DJ TUTORIAL PRACTISE WITH MIXING ACAPELLAS by ellaskins the DJ Tutor.

0:01 This particular tutorial is about mixing acapellas

Alright ladies and gentlemen, this particular tutorial is about mixing acapellas. Also, about getting your timing a little bit better. First of all, what is an acapella? Well, if we strip any particular track apart that's got vocals in, and you just leave the vocals, that's pretty much your acapella. Now if you, what I want you to do, I want you to choose one of your favourite songs that's got vocals in it. Try and Google it if you can, and try and find the acapella of that track. What you'll find is, well, I suppose, yeah, it's obvious, the acapella or the vocals will be in time with the music. Not only that, but there will be certain parts of the wording in that acapella that will hit the beats perfectly.

So, when people ask me, how do you manage to fit an acapella from one track into another track? It's because I can do it, and other people can do it, because we're listening for those key elements, the key points in that particular acapella. The timing in the acapella, almost the certain, maybe the certain parts of the word itself, maybe the certain letters of that word will fit in. So, you can put a certain beat to the certain beat of that track. Now let's have a listen to this. By the way, these are two people I talk to on Facebook quite a bit. Mr Lenny Fontana and Kathy Brown. Have a listen.

Let's put the volume up first over there. This is what you've got to do. The first thing is the volume uppy. Hmm, otherwise no soundy. Right.

First thing here, if we listen to the beginning of that... By the way, I'll put links to their tracks in the description. And their Facebook pages, OK?

You're on my mind all day till I go to bed. Have a listen again.

Lenny Fontana, everybody put your hands up. I'm just going to match them up first. Hold on. Bear with me a second. Right, that'll do. Now, first of all what I'm going to do is I'm going to start the Kathy Brown track on the count of one with the Lenny Fontana tune. And let's see, more importantly, let's hear what it sounds like. So, that's the count of one. So if we press play on both of them at the same time, then this is starting the Kathy Brown acapella on the count of one. Lenny Fontana's starting on the count of one. Let's have a listen to what it sounds like.

3:37 It's outrageously terrible because the timing was off

It's outrageously terrible because the timing was off. Let's have a listen to Kathy Brown without Lenny Fontana.

Now for someone who's never heard this particular acapella before, it could be quite difficult to find the timing inside an acapella, or for that matter any acapella, when there's no visible beat. You can't hear any sort of thump of a bass drum or kick of a hi-hat, smash of a snare and thump of a bass drum and punch in the eye. So it might be difficult for you to do that but then it's about practice. Now, there is timing in that acapella because it's in a track. It was sung in a track so there has to be some form of timing but where is it? How do we find it? Right, let's have a listen again.

5:04 I was sitting in the street

Poetry. If you imagine poetry and we think about how a poet forms a poem, what they do, or most poems, most poems with timing and continuity, what they try and do is they start off with the first sentence being, alright it's one I did years ago. I was sitting in the street. So what I've got to do now is try and find something that works with street. I was sitting in the street tapping my feet. So of course you've got street and feet. Now not only, stop it, not only do those two words rhyme but there's some form of,

There's stability, it's almost like those two words are holding the two sentences together. I was sitting in the street tapping my feet. Da da da da da. Da in the street tapping my feet. So let's have a listen. Mind. Day. When. Bed. Time. Move. So we've actually got almost like a poem going on there as well so have a listen again.

Bed and head. So straight away we've got two words there that match. So because those two words match, maybe there's timing and maybe there's some form of... Those, those... It's a bit thick here. Those two words are bringing it all together for us. Let's have a listen again. Mind. Day. Bed. Head. Mind. Move. To me.

7:15 It's about practising and practising and practising and making mistake

Get ready. Bring it on in. Now this is where we can start to just have some fun and mess around and play around. Because at the end of the day, practising is about practising. It's about practising and practising and practising and making mistakes. You only learn by your mistakes. I have, believe me. So let's try this now. So imagine I'm completely new to this track. You see, having a bit of a mess around but at the same time I was trying to imagine someone who didn't know the timing. So getting it off time and in time. But of course the only way of getting it perfect is to try different acapellas. So for example if you do have the likes of hot cues with your controller or with your CD player then try and find the beginning of your acapella.

The first beat. That one on the count of one. Set three of those on the count of one or set three hot cues on the count of one. And then bring in different acapellas, alright? Bearing in mind if you want to do this perfectly in a mix, they've got to be in key. You've got to make sure they're roughly about the same timing because if they're completely off you're going to be moving that pitch so much it's going to sound terrible, alright? So again, this is another way of practising how to match, how to sync acapellas over beats. Thank you very much to Cathy Brown and also Mr Lenny Fontana. Again, there will be links in the description to those two guys. Practice and enjoy. Thank you.

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