Friday, June 22, 2007

How to mix and write

It turns out beatmatching is only half the story. Stick a tune on, tap out the beat if the BPM counter is off, and add FX to taste. To mix the second tune, pitchbend (or timeshift, if you have it) until the BPMs match, cue and drop. This works for tracks with nice long intros/outros because there's time to crossfade. Unfortunately, lots of music doesn't do that. Especially gabba and other esoteric noise music.

So here's the other way. When you put the second track on, match the mid and treble levels and kill the bass. Crossfade the bass or use the kills to hard swap basslines. The downside of this approach (at least to my ear) is your levels end up very peculiar and people complain about the beat change. I have yet to try it. I'm guessing you can merge the styles, at least if you're not changing track too often.

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This was also an attempt to follow Scott Adams' recent advice on how to write. The first sentence leads you to read further. The sentences are fairly simple and follow subject|action syntax. I culled this entire next paragraph because it lent nothing to the story. Part of what I want to do with this blog is to actively not talk about myself and focus on what I'm doing / learning instead. That should make it much more interesting!

I woke up one day, a couple of months ago now, and decided to learn to mix. I bought some decks off eBay, Numark CDXs. These are pretty unique because they have a fullsize turntable (no tone-arm) with a slipmat, so you can scratch on them. That's waaaay advanced for me though.

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