DJ Mixing Practise Session Underground March 2021

0:02 First, then explain exactly what I

Alright guys, we've got some tunes here, Underground March 2021. I'm playing Rumble, the main mix. Now, I'm going to give you a great way of just beatmatching by ear. I'm going to demonstrate first, then explain exactly what I did. Just cover that. Hold on, make sure I'm on the plus six on both sides. And also, I've got the same track. Okay, so I need the same track. Okay, here we go. I'm not using my headphones. More time. Play for a bit. So you get an idea of the track. Of course, if you want to, you can look at the BPM and read out, but what I like to do is get people to go back to basics, you know. Sticks and stones, light a fire. Just try and use your ears. Alright, so what was I doing? Well, again, same track and plus or minus 6%. So what I did, excuse me, is I started the track on the left, let that play, brought in the same track on the right, beatmatched it as best as I could, then take out the first side, leave the second side in, but change the pitch then on the right hand side.

3:00 The difference is, you know, you're changing the speed of the track

And then repeated the process, started the left hand side and then had to rematch the pitch on the left hand side. So you're going from sort of right, left, right, left every time you're changing the pitch. The difference is, you know, you're changing the speed of the track. And also by not looking, you can't see the BPM. And again, by having the same track, you're going to get a little bit of phasing, even though you won't be starting both sides at the same position. But you do have the same track. So you're going to be getting a little bit of phasing with the overall beat. Now, once you master this, you know, wax on wax off karate kid style thing, you know, one side, other side, one side muscle memory, just do it again and again and again. Once you master this, you can take it to the next level. Now at the moment I'm on plus or minus 6%, which basically means if I had a hip hop tune of 100 BPM, brought the pitch all the way towards me that hip hop tune would be able to do it.

So that's the percentage. Always make sure you do have the same percentage on both sides if you're doing a regular mix. Otherwise, you're going to think, Oh, what's going on here? One pitch seems to be slightly more different than the other one. 6% 10% great 16 is good if you're going to mix different genres like hip hop into house techno into trance or drum and bass and so on. Whereas the wide feature really is not impossible to make. It's a mix, but it's more used for an effect. So how can we make this more difficult? So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to go to plus and minus 16% on the left and six on the right. Now earlier on when I did this, you can visually see where the pitches are positioned, visually get in the same sort of place and then you're in the same kind of ballpark. Whereas if you do have difference in percentage of BPM, now you can't

5:30 Let's slow it down so you can see straight away difference in the posi

Look at the position of the pitch because that's going to be completely different because you're going to be having, you know, you don't have to work the pitch as much on the lower percentage, but you will on the higher percentage. You've got to be a little bit more careful the higher the percentage goes because you've got less control over the speed. So let's repeat the process, but let's use a different tune other side. This is OK, so again, cover that. Let's slow it down so you can see straight away difference in the position. Speed that one up so we can see there the difference in the position. Do it one more time. Speed that one even more. Don't normally use the jog wheel, but I had to really give that a good pump then. But there we are. We're sort of

7:21 Track numb

That's really close, that one. Let's have a look. Yeah, 132.4, 132.5. So that's not too bad. All right. So again, great way of practicing. Have you finished, Blaze? Yeah. All right. I'm just doing a vid, OK? Good lad. All right. So let's have a look. What else have we got here? Have you finished your work as well? No. Yeah, you've got to do that, mate. OK, good boy. Hold on. Let's go to track number 13. This is Hope Springs. Now, again, very important when you are forming any kind of transition. You want to see you've always got to. You don't have to, but if you are a beginner or intermediate, for God's sake, make sure you've got the pitch variation the same on both sides, plus or minus six on both or ten on both. If you've got six on one, ten on the other, you've got to do that.

If you're not used to sort of beat matching and if it's not second nature, then you may find that you've got problems because you seem to be working one pitch more than the other. And it just doesn't make sense to you. Whereas stick to the same BPM or sorry, pitch percentage variation. And it's a lot easier. And again, for a beginner, definitely plus and minus six, maybe eight or ten percent. If you think above that and it's going to be slightly more difficult and less, of course, you want to really push yourself. Then, of course, by all means, go to sort of anything above ten percent and then work your way down to six and it'll be a lot easier. OK, so this one here, Hope Springs, quite nice, minimal, moody track. This one here is entitled The Heat Extended Mix. Don't forget there is a link in the description. Take you to cdpool.com. You can get more info on everything.

These tunes and, of course, all of the others. This is the Underground series. They do loads of other series as well. And not just the ones that I use in my videos. They've got old school. They also do sort of radio friendly tracks and chart tracks as well. So it's a multi mix of music. I like that. Put this forward a bit.

Grab me headphones.

Track here entitled You're Gone, the D&B remix. Put one more on. After this, let's have a look.

11:07 Really nice sort of techno feel with this tune

OK, finish off with this. This is Each Of Us. Really nice sort of techno feel with this tune. I can see this track doing really well with maybe a nice sort of acapella over it as well. There's something about it.

And all right, yeah, it's got a bit of vocals in there.

Very driving tune. It's got this kind of... rolling, pushing feel.

Like it.

All right, thank you for watching, ladies and gentlemen. Don't forget as well I do still give the one-to-one lessons, these private tuition lessons through the medium of sort of Google Hangouts, Skype, Facebook Private Message. There is an email in the description if you want to get in touch. There is a fee, £20 an hour, but you get one-to-one by myself, Jonathan Elliskins, DJ Tutor, on either. Controllers like this. We've got CD players, we've got vinyl turntables. It's me and you having some fun. And the lessons are strictly confidential. I don't share any information. But like I said, there's an email in the description. Just send me a message to know each other first. And I look forward to hearing from you.

Practice and enjoy. Thank you very much.

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