Counting your bars

Hope you've been practising well and been able to beat mix?! If you have and you are able to beat mix, then lets move on the the most important part. Learning to create a smooth and seamless mix. 

In order to achieve this, you need to learn to be able to count your bars. Have a look at the video below. After viewing it, come back and I'll explain it with more details.

Now that you know how to count your BPM, I'm going to tell how I count mine. Now when you do a 4 beat count, that will most definitely benefit you when your mixing r'n'b, hip hop or anything that is short. For house or Dance music, it's longer, so if you count 4 beats to a bar, as stated above, it will give you 8 bars.

The way I do this is that, I double the beats. So instead of counting 4 beats to a bar I count 8 beats to a bar. In that way, you get less bars to deal with. So, in a normal situation you will get 8 bars but when you count 8 beats you get half of that, which is 4 bars. Again, this is very useful when your a house DJ. Many DJs I know use that way.

Hope this was helpful to all of you. Again, please comment if you have any questions. 

How to DJ with Mixing techniques

Mixing is a pretty straight forward thing. The main objective is to get both the beats to sync and sound like one. In order to achieve this, you need to first set or get your bpms right. I talked about bpms in the previous post. Unlike bpms, where you can start counting the beats at any part of the song, mixing requires you to catch the first beat of the song. It is important to understand that you will need lots and lots of patience. This can be a very slow and frustrating time but once you've mastered this skill and continuously have the passion for music, dj'ing can be very rewarding. Also, before you carry on reading, ready yourself with your headphones. Always remember, one side is to listen to the current song playing on air and the other is for listening to your headphone. So, don't use both cups, just have one on. Learn to differentiate both songs. You need to be able to separate both songs. Its is kinda like tapping with one hand and sliding with the other at the same time. 

Cueing and mixing

• The first thing you do is get two songs from the same genre. Try to get two songs that are instrumental. This will be a lot more easier for you to learn to mix as there will not be any vocals to confuse you.
• Let the first song play and prepare to cue the second song. Now, you need to find the first beat of the song. This is very important. Catching the first beat is very simple. Play the second track and when you hear the first beat 'doop' (beat sound), pause the track. Now slowly turn the platter back until you hear the beat sounding 'doop doop doop doop' really fast. This is the sound of the beginning of the beat, the edge. Once you've got that, hit the cue button. Congratulations, you've just got you'r first cue!
• With the advantage of having a bpm counter on either your cdj (most do), you can already pre-drag your pitch control to the desired bpm. It's a matter of getting the perfect pitch. Since we are only gonna learn to beat mix now, don't concern yourself with bar mixing for now. 
• Ok, once you've got your first beat ready, which should be on standby or cue'd and you've pre-adjusted your bpm, lets mix. Listen to the first song playing, time yourself to the beat. I recommend you tapping your hand or feet to the beat. When your ready, on the next beat, hit play. Now because you've already pre-adjusted your bpm, it should sync with the first song or it may just be a little bit off. Ok, so you got the two songs playing,  

For a more detailed explanation, I will post a video soon (cam is broke) on how to cue and mix. 

Counting your BPM - Essential

Entering the world of DJ'ing is no easy job.There are many aspects of DJ'ing that you need to master. Not forgetting the investment in getting your own decks to practice on. Your dj equipments are not just any instrument, they are instruments made for precision and fun.

There are two important things too learn and master, beat mixing and bar mixing, but most importantly, you need to understand BPMs (beats per minute).

BPMs - Q: What does a bpm do for you? A: It tells you the speed of a song. Now before you start to push the fader, you need to be able to differentiate the genre of songs and their bpms. This will help you find a track that is appropriate for a mix your intending. For example, if the track that is playing on air is 128 bpm, it is not a good idea to try and mix a track that has 95 bpm. In general, you should find something that has the same or close to that 128 range. Even if it is 120bpm, you can still mix with the pitch control. Now, almost all mixers and cdjs have a bpm counter. The moment you play your track, it will show you the current bpm of that particular track your playing. Just for fun and in-case your bpm counter isn't working for some unknown reason, here's how you count it manually. There are different ways to count them but here's how I do it and thanks to DJ Love for this.

1. Prepare your watch or stop watch for a period of 10 seconds.
2. At any-time of  the track, count every beat or kick drum in that 10 second period. If your not sure what I mean. You know how you shake or move your head every-time you listen to a track you like? Your shaking your head to the beat. That's how you count.
3. Once you get the amount of beats in that 10 sec period, just multiply that amount with 6. Example: 20 beats x 6 = 120. The answer (120), is the bpm of that particular track. This will not be an accurate result, but close to the actual bpm.
4. Do remember this, always keep your pitch control on neutral. Anything below or above will not give a good result.

Here are a couple of videos. The first one simply shows how I mix and the second shows how I get the right tempo for mixing. Please note this was done very quickly with one hand as I was recording it myself :). Hope you guys find this helpful. I will post a more detailed video soon.