There you have it, you have chosen to start music and it is now time to choose the one that will follow. For that, you need to know how to mix with the harmonic keys, also you can thank to this page learn all the techniques of mixing by harmonic key. Here, in our playlist creation, I advise you to go to the simplest and most efficient. Select music with the same equivalent harmonic key, test as a priority the music with the best notes and if this does not suit because of too strong or too weak musical intensity, go to the higher harmonic key, test again, and if it still will not go to the lower harmonic key on the condition that it allows you subsequently to resume the current harmonic key and to be able to pass to the higher one Example: you are currently playing music in harmonic key “4A”, test another music in “4A”, if that does not suit, switch to “5A”, if it still does not suit, switch to “3A” on condition that you can come back to “4A” and switch to “5A”.
7) MASTER THE INTENSITY THROUGH THE CHOICE AND THE WAY TO MIX
The intensity of a piece, its energy, and its complexity in sound sources, means that it is more or less suited to another piece and logically directs the energetic evolution of your playlist, your deejay set. That said, you shouldn’t just rely on that, because the energy of your dj set will also be defined by your way of mixing and chaining your music. Also, the original tempo of the music is not necessarily evocative of its potential. This is why when you choose a title so that it is linked with another, you must try it by mixing it with the key corrector of your software or dj player (“Keylock” function) with the tempo you want. want for this precise moment of the dj set. This will allow you to discover that many normally slow songs can be a real bomb when accelerated. However, the opposite is rarer and should be avoided, because the more you slow down digital music, the more you reduce the resolution and therefore its sound quality.
Also, you must change the tempo gradually throughout your set and especially not stay frozen at the same BPM. Increase it gradually throughout the mix and from time to time, you can choose to lower it to better bring out the bass for example. To lower it, it is better to do it when there is no rhythm, or if not to do it quickly and exaggeratedly to gradually increase it again during a rise to create a break effect between two phases. of charged rhythms.
In addition, when a piece is clean, simple, minimalist, this one alone, will not be a good choice to follow behind music very loaded in sound and intensity but can prove to be an excellent choice for a three or three. four decks. In this case the selection of 2 simple kinds of music can very well be linked in 3 decks behind a loaded title. This is why you should also test and select a song according to your DJ skills and your material.
8) END YOUR PLAYLIST STRATEGICALLY
After having selected about twenty titles that follow one another, you will undoubtedly notice that your playlist evolves in the form of waves. This geometry is undoubtedly the most appropriate for a playlist and a dj set, because we could say that each wave contains a starter, a main course, and a dessert. At this point, we could choose to stop for dessert, but as the other would say, “we would have a nice little strong coffee”, then after “it’s time for a drink” and “rebelote”.
More seriously, a dj set can be defined as a wave, but a playlist has no limit, so I advise you to try to chain several waves, but above all to try to return to the Harmonic key of the start your playlist and end it with a song that fits perfectly with the very first song in your playlist.
Thus, when you find yourself in a party situation you can, without any worries, start mixing your playlist at any time depending on what you were doing before. With this type of fence for all your playlists, you can mix and change at any time and thus perfectly adapt to the audience’s reaction without any stress or musical mess.
9) ADJUST THE SELF-GAINS AND SET THE TEMPO GRID OF YOUR MUSIC
That’s it, the hard part is done, now all you have to do is prepare your titles one by one to ensure formidable precision during your dj sets.
To do so, the first thing to do is to choose reference music, simple with perfect regularity in its tempo and sound level.
Choose a song that is not too old and of good quality, it will be used to calibrate all your music.
Now you slip this music into player A, you calibrate its tempo grid just once, and without touching its gain, you listen to it in a loop.
You then tune the auto-gain and the tempo grid of each music in your playlist according to this reference title. So you can be sure that everything will be on the same level and perfectly aligned during your set. Thus, you can concentrate on the purely artistic part of the DJ mixing.
Thanks to the new id3 tags, all the auto-gain levels will be memorized autonomously in your mixing software, i.e. the sound level adjustment will be directly recorded in the id3 tag of each music, which is really practical. (this is also the fundamental difference between auto-gain and the gain which is not memorized).
10) PREPARE THE CUES OF YOUR MUSIC
Finally, the last part and which is not the least, because it consists of editing starting cues to chain your titles like an ace and recompose a song live. Also, each dj has his own technique for editing cues, which is why here I will only tell you about my current technique Since the majority of DJ software and even high-end CD decks all generally allow you to store 8 Cues per title, I organize my Cues in the same way for all my music in order to be able to improvise better, according to my desires and public reactions.
I use Cue 1 to start the song, I place it on the first beat, usually the bass drum. I generally choose a passage at the beginning of the song corresponding to a rhythmic intro, but not too busy, perfect to mix with another title I use Cue 2 for a really flashy snare that allows me to juggle and manually recreate a rhythm with the other cues set on bass drum beats. Or if the song is not appropriate, I prefer to wedge it on an onomatopoeia I use Cue 3 and 4 to score the starts of two loaded parts of the song, usually the verse and the chorus I use Cue 5 and 6 to mark the starts of two climbs and bridges of a song. The 5 must be less intense than the 6 I use Cue 7 and 8 to mark two interesting parts to mix the next track, generally, I use it as a hot cue in the form of pre-recorded loops
11) TEST, RECORD, LISTEN, AND PERFUME YOUR MIX
There it’s finished! your set is ready to burst into the crowds, but before, obviously, you have to practice, record, and listen to learn your music, your set, try different ways of chaining, daring effects, climbs, beat juggling, etc. … in short, do your job, mix.
