Simple Urban Hip Hop Soul Mixing Styles for the DJ

0:00 Got some tunes here from the Urban releases from Citypool August 2018

All right, got some tunes here from the Urban releases from Citypool August 2018. I don't every day, but at least once or twice a week I'm getting people saying, can we have a few more tutorials on mixing hip-hop, R&B, soul and urban? You know, for some people it's easy, for others it's difficult to mix this sort of genre, but it's life. You know what? We're all unique. Every single person is unique, so what's easy for someone is very difficult for someone else. So don't panic if you can't do it. This video is about helping you to mix urban styles. Right, what we're listening to at the moment is a track entitled Something True. It is the original mix. Now don't forget, every single tune I play during the course of this video will be on the Urban releases page on Citypool for August 2018. So let's just queue that one up.

All right, so on the other side we have Be Young and it's the original mix. Let's check out. It's 079 Me.

Now this isn't the case all the time, all right? Because every single mix is different, every single style. And so on. So you don't want to follow this step by step. What I want you to do is take this in. Imagine water, a sponge and you are sponging in the water. There's lots of water but you're only going to sponge in a little bit of it. You know, you don't want everything. Don't take everything I say as how it should be. Take everything I say and make it your own. Add it to your own style. Okay, so what I'm going to do, I'm going to mix the vibe of the tune. I'm going to mix the vibe of the tune with the rhythm.

Now I'm not going to, right, pitch is there. It's the centre on the left hand side and I'm going to keep it the centre on the right hand side. So bring that down so it's all 0-0-0. Yes, I could press at any time. Tempo reset no matter where the pitch is. That will just bang it to the original speed. All I'm going to do is chop one track into the other.

But what I want to try and do is wait for like the end of a chorus, the end of a verse.

Still playing.

Right there.

2:48 What I try to do is sort of snap the next one in

Alright so what I try to do is sort of snap the next one in. I didn't, I did wait for the correct time but what I wasn't doing there, I wasn't fading one out or fading one. It was pretty much one bang straight into the other one.

Okay let's pause that one. We're coming over here to CASH, spelt C-A-S-H-H. A track entitled You Deserve It, explicit version. So if there is a couple of naughty, cheeky words here I do apologise. Let's have a listen to the beginning.

Alright what I'm feeling here now, I'm feeling maybe the Young B tune. Let's sort of wrap that off with an echo and maybe filter the echo out and then bring CASH in. Now that's my first thought and sometimes in life that kind of niggly first... Should I go right or left? Go right because that was your first thought and sometimes the first one is the best one. It could maybe save your life one day. Alright so...

On three we get some echo but of course we don't want the echo like that, we want it a bit longer.

Take it off.

Engage the filter.

4:33 Even if you've got one, you're still quick

This is what you can do with three hands but if you're a DJ, you've got two. Even if you've got one, you're still quick. There. Okay again, little bit of filter, bit of echo, bosh straight into the next one. This one here CASH You Deserve It. Right, pause that one up. Let's have a listen to Summer Rain Bomb Hard It Swinger Club Mix I believe.

The echo is still on. It's almost got that old school original swing beat style from the early 90s.

Yeah! Poison! Oh wow! Can you feel that? I can definitely. Alright, I feel a mix coming on here.

No headphones in at the moment so do apologise.

It was off there a little bit but you know, come on.

Okay one reason why... I'm going to pause that. Why? The first time I did that mix. Well there's a couple of reasons. One is because A no headphones, B I was trying to beat match it just using the pitch and C also the drum patterns are different with both tracks so what's actually happening instead of it being dum-dum-dum together you've got one drum pattern on the left hand side mixing in with a different drum pattern on the other side so instead of both drum patterns being in tandem. They're slightly off. Now if that mix is done incorrectly, which it was when I first tried it, it sounds terrible but if it was done correctly you're actually adding another sort of element, another dimension to the whole mix.

7:03 Or the third one whi

Now what you have to remember this is the most important thing about a transition. One song, two songs, the mix in the middle. The mix in the middle is almost like the second song. So track one, track two on the right hand side but really you've got track one on the left, track two in the middle which is your transition and track three on the right hand side the track you're bringing in to track one. If the one in the middle does not complement the first one or the third one which is of course a second track. The second track which is of course the third one, I hope you're following this, is going to sound terrible. So the one in the middle is vital. Okay so let's carry on playing. Went off there slightly again but I'm not using any headphones at the moment and yeah

I'm looking at this now and the one on the right is 100.9 bpm, the one on the left is 101.7 but of course that's depending on you know the readout is correct because I'm not using a record box, I'm just using very basic files. Okay let's do one more. Okay pause that one up and on the left hand side we have a track now Let Me Live, the Banks and Ranks remix. Now what I'm feeling here now is an echo, an echo out on the right coming into the left one because the left side has got a kind of, there's no beat to begin with it's almost like this very melodic introduction and that's what I want to keep. So let's just... Yeah go towards the end. Okay forward a bit. Oh here we go, there you go. Alright now I hope that's been helpful don't forget to check out the link in the description

Practice and enjoy.

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