WHY You Need to Mix in Time and Bring the Next Track in on the One in a Bar

0:01 My name's Jonathan Ellaskins, The DJ Tutor

Alright guys, my name's Jonathan Ellaskins, The DJ Tutor. Welcome to TribeXR. Very simple demonstration tutorial on learning how to mix. Now there's loads of videos like this but the more you can get out there the better. I am using TribeXR. It's through Oculus and this is virtual DJing. Okay, so bring the volume down. Track I'm using by the way is entitled Real Love from Karmic Power Records. Now I have either side of me the equivalent of a CDJ and in front of me a four channel mixer. At the moment I'm only going to be using two channels but we've got the two decks. That's all we need. Okay, so I'm going to be using the outside channel on the right for the right deck and the outside channel on the left.

I'm going to be using the sync feature simply because it's a lot easier to beat mix and talk at the same time. Quite often as well if you're really deep in the mix you don't want to talk, you want to concentrate on what you're doing. Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn the bass down on the right hand deck. I'm going to highlight a little bit the mid and give a bit more treble. I'm going to put the volume up on the left deck and press play. Okay, so that's the left deck playing now. Okay, I'm going to cue up the right deck, click here on my headphone so now I should be able to hear the right deck when I press play and play. I can hear that now and it is in time. Slowly bring the volume up, bring the bass in and volume down on the left. I'm going to repeat the process now.

1:59 Perfect, so in phrase as well

As soon as we get to the break I'm going to start the left hand deck. Three, two and take the mid out. Perfect, so in phrase as well. So I'm going to click on my headphone there, I'm going to click on cue, click on cue on this side, cue it up. It should automatically cue up at the beginning of the track anyway but of course that's so long as your beat grid is correct. If it isn't you can always adjust the beat grid. And that's of course in the software on your laptop. Also if you want to adjust the beat grid on, sorry should I say in Oculus as well? When I say in Oculus, sorry, in TribeXR. Okay, so what I'm going to do now is press play on the one, three, two and one. Okay, next one coming in, take the bass out and mid in.

Now what I'm doing here is I'm not just randomly throwing in the next track, just anywhere. I'm doing a couple of key points. One is I'm making sure I bring in the other side on the count of one and the other thing I'm doing is making sure that I bring the other side in in time with a certain amount of bars. For example maybe four bars or eight bars or sixteen bars. I'm not going to bring the track in maybe on the third bar or the fifth bar or the seventh or the ninth. It's always good to bring in the track on an even bar, even number. Generally a radio version you're looking at two or four bars but mostly with extended dance versions you're looking at eight and or sixteen bars. So things there, more vocals comes in that tells me that wait for a change.

4:51 In and repeat the process

And then I'm going to bring the next step in and repeat the process. Three, two and sounds like. Okay so this is a problem that a lot of DJs get is it seems to be in beat and it sounds in beat but it just doesn't sound right. And that's because it's at the wrong time signature. So what does that mean? Basically you have the one side playing. You bring in the next one. But you're not bringing in the next side on the count of one. You could be bringing it in on the count of two, three or even four. And if you do that the track that you bring in at the incorrect time signature will always be out of time. So for example if you bring it in on the two then it doesn't matter how long it plays for. It will always be in time but on the two beat.

Not on the one beat where it should be. Same with three and four. So let's just listen to that again. So, and this time I'm going to count. And while I count I will press play. And you'll hear how bad it sounds when I miscalculate where to bring it in and what it does sound like. So one, two, three, four. Or one, two, three, four. One, two, I'm gonna bring it on the three. Two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Now it sounds in beat but it's not in time. It's not in phrase. Listen. Okay so that's proof it needs to be in time and in phrase. Okay a short video here thank you very much for watching and don't forget check out the link in the description. It will take you to TribeXR. Also thank you very much to Mr Lenny Fontana

For letting me use his tune from Karmic Power Records. A track entitled Real Love. I'm going to shake my hands now, go over there, turn the computer off, practice and enjoy. Thank you.

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