Old School Mixing DJ Information on WHY It's Hard to Beat Match Old and New Tracks

0:00 Listen to this part, this may jog your memory

Alright guys, in this video what we're going to do is we're going to mix a couple of tunes in old school with something that is from, I think it's about 2006, 2007-ish. So we have the Freaks, the Creeps on the left hand side, on the right hand side we have Dance With You which is an absolute classic disco track. It's that sort of tune that if you haven't heard it before you'll be thinking, hold on I know that bit and I know that bit and that has been sampled here, there and everywhere. Have a listen.

Listen to this part, this may jog your memory. Go back a bit.

Yeah, you get it, okay. So what I want to do really is in a way give a demonstration on how it is difficult to mix something that is sort of... from the 80s-ish with a track that's more slightly up to date. Now, the Carl Lucas track for a start, sorry not Carl, where are we now? Beg your pardon, yeah. The Freaks track, Freaks, oh shit I'll get it out in a second, said the bishop to the actress. The Freaks, the Creeps, the Creeps track by the Freaks. Dear me, this is where dyslexia is not very good. Has been made by a drum machine. So unless there was a bolt of lightning and... something happened to the electricity while they were making the track. When this track starts, if it's at 126 BPM, it should be 126 all the way through.

On the other hand, Dance With You does fluctuate. Not only does the BPM fluctuate but you can definitely hear edits in the track. And that will be very apparent when I start to mix the two together. Because you will hear... You will hear them in beat and all of a sudden they'll just go offbeat and they seem to go offbeat at certain points in the the Cary Lucas track. And you will also hear that when they go off it's maybe after four bars or eight bars. So I've set a cue point here.

Okay, so let's have a listen to this break first without any other track over the top.

2:34 Get the general idea

Here we go, so... One, one, two, three, two, one, two, three, three, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, five, one, two, three, six, one, two, three, seven, one, two, three, eight, one, two, three, nine, one, two, three, ten, eleven. Alright, get the general idea. So what I'm going to do now... Just gonna make sure they're both, well hopefully they're in beat, so...

That'll sort of do. So they were what I would class as gladdering, not exactly a trainwreck but it was sort of in time. I did notice as well, it may be very difficult if you maybe get your screen a little bit bigger, hopefully you can see there... Let me just check to make sure it is focused, it's not bad actually. The track was definitely fluctuating on the right hand side. At the moment it's saying 126.3 And on the left hand side, the Freaks track, it's 126.6 So what I'm going to do, I'm gonna go to my Hot Cue... There.

5:14 Did you hear there?

That is where I am going to start to bring in the Freaks. I'm gonna do my best very quickly to get it in beat and then I'm gonna leave it and not touch the pitch. What you will find is it's possible it may start to go off very slightly but you will find that there will be a point where you can clearly hear it definitely go off. It's almost as though, oh, it's just gone terrible. I'm not gonna touch the pitch. Once we've gone past that stage, I will explain why that happened. So really this demonstration here is about understanding what's going on if you're mixing a new track made with a drum machine into an old track that was made by someone probably smoking a pipe at the time. Here we go.

Here we go. Did you hear there? It just went completely off. It went completely off. Now even though it was going off, what I heard there is that it was sort of off beat and it started to go slightly more off beat but then it actually went back in to beat and then went off beat again and then it went completely off beat. So what the hell was going on? Well, the track on the right, The Old School, was probably made by real people but also there may have been a little bit of a drum machine going on there but there's more to it than meets the eye. I want to go to the point where it went completely off so let's just go back to my cue point. There. I think it was there. Now what is going on? Right. It was very clear, even to someone who hasn't got the foggiest about beat matching

7:02 Tape, reel, marker chalk

That there was a point in the two tracks, the mix, where it just went off completely. Why did that happen? Well if we go back not that long ago actually, say I don't know maybe even into the 90s when someone, a producer or a remixer was remixing a track it wouldn't be on any form of digital format. It would be on a tape, an actual reel to reel, a physical piece of tape and what they used to do, they would cut the tape known as slicing so they would slice up the track and then they would literally stick pieces of tape together so they may take 16-32 bars of part of the track and we don't really want that bit in the middle, there's the 36 bars so at the moment for the partially sighted I am now doing an image of catching a rather medium sized fish

With my hands apart, my palms facing each other so that would be say the section of tape. Of course it would be a lot more because 16 bars on reel to reel tape in a studio would be a lot longer it would be quite a few feet but what they would do, they would slice that off and they would just join it so what they would do, they would listen to the track and they would go right, we're coming to the end of a phrase stop, cut and then they would play or actually sometimes they would put a little marker of chalk where they need to cut it then they would carry on playing it they'd put another marker of chalk and then they would cut those two markers and sellotape the damn thing together that is what has happened

That's why you get that jump because the person who has cut the tape has not done it perfectly they haven't gone, well that's exactly the right point so when you're listening to this when you're dancing to it and just listening to it randomly you don't hear that tiny little step with the track but if you're trying to mix old school tunes this is where the problem arises because you feel as though you've got it in beat and all of a sudden it goes off beat this is one of the reasons now I hope this video has been a help bit of an insight for you it's made you go bloody hell, now I know what's going on so there you go practice and enjoy thank you very much indeed

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