Before you get on the decks, you need to understand how dance records actually work unless you really want to do horrible clashy mixes, that is!
After last month’s tutorial you’ve hopefully been listening to your tunes non-stop. Well get ready, as this month means more listening – because we’re going to talk about how dance records are put together.
Let’s start with the absolute basics. On a track you will generally hear a bass or kick drum and a snare drum. You would use these to define the beat of the track: normally you’ll hear a kick, snare, kick, snare and so on. Remember, a track may have no drums at all, therefore giving you a ‘silent’ or ‘invisible’ beat, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t mix it or find out its BPM.
Now, if you’re a UK garage fan, for example, you might be reading this saying ‘there are loads of kicks and snares here, which do I use to count the beat?’ That would be a fair point, and it would be very difficult to explain. Which is why I would recommend getting yourself a few simple house tracks to understand this part a little more. The reason behind this is that house tracks generally have a 4/4 beat, whereas a 2-step garage track has exactly what it says and such drum patterns can be very complicated. Similarly, breakbeat-led records (ie, breaks or drum & bass tracks) can be quite confusing to mix.
Therefore, to keep it simple, I’ll talk house. All the principles I’ll talk about however, are the same and can generally be applied in the same manner as well. To mix 2-step garage or drum & bass you can still tap your foot to an imaginary 4/4 beat, as the first beat in the bar will still be on beat 1. The rest of the bar may not match up, but beat 1 of the second bar will match up again, and so on.
So we’ve got our beat. Take four beats and we have a bar (there are not always four beats to the bar, but for dance music there generally are). Take eight bars (or 32 beats) and you’ve got a phrase. You see, most house music is constructed in eight-bar phrases. So a typical house track might start off with eight bars of just percussion, then eight bars of percussion and bassline, then eight bars of percussion, bassline and vocals, then an eight-bar breakdown with just a synth line, then eight bars of you get the idea.
Count on us
Try listening to a few of your records, counting ‘ONE two three four, TWO two three four, FOUR two three four, FIVE two three four, SIX two three four, SEVEN two three four, EIGHT two three four, ONE two three four’ and so on, and you’ll soon see this is true. Each time you get to ONE, it’s a solid bet the record will start to do something different: a new instrument will come in, the beat will change, or something will drop out. And it’s knowing where these changes in phrasing come that’s vital to learning to mix.
When you eventually come to mix records, you see, you need to be able to do so in such a way that they don’t clash horribly, and to do that, you need to start your mix at the beginning of a phrase. Now you’ve got your head around how dance records ‘work’, go and listen to a mix by one of your favourite DJs. You’ll notice that on that ONE beat is when they bring in a new record. So for instance, as the vocal finishes on record 1, they bring in the beats of record 2; then eight bars later, just as the bassline on record 1 drops out, in come the synths on record 2.
Too many DJs fall into the trap of learning to match the beats on two records, without first understanding this phrasing – and it’s why they never end up sounding any better! So spend the next 30 days doing some listening and counting. It’ll all pay off next month, believe me – because that’s when we actually get in the mix!
Source: I-DJ Mag
um well i guess all of u deserve it