How You Can Make a Radio Version of a Track an Extended DJ Mix BY Using Loops

0:00 You imagine you've got a

Right, you've got to think outside the box with this video because I'm going to be using an extended version, but I will explain. Okay, so you imagine you've got a... Stop, thank you. You imagine you've got a radio version of a track. It's three and a half minutes long, you've just downloaded it, and it's a wicked tune. Man, it's dope sick, man, yeah. And you wanted the extended version. You wanted the extended version, but you don't have it because it's a three and a half minute radio version. It's no good to you. What do you do? Trouble is with the three and a half minutes radio versions is they're small, they're short. There's like sort of this really small intro and then you go straight into some teeny bot vocals and then a tiny break of about a millisecond, then there's more vocals and more and more and more and then you get a break of like a drum roll back into more vocals and then it goes finishes.

How the hell do you extend that? How do you make that into a club version? Well, you can using some loops spot on. Right, so I'm going to prove a point here because I do have an extended version of a track, but I'm going to do loops that are quite short. Not only that, again, like I said with this video, you have got to think outside of the box. So firstly, if you are going to do something like this, it's highly advisable. In fact, if you don't do this... Don't bother doing an extended version of your 7-inch because you probably wouldn't have time. Make your loops in rekordbox on your laptop prior to even playing it and I'm sure for anyone out there that would be pure logic, isn't it? Because then you can sit at home drink a cup of coffee and you can spend an hour doing one track. On the other hand...

2:12 Let's have a listen to the beginning

When you're in a live environment, you'll start peeing yourself because you won't have any time at all. So don't do it. Do it at home. Right, so let me just put the camera like that. Alright, so the tune I'm using is Holler by Mr Lenny Fontana. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to give you sort of a rough idea of what we can do. Very quickly as well, I don't know if you're familiar with the double tap feature. You can use this, I believe, with the RR, the RX and the XZ. If you have a track playing on one side, you double tap the load on the opposite side. Not only will you get that same track playing on the other side, but it will start playing at exactly the same point. So you can actually get a really good effect straight away, which I'll show you in a little bit. So let's have a listen to the beginning.

Random track. This actually starts not on the 1, it's 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3. This is the club instrumental. Let's just see if the club main mix start on a... There you go. That's a little bit better. It starts on the 1. So, 1, 2, 3, 4, there. So what I've done there is I've done a one-bar loop, OK? So straight away... If you have got your 7-inch version and the intro is really, really short, if you can get a one bar loop and get away with it, spot on mate, sunshine, nice one. What you've got to listen for though, is that the loop itself does not sound repetitive. Now this is very important, this is up there with the gods, alright? You know, with the pro DJs of our time. It's because if your loop...

4:31 You can get away with that but not the second one

Sounds repetitive, it will be repetitive and I can demonstrate that now. In fact, have a listen. Oh, let me get out of that. Let's just go forward a bit. Ah, that actually, yeah, that would be a good place to do it. Yeah, I'll just double that. You see, that to me sounds repetitive because you've got like a tiny quirky drum pattern there that is really just an add-on. Whereas, you see that to me just sounds like the intro of an extended version. So you can get away with that but not the second one. So that's our first loop. Let's have a listen to another one then. Second one. Now you'll hear there that it changed too abruptly. Listen to this. So what I did there, I added a filter effect to just change the parameter and feel of that loop.

So it's almost as though the filter is getting ready for the change for the next loop. So there's our second one. Alright, there was a bit of a hiccup when I played, went from the second to the first earlier on, but again this is just for demonstration purposes only. So let's... Yeah, I like that. Now quite often with radio versions as well, you will have two bars of something and then a change. And listen to them because... What you may find with a lot of radio versions is you seem to have like a four bar chorus, a four bar verse, a four bar chorus, four bar verse. Then quite often you'll have two bars of something and then it will go back into a four chorus, four verse. So what you're trying to find is these two bars in the middle of all of that.

7:06 Talking and vocals and rap and so on to just extend the track

Talking and vocals and rap and so on to just extend the track. So now I've got three. Back to my second one. Okay, and all I'm using is loops. That's all I'm using. I've got a one bar loop and two two bar loops. And so far that's three of them. Imagine what it would be like if I had another one and another one and another one, okay? And like I said... At the beginning of this video, this is an extended version anyway. But what I'm trying to do here is only use short loops to prove that if you do have a three and a half minute track, a radio version, and indeed you can only make short loops, you can do exactly what I'm doing. So let's just do one more. Skip forward. Go there. Second loop there. Okay, so there you go. I've got four loops now. All of them...

9:21 Three of them are two bars and one is one bar

Three of them are two bars and one is one bar. So now I can start to extend and remix the track, even though it would in a way, even though this isn't, short version three and a half minutes, I can make it now as long as I want. Now also again... This is where effects come in. So, for example, if you do have the likes of the XZ, one of the best effects not many people use is the sweep because what that does, it takes away a lot of the low and gives you like a mid-high sound. It almost completely changes the dynamics of the track. Have a listen. Alright, so I hope that's been helpful. By the way, thank you very much again to Mr Lenny Fontana for letting me use his tunes. These are from the Karmic Power Records stable.

11:30 In fact, you can press one button and make a loop

Welcome to the Karmic Power Records site. This one here is entitled Holla and it is the club main mix. Now that loop there, yeah you could get a little bit bored with that because it is quite repetitive. Now what I'm going to do now is go slightly off subject on where we can make a loop that doesn't work. Now I have covered this in previous videos but I think it is very very important. Because with today's tech, you can press a couple of buttons. In fact, you can press one button and make a loop. In other words, from wherever the track starts, if you then play the track and then press the out button, you will have a loop from where the track started to where you press the out button. Again, if you're using quantize mode, the software will go, you're a little bit too late, a little bit too early, I'm going to snap it in time for you. If you're not using quantize or you are using just...

Basic mp3 files. You've got to be careful because it's up to you to get that loop bang on the money. But again, I highly recommend you use Quantize and the rekordbox software. So let me play a loop now that just doesn't work. All right, here we go. Okay, so it's a loop. It's in time. Why doesn't it work? Because it's not structured correctly. Now 99% of dance music 99.9% of dance music recurring well practically every single track unless some producer was not really watching what he or she was doing is is very very structured so In a bar or in a phrase, you'll almost have like, it's as though the producer has designed the bar or the phrase in a way that it's a complete circle. It's almost like it's meant to be. So in other words, what you will find, let's say here at the beginning, let me come out of that loop, where the drop comes in, if we listen, at the drop, there, okay, to there, we had

14:52 I'm going to start from exactly the same position as I started there

A really nice collection, a piece of music that was put together correctly. Now that in itself is a phrase and that's a nice loop. So let's listen to that a couple of times. It works because it's made in a way that you have the beginning of the phrase and then the end and the end matches with the beginning. I'm going to start from exactly the same position as I started there. So let's just come out of that and go back. We'll start there. Now again, I don't want to do half or quarter because if I, sorry, half or two times, because all that will do will halve it. And a quarter bars, and that would sound probably awful. Right, so listen to this. Once again, the tune is Holla. It's from Karmic Power Records. Thank you for watching. Practice and enjoy. Thank you.

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