DJ LESSON on MIXING CHICAGO STYLE HOUSE MUSIC by ellaskins the DJ Tutor

0:00 There he is down there, he's so cute

Alright ladies and gentlemen, first of all if you can hear any strange noises in the background it's my little boy Blaze. Blaze say hello. Hello. There he is down there, he's so cute. Right, Chicago style mixing of house music. Now, very important, this is a rough way of mixing house. This is very organic. Careful I don't say orgasmic. This is like a little bit more twisted. Careful, not exactly twisted as in it's going to fall all over the place like my little boy if he's not careful. It's a little bit more rough, it's more organic, it's more natural. Now, smooth mixing is a nice steady blend. If you listen to the likes of some old school Chicago music, it's very rough and chunky and ready. It's like blocks.

They're just chucked on top of each other. The blocks work, everything's in time but it's a little bit more raw, more real. I can imagine the old school Chicago tracks being made with a reel-to-reel and some guy spending hours getting that perfect cut just there so it's perfectly in time. Of course they thought it was perfectly in time but then it was slightly off. But talking about off, change my socks. That's what we're going to be doing by bringing you back to Chicago style mixing. That's what we're going to be doing by bringing in the next track. We're going to be bringing it in on the off beat. We're going to be bringing it in on the and instead of one, two, three, four. One and two and three and four.

I'll give you a demonstration first then I'll explain exactly what's going on. Two tracks I'm using is Cape Funk Cartel, a track entitled Buster Move. So I'll give you a bit of a demo where you can have a listen. This is the one track.

2:04 It's a Chicago feel

It's a Chicago feel. It's got that very casual relief records kind of bassline stroke melody. So we'll just take it from there and the other tune we're using is this one here. The track is the original mix. It's OXO Records. It's Bart Ricardo, a track entitled Stomp. Now the reason I've got this particular cut, careful there Mr Wu, is because we've got a very good four to the floor beat. Careful. Yeah come over here. Come over here. You play with this ear. Good boy. I'll play with some dab dabs down here. Play with that there. That's a good boy. Good boy. Okay, so if you have a listen we have a Now I'm going to be bringing this track in on the as well as the . Have a listen. Here we go. There is a lot more to this than meets the eye but it is a very rough way of mixing.

But it's natural. It's real. Come here Mr. No Blaze. Come on. Sorry about this. Come on, play with that. Here you go Blaze. Here you go. Well not to the beginning. We'll put that back to the part where I started it off which was right about sort of there-ish. In fact it was at three minutes, three seconds .28.0 with an F. Okay and this one here was of course right from the beginning. Now normally when you mix tracks in again you must listen to bars, structure, timing. But normally it's bringing it in on the one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Now this one has got an and in it which is that . Listen. Now what I'm going to do now is I'm going to play this one but I'm going to I don't have any headphones so if I have that quite low volume

6:03 This time we're going to bring it in on the and

I'll be able to explain how I do bring it in. I want to try and like just make it slightly more rough. In other words we have a diamond here. A beautiful cut diamond. But it's got a couple of rough edges. People aren't bothered about the rough edges because it's still a very good diamond. And so long as you show the good part you can get away with the rough bits because again it shows that it's real. So here we go. What I'm trying to do, I'm trying to bring it on that instead of the . Now again I can cut it in and out. I don't just have to bring it in on the . Because this is . I'm bringing it. It's just destroying my webcam mode down there. Okay what I'm going to do, I'm going to bring it in on the . And be in time.

But hopefully you'll see it's not as interesting as bringing in on the and. So play this one again. Right we're going to do it again. This time we're going to bring it in on the and. And I'm going to cut it up. I'm not just going to bring it on the 1 2 and 3 4 1 2 and 3 4 I might bring it on the 1 and 2 3 4 Or 1 2 and 3 You alright Blaze? Good man. Okay here we go.

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