Ramon Music

Archive for the ‘Dj Mix’ Category

Stereo MCs – tune ‘em in and up! When Gee Street started gaining popularity, Stereo MCs’ debut album 33-45-78 (1989) was released. Although this album was recorded on a tight budget which along with DJ Cesare had drummer Owen If and backing singer, Cath Coffey was a great hit.

Their first British hip hop single named “Elevate My Mind” was released in1990. This single belonged to Stereo MCs and was the first British hip hop single to go to the U.S. R&B chart. Also where they were based out, the indie dance scene was gaining momentum for Stereo MCs. They tied up with the Jungle Brothers. A number of hip hop tracks emerged as a result of this alliance such as Supernatural (1990), and remixes such as U2, Queen Latifah, PM Dawn, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Electronic and Monie Love. These producers are still very well known. Most of the remixes by them are under the name of Ultimatum. You can get cash loan online to buy the music instruments like guitars or drums so you can be the same like your idols

The fame they gained through the live shows made way for their famous album Connected, which was released in 1992. On the UK Album charts, this album went up to No.2. The album contained hits like “Connected”, “Creation”, “Step It Up” and “Ground Level”. Due to these tracks, the BRIT Awards for Best Album and Best Group were won by Stereo MCs. When music publisher Spirit Songs was started by Birch and Hallam, the status of rock star was confirmed by the Stereo MCs by having taken an eternity to come out with the follow up of Connected. The reason given was that they did not want to come out with something similar to the earlier one.

For the purpose of their live shows, Stereo MCs put together a live band. This band had famous singers, Verona Davis and Andrea Bedassie in it. They were one of the very few hip hop bands who played at rock music festivals. Stereo MCs is a hip hop band in the English arena. Their very won recording studio called the Gee Street recording studio and record label was founded by Rob Birch (the vocalist) and Nick Hallam (DJ/producer). They started this endeavor with the money they were left with from leaving the flat they were living in London. Traveling on buses to early gigs carrying bags full of tapes instead of getting a backing band, the studio was set up.

Stereo MCs then released remixes of “Frozen” by Madonna and “Jungle Brother” by the Jungle Brothers in 1998. This confirmed that they were back in form and were still keeping alive in the hip hop arena. In 2000, Stereo MCs came out with a DJ mix of DJ-Kicks series for Studio K7. Another remix was done by them for Madonna, called “Music”. The album, Deep Down & Dirty was released in 2001. They then went on a tour which included slots opening for Jane’s Addiction, the band which was reunited recently. In 2005, Stereo MCs released an album, “Paradise”, the most recent one.

The Stereo MCs, with their numerous albums and remixes have gained immense popularity.

Okay, so you’ve had your moment of inspiration ; you’ve written the song, recorded all the parts, finished all the programming and added loads of fancy tricks to your production. There’s only one thing left to do – the mix. It shouldn’t take too long should it? After all, mixing should simply be a matter of balancing the different tracks until it sounds “right”? The difficult part is deciding what’s “right” in the first place. There are guidelines, and some basic rules to ensure that your record doesn’t end up being unlistenable, but generally speaking it comes down to taste.

This can make it very tricky to know when something is finished, and a good reason for employing a dedicated mix engineer to mix your material for you. Assuming they are working with a good recording to start with, a decent mix engineer will make your track come to life. They also have the benefit of being impartial, which means they can help you through the process of realising that the project is finished and it’s time to move on, no matter how hard this may seem!

When I’m mixing, I often find a pattern in the process I go through in order to finish a track. I tend to know when things are starting to sound “right” and “finished”, so I usually print a mix and have a break. Later on I’ll have a listen to the mix and make notes about things that may be wrong, usually simple stuff like “guitar verse 2 too loud” or “kick drum gets lost in middle 8″, that sort of thing. So I’ll go back to the mix and make minor adjustments and then print it. Usually I’m happy with this mix, and in my experience I’ve found that the more your revisit your original decisions, the easier it is to move away from the original “vibe” of the track. It can quickly become a balancing act between paying attention to detail and “mixing the life out of it”.

This is a problem that I often encounter with artists, (who can be very hard to satisfy) as the pursuit of perfection can be a very long and often disappointing journey! But equally it can lead to fantastic results, it’s just a question of knowing how far to go. The truth is you probably got a lot of things right to start with, and trying to perfect your mix too much can end up in a track that sounds lifeless and undynamic (perfect?!) This is why people talk about trying to keep things “raw” and not too “polished”. Music that has been “overmixed” is a sound that we associate with background music ; smooth, inoffensive and not requiring your attention. Not characteristics that most of us want to be applied to our music!

But knowing when to stop can be very difficult, because you can pretty much always find something wrong with your own work. It’s important to remember that everyone else will hear your music differently to you. Assuming that the song and the recording is “good” to start with, and you’re not deliberately trying to break the rules by panning everything hard left and having nothing in the right speaker, not many people will notice that the hi hat is maybe a little bit louder than you think it should be. They’ll be listening to the melody, the words and the beat.

I once worked with a band who seemed really happy during the recording session, but as soon as they heard the mixes decided the results were not what they wanted, even though everyone else who heard it thought it was great. Why were they expecting the mix to sound so radically different? Probably because they had a sound in their head, an idea of what they thought they sounded like rather than what they actually sounded like. They demonstrated this by giving me loads of reference tracks to listen to, and saying “we want it to sound like this”, to which my reply was “but you don’t sound like this!”

It’s this pursuit than can lead to endless tweaking, changing and revisiting. There’s a romanticism involved with music that can distort your understanding of your art, which is why having an outside opinion can make it easier to make decisions about things like mixing. And of course, the opinions you really want are not other band members or even mix engineers – it’s the music buying public! In this case, I went along with the band’s wishes to change things and we spent a long time slowly turning the mixes into a flat, watered down version of the original. They were happy, but from an objective point of view the music had nowhere near the energy or fun that it had to start with. Eventually I put my foot down before it turned into an Enya record.

This is not to say that there’s nothing to learn from the artist’s pursuit of perfection ; it’s easy to get into a routine if you’re mixing a lot of material, so if somebody suggests something a little bit crazy it’s nearly always worth trying, because they may lead you to some great place you may not have found on your own, and encourage you to try new things. You just have to know when to stop, and try and have the discipline to stick to your guns if you know that something is “right” and shouldn’t be changed. For example, Be wary when people ask you for bass, more bass and even more bass, to the point where your mix is unplayable on anything other than an ipod ( with the bass turned right down! )

The best rule to follow when learning the basics of mixing is the rule of simply trying things out. Do a mix, stick it on a CD then play it in a car and on your ipod. Play it on as many different systems as you can find. Try turning off your computer screen when you’re listening back to the mix – looking at the arrangement on screen gives you visual cues about what’s coming next, and can influence what you think you’re hearing. If you’re getting things “wrong” it should be very easy to tell the difference between your mix and a commercial CD, as things like too much bass or top end tend to show themselves up everywhere. It’s also a good idea to trust your instincts, and when something “feels” right it can very often sound right too.

Just remember, if you find yourself at a point where you’ve got files called “I Love You Baby Mix 23″ you’re probably in trouble. Go back and have a listen to “mix 1″, you may be surprised what you find.

In order to beat match you will need the following:

* Two decks (D1 and D2)

* At least two records (R1 and R2)

* Sound System

* One mixer

* Headphones

If you’re not sure what these are or what to get then check out our article on basic DJ equipment HERE.

Now you’ve got the equipment plugged in and ready to go we can begin preparing to beat match.

Choosing songs

To begin learning you want to choose two records which are reasonably similar in style and speed with long intro’s/outro’s and a good beat. This is where you need to get yourself down to a proper DJ shop and get listening to some tunes (your mums record collection won’t doJ). House records are usually a good place to start as they will usually have a good beat throughout.

Learn the tunes

Dance tunes are usually made up of multiples of 4 bars with each bar having 4 beats, this is where the 4/4 time signature comes from. Any changes that happen in the song will generally happen after 4 bars (16 beats) or multiples thereof. To try and make this clearer below is a sequence of B’s, each B represents one beat, a change in style (i.e bold/italic) signifies a change in tune such as a new instrument coming in.

BBBB BBBB BBBB BBBB BBBB BBBB BBBB BBBB BBBB BBBB BBBB BBBB BBBB BB…

You can see from this that the first change comes after 4 bars (16 beats) then there’s another change after further 8 bars (32 beats). Listen to your tunes and learn the structure so you know whether a section is 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 or 128 bars in length. When you DJ you generally want to begin mixing at the start of a section otherwise if you bring in a record on the 3rd beat or 2nd bar for example it will sound odd whilst what your trying to achieve is for the sounds of one track to fade as the other track is beginning to build up, or whatever effect your trying to achieve.

Cueing

While one record is pumping out over the main speakers, you are using your headphones to listen to the other record and trying to find a good starting point, this is usually the first drum kick of a measure (the correct name for a section of a record made up from a number of bars) and so to start with you could just use the first beat on the record. To find the beat just use you hand to move the record back and forth to find the correct point, once you think you’ve found it let the record play for a bit to make sure it’s the correct beat. Once your sure you’ve got the right point hold the record still with your hand so it is effectively paused and listen to what is playing through the speakers, your waiting for the right point in the track that’s playing to the crowd to push off the other record and beat match ready for the mix.

Beat Matching

R1 should already be playing out to the crowd and R2 should be audible in your headphones, find your starting beat on R2 and on the first beat of a measure on R1 push of R2, you should now be listening to both records at the same time. Now the difficult bit, as you listen you will here R2 speeding ahead or dropping behind R1 and you will need to correct this by slowing or speeding up R2 to try and get it to match then adjusting the pitch to remove this difference in speed. Initially it is best to make all adjustments on D2, so that the tempo of the music playing to the crowd isn’t changing.

So R1 is playing on D1 and audible to the crowd, R2 is spinning on D2 and audible in your headphones:

1. Cue R2 on D2 to first main beat and hold it

2. Count beats on the R1, and get ready for the first beat of a measure.

3. Start R2 to correspond with the first beat of R1 by pushing it off slightly. Now listen to both records, most DJs do this by listing to the headphones in one ear and leaving the other one uncovered so they can hear the main track. Some mixers allow you to fade between both decks in your headphones, and so you may prefer to do it this way.

4. If the R2 is speeding ahead of R1 then slow it down either with your hand or the pitch control then adjust the pitch control so that D2 is running slightly slower then when you pushed the record off. If R2 is lagging behind R1 then you need to speed it up either by nudging it forward or using the pitch control, then set the pitch control so D2 is running slightly faster then when you pushed the record off. You will probably need to repeat steps 3 and 4 a number of times before the tempos are actually locked together. You will know that you have succeeded when even after listening to R2 for a (relatively) long time it will stay perfectly synched with R1.

5. Try to keep pitch changes to less the -2% or +4% more then this and the record may begin to sound odd (unless this is an effect you are trying to achieve), if R2 is much quicker/slower then R1 then slowly adjust (so the crowd don’t notice) R1 so you don’t have to change the pitch so much for R2.

6. Cue up R2, as described above.

7. Count beats on R1 and push off R2 at the correct point. As mentioned this will be the first beat not only of a measure but of a 4, 8, or 16 beat section.

8. Listen closely and make small adjustments, if needed, to the record either by nudging it forward, slowing it down or using the pitch control so that it is perfectly in sync with R1.

9. After the right number of beats (4, 8, 16 etc) begin mixing in R2, it should still be in sync with R1. You have now beat matched.

10. Fade out R1 when ready.

With a lot of practice you will eventually be able to layer one record over another and create smooth transitions between different songs and you will have the basis for virtually everything else you will do as a DJ.