DJ Tutorial, How to mix Reggaeton, Video 1 part 1

0:00 You know, it's Latin music

Alright folks, this is video number one in hopefully a selection I'm doing on helping you how to mix a style of music called reggaeton. Now first of all, it originated around the sort of Puerto Rico area and it grew and grew, went into the clubs and eventually people realised that it's a fun kind of sound and then it slowly crept all over the place. Alright, what is reggaeton? Well, you know, it's Latin music. We're looking at rap, hip-hop, reggae, ragga, merengue, salsa, all bunged in together to form this vibrant sort of sound. Now, it is a culture in itself. I personally think it's a bubbly, wild and wacky sound, and it makes you smile, it's happy. And if you can't dance to that kind of music, then I'm afraid...

1:46 One, two, three, four

Your legs have probably been sawn off okay so what i'm going to do in video number one we're going to play a couple of tracks and then i'm going to break it down and listen to the structure mainly though listen to the actual beats and see if we can sort of somehow together work out how we can count those beats which is of course the most important thing and again we're going to break it down into bars and we're going to try and distinguish Ellaskins, The DJ Tutor. Now that's how he starts. Listen. One, two, three, four. Now straight away I can hear a beat. One, two, three, four. Let's play it. Even though we haven't got like in house music.

We can listen or I can hear some sort of structure where the beat's concerned. So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to play that again and I'm going to start to count 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. Now of course counting 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 is a bar. What we can do, we can count 1, 4, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. And what we might find is after counting say 4 bars there could be a change. After counting 8 bars, there could be a change. After counting 12, 16, 32. Now all of a sudden what we're actually doing, we're finding that there is structure inside the music, inside the vocals, inside the melody, inside all of those tiny little parts of the music. Now very quickly as well, what we do find with the likes of reggaeton, as opposed to let's say house... I keep on hearing funny noises here.

As opposed to house music. House music is a steady 4-4 beat, and quite often you will have a long introduction where there's just a beat. Then you'll have melody and bassline slowly coming in, you'll have a bit of vocals etc. But with regards to the likes of reggaeton, it's more intense, there's a lot more happening, there's a lot more vocals, there's a lot more melody. Therefore, there's less chance for you to actually mix another track in with a beat over the beat. You've got to be very precise and you've almost got to chop it from one track, bang, straight to the other. And if there are areas where there's very little vocals, then you've got to be very quick to mix the one track into the other. So now what we'll do is we'll press play. Start again. And I'll start, as soon as it starts, I'll start to count.

4:07 Let's say for example there's, I don't know, 128

Okay, now while I was actually doing that, I was actually counting how many bars. Now for example... What I could do, I can actually go through that entire song and count how many bars there were in the whole song. Let's say for example there's, I don't know, 128. Then what I could do, I could take that to the next level and I could count how many bars there were in the introduction. I could then count how many bars there were let's say in a rap. I could count then how many bars there were let's say if there was a certain... Vocals, maybe there was a lady singing. Now all of a sudden what I'm actually doing, I'm breaking that particular track down into its small facets. Now this is very important with the likes of this kind of music because there's no point playing this one and then getting another one ready and mixing the next track in when you've got vocals over vocals or a melody over melody that will clash.

This is very important. So, like I said earlier, with the likes of this sort of music, you have to be very precise and concise about where one track finishes and the other track starts. Now, I hope you get the gist of this. By the way, if you are a DJ and you play the likes of reggaeton and you're good at it, then please put a video response underneath here so people can see how it's done. Practice and enjoy.

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