Beat-mixing tunes at different tempos

Tentative Andy

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
What is the key to this? Is it to do with finding tracks where the bpms are multiples/divisions of each other?

(Obv not talking about things which + or - 5 from each other or whatever, talking about how to do fairly major shifts).
 
S

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
Grime DJs who have taken to mixing funky into their sets, like Spyro and Maximum, have tackled this problem by buying Pioneer CDJ-1000s which have wider pitch control than regular turntables. I believe they also let you change the tempo without changing the pitch.
 
Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
Things like house and jungle don't really work together.

But reggae and r'n'b at 80-90 work with jungle at 160-180.

And dub, hiphop etc at 65-70 works with garage / dubstep at 130-140.

Anything with a 4x4 pulse works ok together, disco, house, techno, etc, maybe even steppers reggae, but watch out for the beat on the third beat.

So you're looking at half-tempos.
 
Tentative Andy

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Grievous Angel said:
Things like house and jungle don't really work together.

But reggae and r'n'b at 80-90 work with jungle at 160-180.

And dub, hiphop etc at 65-70 works with garage / dubstep at 130-140.

Anything with a 4x4 pulse works ok together, disco, house, techno, etc, maybe even steppers reggae, but watch out for the beat on the third beat.

So you're looking at half-tempos.
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Thanks Paul. That was more or less how I was thinking it would work. :D
Yeah I've already encountered the fast breakbeats/fast non-breakbeats clash - like a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs, etc.
 
D

droid

Guest
It only works with half speed, so a 90 bpm hip hop tune will go into a 180 jungle tune, or 140 techno tune will mix with a 70 dub tune.

1210's give you about +/-10 bpm to play with. CDJ's give you a potentially infinite range - BUT - once you flick the +/-100% switch, the sensitivity of the slider becomes much coarser...
 
Tentative Andy

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Right, tried this a few times following GA's and Droid's advice. Good fun, and I've got it to sort of work, but find that I can only hold the mix down for a quite a short spell compared to doing it with tunes of the same bpm. Is this just how it goes, or can you increase it with practice? (As it goes, I tend to prefer short, quite rough-cut mixes anyway, but there you go).
 
D

droid

Guest
Tentative Andy said:
Right, tried this a few times following GA's and Droid's advice. Good fun, and I've got it to sort of work, but find that I can only hold the mix down for a quite a short spell compared to doing it with tunes of the same bpm. Is this just how it goes, or can you increase it with practice? (As it goes, I tend to prefer short, quite rough-cut mixes anyway, but there you go).
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It depends on the tunes really, but it should get easier with practise. The problem lies more with finding half time tunes that have the right kind of groove to go with faster ones.
 
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Tentative Andy

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
droid said:
It depends on the tunes really, but it should get easier with practise. The problem lies more with finding half time tunes that have the right kind of groove to go with faster ones.
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Yeah that's a good point - doing this had made me realise that I don't really know the tunes I know, as it were. Reckon it does come down to careful selection of exactly the right points on exactly the right tunes.
 
R

ripley

Well-known member
as you listen more, and get to know the tunes, you get a sense of each tunes' shape, and that helps you figure out how to line them up with each other. Some tunes (really some genres) have a pretty predictable pattern of buildup, breakdown, buildup again, etc.. others are more linear.

The shape of the tune can influence how smooth or rough you choose to mix. But you can always change it up, if you feel like it.. experiment to see what sounds good, and what feels good. If you are thinking about djing for dancing people, start right away because you learn much more from watching people's bodies move as you mix than you do listening at home. At least I did.
 
Tentative Andy

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Thanks ripley. I am gradually getting the hang of spotting good breakdowns and buildups and anticipating when they're going to come in.
The plan is definitely to play out for people dancing, but it seems to be quite hard here to get a break into playing at clubs or even in bars and other places. Especially since margins have been hit by the downturn I reckon. I would start just by inviting people to party at my flat, but my neighbour has a young kid, so not really the cool thing to do.
 
T

Tactics

BBP!
how does a person get a break

Tentative Andy said:
Thanks ripley. I am gradually getting the hang of spotting good breakdowns and buildups and anticipating when they're going to come in.
The plan is definitely to play out for people dancing, but it seems to be quite hard here to get a break into playing at clubs or even in bars and other places. Especially since margins have been hit by the downturn I reckon. I would start just by inviting people to party at my flat, but my neighbour has a young kid, so not really the cool thing to do.
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then? submit a CD and offer to play for free?
 
Tentative Andy

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Well yeah, that's what I'm trying to do right now, but I'm being fairly obsessive about getting the mixes to demonstrate as accurately as possible what I'm into, and for the last week or so some fairly soul-crushing, bread-winning real-world bizness has been getting in the way. Weh weh weh.
 
O

oblioblioblio

Wild Horses
the mind has some cool special feature that can assemble patterns in weird ways.

my friend and I played some music together once. me playing beatmatched tracks and him just from a regular media player and many tracks completely out of time somehow made complete interrelated sense.

obviously with heavily percussive stuff this is silly. but some mxtures with percussive and also more kinda drifty instrumental stuff were magical.
 
benjybars

benjybars

village elder.
one of the only good things i've seen on dsf in the last year or so was a thread about mixing non-dubstep tunes with dubstep

someone started with this list -

Artist Song BPM

Datarock Fa-Fa-Fa 135
Lil' Wayne A Milli 152
Britney Spears Freakshow 132
MC Hammer U Can't Touch This 133
Michael Jackson BEAT IT 140
Yeah Yeah Yeahs Heads Will Roll 132
Gorillaz Feel Good Inc. 139
Ciara Oh feat. Ludacris 128
Whigfield Sexy Eyes 131
Whigfield Saturday Night 130
Vengaboys We Like To Party 136
Vengaboys Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom 138
Lil' Wayne & Static Major Lollipop 148
Savage & Soulja Boy Swing 150
Britney Spears 3 135
Quad City DJs Space Jam Theme 132
Busta Rhymes Gimme Some More 138


this website is pretty cool - http://bpmdatabase.com/index.php

i love hearing about people's funny mixes that actually work really well.

i really want Beyonce - Diva and Beyonce - Video Phone on vinyl.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Nice tracklisting - inspired me to listen to Quad City DJs on youtube. Er....:
Which is the Beyonce/Lady Gaga tune with that INSANE video?
 
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benjybars

benjybars

village elder.
baboon2004 said:
Nice tracklisting - inspired me to listen to Quad City DJs on youtube. Er....:
Which is the Beyonce/Lady Gaga tune with that INSANE video?
Click to expand...

that's Telephone. which is shit. Should not be confused with Video phone. which is amazing.


i saw Joe Nice mix in Jay-z big pimpin at DMZ once. Big pimpin is 90bpm according to that website so i guess he pitched it down to 70bpm to mix it with 140bpm dubstep


this Aaliyah track is 70bpm and goes really well with 140bpm stuff -
 
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