The Energy Flow in a DJ Mix Is More Important than Just Thinking About Mixing in Key

0:00 I wonder how many of you actually looked

This video could actually change your life forever, so look behind you, there's a really big spider. I wonder how many of you actually looked. Okay, so I have said on the odd occasion about getting a good set together is of course track selection, which it is, you know, you get good tracks, you get bad tracks, you need to have tracks that work well together harmonically and so on. But have you ever thought about what it's all about? What is actually happening in your set, whether it be good or bad? What is going on? Let's imagine you choose a whole bunch of tracks which are harmonically matched. So track 2 is harmonically matched with track 1, track 3 is harmonically matched with track 2 and track 4 with 3 and so on and so on until you finish your set.

And it has this monumental flow of energy. Energy and flow is part of this video, believe it or not. So what makes a good mix? Is it track selection? It actually is, but it's deeper. Let's dig deep. Now of course to find, let's imagine, give me an analogy here, I love my analogies. There's something wrong with you, you just can't quite work it out. There's something inside that isn't right. You go to the doctor and they say take these tablets, but you still know there's something wrong. And eventually you dig and dig and dig until you find out you have pulled a muscle just below the fourth rib and someone does some form of movement on it and it gets better. But without that digging, without that real deep digging, you'll never find or you would have never found out what the problem was.

2:21 Completely disregard the style

So really in a way that analogy works here, because you want to get a mix that is beyond all other mixes. But you just need to, you can't understand why you're not getting something that's got a flow. You may have all the tracks that are harmonically matched, they may be the same genre, the same style and so on, but you're still not doing it. Now in this video hopefully I'll explain why. So first of all I needed to explain in great detail what the video is about. Completely disregard the style. I want you to think about one thing, energy. Energy and vibe. Energy is around us all. Vibe is around us all. You can't destroy energy. Einstein basically said that, I think. What a clever bastard he was. Anyway, so if you think about it, when you listen to a track, of course key is very important,

Because the musical content is about the energy and the flow. But more it's about the flow of the mix. Now I've said this to a few people I teach, and I'll say it again. When you mix track one into track two, you're not actually mixing track one into track two. You're mixing track one into track number three. You're scratching your head now aren't you? That's because the transition in the middle is track number two. So for example, track one, your thoughts are track number two. Let's imagine that transition is 8-16-32 bars. So if you think about it, that transition is now a mashup of two songs. So by definition, that middle bit is a new song. You're making a new track in the middle. And if that middle track does not complement track one, or now think about it,

4:21 What vibe does it give you?

Track number three, track number three is going to sound like this. It's going to sound crap. Also, the middle bit is going to sound crap. Because the two tracks have to harmonically match. So now think, and you will after this video, you'll be nodding your head. Track one goes into track three. Unless of course you're doing a chop. One, two, three, four, one, into the next track. Then of course it's a chop. So you can in a way sort of get away a little bit from harmonic mixing, but you've still got to be very careful. I'm not going to go into that because that's another million videos. But think about vibe and energy. So what I want you to do from now on is when you're thinking about forming a good mix, of course, make sure that your mix is harmonically matched.

But the vibe and energy of a track, how does the track that you're listening to first make you feel? What vibe does it give you? What energies does it give you? Is it good, bad? Think about the energy. And then the next track. Does the energy of the second track match the first one? So by thinking about key and energy, you're able to not only make a mix that is harmonically matched, but also is above that because the energy is flowing. So when you look at a dance floor and you're playing track one into track three, you need to remember during that mix are the people still dancing track two, the mix. Are then it's harmonically matched and it should work. Also, how are they dancing? Are they still dancing at the same pace or is the dancing

And vibe on the floor increasing or decreasing? You see this is the energy. This is the energy flow and this is what you need to listen to and also vibe to now some of you will be scratching your heads after this video going. What the hell is he on about? Hopefully most of you will be going. Actually, he's got a point there. It is about the vibe and the energy. I hope that's a help practice and enjoy. Thank you very much.

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