DJ Tutorial, Mixing Drum and bass with Hip Hop. and Info on Getinthemix

0:01 How you can utilise the 100%

Alright guys, another demo but mainly a tutorial on learning how to mix drum and bass. Also, how to incorporate a hip hop track with drum and bass. I'll put the names in the description. And the hip hop track is, actually the hip hop track I'm going to mix in is bigger than hip hop because it's by Dead Prez. It's a lot slower. But in this tutorial I'm going to show you how you can utilise the 100% function on the pitch. It's something that I highly recommend you treat with great care when you're mixing because you have very little control over the pitch. In other words, if a track is going at 100 BPM at the centre point, if you increase it 100%, it'll actually go to 200 BPM or nothing. In fact, it will stop.

Right, so this particular track here is Shadow Down, Pendulum. Bring it back to about there. Because what I've done, I've got this track here. Now, again this is about timing. If you're familiar with some videos I did a while ago with bricks of Lego, then if you're not, go and check them out. I actually constructed tracks in Lego. I had, say for example, the bass would have been the blue Lego, the vocals would have been the green, a bridge would be a bridge and if you think about it, you can construct Lego exactly how a track is constructed in bars of four phrases and so on and you can almost have a visual interpretation of the track. So imagine we've got a visual interpretation of the end of this track

2:22 One, two, three, four

We're going to start counting from the first beat. One, two, three, four. One, two, four. One, two, three, four. So what I've done, I've set a point on this track here that will be exactly the same amount of timing from this point to the end, exactly the same amount From, let's say the beginning of this track to where that break comes in. So, back with that. Two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Right, finishes. So also at that point we've got a... Hold on, what was it? Yeah. So that is the point where we bring it in. Lots of things we can do. We can get this one set up perfectly in beat and then we can start it off at that point and try and chuck it in as soon as we can. Alternatively, we can also mess around with the crossfade which is what we'll do now. Right, hold on.

My God, I haven't got any shoes on. Right, let me just do my punk thing here and put the camera like that. So, we've got the one track already. In fact, this is a good area to look at because we need to look at the pitch, concentrate on the pitch control on this one because we're going to bring in the dead Prez track which is a lot slower. So, right, let me just get my dog and phone homes, headphones thingies on. OK, that was one way. If we go back again...

5:18 To be quite honest, there's not really a right way or a wrong way

Now the reason I'm doing this is because there are loads of people out there saying which is the best way of doing sort of a transition. To be quite honest, there's not really a right way or a wrong way. Alright, there are certain criteria you need to look at as in make sure it's in key, make sure it's in time, but it's actually up to you. Now where drum and bass is concerned, you may want to consider looking at the bass as well. For example... For this, it's mainly a demonstration. I had all the bass mid and the treble up. So you may want to consider when that one's playing and you're bringing that one in, you could have the bass out on that one and then as you do your transition, you bring the bass out on that one and bring the bass in because those are the frequencies that will move speakers a lot more. So, got this one playing. Have a look over here now. Right.

7:54 Tempo feature here, at the moment

Now that's what we're going to be mixing in, alright? So it's going to be not impossible but it's going to be very, very difficult. So now if I just try and mix like this at the original speed, this is what it will sound like all over the place. Not only all over the place, it's not a very good time to bring it in because we've got vocals on that side as well. See, that might be a nice place to bring it in. Right, so I've got that set up there. Okay, so at the moment now, if you can see, I've got master tempo on, I'm going to keep master tempo on. And if we look at the tempo feature here, at the moment I've got it on plus or minus 10, so I'm going to click that twice. Now we're on wide. If we have a listen now. If I take master tempo off... Right, this is where a bit of skill is needed because what you've got to remember now, from there to there, you have a difference of 100%. So if this original track was say, like I said earlier, 100, it's now going to be 200 up here. So that there...

It's not much space to work in, but we're going to give it a go. So from that point... So I'm going to try it there for a second. Let's give it a go. Might try it again. Let's have the volume a little bit further up and down. Also something going on here, loads of bass there, and that is drum and bass. What I want to do here, and again it's entirely up to you, I want to emphasise... I don't really want to emphasise the bass, so if I now just get rid of the bass. Because I've got rid of the bass now, there's probably less volume coming out of this channel here now. So what I can do if I wanted to, if we have a look, I could increase the trim to make it louder. Alternatively, I'm going to increase the mid and the treble very slightly.

10:38 Can you hear it's a lot louder, there's more emphasis now in the mid

Now, again, with bass, mid and treble, one important factor here, it's fine, decrease not a problem, but when you start to increase, especially the bass... Well, actually all of them. Solve that. All of them. You will start to overpower the system quite possibly. Just be careful. So rule of thumb, you know, maybe up to a maximum of two or two and a half sort of to three o'clock. Or when I say two, two and a half, one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. Rock, four, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. About up to two is probably sufficient. So what we're going to do is go back to this point here and... Now can you hear it's a lot louder, there's more emphasis now in the mid. I'm going to have a little bit of bass there. Right here we go. That's a bit of a demonstration stroke tutorial and I've got a bit of news for you. Something quite interesting actually. I have mentioned it a little bit but it's all about

A company that I'm going to be working with for quite a while now, they're called Get In The Mix and it's a company in Colchester. They deal in all aspects of DJ gear and they're going to be sponsoring me. Now again there's something that's really important here. I haven't been taken over, nothing will change. In fact the beauty about what's going on, it will be bigger, it will be better, it will be bolder. Do you like the light in the back? What will happen is I will be, over quite a period of time, be able to demo, give advice, tutorials on all different aspects of kit, not just one or two items. All being well, near enough as soon as a piece of kit comes out. Some pieces of kit, I'll be able to demo them straight away. And again, you know, I don't do any crap. I try and give my honest opinion. In fact, this is what actually has happened. A lot of people say, why don't you ever do any bad reviews? Well, my philosophy, very simple. If I have a piece of kit and I don't like it, I will not give it a bad review. I just won't review it. So in a way, I'm being honest there.

13:18 There will be a lot of things happening over however long, I don't kno

I don't like to have, it's not fair to have a piece of kit and say it's crap. It's better just to have the piece of kit, look at it and go, don't want to do it. And I'll be honest with you, that hasn't happened that often. So I'd like to say this opportunity to thank Get In The Mix, to everyone there, the whole team, and also if you want to subscribe to their channel as well because they've got a whole bunch of videos on there and quite often what you'll find is I'll be having some videos and I'll put them on their channel, I may not put them on here. And once a fortnight, maybe once a month, I'll be going to the Get In The Mix headquarters in Colchester and doing a whole bunch of tutorials there as well and demos. And all of those videos will be uploaded to the getinthemix.co.uk YouTube channel. Also, there's the Facebook thing, so go and check them out as well. Now, there will be a lot of things happening over however long, I don't know. But hopefully it will be great fun.

What I do will not change. It will always stay as it is. It'll be a little bit punk, a little bit random. You know, they've actually got a better camera now, one that hasn't got blurry bits on it. And also, all being well, we'll be able to go to NAMM show, back to the Mobile Beat Show, Frankfurt Music, Messi and all of the shows and just do my random thing. So I hope that's been a bit of information for you but at the end of the day it's good to be honest. Right, OK, so I'm going to say practice and enjoy and I'm going to leave you with a few clips from what happened when I was last at the Get In The Mix headquarters. Practice and enjoy. Thank you. It's a snow machine! Yes, it's a 500 watt snow machine and all I can say is it's rather good fun. Right guys, what we're looking at here is the Equinox foldable DJ screen.

This speaker from Mackie is known as the TH15A. Happy New Year! Two, one, I've started already, go. Alright guys, we're looking at a couple of speakers from a company called Mackie. Alright guys, looking at a nice little light called the Equinox. Jeremy, right now, I'm off now, so goodbye. Thank you for... Good to see you, yeah, and you too. Thank you. Hang on a minute, I'll see you in a minute. Right, that was speak-on connectors. Now you will use these for your speakers. In video 7 we're looking at a smoke machine. Hey DJ Tutor! Oh it's the last time I'm getting you down Jonathan to do any videos. What the hell have you done? Look, look! Practice and enjoy!

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