DJ Tutorial on Mixing Breaks BY Ellaskins the DJ Tutor

0:00 Style of music known as breaks

Alright ladies and gentlemen, still at the DJ Academy in Dubai and this very second my knees are gliding apart from the slidey floor. Not a pretty picture. This video we're going to look at a style of music known as breaks. Breaks. First of all, if you're not familiar with breaks, this is what happens when you throw something on the floor. Okay, imagine hip-hop. Hip-hop. Imagine drum and bass. Brakes are sort of like in the middle, sort of like nestled in between them. It didn't really want to go to drum and bass because it didn't like it and hip-hop was a little bit too slow for it so it decided to do something completely different. Break apart from the other genres and make its own sort of style. Brakes have been around for quite a while and this is the sort of style of music

1:48 All of the Slag Brothers, have a listen

You can have so much fun with. You can chop, you can just mash it all up big time. This track over here is Nitro Track and Tart. Violence, is it violence? Yes. And then we're going to bung in the Slag Brothers drugs. What a nice name, Slag. We'll call them the Slug Brothers. Anyway, right, so, give you an idea. Lots of energy here. Okay, so what I'm going to do now... Okay, we've got that going. Let's have a listen to the first part. All of the Slag Brothers, have a listen. Also timing, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Now I like the beginning of that so what I'm going to do, I'm gonna try and bring that in. Oh, volume up. Check my levels. Okay, let's do the mix. Wang some filter. Filter! Okay, so what was happening there? Again, all the time,

I was counting bars and phrases, making sure that I brought it in in the correct time frame. There's no point just bunging it in anywhere. I'll give you a demonstration of the bung-in anywhere. Right, okay, so let's go from pretty much the same place we started before. Wank forward a little bit. Two, three, four. Two, three, four. This is what it sounds like if you don't bring it in on the count of one. Let's wait till the kick, the actual full percussion comes in. I'm just going to keep it in time on my headphones. Oh dear, you're going to have a laugh now. It's sort of in time but it isn't. The trouble is with breaks, house music, trance, electro, all that kind, all those genres are four by four.

4:52 You've got a kick drum

You have a 1, 2, 3, 4. You've got a kick drum. Dum, dum, dum, dum. Or it could be da-da-da, it could be dee-dee-dee, it could be da-da-da, it could be... It's a basic dum-dum-dum like that. Breaks is completely different. It's almost a... OK, you can hear there's a lot more going on. There are so many, there's little tiny bits. Inside the normals of dom, dom, dom, dom. You could if you wanted to. You could mix in some house. In fact, probably the next video I'll be doing mixing house into breaks. What fun that'll be. So, you've got to remember that breaks has a lot more going on. In a way you've got to be a lot more careful about beatmatching because if you are slightly off then it's going to sound...

Far worse, because let's imagine this is the one track here, this is the other track here, and that's perfectly beatmatched. Let's imagine that they're not perfectly beatmatched. Instead of house, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, working together and being slightly off, so you've got that sort of gladdering style sound, you're going to have something like this. It's going to be... There's going to be too much happening, too much of this sort of like mad sound. So you have to be a lot more careful. It's exactly the same as maybe mixing the likes of drum and bass. If you're off with drum and bass, you are really off. You've got to be either very much on or take up flower arranging. Right, so let's go back to the old slaggy slow brothers. No offence guys if you watch this.

7:00 Let's find something else now

Let's find something else now. Okay, we'll go through. Let's find something else. A good idea here or a good track is this. If we have a listen, this one here is Soul of Man, a track by Sukdat, the Roge Element Remix. So it's almost quite minimalistic here. You know, earlier on I said there's so much going on and now I find a track where there's not much going on at all. But there's not much going on at the beginning. Let's have a listen as we go further into the track. Pretty much the same, the same sort of beat. In other words, if we imagine that there's like, say, half a dozen beats or drum loops going on, there isn't any more. There's still the same amount of drum loops. Whereas something like this over here, if we have a listen. There are more beats and there's more sort of drum sounds in this.

9:16 I'm cued up on the first one, the count of one in a bar

There's less in here. So, again, I try and always think outside the box. I don't just think, yeah, mix one to the other, one to the other. I try and think, you know, what should we do that's slightly different, something more exciting? Maybe we could add tiny parts of this track into that track, but just tiny parts, not all of it, not do a complete mix where we go into that one and we let it play and then we mix into this one. Just add a little bit of this track. So I'm going to do just that. So over there. Bring that one in. I'm cued up on the first one, the count of one in a bar. Beatmatching it. So again, we're chopping. We're not just chopping the dum-dum. We're chopping the and the low, the high and the low. Break. Beat. What I've done there, I've got it ready at the beginning of the phrase. Have a listen. Okay, we're going to chop this track in now. Don't you hate that when that happens? Hit the cue and not the play.

12:03 One minute or so left

Okay, right, so one minute or so left. Let's try and find something else that pulls that up. Okay, right, what I've done here is if I just set hot cue at that point there and we go back to the beginning of the track. Let's have a listen to the beginning. This one here by the way is far too loud and it's by The Touchdown. Okay, so let's have a listen to the point where I set the hot cue first of all. Let's have a listen to the beginning of the track.

Now many times I've said in my tutorials, if you want to be different, if you want to be the DJ that is maybe slightly unique. Yes, I'm saying this so if you're the one who's slightly unique and everyone else is then you'll be the same. So, right. What I'm trying to do here now is not just beginning and end, beginning and end. As I've said quite a few times, Experiment. Maybe start mixing a track in at the middle or after the first two phrases or one phrase. So what I'm going to do here, I'm going to start mixing this track in there, not at the beginning. Sorry, not even there because that was track 2. Track 3. That's it. This is the beginning of the track, not the last bit because that went to track 2. So what I'm going to do just in case is set another hot cue there. So now I know...

Set a hot cue please. That's it. Sorry, love it. Right, so that's the beginning of the track there and that's where I'm going to mix it in but if we have a listen to the end of this track here, I now need to find a time, a point in this track where I can start to mix this one in. So let's go back over. This is that bass line. What's happening?

15:12 Dance music, software, loop

Thinking out loud here, now if I'd have used the software known as rekordbox, by the way it's a free download go and check it out from Pioneer website, what I could have done is I could have in the software, rekordbox software, I could have formed a quantized loop which would mean it would be, well 99.999% perfect, nothing's perfect except myself of course. So if I'd have done that My first thought would be to form a loop right at the end of this track and then start to bring this one in, but because I haven't done that and I don't really want to put a loop on here now because it's me doing it so it could be highly likely, it could be slightly off, so it'd be very difficult to beatmatch it. So what I'm thinking now is have a listen. We've got that bass line in the background. Right, did you hear that point there? Okay, 31. Now that's quite possibly the beginning of a phrase.

17:32 Up your mixer slider

Now, in most, practically all of dance music, modern day dance music, you have bars, beats, of course you have phrases. And phrases, most of the time, are probably around about 16 bars. So what I'm going to do from that point, let's count how many bars there are. Now it's roughly about 30 seconds left, which quite possibly could be our 16 bars. And here we go. One, two, three. One, two, three, four. That's going to be my cue. So, let's have a listen now to this track here and see what happens or what we get after this point. And I'm going to count the same amount of time, 16 bars. So, here we go. Up yours... Sorry. Up there. Up your mixer slider. Be rude. One, two... There is a technical difficulty with the speaker. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.

Alright, that wasn't that much of a difference, but it's enough. Now, did you notice as well, I said tip for you, when I was counting my bars, I was doing 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. I was sort of highlighting the fourth. Now this is my way of almost like a click down. So instead of going 16, 6, 1, 2, 3, bars, as in 1, 2, 3, 4, that's 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, that's 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, that's 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, that's 4. Grouping them in sets of four. So what my mind is doing is one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. And that's almost one. That's a lot easier to think about than four and one and two. This is what I'm trying to do. So I'm imagining groups, sets of groups like bits all chucked together of bars, not just one bar, two bar, three bar, four bar.

Come from Wales, loads of sheep, always bar. So, right, we're going to play this again and we're going to mix that one in and by the time these 16 bars finish here, we will get to that stage where you heard that track. But of course, maybe this mix could be a nice, subtle, sort of gentle kind of flowing mix. So I know I've got 16 bars to bring one in, take one out, maybe use a bit of the filter, a bit of the EQ and maybe scratch my testicles. Don't know. Hold on.

20:18 I just cued it up at the wrong place

Okay, I just cued it up at the wrong place. Ignore them. More time could be slightly better but never mind. Alright, tiny insight into a genre known as breaks. If you want any more information on this style then go and check it out. What I'll probably do, what I'll try and do is in the description of this video give you some sort of a link to breaks. It's a very vibrant kind of genre. It's good fun and if you're sort of thinking I'm bored of hip-hop. Drum and bass is a little bit too difficult for me, then go and check out breaks because it's a great way of chopping from one to the other as well. You can have a lot of fun. You don't just have to do a smooth mix all the time. Again with breaks, if you're not very good at beatmatching, you can still mix using breaks because all you need to do is cue up on the count of one, you play one track and just so long as your timing is correct, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

Have fun, practice and enjoy.

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