How To Mix Better?
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» RedVodka replied on Sat Jul 1, 2006 @ 1:50pm |
 Coolness: 45600 | Originally posted by ALIEN ZED...
I've heard songs at 150 and it's a bit too agressive ---> [ saikosounds.com ] |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» AlienZeD replied on Sun Jul 2, 2006 @ 2:10am |
 Coolness: 510505 | ...psytek...? |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» FRANKB replied on Sun Jul 2, 2006 @ 5:30am |
 Coolness: 104280 | we call that ''le nast''
:P |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» DJ_JePh replied on Sun Jul 2, 2006 @ 7:01pm |
 Coolness: 35430 | reading the first page of this thread made me laugh a little.
saying flat out that you should never mix 2 tracks with the bass up is just closed minded, and plain wrong. if the two tracks you have playing are in the same KEY, and you lower BOTH bass by a few dB, the main mix will sound nice, more often than not. if the tracks are in different keys, however, it will sound like shit. you won't get phase issues with the kick drums either, unless it is the exact same kick drum, eq'ed in the EXACT same way, occupying the EXACT same frequency ranges, and finally played on a MONO system. there is also the fact that phase issues in a mix will NOT be noticed by the crowd anyways, as most people don't even know what you're talking about if you are referencing them. end of story. open your mind. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» AlienZeD replied on Mon Jul 3, 2006 @ 3:32am |
| Coolness: 510505 | I don't live by not superimposing bass lines... but I do mix without superimposing bass lines. Why? Because in Psytrance or Goa... the bassline is the heart; two hearts?! What the hell is that?
But you're right, there's nothing that can't be done with the right tracks and that is the important part of mixing. I don't know if you directed any post at me, even though I remember saying something about never having two basslines playing simultaneousle, but I am most def open minded. In fact I am contantly changing my mind everything, and imo for the better. yeah. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Screwhead replied on Mon Jul 3, 2006 @ 12:53pm |
 Coolness: 686535 | In regards to the bassline thing, really it applies to the whole frequency range. It's like, each track is made up of 3 full cups of water, each representing a diffrent portion of the frequency spectrum. Your output, is an empty glass, 3x the size of the individual frequency cups. When you've got one track playing, the "big" glass is full. As you're mixing in the next track, you are adding water from the other cups to it. If you don't watch your balance and keep things properly level, the big glass will overflow (aka distort/clip/sound like shit).
It's not a matter of oppinion, it's got nothing to do with what style of music you play, it's plain and simple hard FACT. The sound spectrum has only so many frequencies that can be put into it. If you've got 2 basslines playing, you're putting twice the amount of frequencies into the spectrum as it was meant to take, and you lose the definition of the sound. Sure, it might sound "good" to partiers, but think if it like distortion on guitars. Most metal guitar players who play with loads of distortion can sound good, but take away their distortion and give them a clean tone or an acoustic guitar, and their playing sounds sloppy. Their notes don't hold right, chords are muddy, etc.. The distortion masks the fact that, as good as they sound, they actually DON'T know how to play their instrument properly, in the same way that not knowing how to EQ properly and use your gain right to keep all of the frequency levels balanced is an indicator of a DJ who, good as they may be at beatmatching, doeasn't know how to make it sound "good". At the risk of getting flamed and having someone hate me, I'd point to the mix that Jasmine had put up a while ago that she called The Bling Mix. The tracks and mixing were alright, but the levels were completely off and frome tune to tune you could very much notice that one track was louder than the next, lower, etc.. , it was like a rollercoaster ride, the sound was not smooth, basslines didn't keep their "power", drums had vastly diffrent force behind them, etc.. From my understanding, a good DJ mix is not supposed to sound like a bunch of noticably diffrent, individual tracks, but instead is supposed to sound like one, continuous, non-stop however-long tune, and to acomplish that, you have to learn how to work your equaliser and keep a proper balance within the sound spectrum. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Tue Jul 4, 2006 @ 12:43am |
 Coolness: 146145 | respect fred, alot of what you wrote was very informative, i lke the cup Vs spectrum analogie, |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» DJ_JePh replied on Tue Jul 4, 2006 @ 4:22am |
| Coolness: 35430 | i still maintain that if you're eqing it properly and both tracks are in the same key, having the duelling basslines of both tunes CAN sound good. you have to ride the eq's during the mix though, since as the songs may be in the same key, they won't be playing the same notes on the scale at every given point. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» MURDOCK_ROCK replied on Tue Jul 4, 2006 @ 2:32pm |
 Coolness: 84820 | i like screw heads glass of water analogy, but still don't agree with killing your whole bass frequency to swap it for another...
i firmly believe that this only sounds good in your bedroom. and you can still swap your basslines without killing the frequency completely. its not like yer just switching off an instrument... yer removing a frequency from everthing... as much as those frequencys can get in the way... you can't just ask em to leave and expect the rest of the sound to go uneffected. alot of my buddys have played at big afterhours like stereo and sona... and the sound guys at these clubs usually have to tell dj's to go easy on equing and it only makes sense ... i don't think any of you ever crank you bass to the max? so i don't see why y'all think i'm so crazy for not wanting to crank it down to the minimum? there is a whole lotta room inbetween and its up to you to find that "sweet spot". riding 2 basslines at 1/4 of the way up hardy ever creates noticable phasing and the bass still sounds completely full untill you cut a track.. and yeah if you ride 2 basslines 1/2 -3/4 of the way up its gunna sound like total shit. but i think thats less phasing... and more overmodulation? |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Tue Jul 4, 2006 @ 11:28pm |
| Coolness: 146145 | i have an interesting question to ask you [ guys...ca ] two vocal samples bang of eachother at the same vollume and not sound like crap? |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» mikelaicervera replied on Wed Jul 5, 2006 @ 4:33pm |
 Coolness: 42540 | When that thread started I remered the "trick" to beatmatch cds someone told me. (Thanks)
For 2 years I used this method intuitively (I was given the 7% number), but reading this subject made me want to go a bit deeper in the comprehension of that trick. Here`s a math problem : A pitch bar modifies the speed of a track on a scale going from -10% to +10%. For a bpm of 145, what is the value of the % required for the track to speed up or slow down 1 bpm? x : What we are looking for, the delta % v1 : initial speed (bpm) v2 : final speed (bpm) So we have : v2 = v1 - 1bpm (or v1 + 1bpm, but the end result will be the same anyway) The x factor will be multiplying v1 in order to remove 1 bpm from it. Thus, 1bpm = x*v1 v2 = v1 - x*v1 v2/v1 = 1-x v2/v1 + x = 1 SOLUTION: x% = (1 - v2/v1) * 100 And the only thing left was for me to put this in excel to obtain the delta % for a 1bpm variation with any initial speeds.  |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» MURDOCK_ROCK replied on Wed Jul 5, 2006 @ 5:56pm |
| Coolness: 84820 | most pitch controls acctually go from -8 to +8...
and wouldn't the turntable rpm speed effect the formula? and whats this 7% trick buisness? i is well confused? @basdini... i rock alot of vocal stuff and vocals can be pretty tricky... i'm not gunna say 2 vocals can't be rocked at the same time... but in most cases its rather chaotic... i try little cuts with words and phrases but do my best not to play 2 vocals on top of each other... sometimes you can work it if its just a repeated sample or a little chorus or something, but even then i'd shy away from dropping it at full volume. it also helps to know your records. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» fishead replied on Thu Jul 6, 2006 @ 7:37am |
 Coolness: 76615 | the two vocals thing is really tricky - but sometimes you'll discover something that's absolutely golden... where samples line up to add to each other. An old fave of mine is riding Maneater by Hall & Oates over Skelechairs by Doormouse. It gets funny as hell, because vocal samples throughout the Doormouse track are taken from the intro to Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and pertain to cannibalism... when it's hit just right there's this call and response thing going on - where the Doormouse cut fills in gaps between lines in the song.
[ djfishead.com ] |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» MURDOCK_ROCK replied on Thu Jul 6, 2006 @ 9:28am |
| Coolness: 84820 | ^^^^thats was kinda fun to wake up to...
i totally dig it fish face!! |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» mikelaicervera replied on Thu Jul 6, 2006 @ 1:26pm |
| Coolness: 42540 | Originally posted by MURDOCK ROCK...
most pitch controls acctually go from -8 to +8... and wouldn't the turntable rpm speed effect the formula? and whats this 7% trick buisness? i is well confused? The pitch range of the table isn`t relevant for this problem, I shouldn`t have mentionned it at first. The Rpm of the table will not afffect the formula since the pitch bar affects the tempo of the song and not the rotational speed of the disk in the player. I don`t know if this applies to vinyles also, I've not tried yet. If you take a typical psytrance song at 145 bpm and you want to bring it to 146, 147, 148 bpm, then you will have to modify the pitch repectively to +0.7, +1.4, +2.1. Now if you look at the graph, notice that the faster the initial speed of the song is, the lower the delta % for 1 bpm variation will be. Also, for a 145 bpm track, the exact value for a 1bpm variation would be ~0.69%, which means that with a 0.7 multiple the track will have to be slowed (or speeded, if the factor is negative) just a little from time to time. I found that to be usefull knowledge in order to improve my ear. Knowing at least one track speed, I can logically determine which one will go a bit faster when beatmatching two tracks. If I mix prog, the pitch bar will go to values like +/- 0.8, 1.6, 2.4, knowing that I`ll have to take little step back at some point. If I mix full on the values have been shown earlier, knowing the higher the tempo will be, the more often I will have to slow the track a little. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Screwhead replied on Thu Jul 6, 2006 @ 6:44pm |
| Coolness: 686535 | Originally posted by MURDOCK ROCK...
i like screw heads glass of water analogy, but still don't agree with killing your whole bass frequency to swap it for another... It's not so much about killing, as balancing them sout. The thing with bass in particular is that sub frequencies tend to be a lot more powerfull. It's got nothing to do with the "sound" of it but with the frequencies that you CAN'T hear. If you've got 2 basslines going at "full" they will get a lot "messier" than other frequencies tend to get. As it stands, most of what you hear in a bassline is low mids and harmonic frequencies that can go all the way through the spectrum to the high end. In my example, I should have actually not mentione that the "master" out is one cup that's 3x the size, but that it's also divided up into 3 that are the same size as the rest. You cannot fill one cup with 2x more than it can handle, you have to balance everything, and that doesn't just apply to the EQs but also to the gains. The best "trick" I can think of is what I tend to do when I mix. The track that you're bringing in, always have the bass down by at least 2/3 as you're mixing it in, because as I mentioned before, bass is not a frequency that you're supposed to hear, it's a frequency that you're supposed to feel. With the mids, do the same thing except about 1/3 lower than the 0 point on the mids EQ knob. The highs I tend to always leave up on full, as physically high-end frequencies' sound wave moves faster than bass, and it's the main frequency that you should be using to beatmatch (plus the hats and upper-end of the snare frequencies tend to be the best ones to beatmatch with, esp. in DnB) When you start bringing in the new track, don't bring up the fader "all the way" to max on the tune you'e mixing in, keep it a little bit lower than full (because, as I've stated before, it's not good to have 2 tracks worth of frequencies playing at full) Once you've held your mix for about half as long as you want to keep it, slowly swap the mids. Bring the previous track's mids down by 1/3 while bringing up the new track's mids to full. once the mids have been swapped, then you should swap the upfaders positions, from new track to "full" and previous track to a little lower, and as you're adjusting the faders up also adjust the basslines so that the new track is now the dominant track, and then just bring out the previous track however you feel like. Mixers with filters built into them are the best, because then all you really need to worry about is how you're mixing your basslines and you can use a filter to bring down the rest of the frequencies smoothly. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Fri Jul 7, 2006 @ 12:52am |
| Coolness: 146145 | Originally posted by MIKELAÏ...
When that thread started I remered the "trick" to beatmatch cds someone told me. (Thanks) For 2 years I used this method intuitively (I was given the 7% number), but reading this subject made me want to go a bit deeper in the comprehension of that trick. Here`s a math problem : A pitch bar modifies the speed of a track on a scale going from -10% to +10%. For a bpm of 145, what is the value of the % required for the track to speed up or slow down 1 bpm? x : What we are looking for, the delta % v1 : initial speed (bpm) v2 : final speed (bpm) So we have : v2 = v1 - 1bpm (or v1 + 1bpm, but the end result will be the same anyway) The x factor will be multiplying v1 in order to remove 1 bpm from it. Thus, 1bpm = x*v1 v2 = v1 - x*v1 v2/v1 = 1-x v2/v1 + x = 1 SOLUTION: x% = (1 - v2/v1) * 100 And the only thing left was for me to put this in excel to obtain the delta % for a 1bpm variation with any initial speeds. the power and the science... i would like to talk about the math involved in mixing, i'm really interested in math and i think its a cool discussion... |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» mikelaicervera replied on Fri Jul 7, 2006 @ 3:14am |
| Coolness: 42540 | It's not so much about killing, as balancing them sout. The thing with bass in particular is that sub frequencies tend to be a lot more powerfull. It's got nothing to do with the "sound" of it but with the frequencies that you CAN'T hear. If you've got 2 basslines going at "full" they will get a lot "messier" than other frequencies tend to get. As it stands, most of what you hear in a bassline is low mids and harmonic frequencies that can go all the way through the spectrum to the high end. In my example, I should have actually not mentione that the "master" out is one cup that's 3x the size, but that it's also divided up into 3 that are the same size as the rest. You cannot fill one cup with 2x more than it can handle, you have to balance everything, and that doesn't just apply to the EQs but also to the gains. The best "trick" I can think of is what I tend to do when I mix. The track that you're bringing in, always have the bass down by at least 2/3 as you're mixing it in, because as I mentioned before, bass is not a frequency that you're supposed to hear, it's a frequency that you're supposed to feel. With the mids, do the same thing except about 1/3 lower than the 0 point on the mids EQ knob. The highs I tend to always leave up on full, as physically high-end frequencies' sound wave moves faster than bass, and it's the main frequency that you should be using to beatmatch (plus the hats and upper-end of the snare frequencies tend to be the best ones to beatmatch with, esp. in DnB) When you start bringing in the new track, don't bring up the fader "all the way" to max on the tune you'e mixing in, keep it a little bit lower than full (because, as I've stated before, it's not good to have 2 tracks worth of frequencies playing at full) Once you've held your mix for about half as long as you want to keep it, slowly swap the mids. Bring the previous track's mids down by 1/3 while bringing up the new track's mids to full. once the mids have been swapped, then you should swap the upfaders positions, from new track to "full" and previous track to a little lower, and as you're adjusting the faders up also adjust the basslines so that the new track is now the dominant track, and then just bring out the previous track however you feel like. Thanks for the EQing method! I will certainly try that next time I mix. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Sat Jul 8, 2006 @ 9:45am |
| Coolness: 146145 | in a lot of ways we can say that when we beat match we are doing an advanced form of calculus...we are calculating intercept 'points' for sine graphs, however the representation occurs at the level sound... |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» ufot replied on Sat Jul 8, 2006 @ 1:13pm |
 Coolness: 94045 | how about reading your records, no one has mentionned that... I think its pretty darn important to learn how to read records to be a dj, so much so that eventually, you can take one quick glance and know exactly how much time you have left on a track, where the breakdowns are and key spots for mix-ins... advanced readers can even distinguish the speed of the record based on its groove sizes, without needing to check the track info...
Ufot-the luv of wax |
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