Need criticism please!

Sounds good to me. LOL I do weddings, not much call for beatmatching although I still can. Good job!

Best,

Paul

Good mix overall. There is a bit of stumbling around 7.44 for about a minute & Just about 11.00. Your transitions need to be louder so as not to loose the momentum. Remember this is "High Energy"You can always reduce the volume right after the transition. Try using an Automatic Gain Adjustment.

The new song coming in should have the same volume. As you increase the new, decrease the other one.

Before I give my attempt at constructive criticism, I should say my background is mostly in fringe electronic dance parties where a lot of the crowd either at least dabbles in mixing or dates someone who does. Based on your selection, I assume that you're targeting slightly more mainstream club demographics so I'll try to keep that in mind

I think it's a solid selection. Real upfront with the dutch/electro house feel consistent between tracks. There's a little too much beat juggling and stutter-looping for my taste but I must say there's a few parts where you hit the cuts cleanly and it definitely works! I would recommend maybe just picking a few parts to do this where it sounds the best, and leaving the rest of each track to play straight because too much stuttering tends to throw me off when I'm dancing. Another approach would be to use longer (2, 4...?) beat loops in some of the parts where you want to play around; it's easier to stay in sync with the overall 4/16 beat-chunk structure of most tracks. Short Loop rolls would be another option; keep the stutter but snap back to where the track would have been otherwise. Substituting echoes / flanges / filters might add more variety. To be honest even when spinning a underground-style party I try not to go overboard with effects but everybody gets different mileage on this issue, it's a central decision in what you want your mixing to sound like, and it seems you want a bit more of a scratching & hip-hop feel.

To touch on the transitions point mentioned by Houston above, I would suggest a few things also...

1- I own a VCI-300 but if the Itch interface is the same as what I've used, the software lacks the individual gain for each deck (see Scratch Live for comparison) which means your level matching needs to happen at the controller. Again, I don't know firsthand about your gear but I always found it tricky to match levels on the VCI's meters, which don't have enough resolution in my opinion. Your ears will be more accurate if you compare the peak part of your incoming track with the louder bits of what's playing already, and set the gain until they sound about the same when switching the cue back and forth in your headphones. I believe Itch has some kind of auto gain set, which will help you find starting points for sure, but Houston might be able to recommend a better piece of software for that purpose. I've had mixed results with SSL's auto-gain and always get the best results when I adjust manually. Hopefully the NS7 has more LEDs on your channel meters.

2- I encourage you to play around with 4/8/16 bar loops. A lot of these new dance tracks for the radio start with a long fade in, and don't hit a steady kick drum beat until there's a full vocal going. Sometimes there's a part in there that can be looped and mixed in for a long time without clashing against the current track, then you can drop the loop at an appropriate time and hit the point of no return in the transition. This will keep the beat continuous and the energy high. Nothing against a sudden dramatic drop to a recognizable "omg it's that track" intro, though - that generates a different kind of energy than a continuous groove.

3- As an alternative to 2, you could look for (or create) remixes/re-edits of these tracks that are more DJ friendly, meaning that they have longer intros/outros which can be mixed without clashing vocals. There's a huge range out there, though. A mainstream club might not dig anything longer than 32 beats or so without vocals, so search for what will work for your crowd and/or don't feel locked into playing each track from the very first beat...

Damn, sorry - that was a lot longer than I meant it to be! Too much caffeine as I prepare to work a few hours tonight, I'm afraid. Thanks for reading, I'm always excited to talk about mixing styles, particularly when there's different target crowds involved because it gives me fresh perspective on what I do... I have some mixes up on Soundcloud as well. http://soundcloud.com/mr-alexander They won't really serve as 'do it like this' examples because of the different selection, but they'll give you a feel for some stuff I'm into. Krafty Kuts is putting out mixes (i.e. Datatransmissions) that I can listen to on repeat, again a fringe-oriented but that guy can scratch and mix up a storm and hits a few different genres of electronic stuff with a lot of hip-hop vocals in the mix. Feel free to comment on my stuff, and especially please let me know if I was off the mark on what you're trying to do!

Cheers,
Lane

Ahh, Jon's comment reminded me of something else... If you want to specialize in scratching, I highly recommend checking out DJ Qbert / Thud Rumble instructional videos. You can find links on Youtube but the hardcopy DVDs are nicer because they automatically loop for you so you can easily kill some hours perfecting, say, a tear scratch. Also I find some of the clips highly entertaining

No doubt Jon! That's a much more concise way of saying something I was trying to get at in my accidentally-epic-length post

I don't know if anybody here's familiar with a book called Last Night a DJ Saved my Life, but it covers the earliest years of club beatmatching and references a DJ named Francis Grasso's description of using Thoren turntables (which apparently didn't have pitch control or the ability to do any adjustment after letting go of the slip-cued record) and still doing long blends with tracks featuring live drummers(!)

For me and most places I've been to DJ, drink, and/or dance, a DJ who keeps it simple and clean is almost always better than one who tries to get too fancy with scratching and effects. Impressing friends at a house party, hip-hop show, or DMC championship might be the exception to this general rule...

PS If you're trying to learn how to scratch, I recommend that you start with the fundamentals. A well-timed baby scratch will have way better impact than a poorly-executed crab I started practicing from the top down and didn't make much progress until I started over from the bottom up! Even so, I rarely do it when spinning for a crowd...

No doubt Jon! That's a much more concise way of saying something I was trying to get at in my accidentally-epic-length post

I don't know if anybody here's familiar with a book called Last Night a DJ Saved my Life, but it covers the earliest years of club beatmatching and references a DJ named Francis Grasso's description of using Thoren turntables (which apparently didn't have pitch control or the ability to do any adjustment after letting go of the slip-cued record) and still doing long blends with tracks featuring live drummers(!)

For me and most places I've been to DJ, drink, and/or dance, a DJ who keeps it simple and clean is almost always better than one who tries to get too fancy with scratching and effects. Impressing friends at a house party, hip-hop show, or DMC championship might be the exception to this general rule...

PS If you're trying to learn how to scratch, I recommend that you start with the fundamentals. A well-timed baby scratch will have way better impact than a poorly-executed crab I started practicing from the top down and didn't make much progress until I started over from the bottom up! Even so, I rarely do it when spinning for a crowd...

Mr. Alexander said:

No doubt Jon! That's a much more concise way of saying something I was trying to get at in my accidentally-epic-length post

I don't know if anybody here's familiar with a book called Last Night a DJ Saved my Life, but it covers the earliest years of club beatmatching and references a DJ named Francis Grasso's description of using Thoren turntables (which apparently didn't have pitch control or the ability to do any adjustment after letting go of the slip-cued record) and still doing long blends with tracks featuring live drummers(!)

For me and most places I've been to DJ, drink, and/or dance, a DJ who keeps it simple and clean is almost always better than one who tries to get too fancy with scratching and effects. Impressing friends at a house party, hip-hop show, or DMC championship might be the exception to this general rule...

PS If you're trying to learn how to scratch, I recommend that you start with the fundamentals. A well-timed baby scratch will have way better impact than a poorly-executed crab I started practicing from the top down and didn't make much progress until I started over from the bottom up! Even so, I rarely do it when spinning for a crowd...

Click to expand...

I thought I was the only one here using that term. "Slip Cued" It shows that you are plenty "Old School". Lots of people don't know what that means.

I didn't recognise the first song "smash the club" . Is that popular for you? I thought you overused vocal sample effects. The whole mix for me was too busy & too long at 12minutes, running with similar beats all the way through. Dancers & their ears get tired especially if its the same rhythm right through.
What amazes me about soundcloud is that no one comments anything if they dont like a mix . On the rare occasion when someone does offer "less than praise feedback" they get muted or insulted.I'm glad you are openminded .

Jon, A DJ I respect who can beatmatch at warp speed as well as cut up a storm said this and I've repeated it many times since: "A good drop is always better than a bad mix." Can't keep it much simpler than that and I try to remember it because it helps me get out of the 'must beatmatch all mixes' mental box.

Burnout, it's awesome you know about the phasing trick. I was gonna add it to my post but actually edited it out to keep the thing under one full monitor screen worth :-O I think you have the right idea for promo mix lengths... 60 min is a typical mix CD but unless it covers some variety and is just super tight the whole way through, it's possible the listener will skim thru and maybe miss the best parts by random chance. It's better for existing fans than to gain exposure to new listeners in my opinion. 10-30 min seems typical for promo work. All killer, no filler, and quicker to download makes it more accessible

Andywilson, I agree on the Soundcloud thing... I've seen some individual track posts get constructive criticism but full mixes are usually nothing or 'love this part dude' and I don't know if that's because people don't post or if they get muted. You have anything up I could check out?

Off topic but related: Apologies for my double post above. I only saw the option to edit this post, not delete the duplicate... I must be missing something. Feel free to PM me with tips/flames so I can avoid/fix this issue in the future!