Learning the Basics of DJ Mixing
Most of us think it would be really cool to learn how to mix songs together in a DJ set. This is a pretty complicated practice, however, and it’s a good idea you learn the basics in an environment where you are free to mess up as many times as necessary.
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t think that dj mixing is really cool? After all, just about everyone loves music, and it’s easy to admire someone who is able to command and control music in such a way to make song after song flow together effortlessly – like they were made to fit together and were written to flow with each other. In fact, most of us appreciate and enjoy a great DJ set so much that we’ve thought about learning how to mix ourselves. Knowing about DJ Mixing is a great skill to pick up, but it isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to figure out in the world. If you are going to learn this cool skill, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
First and foremost, you need to understand that learning dj mixing requires a lot of patience. It will probably be a very slow going and frustrating experience in the beginning, and it can take a while before you learn how to make something that sounds even halfway decent. Know that it’s going to be a marathon and not a sprint, and you’ll be miles ahead in the game.
Besides that basic mindset that you need to pick up, there are obviously a number of technical concepts that you need to get a hold of.
* You need to understand bars and majors, and why certain genres of music just don’t mix well together. In general each genre of music works according to a different base structure, which makes them hard or nearly impossible to flow well together.
* Hip hop music tends to work at 80-90 beats per minute, for example, while drum and base music can work at up to 180 beats per minute. It’s obvious that they probably won’t work too well together, so don’t think you’re going to mix different genres easily.
It’s clear that learning dj mixing can be a pretty complex thing, and it’s a good idea to get some good instruction. You can get someone to teach you in person, but it’s probably easiest to start out by learning online somewhere. For example, the most basic ideas can be taught a little bit easier by an online course where you can hammer it into your brain, as opposed to trying the patience of an instructor.
Learning how to match the first beat of each four bar structure between songs to link them, and making sure that you are able to properly match songs according to how their majors fits together is an essential building block of an DJ mix, and something that online instruction can show you very easily.
