DJ Mixing Lesson the Hard Way BY Ellaskins the DJ Tutor

0:00 Hopefully this video will inspire you to do some form of a random mix

Alright guys, hopefully this video will inspire you to do some form of a random mix. Now, it's easy just to grab a whole bunch of tunes and randomly put them together, but with today's technology, it's very easy to see the wave format, to know the BPM, etc. Alright, so doing something like this will make you think that little bit more. Now, I've got a bunch of tracks here, I've put them through rekordbox, there's in total, I have 36 tracks to go through. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a very kind of random mix. Now also as well, to prove a point, I have here the XDJ-RX from Pioneer. I'm going to cover the screen, so I won't be able to see the... the names of the tracks, but for this demonstration, more importantly, I won't be able to see the BPM, so I've really got to concentrate and make sure that it's in time.

I also won't be able to see the breaks where the phrasing starts and finishes, because of course we can see that there. I'm just going to change that a little bit, so there you go, around the camera. Okay, so first things first, I'm going to cover the screens. Now, absolutely no one should be able to see that. I can't see anything at all. So I'm going to load up the first track, let's have a listen. Okay, let's keep this kind of vibe hopefully. This is again, best thing to do is Shazam it. I can't see what I'm playing. Right, okay, let's give this a go. Just could do a couple of mixes for you.

1:45 Just trying to find, yeah, tracks with sort of similar kind of feel

Sorry, yeah, I had to press back, I do apologise, sorry, I forgot about that. Just trying to find, yeah, tracks with sort of similar kind of feel. Let me just move the camera there a little bit so I can get to the pitch. Wait for my phrasing. I'm going to move the bass away, don't forget Shazam, take filter off. Try to do that, so I'm going to pause that now. Let's just have a listen to the other tracks. You see, you know, there's a lot going on there. You know, I try to just choose tracks that I felt would work.

Okay, so go back and by the looks of it, tracks I played was one, entitled Break of Dawn, the original mix. And then another one, Can I Have a Break? The Trim Tone Remix. Church Lady featuring Danielle Wright. And then Come On Stronger, the original mix. Define, Club Dub, Do Me Right, original mix. And this one here is Higher, the original mix. Right, give it a go. Have a mess around. And doing something like this tests you to the pretty much limit because, you see, this is actually even more difficult than vinyl. You're probably thinking, yeah it isn't because you're just using files. Well actually it is because even with vinyl you could see where the breaks were so you had an idea of where the breaks were coming in.

But of course this does train your ear even more because you've got to picture in your mind this break appearing, appearing, here it is, it's coming, it's going, bang! And there it is. As soon as you get that break and a change then you start counting your bars and your phrases again. Alright, I hope that's been a help. Practice and enjoy. Thank you very much.

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