RECORD STRUCTURE To Know the music structure of a song it's very important to help you with the mix tecnique. To obtain a syncronized mix that "plays good", get on time on breaks or "rip" straight away after a singsong part, needs a minimun of basic of music theory knowledge. There is nothing worse than to have to listen to mix with voices placed one upon another or broken rythim. Disco music is basically in 4/4. The speaker plays every beat, House, Elektro, Disco...while in others like Hip Hop or Drum & Bass, the speaker plays two beats on four. The arrangements of Disco Records are supported by the typical FILL of drum or by FX, that is used to shut a musical sentence. It is enough just to listen to any record even of a different kind of music style, to realize that some rhythm passages are common in a disco metric structure. They are used to drop the next phrase or to close a musical break. Making the dj's job easier to insert a record to mix or to pass from a piece to another. Your fantasy and ability add to experience will help you to create some passages that will not be too similar or repetitive. Since Djs started to produce music and to take care of mixing in studio, even the most simple written pieces are changed. The real and only break, as it was conceived in the 70s/80s. Only rythmical has been substitute by a more natural interpretation to make a part of a recordless played and arranged, getting out of usual scheme ( for exemple to insert the break to mix in the middle of a song). Today, mainly musical styles like House Music or Techno music gives more space to singsong or played parts, avoiding like happens in most of Dance records to insert or to reduce to its basic elements the musical phrase that identifies the Break as the granted moment to change a disk. Nowadays Djs preferes to create continuos musical situations, succeeding to mix a record with a sound that becomes a unique record, a continuos mood. Naturally, the ability of a Dj shows off not only creating a sound-track of records musically the same but giving more space to certain situation, filling up the dance floor with records and logically interrupting it using musical stops by strumental intro, synth and voices. The break becomes a breakdown
One of the most important quality of a Dj is considered the ability and the capacity of putting the records on time. Instead, for others is the music selection. Certainly a basic preparation and knowledge of the tecnique will help the gig development. There are no rules for a perfect mix. The base of Djing are tecniques refined during past years. The right ingredients to mix are: the knowledge of the records played. The ability to manage the Dj set instruments: but the main thing is the feeling that you can pass on when you play. The people, the dance floor are measurement of power to involve clubbers with your own sound. The perfect mix is the moment when the dj changes the record, giving people an active interaction. It can be of "wound up" playing on volumes interacting on equilizare controls.Or progressive, creating a continuos mood getting into a mix with emotions, creating an involving and continuos musical wave. Then the Djs ability and the type of music affect the mix as duration, from the typical "At Rip" the cutmix to the beatmatch the syncronization between two records that can last to 4/8/16 measure time.
The basic moment to realize a mix between two different music traces is the preparation of the CUE point or simply as we say, is the research of the "beat". Any kind of music support that has been used from the vinyl cd or audiofile, the research or the launching point of the record is referred to the beat of the music measure time.
With vinyl the research of the CUE point is manual, moving the record forward/backward positioning the beat, blocking the record in a start position, while the SLIP MAT works as friction with the turn table. In the cd player the CUE point can be positioned at the beginning of the beat with the AUTO CUE function that positioned automatically the start at the beginning of the trace. Or using the SEARCH that moves the listening trace searching the START position, using PAUSE after and the JOG WEEL to position the exact point of the beat. The next mixing step consist in syncronizing the speed of two records at time, the most simple and fast solution to syncronize two music traces is to use the slider of the pitch control, it can be the PITCH ADJ of the turn table or the TIME of the cd player. Are we noticebly out of beat?
Fastly move the pitch slider either in small steps, if the speed of the two records BMP is nearly the same. This manuality gives you the chance to regulate the syncronization of the two traces. You can perfectionate the sync regulation using the "touch" on the vynile records, with the cd player instead regulating the jog wheel. Mainly the preparation of the CUE during mixing happens while it has been previously listened, it is not nice to hear the correction of the time, while mixing it overlaping the rythimicals of the two traces. During the phase of realization of the mix, very important is the volume control through the GAIN present at the bar control on the channel. Don't you have the gain control on your mixer?
Not to worry, you can positioned the cursor FADER slightly lower ex: from 10 to 8, so you will have some spare gain in case the records could have different volumes.
Essential is the MONITOR at the consolle, which gives you the right reference on the mix. The long distance between speakers and the Dj position can provoke delay in sound, giving a wrong point of reference during the syncronization stage between records.