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Phrasing when mixing hip hop


doppelkorn

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Hello flowers,

 

I was putting together an off the wrist hip hop mix for playing at a festival yesterday and it got me thinking about unplanned mixes.

 

I find I mix better when I don't plan it but seeing as I've never had a DJ mentor to help me learn the skillz, I was wondering:

 

a) how do you arrange your music, by BPM, by genre, alphabetically by artist?

b) if you were mixing do you plan the track listing and if so do you plan the individual mix points or not, do you just mix in when you feel like it

c) if you don't sortyour music by BPM how do you know/remember what songs can be mixed? I'm talking more about hip hop here rather than drum and bass or something where it's all the same

d) if you're mixing hip hop "blind" how do you get the phrasing right? I know you're supposed to know your records off by heart but do you really remember whether a certain break is 8 or 16 bars or how long certain intros are? I find so often that when I mix without planning I wait for a break then drop the next song but get the phrasing all wrong and try to ride it out for too long then the vocals come back in on the first sing so I have to pull it and it just sounds a mess

 

Thanks for the support sex pods.

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a) I used to write the BPM's of all my tracks on my records, now I sort by BPM in traktor

 

b)Tend to just do it whenever but some tracks I have little routines with so I drop em at certain points.

 

c)I sort my music by BPM

 

d)Tend to just mix over the hooks or the outro, blends dont really have to be that long with Hip Hop but at the same time there is not so much opportunity to blend suppose its just that whenever thing again haha!

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yeah man, my shits sorted as genre, BPM, artist... roughly anyway. Mix intro's, chorus' and breaks, you should know how long they are by heart really, you can often tell by looking at the rings too. I think you can pretty much 'feel' when the chorus or breaks gonna drop if you don't quite know your ish off by heart. I used to mix my stuff too long too, it takes a while to adapt. But if you don't know if its gonna be 8 or 16 beats, just assume its gonna be 8 and be quicker about it, theres no harm there. Failing that I just scratch it and drop it. If I'm recording a mix I plan out exactly where everything is going to go first and then do it. If I'm mixing on the fly I just kinda look through the tracks and when I see one that I know will go (you just do after a while) I try and fit it it somewhere. ie if the break of the playing track is 16 and the track im mixing in is 8 I'll scratch the track for 8 then drop it etc

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a) how do you arrange your music, by BPM, by genre, alphabetically by artist?

With vinyl, I would arrange it by genre. I never BPMed my records, although it's a useful thing to do if you want to group by BPM.

 

b) if you were mixing do you plan the track listing and if so do you plan the individual mix points or not, do you just mix in when you feel like it

It varies. With the mixes I've posted online, I have never planned a track listing. Most of them are multitracked though and built up in stages.

 

With club mixing, I would always rehearse a pre-arranged set of about 30-45 minutes, just so I could get something that was both musically and technically (at least in terms of my skill limit) good down. On the night, if the pre-arranged thing wasn't working, I'd just scrap it, rearrange it a little, or chop it into shorter sections and mix those in with more on the fly mixing.

 

I could say "I mix a track in when I feel like it", but "when I feel like it" isn't just random and is based on phrase matching.

 

c) if you don't sortyour music by BPM how do you know/remember what songs can be mixed? I'm talking more about hip hop here rather than drum and bass or something where it's all the same

It's something you get an ear for and a big part of that comes down to knowing tracks well.

 

d) if you're mixing hip hop "blind" how do you get the phrasing right? I know you're supposed to know your records off by heart but do you really remember whether a certain break is 8 or 16 bars or how long certain intros are?

Mixing "blind" with hip hop can be hard, but that's why you should avoid doing it, haha. When I do a mix I know the tracks I'm playing well enough to know where the good "in and out" points are and how long they are, so I can avoid vocal clashes and so on.

 

I find so often that when I mix without planning I wait for a break then drop the next song but get the phrasing all wrong and try to ride it out for too long then the vocals come back in on the first sing so I have to pull it and it just sounds a mess

That happens just because you don't know the songs well enough.

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when i record mixes they're generally multitracked, and i find it's a good way of finding out the best places to mix/learning the best way to mix in or out of a track.

 

when i play live i just play whatever i think is stylistically appropriate and is a similar bpm, rather than looking for tracks which mix well. 9 out of 10 times no one gives a shit if a track is mixed well. tune selection is far far far more important than skills. make sure you play things people will want to dance to.

 

half the time i'll stop the tune on the final snare and scratch in the next tune. That said at a decent club i'm a bit more concious of that sort of thing...but it'd be very rare you'd be mixing hip hop at a decent club.

 

i never have my records in any set order when i take them out, but at home its hip hop 12s and albums a-z, hip hop comps in no order, funk/soul etc 12s and albums a-z, then funk comps no order, disco comps no order, soundtracks/library no order.

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Thanks for the help guys.

 

I guess my philosophy should be less mixing! I always try and mix it for too long. That's why I need to improve my cuts for the drops and just more interesting transitions. I'm gonna post a half hour hip hop mix sometime in the next few weeks for your delectation.

 

If anyone's interested I sort my records:

 

non-mixable rock/pop albums, mixable albums and 12s A-Z by artist, compilations A-Z by name of compilation then I have a full 6-page BPM list stuck above my decks :$

 

When I have one track on I literally browse up and down that BPM range to find the next track. I do know each track pretty well but I'm guilty of always going for the safe tracks where I know they'll mix well, even when practicing so I have to force myself to choose tracks I don't like that much to improve my skillz

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I used to BPM and label my recs, then build a set from there. Then with Serato it's a lot easier to sort by BPM... but I still have a lot of crates for my favorite stuff or genres but still sort within the crates by BPM. Now however, I've scanned everything with mixed in key. I originally did it to assist with building sets for Ableton, but has obviously carried over to Ableton (and ruined all my beautiful Serato crates since all the names changed)... not really messed with it much since I started doing that, but I flip back and forth between sorting by BPM or sorting by Key (name).

 

As for the mixing "blind" and knowing your records... I've always been like whatever about it... Just gave it a go... I also usually just mix instrumentals which makes it easier too... Don't have to worry about a verse coming in.

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Knowing your records well is key.

 

A lot of the time with hiphop I'll do variations of cut mixing or incoporate slow fading where tracks allow it. I'll show you how I mix hiphop next week and show you some exercises to practice :)

 

I sort my serato playlists by genre, then have playlists for each sound/style I mix reguarly within that genre (i.e. old school hiphop, neptunes style hiphop etc), then sort each of those sub playlists by bpm. A lot of the tracks cross over into other sub playlists but it's nice to have a few tracks lined up that you know will fit the mix. I don't necessairly try and mix all my 95 bpm songs together but try and stay within similar ranges where possible.

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yeah digg reminded me of something! Mixing in the odd instumental can be beneficial, esp if you got doubles... coz then you can slowly mix in an instu without having to worry about vocal clashes and it makes a nice long mix. Then, once you've faded out the vocal track, you can flip over to the vocal bit on the double and scratch that in BOOM

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yeah digg reminded me of something! Mixing in the odd instumental can be beneficial, esp if you got doubles... coz then you can slowly mix in an instu without having to worry about vocal clashes and it makes a nice long mix. Then, once you've faded out the vocal track, you can flip over to the vocal bit on the double and scratch that in BOOM

 

What I actually like to do is (instrumental playing) beat match the new instrumental, but instead of mixing it in, flip to the accapella. I usually have a sticky on it if it's a good phrase to cut--so few scratches then drop in the accapella for a verse and a hook--it's already matched from beatmatching the inst for it, then flip to the instrumental, do a quick mix in (again already been beat matched) and repeat. Actually, I don't do accapellas ever time tho, cause it's a little predictable and also some stuff I play is a killer beat but crap accapella... anyways, thats always been my basic method for DJing hiphop.

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It's impossible to know all your tunes well enough to mix everything perfectly everytime so I tend to know everything well enough to mix well but then have a few go to mixes that I know inside out.

 

Having certain practiced mixes to changes style / tempo / impress everyone has always worked well for me.

 

A lot of people ignore the channel faders when mixing, but if you want to do longer smooth mixes, especially with hip hop, they're vital IMO.... you can get away with things drifting or clashing a bit if one of the channels is down.

 

I normally bring the new tune in at, say, 3/4 volume, then work it up to full while I'm working the other tune down to 3/4, then take the other tune out. That way you can do nice long smooth mixes without it being too abrasive. If you don't know your tunes that well you get chance to realise it's about to drop wrong and start again, without it being obvious because the tune you just aborted wasn't at full volume yet...

 

You often see people reaching for the EQs to do that kind of thing rather than using the volumes, but to my ears it just sounds like two badly EQd tunes being mixed...

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It's impossible to know all your tunes well enough to mix everything perfectly everytime so I tend to know everything well enough to mix well but then have a few go to mixes that I know inside out.

 

Having certain practiced mixes to changes style / tempo / impress everyone has always worked well for me.

 

A lot of people ignore the channel faders when mixing, but if you want to do longer smooth mixes, especially with hip hop, they're vital IMO.... you can get away with things drifting or clashing a bit if one of the channels is down.

 

I normally bring the new tune in at, say, 3/4 volume, then work it up to full while I'm working the other tune down to 3/4, then take the other tune out. That way you can do nice long smooth mixes without it being too abrasive. If you don't know your tunes that well you get chance to realise it's about to drop wrong and start again, without it being obvious because the tune you just aborted wasn't at full volume yet...

 

You often see people reaching for the EQs to do that kind of thing rather than using the volumes, but to my ears it just sounds like two badly EQd tunes being mixed...

 

I agree--I don't understand people mixing with the Gain instead of the volume faders. Like you were saying, if you have to bail you can just do a simple baby scratch while fading the volume back down... act like it was planned :p

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I try to avoid having 2 tunes full volume at the same time unless one of them is just has vocals or synths on it, 2 beats at full volume usually sounds wrong even if they're perfectly beatmatched IMO.

 

Also, you don't generally want the mixing bits to be louder / denser than the rest, the tunes already have song structure so the overall mix will usually flow better if you can make the mixes subtler, unless you've got some highlight / trick mixes worked out that you know flow well

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yeah I see what you mean - my level skills are awful as i usually mix with phones on and only then in cue mode (my mixer doesn't allow master).

 

when i mix live there's always a massive "paff" when I don't quite get levels how I want them. Great advice here guys, keep it coming :)

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