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| quote: | Originally posted by Atmos
Yea but she's a real good friend so I'm doing it as a favor. Anyway, thanks for everything guys, but what I need is tips on how to mix (the actual technicality of it). Should I just crossfade everything? |
You're going to be looking at a lot more sudden cuts and transitions rather than the fluid, drawn-out mixes you are probably used to. I've been running into the same problem. To me, the hardest part has to do with the fact that people who listen to hip-hop usually listen to no particular BPM-range in general. As such, it makes it hard to mix 87 BPM hip-hop tracks with 103 BPM ones. In progressive house, you know you can get away with playing tracks in the 127 - 132 range, or in trance you can play stuff in the 136 - 142 range, and everyone will be happy... but this just isn't so when it comes to hip-hop. People want to hear what is popular, and what is popular doesn't mix well with everything else that's popular.
I've been meaning to go through all of my hip-hop/rap mp3s and group them by similar BPM to see how many mixes I can get away with. I'm not an experienced scratch-DJ or turntablist so being creative without sounding like ass is hard for me. I mainly just need to practice it more. A lot of times I just end up crossfading the tracks or cutting them at a time which seems appropriate, and mixing the ones I can, so that at least I feel justified in DJing as opposed to just setting a WinAmp playlist.
One thing that I have been doing is mixing popular tracks that happen to have a 4/4 beat (Nelly Furtado - Maneater, for example) in with some house pop remixes and then going back to playing "mainstream" stuff. I like to see how much I can get away with. I've only played for a few house parties with mostly friends though, so they are fairly forgiving.
You might pre-make a playlist for this one. Group stuff together as best as you can and, when all else fails, just fade it over.
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