This is hard to explain properly, but I have mixed them before, altho some I couldn't, they were just to hard, but what I do is you imagen there is a beat there, and mix the tracks like that, or you could wait until the track gets going and listen to the high hats and different sounds and mix those, you don't need a beat to beatmatch, when I mix normally, I hardly listen to the beat, and just consentrate on the high hats, because they are a fast sound, unlike a drawn out bassline, you can be more precise with them, well thats what I find anyway.

There might be no beat but surely still is a tempo; that is something you can work on and see what works best with others, combinations and such, kind of like regular mixing but it's much more experimental then the regular stuff.

Just try it out.

a purely ambient set? sounds boring

or are you talking more along the lines of BoC/autechre/aphex stuff?

if you are going for a very experimental sounding set, try mixing ambient with some funked out experimental hiphop (BEANS or anti pop consortium)... that sorta stuff sounds pretty cool

maybe some acid jazz in there too? and a random goldie or roni size track?

oftentimes there are spots that are like.......a constant synth pad for 16 beats and that sort of thing where you can just crossfade over as long as the tempos are within the same ballpark. Usually though, you do need to beatmatch the tracks.

One trick is that oftentimes an ambient track will have a section with drums...and that makes it easy, so use that section while beatmatching. But even without any percussion of any kind, there is a pretty obvious beat usually. I usually find it easier to beatmatch to ambient tracks by listening to both tracks at the same time in the headphones (instead of hte usual one track in headphones, one track on speakers) since it's easier to hear seeing as there isn't an obvious beat on both tracks that you can just match. You just listen and pretend you're drumming almost and decide if you would drum faster or slower to match whatever the ambient track is doing....know what i mean?

Let me know if that was totally unclear.

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-Jon
www.DJjoncaserta.com - - mixes and whatnot (melodic progressive house and trance)

quote:

Originally posted by rainbow_marble a purely ambient set? sounds boring

Then you obviously don't know how diverse and varied ambient can be But yes, playing pure ambient (or pure (insert genre here) for that matter) for several hours will of course be boring. Every set needs variation if it's going to be a longer one.

Thanks for the comments so far guys

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"Wenn du dich zum Untergrund zählst, reicht es nicht, es nur zu sagen. Du musst auch viel graben, um es zu werden."