4 ms·
* Love good music. If you don't love or don't have good music, blending songs together will never sound good. * Try out Xwax or Mixxx (based on xwax) for free
by doublerebel 10y ago
* Love good music. If you don't love or don't have good music, blending songs together will never sound good.
* Try out Xwax or Mixxx (based on xwax) for free. They are open-source. You don't really need all the other distractions of modern systems to play good music. All that comes later when you run out of things to do with good music. Any easy effects will sound canned to the slightest trained ear.
* Harmonic mixing is incredibly hard to get right. Forget about it until you know you need it. No formula can tell you the key of one song matched with another, as soon as they make a chord progression not in sync it can all go to hell. The people selling these keying programs gloss over that important fact so they can take your money.
* Corollary: it's way more important to trust your ears than a DJ program. Software is constantly wrong about BPM and key, but you have a natural talent for rhythm and harmony. Trust it.
Disclosure: I help maintain Xwax and have been djing for over a decade. I really hope you give djing a try and trust your instinct to rock the house.
- doublerebel 10y agoAddendum: If you perform using Spotify this is technically illegal, however most artists I know find it more important to share their music than to buy it every time. So if you're not buying the music please help people discover what it is so they can buy it if they love it.
- Thrillington 10y agoI'm not an expert here, so I would invite contrary interpretations. I know you can't setup speakers outside and play Spotify, but it should be legal in a venue that pays ASCAP. When I worked for a radio station in the early zeds we were told many times that their ASCAP license allowed us to play music regardless of the source, so ASCAP should supercede the Spotify prohibition on public performance.
- nnd 10y agoTraktor has key recognition built in now.
- empath75 10y agoHarmonic mixing is amazing, but really as long as your mixes aren't out of key, it's fine. You can just tell when two records aren't in tune, you don't need to write down the keys of all your records. I tried using mixed in key and stuff but what I mostly did was mix every record I had with every other record I had to find out what sounded good. I don't think there's any replacement for planning out sets with practice. Sometimes you just play two records that are a little out of tune because the drums sound good together. Nobody will ever complain about it like they will about train wrecks.
- btown 10y agoOne thing that can help with harmonic mixing is, when you have a 2-3 song combination that truly makes sense and is a crowd-pleaser, prerender it as a mashup. Then you can audit ahead of time for train wrecks, and mix the final product in (harmonically or non-harmonically) with only a couple measures or beats of overlap. Not to mention that this can build a lot more hype as an individual release. Producers like 3LAU and The White Panda use this strategy to great effect.