9:45
Mixing house
On YouTube this video is called Dj Tutorial on mixing House
What this lesson teaches
A house mixing lesson whose real subject is the shape of a set.
The thing he is arguing against
Play a track, wait until the end, mix the next one in. Wait until the end, mix the next one in. Repeat for two hours.
That is what most people do and he dismisses it outright. Every record gets the same treatment, arrives the same way and leaves the same way, and the set becomes predictable fifteen minutes in.
What to do instead
His instruction is to take your set and jiggle it about.
The specific move he demonstrates: treat one track as a filler. Play track one, mix track two in, then bring track one back, then bring track three in. The set stops being a queue and starts being something with a shape - things return, get answered, go away again.
He confuses himself describing it, which is fair enough, because the point is not the particular sequence. It is that the sequence is a decision rather than a default.
Why house in particular
Because house records are built to allow it. Long intros, long outros, extended instrumental sections, and arrangements that repeat - all of which exist precisely so a DJ can come in and out of them more than once.
A three-minute pop song does not give you that. A nine-minute house record does, and playing it start to finish wastes most of what it was made for.
The practical version
Pick three records you know work together. Play them as a straight A-B-C and listen back.
Then do A, B, back to A, then C. Or bring B in, drop it out, and bring it back in eight bars later.
The records are identical and the two results are not remotely the same thing - which is the point, and it costs nothing to find out.
Contents of the video
0:01 Mixing some house tunes, garagey house
Hello! Right, another video on sort of mixing and stuff. I like the word stuff because I suppose most of my videos are sort of like stuff. It starts when it starts and it finishes when it finishes and sort of stuff happens in the middle kind of stuff, stuff. Right, in this one we're going to look at mixing some house tunes, garagey house tunes but not your stereotypical stuff as in 1, 2, 3, 4... Fine things, huh? Hey, you know, wait till the end, mix the next one in, wait till the end, mix the next one in, wait till the end, mix the next... Forget it. What I want you to do is I want you to take your set and just jiggle it about a bit. You know, stick it in the washing machine, not literally please because it'll break the records. Stick it in the washing machine, give it a bit of a jiggle and then see what comes out. Bits of record. No, right. So, bearing in mind, pay attention, hold on, here we go. Right, this is the first track we're going to mess around with.
Which is this one. I'll put all the names in the description, don't panic. Who wants a lickable clink? Yeah! That's one, right, this is the other one. This is a classic here. Good bass line. Okay, and then I'm going to put on a bit of this one. Check it out. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to class that one there as a bit of a filler. In other words, what I'm going to do is play that one, mix that one in, then I'm going to put that one back in. Then, I'm going to bring that one in. And then, I'm going to put that... I've even confused myself now. Then I'm going to put that... Right, let's just see what happens. I should have written this down, shouldn't I? So in other words, instead of... Instead of going from there to there to there, what I'm doing is going from there... No, I'm going to go from there to there anyway, but I'm going to sort of mash up the tracks. In other words, not just play your stereotypical put one track on, put the other.
2:20 In, third, fourth, fifth and
The whole idea here is if you imagine... See what, that printer's not going to last very long. Keep on kicking it and chucking stuff at it. Right, if you imagine your stereotypical first track, bring the next one in, third, fourth, fifth and so on. That's fine, but occasionally maybe it's a good idea to play first, second, third, and then maybe if you can bring a tiny little insy-winsy, little bitty spicy-waisy of the first one in, but go back to the... So, what you're actually doing is you're not just doing the stereotypical one, two, three. You're just doing jiggly bits in the middle. Right. So, if we have a look here and let's play this one. And it starts off like this. So, for argument's sake, right, have a listen.
3:59 This and go and think, I
So we've gone sort of straight into that, but because this is a bit of an instrumental, we can sort of do lots of other thingy-thingies, jingly stuff with it. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to take this off here and again very quickly what you need to do, please pay attention, don't copy this, look at this and go and think, I know, I can do it better. You know if you can, spot on, because that's what I want you to do, do it better. Right, so what we'll do is we'll put this one in there. All right, calm down. Concentrating a little bit more, right. Say we've got this one playing now, right. Particular tracks don't necessarily go fantastically with each other, but the whole idea here is to show you that, get away from this light, I'm going to play this one and that one and that one and that one. Try and take, let's say, the first three tracks. One, two, three. Right. That's all I get, asthma. Pain in the arse sometimes. Right. What you need to do is get out of the box and just think, you know what, I'm going to put a bit of that in.
Bit of that in, a tiny bit of that, a tiny bit of this, bung it all together. Imagine this, you're making a cake and you think I'm going to put four ounces of flour, four ounces of margarine, two eggs and I'm going to make a cake and some margarine. Maybe try and put four and a bit ounces in but maybe put the four ounces in first and then the bit in later. In other words you're just adding tiny bits of the same thing but at different intervals. Probably not a good analogy because with cooking a lot of the time you have to do it like this. What else can I use analogy-wise? I know, practice and enjoy. Thank you.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
