WHY and How to Mix House into Drum and bass or Drum and bass into House Music DJ

0:00 There's loads of reasons

Right, so why would you want to mix house music into drum and bass or for that matter drum and bass into house music? Well, there's loads of reasons. For example, maybe you want to do some kind of transition where you are playing house and you want to start playing drum and bass or you're in your drum and bass vibe and they want to hear house. So, a lot of people say never the twain shall meet. In other words, a drum and bass DJ is solely a drum and bass DJ and a house DJ is, of course, a house DJ. On the other hand, we have people out there like me who enjoy an eclectic mix of music. In fact, I'm a firm believer that if you do indeed love music, you should embrace all genres, all styles. And some of the best DJs out there are people like me.

We'll mash it up. We'll play hip hop into drum and bass, then some house tunes, and then they'll go maybe into some old disco cuts from there. They'll go into some funk, then they'll go into some sort of new wave, then they'll go perhaps some 50s or 60s, some Motown, some disco, some 20s. I mean, taking people on a musical journey isn't just about playing hip hop all the way through. Of course, if you're in a club where they want hip hop, you're not going to be playing house. And if you are, let's say at a house party where they like techno, you're not going to be playing rock and roll. On the other hand, if you have a selection of people in front of you of all ages and all backgrounds and God knows what, then look to be playing different styles.

So this really helps. This really is a way of how you can practice mixing in a house track into hip hop and also vice versa. Now, for reasons to do with YouTube, the track on my right I don't think I'm allowed to play. The one on the left, I am because it's from Hospital Records and it's entitled Back To The Future. So what I will do is I'll put a link in the description that will take you to the Hospital Records website where you can get more info on this. So what I'm going to do here on the right hand side is I'm just going to form a loop. So in a way, it's exactly the same as playing the house track. Now, bearing in mind as well, I am using the Rekordbox software and I have Quantize engaged. That means that if I'm a little bit too late or too early in finishing the loop, the Quantize software will go, oi, you're rubbish.

2:51 One, two, three, four

Let me tidy it up for you, which of course, which is what we want. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. OK, so there's my house beat. Now if we listen, I'm going to bring in the... Let's turn it up a little bit. I'm going to bring in the drum and bass tune. I don't know about you but that to me sounds completely off. It's because it is. Because on the right hand side, the house tune is telling me it's 125.4 BPM and the drum and bass tune is 174.3. At the moment where the pitches are. That could vary depending on if I bring, which it will, put the DMB tune in the centre and it's now at 174. And put the house tune in the centre and it is now 125. So we've got quite a variation there. No wonder it's not in time.

4:18 I still can't get them in time, that's right because, sorry, ag

Now, the first thing we have to consider is the percentage of the amount we can speed up and slow down the tracks. And that is, of course, on your screen. At the moment I've got the XDJ-XZ and it's telling me I can increase or decrease the speed of these tracks by 10%. So to give you an idea of what that means if I had a track that was 100 BPM and I brought the pitch all the way towards me I could increase it up to 110 BPM away from me, slow it down to 90. So even if I slow the drum and bass tune down and speed the house track up I'm now at 156.6 BPM with the drum and bass and 137.5 with the house. So I still can't mix them. So let's try 16%. Alright. I'm now at 146.2 on the drum and bass and I'm now at 145 BPM on the house tune.

So I can now... No, sorry, I can't. No, sorry, I still can't. Duh! I still can't get them in time, that's right because, sorry, again this is where dyslexia comes in. My right is my left and my left is my... Never mind. OK. So even though I've reduced the speed as much as I can on Back to the Future I've reduced it to 145 because it's too fast. Now, if I wanted to do a very quick transition using these two tracks I could probably get away with half a bar or, you know, when I say half a bar or a couple of beats. Yeah, the same. But that would probably be about it until the listener would definitely be able to hear that they're not in beat. So this is one way in which you can mix tracks that are different BPM so long as the BPMs are very close

You can mix them but the further they are away the shorter the mix. So, for example here we have, you know, literally one BPM apart in fact it's 1.2 BPM apart which tells me that I could probably get away like I said with, you know a very short transition of two, three beats at the very most before the listener can hear yeah, you're going off. On the other hand if the left-hand deck was 140 say 5.3 and on the right 145 then 0.3 of a BPM difference which means the transition could last for slightly longer before you can definitely hear them going off. So the closer the better. But anyway that's really if you're doing very simple quick mixes on the fly and you just want to bung the next track in and you don't want to spend about

Five years beat matching them. Alternatively you can press these wonderful sync buttons but that's for another lesson. Okay, so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to hit in fact what I will do is I'm going to leave the drum and bass tune at plus 10 and I'm now going to press on the right-hand side the tempo select with the house tune and put that to wide. Now wide is it's very interesting because yes you can mix using the wide feature you're going to be very clever but also it's there more for an effect and that's future videos now with wide I can now increase and decrease the track by 100% so I could just stop it I'll show you that there it stopped because I have reduced it by a hundred percent on the other hand I could speed it up

By a hundred percent 250 BPM but what I want to do is I want to put it and I'm just going to put that to the center again 274 speed it up

Okay so the software here isn't precise it's showing me 174.4 with the house tune so all I need to do now is bring the speed up on the left hand side to 174.4 now you will find when you go to the wide feature that it will not go in up in increments of point one point two all the time it might sometimes it's more likely to go up in increments of point two and then four and then six and then eight or maybe point three so now if I play them together it should sound in beat here we go

Using filter now sweep

Okay I'm going to bring that down bring the red there don't want to go in the red really

There you go

Alright so bit of a tutorial for you as well but what I'd like you to do and a lot of the people who watch my videos is you know if you are a hardened house head and that's all you play that's fine if you're just into drum and bass that's all you play fine but really DJing is about encompassing the whole music industry and taking it all in and thinking you know what I want to do I want to be slightly different different from the rest of the pack now why don't you start investing in yourself and start just trying a variety of mixes with other genres and styles let me just put the camera like that so instead of just a house track into a house track into a house track listen to some old school disco because a lot of disco from back in the day

Is quite fast has that house beat bung one of those in and then maybe from a disco tune the break just mellows out go into a soul track then from that soul track play a hip hop tune and then from a hip hop tune go into some drum and bass you'll find that your mixes quite likely will become more interesting more diverse an eclectic mix

Pricks up ears big time practice and enjoy thank you

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