Intermediate DJ Lesson on Mixing Acapellas with Odd BPM

0:01 You have in front of you some new kit from Denon

Alright guys, you have in front of you some new kit from Denon. The mixer is the DN-X1600 and the players are the SC2900s. I will be doing demos, tutorials on them in the near future but for the time being we're going to do a bit of a tutorial. I would class this as an intermediate DJ lesson. We're going to be mixing four different acapellas into a track. Now firstly, if you're mixing one acapella and you get the speed, you work out the speed, you get the speed correct with the track that's playing, then even if you do set four hot cues during that acapella, so long as the acapella all the way through the acapella is the same BPM, then you'll have no problem in beat matching it. You can leave the pitch where it is and away you go. You may have to move the jog wheel slightly back and forwards just to nudge your acapella slightly if you press a hot cue perhaps just before or after the correct time you want to bring it in, but you shouldn't have to then move the pitch continually.

But I like to do things a little bit more difficult so I've got four acapellas. I have Madonna. We have a bit of New Order.

And we have a bit of Tom Novy. And we also have la-da-dee-la-dee-da, Mrs Crystal Waters herself.

Now they're all different BPM. So what I'm going to do first is play the track, beat match one of them and then play the other and you should be able to hear that very soon it will go out of time so you have to be very quick on the pitch and I've done a similar video to this in the past. But of course there's only been three hot cues. What I like about the 2900s is that you've got four. In fact, if it was up to me people listen, I would have a player like this with a platter, cue, play pause, pitch and vinyl CDJ mode and about 50 million hot cues. What fun you could have! Right so let's give it a go and let's start off with say perhaps Chuck The Blue Monday New Order track in.

2:24 I thought I was mistaken and I thought I heard your words

When you treat me like you do. So I'm just pitching it. And you've laid your hands upon me and tell me who you are. I thought I was mistaken and I thought I heard your words. Tell me how do I feel? Tell me now how do I feel? Okay, there you go. So we pretty much got that beat match. I have to move the platter slightly in another video or future video. I will be giving more greater deal, greater deal detail on how you can find out how to make sure the speed of the acropella is exact with the track that's playing. And these are going out to my little girl Ella Love You Millions 14 very soon. And mum at one point did throw those away but I kept them. Alright, I love you lots and I do this to you alright? So...

Does it feel, does it feel... Don't touch it now. Now I don't know if you heard but it was completely out of beat. Completely because I didn't touch the pitch. What I needed to do was make sure it was in time. Now this again, it's very difficult because you have to be on the ball continually. You've got, you have to have bloody good timing. Bloody good timing. I'm going to move the track back. OK, and I'm going to bring the Madonna track in at the same point, the acropella Madonna track at the same point where I brought it in earlier. But this time I'm going to use the pitch. Not only that, I'm then going to go back to the Blue Monday and do exactly the same. So you'll see how by moving the pitch is imperative to make sure you keep everything in time.

5:35 Oh, tell me now how do I feel?

Here we go. Let's go to Tom Novy. Oh, tell me now how do I feel? I want nobody, baby. Let's go to Crystal.

All right, so you get the general idea. Believe me, if you can do this correctly, it is so much fun. And also from the perspective of the crowd, if they can see what you're doing and they can visually see that you're doing something instead of this ghosting of bass, mid and treble, it looks good. OK, so I will go into this in greater detail in future videos, more on the moving of the pitch and making sure your timing is correct. Also what I will do is in greater detail again, just pull apart acropella and show you how by putting an acapella next to a rhyme, a normal everyday nursery rhyme will make you be able to mix acapellas much better. I hope that's a help practice and enjoy. Thank you.

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