What do you think is the hardest music to mix?

K

Kev

Guest
I just wondered what you all thought was the hardest music to mix and the easiest.

I play mainly house/garage stuff, off of Azuli,Z Records,SoulFuric and since going from Belts to Directs I found it easier to mix.

I've mixed with hardhouse and trance and find it really easy whether it be on Belts or Directs,I find that a lot of house has more percussive elements and some generally have that shuffle rythm which isn't quite on the 4 to the floor structure but set offset and can sometimes be tricky to pin down especially on a a set of Belts.

No disrespect to hardhouse/trance DJ's though as my best mate plays this and he is top notch.
 
I think with all the breaks in Drum&Bass though it is harder for the listener to pin down a mistake,there thinking was that a break or a bad mix,do you know what I mean
 
Junglism and Old Hardcore

I think that the older hardcore and jungle breakbeat material (1987 - 1993) is harder to mix than anything produced now.
Most music now is already split up into its own genre's.
 
Kev wrote:
>I've mixed with hardhouse and trance and find it really easy whether it be on Belts or Directs

ha...how can you find it easy, wow, you must be a natural....Can I hear some of your mixes? Let me guess...you don't have any....IT's easy to mix, but it's hard to get to the level were you can make a O.K trance or hard house tune into a amazing one.....
 
Trance and house is sooooooo much easier to mix than any other form of dance music!

As far as the hardest. HappyCore and TranceCore by far. I mean your talking 300 to 400 bpm!

How can it not be easy to mix music that has identical beats in almost every song?!?!?!

boom boom boom boom, boom boom boom boom, boom boom boom boom.......

Get real.
 
i'd say Funk - because its naturally beat out rhythms, not quantised in any way - and the kind of structure just doesn't lend itself to traditional style of mixing.

Word to the funk dj's.
 
Obviously you don't know what trance is about when you say it's all the same beat so it's easy to mix......Fu ck that, I love trance and everything about it, and to make it sound good, especially for hard core trance fans is very hard, any smuck can just beat match and mix fade from one song to another, when I first started out I was a Hip hop and break DJ.....Argghh...I'll never live that down for a million years....
 
IMO House is the easiest to mix, but the hardest to mix well. Because the tracks have the same foundation (boom boom bomm boom) you have to pay more attn to the key the track is in, the melody, and percussion elements aside from the bass line. Tack two house tracks that have no vocals and alot of congas, tumbas etc... unless you quick mix (less than a minute or 2 IMO), youll be working those records a several times to make sure you drop it on the right break. I have alot of breakbeats that I like to drop into deep jazzy house sets and I have to say that dropping the breaks is far eaiser for me because you dont have the long 4-8 bar break in the basslines, youve got a 2 bar "break" (what makes the track a "break" in the first place) and sometimes even 1 bar. This is all my subjective of course... just what Ive learned from mixing and studying.

As long as you can dance to it... I say mix it all together. House, breaks, jungle, techno...
keep the floor packed... never let'em rest.
 
i do uk hardcore (happy/freeform), and house is definately easier :) dunno about jungle, wasn't too hard the few times i've played with a friends' jungle tracks. i've heard goa is pretty difficult, pitch changes, odd melodies, etc.
 
trance

well i would say trance is easy to mix too.. .thats if ur a simple dj. . .but if ur like me and Ck, what makes trance is the DJ, not every dj can make a transition sound so perfect and so unseemling in trance music. I do every style of mixing and i find trance the most enjoyable because it gets me into the groove when i see people getting down and raising their hands to the mixes and extra tricks i add to the trance beat. trance forever!
 
hmmm

I think that R-One was pretty close when he said "House is the easiest to mix, but the hardest to mix well" - only I think this goes for all genres. I've mixed a little bit of everything, if not just to try it (all though I spin mostly disco/funky house [reeeeeel funky :)] and trance) and I think they were all about the same difficulty to simply 'mix' - you know, beatmatch get a few things in sinc, just make a mix that sounds 'good', thats it. For a mix to be really good -in any genre- it takes a really talented DJ <-- all of which had to put hard time in practicing and none of which are better than the other simply because of their chosen genre. Props to all the DJ's who can drop phat beats whether they be funky, hard or broken.

-=P.L.U.R.=-
Ryall
 
hmmm

I think that R-One was pretty close when he said "House is the easiest to mix, but the hardest to mix well" - only I think this goes for all genres. I've mixed a little bit of everything, if not just to try it (all though I spin mostly disco/funky house [reeeeeel funky :)] and trance) and I think they were all about the same difficulty to simply 'mix' - you know, beatmatch get a few things in sinc, just make a mix that sounds 'good', thats it. For a mix to be really good -in any genre- it takes a really talented DJ <-- all of which had to put hard time in practicing and none of which are better than the other simply because of their chosen genre. Props to all the DJ's who can drop phat beats whether they be funky, hard or broken.

-=P.L.U.R.=-
Ryall
 
I don't think you can really put an "easy to mix" tag to any style. Some tunes are easy, some are not.
For example those that say trance is easy to mix, well then they should try once... If you're thinking about trance and house as beats only, think again. As I said above, some tracks are very easy, but in most trance tunes (and house like R-one said) you have to take more more than that in consideration : key, percussion, ... And that's a lot more difficult. And in my opinion this will apply to most styles (other styles will have other particularities to take in consideration).

And then one final thought that pisses me off : dj's that say this or that styles sucks/bites/is crap or any other negative thing. Such deejays should be ashamed and should not be bearing the name dj. A dj lives by and for music, but music in general. They should respect any style (yeah even country :D), wether they like it or not, as it is still... music. Maybe you don't like one style because 80% you've heard is crap, but does that mean that all the rest is too. I'll sound harsh here, but if you apply this way of thinking on people and different cultures, aren't you called a racist then?
If you don't like something, just stay away from it and don't bother other people with it, people that may like it.
 
Yes I have to agree with you DJ Thy on the fact that a lot of DJ's/esp. newbies, tend to think that beat mixing is the be all and end all and that if you can beat mix it then it must sound good,which is wrong,but this ideology of mixing by key,structure,mood of night is something that comes with maturity and plenty of practise, getting a track to beat mix is the first and foremost in most newbie DJ's mind.

I think as a Pro DJ or aspiring DJ you should never dis another DJ from another genre just because he plays different music,I try to buy lots of stuff,recently I've been buying stuff like Blaze,DaveTheDrummer,DavidForbes,Meeker even though I regard myself as a house /usgarage DJ,I find on the fringes of my sets I can play some of this stuff,which I did at a recent party which set the night up well for my mate you plays harder.

It is difficult to pin DJ's down in this forum on what they play as a lot say trance,but is that like Sasha or John Kelly or again like DJ Tiesto,trance is becoming more diverse for the better I think, alot of DJ's cross from trance to progressive to hardhouse and then back,and there is nothing wrong with that.

It would be good if Mano could set up in the DJ profile,a chart section where all the DJ's can update there charts weekly.
I did see a thread like this Mano but this would be better in my opinion.
 
In my experience I find Trance difficult to mix.You really have to know the records and well.You have to know when they pause and when the beat comes back sometimes it comes back different.And blending it to a point of not knowing which record was playing and which one wasnt takes skill.If it were that easy we wouldnt have Paul Oakenfold and others.When I started spinning it I thought it would be easy it wasnt.But after listening to other dj's mixing it I just changed my entire way of mixing.And now I can proudly say I got it.It was a learning experience I had to start all over.But I Love music and mixing it and respect everyone who does it to.
 
Anything with a 4 to the floor beat, ie 4 kick drum hits per bar, is much easier to mix than music with a broken beat like jungle also some garage can have strange a 2-step beat that kinda odd and plays with your mind.
On another note all you trance&Hard house heads out there have not got a clue what real trance is like until you have experienced a set by Mark Allen or live sets from The Man With No Name or LAB4, Forget Oakenfold and Fergie!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top