12:41
Picking tracks for the beginning, middle and end
On YouTube this video is called How to Pick Tracks for the Beginning Middle and End of Your DJ Mix Set
What this lesson teaches
The analogy is a book, and it is the clearest statement of what a set is for.
The book
Open a novel. The first page does not tell you who killed the person and that everybody lived happily ever after.
There is a beginning, where you get used to the story. A middle, where it deepens. An end, where you find out who did what to whom.
A good DJ set has the same shape, and the same reason for it: arriving everywhere at once leaves nowhere to go.
The method
Take your tracks and mark each one B, M or E on a sheet of paper - beginning, middle, end.
That is the whole system, and its value is that it forces a judgement about each record before you are standing in front of anybody. Is this a track that opens a room, or one that only makes sense once the floor is already going?
And it exposes the common failure: a box full of E tracks and nothing to play first.
What makes something a B, M or E
He does not define it, so here is the working version.
Beginning tracks have room in them. Fewer elements, lower energy, something to build from. They are often the records you like least on their own, which is precisely why they work - they do not demand attention.
Middle tracks have the energy but not the finality. This is where most of a set lives and most good records belong.
End tracks are the ones with nowhere above them. The anthem, the one everybody knows, the one that resolves something. Play one of these at nine o'clock and the evening has peaked before anybody arrived.
On harmonics
He is explicit that this video is not about key - the tracks may not harmonically match, and that is deliberate.
Which is a good separation. Key compatibility tells you which records can follow each other. Beginning, middle and end tells you which should. The two systems answer different questions and you need both.
Contents of the video
0:00 First of all let me give you an analogy
Have you ever wondered how a DJ forms a set in a nightclub, in an event, well anywhere actually, but the set itself takes you on a journey. Now how do they do that? Now first of all let me give you an analogy. Let's pick up a book. When you open that book and you start at the first page, alright maybe you've got the prologue there so you know a little bit about what's going to happen, but you start at the first page and they don't say who killed the person and they all live happily ever after, amen, thank you very much, and then you get into the book. You have the beginning, you start getting used to the story and then towards the middle you start getting a little bit more in depth and then at the end you have who killed who or who bonked who and who ran off with who and who shot whom, whatever.
So you have a story, a natural progression, that's what happens with a good DJ. Now I'm going to hopefully show you how you can do that. Now I've got a bunch of tunes here from CDpool, the May Dance 2019. I'm going to play just half a dozen tracks from each of the CDs and let's work out how we can make this journey. Now what I'm about to do, the tracks themselves may not harmonically match, that's what this video is not about. What this video is about is choosing tracks. To take us on the journey. So I have on this piece of paper, I have one for CD1, two for CD number 2. And what I'm going to do on 1 and 2 is I'm going to sort of do a B and an E. Beginning, M for middle and E for end. Hopefully as this video progresses you'll understand exactly where I'm coming from.
Scratch head. Right so let's press play, this is track 1. From disc 1. This is Jonas Blue, What I Like About You. OK let's turn it up a bit. Right skip it forward a bit.
2:13 For me now, listen to the beginning
OK so for me now, listen to the beginning. Now the beginning itself tells me that it's a beginning track. It's almost got that welcoming, hello how are you and come into my house and have a cup of coffee and stuff like that. OK so. Let's just have a listen to the middle maybe. But you see then, the middle of it has got that feel of like full on intense thank you very much boom. So right this is where it gets slightly more interesting and I wasn't, I didn't think it would happen but never mind. This is the great thing about videos is they could go in any direction. Is that I could possibly play the beginning of that track and have that as a beginning track. Or maybe the middle and have it as a track in the middle.
Only the middle. Let's have a listen to the end. I mean it's got elements of beginning, middle and end. But for this demonstration I'm going to put track 1 as a B for beginning. So that is going to be the beginning of my set. So this is going to be the first track in my set. Let's have a listen to track number 1 on disc number 2. Bigger Than Us. There will be info in the description. Take you directly to CDpool where you can get more info on these tunes.
See again I'm thinking beginning as well. So I'm going to put track 1 B for beginning again. So let's go to tracks. In fact instead of just 2, 2, 3, 3 I'm just going to randomly go to track number 5 here. Let's have a listen. Camel Fat and Christopher. A track entitled Breathe.
4:32 Would be M for middle of the set
That is definitely a middle. So track 5. Would be M for middle of the set. Because it's got that kind of deep vibe. It's almost like as though it's that progression. As though you feel as though it's... I don't know, I'm trying to... What am I thinking about here? It hasn't got sort of big uplifts. It hasn't got these mad crescendos. Boom! Bang and fireworks. I'm just feeling this deep kind of vibe. Have a listen again. See it's just deep. So this to me is definitely a track that you would play in the middle of a set. So let's go for argument's sake to track number 4 now on disc number 2 which is a track entitled All For You.
Okay so if we were playing drum and bass... If we were playing drum and bass, this would be like an end of a track because it's got that kind of sort of feel of a finish to it. Very nice. So track 4. I'm going to put E for end, okay? So let's go now to, for argument's sake, track number 7, disc number 1. This is a track entitled Undo. Here we go.
Naughty Boy featuring Callum Scott and Shenzi. You know that's got a middle feel as though... I can picture this being in the middle of a set. Okay so track 7, middle. And let's do 3 more. Let's go to track number 8 here. Track number 8, the middle again. What I want to find here is... I really do want to find... In fact if I can't find one in the next couple I'm going to find one. I want to find an end track so you get a good idea of what I would class as a track that you would play at the end of a set. Track number 8, CD 1. A track entitled Feelings, John Newman.
7:34 You know we don't want lots of beginning and ends
Okay again that's a middle. So 8 is a middle. Which is great, this is what we want. You know we don't want lots of beginning and ends. We want loads of middle tracks which is fantastic. Track number 10 from disc number 2. Track entitled Guilty, Ellie Sachs.
Okay so number 10 again. To me there's a middle. Right. So let's find now an end track. So I'm going to now hopefully find a track that we play at the end. And explain why I feel the track that I found, hopefully when I find it is an end track for your set.
See that's another middle one. Number 12.
Number 12 and no cap. Again a middle track number 13 here. Closer Love.
Could be an end track. It's euphoric. It's uplifting. It's got vibe. It's got energy. Yeah. So it's, you know this is on the verge of being middle to end. Okay number 14. This one's Casey and the Sunshine Band and Tony Moran.
Nice disco vibe with this. Loving it.
Okay track 15. Need Your Love. Middle track again. Number 16 here. So Lost Harder. What's that? Hearted.
Again another middle track. Okay let's go to track number 2 now. I want to find a definite yes, that is an end track. Got to find this.
No we've done 4 so we'll go to number 5 here which is good thing.
Hold on. Press the wrong button.
10:38 It's got that vibrant feel to it
An end track. It's got an uplift. It's got that vibrant feel to it. Okay let's try number 6. Sound of My Youth.
Little track. Maybe even a beginning track, you know it's got that kind of deep vibe to bring the crowd up. Start of your set. Track number 7 here. If You Love. Yeah there you go. Nice end track. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. Good night. Take care. Uplift Vibrant. Alright so where is this going? Why are we doing this? Well let's imagine you have got 100 songs and they're not in key, anything at all. You've just got 100 tracks but you know they work well together. They're of the same ilk, the same feel, the same vibe, same style for the place you're going to play at. We'll play all of those tracks and just have a little box you know beginning, middle and end. Alright you're not gonna have 20 end tracks but once you have found 20 tracks that you
Think are great for the end of your set then choose one. So you start off with the beginning tracks, of course you need a lot in the middle. You only need one at the beginning and one at the end so choose correctly. And then the middle ones work around them but once of course you've got your beginning track and your end track make sure everything in between is harmonically matched. Take the listener on a natural journey. I hope that's a help. Don't forget if you want any more info on Maydance from Citypool 2019, check out the link in the description. Practice and enjoy. Muchas gracias. Thank you very much. Bagger off. Practice and enjoy. Thank you.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
