Hip Hop Mixing w/Doubles - a question

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DJ Whoknows

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Hey all--

great forums here, love reading the posts.

i'm learning how to dj, spinning all hip-hop right now. I have doubles of some of my records, and have just started trying to pull longer mix-ins using the instrumental...

What I do now is beatmatch my next track(lets call it X) to the record i've got playing (Y). I then toss X off the table, throw on my double of Y, eyeball the pitch adjustment so it's the same as the playing track, and then cut over to the instrumental on beat, after a chorus or something.

I then throw off my original of Y, replacing it with X. I throw the pitch to where I remembered it at when I beatmatched the first time, and mix in X.

I can't really think of another way to do this, but it seems like the pitch adjustments aren't going to be spot on with the shifting around as I switch records...

Is this how y'all do it?
 
i got a little confused with that whole x and y thing, so im just going to explain what i did when i was starting out(not so long ago),i would play one record live, while cueing up an other one, i'd match the one in my headphones to the track playing live, fade into the track i had cued up, and do the same thing over and over again, i didnt find it boring at all because i had diffrent songs playing everytime and it really worked well to
 
I think I get what you mean and I'm wondering why you wouldn't just throw the instro on, then beatmatch? Wouldn't that be a lot less confusing?

But...that might get kind of boring if it's just a looped instrumental, so I can kind of see what you're saying. Let the original play for a while, giving time to match the next track, then throw on the instro and let it play for a bit before the next song.

Just add your own flavor. What you said sounds like fun so just keep on doin it. The maybe if you throw on the instrumental you can keep the same instro on the other table and juggle or loop..There's soo many things you can do
 
oh right i get what you mean

i'd like to know the answer to this too actually
 
yeah dooban...

it seems like you'd have to have 3 TT's to do this with accurate pitch adjustment from the time the new track drops.
 
welcome to FP whoknows :hello:

i would say you're on the right track. match your next record and keep the setting in mind. then play with your doubles for a bit. after that, get your next track on and put the slider back to where you had it set when you first matched it up.

you are right - with this method, your pitch setting won't be perfect, but with some more time you'll work around that. generally, hip hop mixes are short, so you just have to keep it matched long enough to dump the other track.

mixing hip hop effectively (no, not like "DJ" Clue. . .) is very difficult even for vets who have been matching other kinds of music for a long time. using doubles is the way to go to get the mixes right, and to have fun with the records rather than having them just play out.

PS if you can find it, check out Roc Raida's "Stuck in the Past" mixtape. its a very decent mix and may give you some ideas. . .
 
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thanks alur!

follow-up question...

How does a DJ smoothly do blends with only 2 tables in the middle of a mix?

I've been messing around with blends a lot, but I have to beatmatch the instrumental to bring it in, then beatmatch the acapella, and bring that in... by which time i've used up enough of the instrumental that I can't even use the whole acapella, let alone drop it in time to mix in a whole new track!


frustrated, but loving learning this ****
 
yeah thats much tougher - almost to the point that it can't really be done very effectively under most circumstances.

if you want to play an accapella over a different instro, you'll be faced with probably playing just a piece of the vocal (maybe a verse) before you have to dump it to get your next track cued up. only way to mix two instros and a vocal would be with 3 decks for the most part.
 
haha whoknows

just get urself another deck man! seems like it'd suit your style :)
 
what i do at the moment is use an instrumental off of the computer and have the acapella run over a mix.will use 3 turntables when i can afford another one!!
 
i guess if you're using a computer, you could get final scratch and remix your instros and vocals. you would still have the flexibility of playing with vinyl (which you can still scratch and juggle), and final scratch costs less than a new table.

just a quick thought. . .
 
Just a quick one,

But This whole instro this is something I do all the time, I have 3 dex at home and that's allways cool but playing out clubs never have any sort of 3 deck setup so.....

check out the PVDJ grabber (from Peavy)
It's a small looping sampler.
www.pvdj.com/processors/grabber/

So I play my instrumental, beat match it, loop it and leave it playing on the sampler. Enabling me to fip the record to the vocal and the tune is still set to the correct pitch.

It took me a long time to decide whether it was usefull enough to buy one. But after a lot of use I reckon it's actually pretty damm cool.

(Oh and yes this is just the Redsound Cycloops but repackaged and made with stronger components)

Davy D
 
When i have doubles i usually start with the instr of my doubles. Let me explain:
I have doubles of (x).
While (y) is playing, ill drop the instr of (x) over (y) and let it ride for a chorus or even a verse. Once i kill (y) its a lot easier (i find) to just drop the second copy of (x) over (x-instr) because you just have to look at the pitch, rather than remembering and adjusting all the time. At this point ill drop the second (x) on the last verse for a few bars, then scratch in, or creatively bring in the other (x) from the beginning. Makes for a good "rewind" on a hot track....specially if you have sound effects.

As for a thrid deck, maybe look into a cd player....i use a dn-s5000 and once you get the hang of a 3rd channel you can run some SERIOUS mixes. I use it for acapellas and loops mainly, but its great. Acapellas are crazy cuz you can pitch shift it so its fast, but doesnt sound like the chipmunks.

And dont worry, after time you wont have to beatmatch the intrumental to mix the acapella. In time you can just throw the acapella in cuz youll just know if its too fast or too slow. It sounds crazy, but youll get it. Just sing (or rap =)) a song in your head to an instrumental thats playing on your speakers.....and do it often. It makes mixing it a lot easier at first.
If you want to do it during a set without wasting time, i suggest organizing your records by bpm(beats per minute). That way, you can literally just pick up a record and throw it on cuz you already know how many bpms faster (or slower) it is. Every incrament on a 1200 is 1 BPM. Once its on, you can do the fine tuning by whatever method you choose. I use the pitch slider. Slide it left or right (or up or down) then back to where it was really fast to get it perfect. =)

Good luck.
 
Maybe your right but I don't think it's possible for every increment on the pitch slider to be 1 bpm up. It goes by percentages. 1 percent on the pitch slider for a record at 85 bpm is a lot different that 1 percent for a tune at 160 bpm. I took it way to literal tho obvioiusly lol. It's late and I felt like typing :D...

That is a good way to think about it tho. You need to throw an accapella thats at 97 over an instro thats at 95. Drop it down two on the pitch and toss it on without a worry. A lot easier and a lot faster than fully beatmatching then bringing it in.
 
AlurOne! said:
yeah thats much tougher - almost to the point that it can't really be done very effectively under most circumstances.

if you want to play an accapella over a different instro, you'll be faced with probably playing just a piece of the vocal (maybe a verse) before you have to dump it to get your next track cued up. only way to mix two instros and a vocal would be with 3 decks for the most part.
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I co-sign this, but I'd like to add a few things. If you're in a club with an MC, you can have him talk over the instrumental while you swap out the "old" record for an acapella. Otherwise, some acapella (choruses) sounds metronomically "in-time" without the music behind it. For instance, take a listen to Mary J. Blige's - Family Affair; you can get away with playing that song's acapella (chorus), while you set up the next instrumental for your live remix. Just some additional insight, from a fellow dj...
 
i know ive said that working out sets is baaad for playing out, but sorting out lil bootleging sets is spot on!!

drop the instrumental and lay the accapella down overthe top, at the chorus take the beat out real quick and lay down the next beat, just do some simple scratches to create a beat if you are not too tidy at drumming beats and then continue it with a new beat, ive got a load of these all marked out, and if im doing a set where i know i will be dropping a few of these i just quickly beat match all the instrumentals, label them for instantce +6.5 or whatever, and do lil continuouse bootlegs!! which always go down well!! weve got a bootled cd to sell, just to like a local market but we get them pressed too eventually!!

obviously 3 or more dex is easyer for doing this sorta stuff on and where poss we always bring extra equiptment, and where theres 2 of us we push things and wing it more on what gets legged!!
 
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