DJ DEMONSTRATION Mixing Rock music into house by ellaskins the DJ Tutor

0:01 A bit of a demonstration and a tutorial on mixing rock music with hous

Alright ladies and gentlemen, a bit of a demonstration and a tutorial on mixing rock music with house. Now this tutorial is going out to Sammy Juergens, I hope that I pronounced that correctly, from Toronto. Now first and foremost, again with a lot of my videos, well practically all of them, don't follow them precisely as I explain. What you want to do is take tips and a few tricks from each video, so it's up to you to take it to the next level and also take little bits of information and put them into your set. Right, so let's just move that over there a little bit like that. Right, now first we need to talk about BPM and timing. Now house music, most of it, 99.9% recurring is done with a drum machine. Rock music on the other hand, it's not exactly the other way around.

There are quite a few rock bands out there that will use drum machines but generally it's guitar orientated, it's a real drummer so the time will change, or sorry, will fluctuate. The BPM will change. The BPM will fluctuate because the drummer is a real person, they're not a machine. A lot of good drummers can keep very good timing but they can't keep timing like a computer. A computer is new enough damn perfect if it's 120 bpm at the beginning it'll be 120 bpm at the end whereas a drummer may start at 120, may finish at 120 but in the middle it could be 120.5, it could be 119.7 It could be 120, 1.328. So that's where you've got to be very clever and very quick. Now again with rock music it's more hard edge, it's more hard hitting.

There are certain rock tracks with a bit of soul so the first thing to think about is finding the right track, the right house sort of track to mix in with your rock tune so you don't want some fluffy sort of uplifting house track and then going to some deep dark sort of rock tune. Opposite applies, you don't want some really dark sort of full on techno tune coming into something that's maybe sort of a bit soul in it but still rock orientated. Again, it's down to the ear. That might work, it might not work so again I don't want to contradict myself but it is about choosing the tracks. So let's imagine what we're doing, we have a track over here. This one here is Dreaming by Robbie Rivers. Dreaming by Robbie Riviera going into Smash and Grab.

Keith and, hold on. Keith and Sue.

2:52 This while it's happening but

Super Beats remix sorry.

And then we're going to be playing Since You've Been Gone by, sorry there's so much going on in my mind at the moment, by Rainbow. So there it is. It's from a bit of a compilation. Like it's just loads of rock stuff on here. So first of all, now let's imagine we've got this playing here. Now again I'm going to try and explain this while it's happening but at the same time stop and start and show you what I would need to do. Okay? So we've got this track playing here. That's our first beat. So what we'll do, we'll play this towards the right part of the track. So this is our sort of basic mix. From one sort of house track to the other. Right, I'm going to stop it there okay? What I actually should have done is, now again every single track is different so don't take this as what you should do.

Every single track is different. Let's have now a listen to Smash and Grab from the beginning.

5:24 Just make sure I tapped it on time

Yes that's left.

Right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to, let's just imagine I set my hot cue at that point in the song. Instead. So that is immediately behind the madness. So even while I was in the mix, I could have set my hot cue quite easily. Just make sure I tapped it on time. You do that of course by pressing record and call so the hot cues are in red. Press it again and then there it is alright? Now at that point now I could know sorry it's on thumb. So let's imagine I've taken my CD out or I'm ready to play my next track. Which happens to be on CD.

So I'm going to go to Rainbow since you've been gone. Now again, I'm going to be sort of trying to explain this as well so I'm not going to be using my headphones. If I use my headphones I'll just pay more attention to the mix. I really want to try and have almost like an overview and explain what's going on. So this is our break. And you know maybe we'll play this towards the latter part of the track. Right I'm just going to pause that there as well. Now again, this is very important and it's you know if you don't take this on board then the mix you eventually have could sound terrible. A lot of rock music has got a lot of vocals in it whereas quite a bit of house music hasn't. It's just samples and like here.

It's just got dance, dance. So what you want to try and do is the house tracks that you mix in with your rock tracks. Try and make sure they're quite minimalistic. Otherwise you could have a lot of clashing of vocals. And vocals over vocals can sound terrible. But vocals over vocals at the right time can sound very good. But again it's about getting it perfectly balanced so.

7:42 Imagine this is playing

Now if we have a listen to. Imagine this is playing. Hold on let me just turn that down a bit. That's the baby monster. Hopefully she won't swear. Not the baby. It's a bear. Sorry. That's a ranger tune. Now again when you're choosing your rock track as well. You have to try and make sure that it will mix correctly with house music. Now you can change the speed slightly. Maybe slow it down, speed it up. But you don't want to do it too much one way or the other. Because you could end up having your rock track not sound right. Even though you may have master tempo or key lock on. People will, they'll sort of feel that it's too slow or too fast. But then again if you're doing a really good mix over a house track.

The emphasis should be more on the house tune. Not on the rock tune. The rock tune should almost be as though it's adding a little bit of extra vibe and atmosphere to the house track. And. I'll show you how to do that very shortly. So.

8:57 Let's imagine we're coming to the end of the track

Let's imagine we're coming to the end of the track. Now remember I set my cue point. Here we go. Take away the bass. Now it did go completely off there. But again no headphones on. So I hope you get the idea there. I went back to the hot cue. And as soon as I hit the hot cue. I pressed start on my rock track Rainbow. Now they were pretty much in time. If I'd have had my headphones on. I would've been able to spend more attention listening to the Rainbow track. And then again what I did. I brought the bass down off Rainbow. Brought in the mid slightly. To emphasise the vocals. Because again high is like your hand clap. The crescendo, the high end of the tune. Mid is more vocals, melody, keyboards. More of the instruments.

And bass low of course is the bass drum, the kick drum. So by taking away the low. What I've done is. I've sort of got rid of let's say some of the bass kick on the drummer. But I've tried to emphasise more on the vocals. And I've kept the low, mid and high on the house track. So again there's nothing happening now. If we just press the cue. Or sorry the hot cue. There.

Together. Two, three, four.

Alright went a bit bananas there. But again it's about experimentation you know. This here isn't perfect. This is not how it should be done. But hopefully it will give you some ideas on how maybe you can do it. That's the important bit alright. So big shout out to Sammy my friend. And I will say practice and enjoy. Thank you.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.