How to Mix Drum & Bass, What to listen for!

0:01 Try and get direct drive

Right folks, loads of people out there have been asking for more tutorials on learning how to mix drum and bass. Now, very quickly, I'm not an expert at mixing drum and bass, but hopefully what I am good at is explaining how to mix it. That's very important. The kit I'm using, DJM700 mixer, we've got CDJ-1000 Mark III, and over here, which is the all-time classic SL-1200 Mark II vinyl turntable direct drive. Try and get direct drive. A couple of things. Look in the description to the side of the video for all relevant information, names of the two tracks and also go and check out a very, very good, rather large drummer bass website. Right, before we go any further, think about this. Any ideas on drumming, on an actual drummer? Imagine it's a basic rock beat, alright? The drummer will use the hi-hat, which is that thing. He'll use the snare and the bass drum.

Let's look at house music first of all. If the drummer was to play house music, he'd be doing this or she would be doing this. In other words, that bass beat would be dum-dum-dum-dum. But with drum and bass, it's like this. Now that's almost half speed, it's more like this. Now listen to this. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Now this hand here would be playing what's known as the snare, which is the round drum. In between the drummer's legs, have a listen again. Bass drum, one, snare, snare. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Now let's have a listen to this track over here. What we're going to do, we're going to start off at that break or where the break finishes and that's where we're going to start to count.

2:46 About learning how to mix drum

That is going to be our count of one. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Right, I'm going to bring it back. Now this time, I'm going to try and talk a little bit quieter. And I'm going to emphasise the count of two and the count of four. The reason being, the count of two and four is the snare. That's what we need to listen to. Here we go. Remember, there's one. One, two, three, four. Two, four. Okay, so that's the first thing about learning how to mix drum and bass. It's try and listen to the snare. Now also, when you're mixing drum and bass, there's loads of different ways to do it. First of all, don't think you have to be like that DJ or that DJ or that DJ or... Where's the other one gone? Be like yourself. Try...

4:10 I'll try and put it in exactly the same place

In other words, here's a good idea for you. Look at different ways people will mix and maybe make it your own style incorporating other people's styles but it's always very important to keep your own identity. Right, what I'm going to do now is mix that one with that one two different ways. One, I'm going to do a gentle slide over then the next time I'm going to do a bit of a chop using the crossfade. Bosh, bosh, bosh, bosh, bosh. Well, slide, slide, slide, cross, cross really. I'm not cross. Mr Angry! That was one. What I'm going to do now is try another mix, but this time more emphasis on the crossfader. So I'll try and put it in exactly the same place. I'll take the old fish eye off the camera. Is that better? Right, okay. A good drum and bass DJ could do this a lot better.

All night. Basically, a drum and bass DJ takes, alright, all DJs who produce a good set take you on a journey. Like I said in a previous video, if we look at the likes of the old composers, Brahms, Bach, Brahms and Liszt, and he said Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, what they did is they started to construct and put the music together so it flowed. That's exactly what a good drum and bass DJ will do. Make the music flow. In other words, what happens, you can close your eyes and you imagine you're on a different planet. That's what it's all about, alright? Another little insight into how to mix drum and bass. I hope I've helped. Practice and enjoy. By the way, dig a t-shirt. I did it myself actually, with a pen.

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