Transcripts
1. Introduction to the class: Hello, my name is Becky safe. I am a DJ, music producer, YouTube and Twitch streamer. This class is for anyone
who's looking to learn the fundamentals of
DJing, sound is science. It's energy at its core. And therefore,
because it's energy, it all acts the same
no matter the genre. So all you need to do in
order to perform a set in any genre is learn the
fundamental rules of sound, how it acts and behaves in regards to volume and frequency, I'm going to walk you
through the difference between volume and EQ's mixing. Then we'll take a look
at how to confidently transition from one
song to another. We'll look at the
crucial importance of phrasing in music, where to start your mix and how to keep the beats in sync. This class is perfect if you are just starting out with DJing, whether you have a controller or the latest Pioneer equipment, all of the buttons that
we're gonna be using will be universal
across all hardware. Djing is a fascinating ART form. Yes, the fundamental rules and the foundational
techniques are all the same across all genres,
but it's the tricks, the song selection and the performance fled
the DJ brings to the set that makes them stand out and be unique
amongst the crowd. I'm so excited that you're here. You're about to learn
the crucial skills required in order to perform
the music that you love. So let's get started.
2. Volume mixing: Let's look at volume
mixing first. So volume is when you turn
your channel up and down. So it starts from zero
and it goes up to 100% or ten as it's red on here. See this is just a
typical volume control. You're turning the volume up gradually using the
channel faders. Now that's if you have
the cross fader disabled. The cross fader is a pretty old school section of the mixer. It was used for back
in the day with like Scratch DJs and it's still used today for a
lot of performance art. So you'd scratch using
the cross fader. This is volume crossing from
one channel to another. It's just horizontal. But we don't really
use the cross fader. And you'll pretty much see
that most DJ's don't use the cross fader for
doing modern mixing. So it's disabled at the moment. If you want to enable it and use it to mix your tracks together, then on the Pioneer mix, you have to assign it to
either the left or the right. I'm going to assign
it to through, which basically means that
it disables the cross fader. And no matter if you touch this, not going to change the
volume of your tracks. Because sometimes
if you're deejaying and you're really into the mix, you might knock the
cross fader and completely cut the
audio from your music. So minds disabled,
It's always disabled. Were looking at mixing using volume on the channel faders. So you turn it up using
the channel feta. So I'm just going
to enable sync for this part of the class because we're going to look
at mixing using the drug. We'll later on, but we've enabled sink so we don't need
to think about that part. And then the other
thing that we need to concentrate on is
using the Q buttons. Get into the habit of using the Q buttons and
your headphones. So when you press the Q button, you're able to pre
fade and listened to the music with the
channel fader down. So when there's no audio coming
out of the sound system, if you press the Q button, it enables you to hear the track in your headphones
first to check that everything's okay
before you then start to bring up the
volume of the track, can you tell me three things do happen? So you gradually increasing the volume of the incoming
traffic and you're decreasing the volume of the outgoing track to take
it out of the picture. And doing that slowly in
this particular instance works for the production
style of these two tunes. So they're slow, they're
evolving their progressive. And so you as a DJ, your actions are slow,
evolving and progressive. It will depend on the genre
and the position in song as to how you do your
channel fader volume mixing. So let's look at a different
genre where channel fader volume mixing will
be a bit more aggressive. They can leave whenever 19, not everybody knows how
big an underground. Everybody knows. Everybody
knows. Everybody knows. That in the DJ world is
what's known as switching. We're using the channel faders, mixing with volume switching
from one track to another. And you'll have
noticed that I was switching at particular points. And it's where the production of the song changes and the base frequency
content comes out. It's a bit more of a
little break just before the next beat of the next phrase is that
little break in production. You can see it on the
screen here on this tune. When it starts to go
in that green color. This is the break that
I'm talking about. That's when you would do that switch just for
that 1 bar of material. So the 1 bar is from the red
marker to the red marker. So that would be this. That's the size of
the section that you've got to play
with when you're changing your channel
faders over and switching from one track
to another using volume
3. Channel EQ's: Now we don't just
mix using volume. We also mix using channel EQ's, which essentially is volume, but it's volume of
particular frequency bands. So in music we have
low frequency, which is your base
frequency content like sub bass and kick drums, anything that's low and boomy, that is the base
frequency content and it sits here on this band. Then you have your
mid-range instruments, and that would be
musical instruments like vocals, pianos, guitars, pretty much most
instruments sits in this mid band is all
of the musical stuff, the stuff that we'd
like to listen to, bands and pop songs and
pianos and guitars, violins, anything like that. The musical stuff that all sits in this band
here, in the mid band, then in the high-frequency band, that's where you have your
top percussion instruments and the sparkle on
the top of tracks. So shakers, hi-hats,
anything that's got that's feeling that's in
this high-frequency band. So when you turn them down, you turn it to the left
and when you turn them up, you turn it to the right. When you have each of these
pointing up at 12:00, that means that the
track is playing out at it's produced Volume. Soon as you start
to manipulate it, you are taking it away
from its produced volume. So when you're
playing just one song out to your audience, you want it to be up at 12:00
so that they're listening to it at its full quality as
the producer has made it. Now I very rarely turn
my EQ's to the right because this means
you're turning up the volume of that band. And so you're increasing
the overall signal and turning the overall
volume of your track up. And so that signal goes from
the channel into the master. And it could push the master and everything could distort. It can be really, really loud. And the only reason I would
ever really turn my EQ's to the right is if the tracks really quiet and a
particular area, if it's overrule quiet, I'll probably just turn the overall volume
of the track up. Now this is volume of the lows, volume of the mids, and
volume of the highs. And the reason why they're
split into three bands is because as I
previously mentioned, different instruments
sit in them, but also because of the
frequency, they act differently. The band that you want
to keep your eye on is the low-frequency band, because the low frequencies
are very boomy, very bass heavy,
huge sound waves. And when you have
them playing out, if your sound system, and there's two tracks
playing together with to huge levels of energy. That's what it is
as what sound is. It all comes crashing
together and going. If you have that in a
nightclub, that's even worse. So base is a very
problematic area of music and you want to make sure it's as clean as possible. We've already looked
at mixing with volume. And this time I'm going to incorporate using the
low frequency bands to have a much more seamless and clear crossover of volume. Just this particular area
is the problematic area. I'll show you first
what it sounds like without manipulating that. And then I'll show you
what it sounds like when we do use the
low frequencies. So it just crossing over, just as we crossed over
using the volumes, we're going to crossover using the low frequency bands,
turning them to the left. So we're cutting, we're
not turning the volume up. That's doing the mix with all of the bands turned up
that produced volume. When we isolate just
the low-frequency by turning down the other bands, you can hear that
rumbling bass sound. So now I'm gonna do a mix using the volume sliders or
the channel faders. And we're also going to just focus on the low
frequency band and crossover our
low-frequency materials so that it's clean and seamless. Unless if that by turning down the high and
the mid frequency bands, just to show you that
this base frequency in isolation is a much clearer
picture for the listener. And it's this less of
that rumbly chaotic mess.
4. How to seamlessly transition from one song to another: You seamlessly transition from one song to another will depend entirely on the song itself and the production of
it and on the genre. Because there's
certain styles of production that exist
in certain genres. You as a DJ, need to listen out for the
production of the song, to hear how it's evolving. We're always listening for
the dominant song in the mix. And the dominant song
is the one that has the majority of the volume
coming out to your audience. If you introduce
a song like this, It's half volume and the channel EQ's are turned down slightly, then that's the
non-dominant song. That's the song that's in the
background and it's the one that your audience's
attention is not on. They may hear it and
here an essence of it, but it's still the
non-dominant song. So you'll listening as a DJ for the production of
the dominant song. However, this song moves whether it goes
into a breakdown, whether it goes into a drop, That's what you
hook onto as a DJ, and that's how you manipulate the incoming or outgoing song to suit the dominant
piece of music. If the dominant song has a lot of mid-range information in it, like a vocal or pianos, then we may not
want to introduce too much mid-range information in our incoming song
because it will then crowd the mix and it
will confuse the audience because they won't
know which song is the dominant one of the mix. Like it's, it's hard to hook onto two vocals
at the same time, which is a big no-no,
don't do that. Do not mix two vocals together. So using the techniques
that we've already learned, we're going to listen to the production of
the dominant song. And then when we
crossover to make this song the dominant song, we're going to listen to the
production of this song. Wow, wow, wow, wow. The dance, dance, dance, dance. Soon as you cross over
that low-frequency band, that is your indicator that
you've now taken one song as the dominant and
cross it over to the other song that is
now the dominant song. And so you watch
for the production on the new dominant song. And you take you out
your outgoing tune according to that song. This one was going into a
kind of breakdown section. As it was going
into that breakdown that then started to
go into a buildup. This outgoing tomb was pretty
much coming to an end. And it was only really going to be kick drum inflammation, which we don't really need. It's just a random kick drum kicking for to the floor beats. And this song is going
into a buildup to a drop, which doesn't make sense. So then we want to get this
song on the left out of the picture so that we can have a dominant song do its job.
5. Finding the downbeat: The downbeat is
beats one of bar, one of a new phrase. So music is divided into phrases and then it's
divided into bars, and then it's
divided into beats. We can see on the screen here that if we just
select this area, this is for beats that
equates to 1 bar and the downbeat is the
first beats in this bar. This beats. So this
is the downbeat. This is the beat that
we're looking for. And the reason why we
would be looking for the downbeat of this
phrase is because that is when we hit play on our new tune that's coming
into the mix because we want the entire phrasing to match together
with our songs. We hit them both on beat
one of the one phrase. Now it's very rare that you would mix two tracks together, both starting at
the beginning of the song is not a
definite no-no, but it just doesn't make sense. If you're a DJ playing
one song after another, you would have one be playing midway through or
towards the end. And then you would start the incoming song from the beginning or from a particular
point near the beginning. So how do we find this downbeat? If we're already halfway
through the song, it's easy to find
the downbeat at the beginning
because it's betwen, or kick drum, one of the song. But how do you find that
further into the music? Well, you know how
we were looking at that little greeny
blue section where the music producer
had taken away temporarily the base
frequency content. Well, this actually
signifies to you that the downbeat is
coming afterwards. Not always, but
usually after one of those little windows where
the base content disappears, the downbeat proceeds that if we try and find one of
those in this song. So this is the downbeat. This is the moment in
the midway point of the song where you would hit
play on your incoming tune, you would match them together. Then are perfectly in phrase. They both started
on their downbeats. It's just that one
of them started on the downbeat midway
through the song. One of them started on the downbeat at the
beginning of the song. How you count that is
doing the 1234 methods. So modern music is
written in 4444, is four beats per bar. So for beats we can see
on the screen here, this is for beats in 1 bar. So if you count 12, 342-234-3234, you're
counting your bars. And in the bit preceding
this downbeat, we can do that to
get things on time. So we're going to hit play on the incoming tune on the
beginning, on beat one. We're going to count on
the tune that we're mixing into using the 1234234. And then watching for this
little green section, there's 2 bar there, so there's eight beats in total. We count those eight
beats physically moving so that we're
feeling the music. We can then do 1234 and play
6. The phrasing of music and mix points: So we know that the
downbeat is beat one of the first bar
of the new phrase. But how do we know
what a phrase is? How many bars make a phrase? Well, it depends on the length
of the song and the genre. So usually short genres like
pop music, urban, anything. Well, a lot of music these days is getting shorter and shorter. So the shorter the songs, the smaller the phrases will be. A phrase is a number of bars, and in those bars are the beats and the first one
is the downbeats. And we work in multiples. So we have full bars
for one phrase, 8 bar, 16 bar, ec2 bars. The smaller the song,
the smaller the phrases. So 4.8 bar would make
three-minute songs and 16.32 bar would make songs that are
like 3 min to six, 7 min. If there's even genes made
that long these days, the longer the songs, the longer the phrases. In house music, the phrases
are usually 16.32 bar. Unless the song has
been made for radio, then they will be
shorter phrases. But you're counting these bars. So you're gonna do
12 342-234-3234, all the way up to 16, and that would be 16 bar and then you drop
on the 17th bar. But instead of going to 17, you're going to go back to 12 342-234-3234 because
you're working in blocks of 16 and those 216
blocks will make up 32. And so when you're looking for the downbeats to start your mix, you're looking for either the
end of the 16th bar phrase or the end of a 32 bar phrase as we
go up to the drop here, the second drop of the song, it's a main second
drop because it's come after a very
long breakdown. This is definitely,
definitely betwen, the downbeats of a
new 32 bar phrase. This is anytime where you can definitely be sure that this is the start of a new
32 or 16 bar phrase. Obviously two-sixths
is 32 because it's just come after a
huge breakdown. The same with this song. Go forward, this part. So this is the huge breakdown. This is one of the new
30 two-bar phrase. That's the only time
you're ever going to be sure in the
production of the song that you've now reached
another downbeat of 16 slashed 32 bar phrase. So with that in mind, let's start this track from just the bit
before it's dropped. We know that that beat, one that downbeats is the start of a new set
of two-bar phrase. So let's count
either in 16 or 32, looking for that little green
window where the production and the base content
comes out of the picture, counting 1234. And we're going to hit
play on the next downbeat. So the next phrase
after this one, That's when we're going to
start our incoming tune. Ready? 3 2 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 2 2 3 4 3 3 4 4 2 3 4 5 2 3 4 6 2 3 4 7 2 3 4 8 3. 4923, 4234 2341, 2234, 1234, 1423, 4234, 1234. In house music, especially
it is 16 bar phrases, usually two 16's making up 32. But if you're working
with pop music, urban, anything that the songs
are like 3 min long, then you're probably
looking at working in four or eight bar phrases. As soon as a full bar phrase ends or an eight
bar phrase ends, the songs probably going
to change in production. And that's going to signify
to you that you've reached a new downbeats of a new phrase, that betwen, of bar, one of a new phrase. That's when you hit play
on your incoming track.
7. Keeping the beats in sync: So far we have been
mixing using beats sync. We're now going to turn it off. Keeping the beats in sync
using the jog wheel. So the jog wheel is in
the center of the deck. And you can set your tempos
first using the tempo slider. And then once you have your numbers matching
on the screens, you know that they're
matched in BPM. And all you need to do is the steps that we've
already learned, which is finding that downbeat and hitting play
at the right time. But then now we have
beat sync disabled. We might not,
because human error, we might not hit play at exactly the right time to
get the beats in sync. And so you're going
to need to make these slides adjustments
using the jog wheel. Backwards, slows your track
down slightly and forwards, increases it in
tempo, speeds it up. You want to get used
to how this jog wheel feels because you're going to learn what is right for you. The geologist on the
Pioneer equipment means that you can go light, which basically you don't
need a lot of force or heavy, which means you'd
probably need to go and do some
weights at the gym. It's not that heavy for you. It's a bit more heavy
and more resistant. I prefer it on the
heavy setting because sometimes I'll pull on it's
too far and if it's on light, It's gonna go really far, then you have such an effort
trying to get it back. So I prefer to have it on heavy, but you choose what's
right for you. We have that part
just before the drop, we can see the different
color of the wave forms. It goes from blue to red, which means we go
from no base content to base content in the picture. And that base
content coming into the picture means that
we hit the downbeat. So the first thing
we're going to do as the song is playing out, we're going to change the
tempo of our incoming tune so that it matches the tempo of the song that is
currently playing. Once you have that, you're going to do
your accounting of your phrases and
you're gonna hit Play so that the phrases match. Let's hit play on the
drop of this song. And that means that
we've got beat one, the downbeat matching
on both tunes. And then we're going
to use the jog wheel to get it in time. The best bit of advice
I can give you, full mixing using the jog wheel is to go in one direction, listened to see if you've gone further away from
getting the beats in sync and then bring it back in the other direction
even further. So you're over swinging. When you over swing, you, your brain will then calculate how far you need to go between that
particular range that you've set back and forth in a ping pong motion
until you end up getting the beats in sync
and you've beat matched, swing in one direction. See if you've gone
further away or closer. If you've gone closer
than just keep going. But if you've gone further away, come back in the other
direction and creates a range or hypothetical
range in your brain. And go back-and-forth and get smaller and smaller increments
until your beats match. You'll see that as we're
crossing over using the EQ's, we need to also keep an eye on whether the
beats are in sync. There's a thing in
deejaying called Drifting. It's way or to chins will drift out of sync with each
other over time. The number one thing that
is probably the golden rule and priority in deejaying is
Keeping your songs in sync. Nobody wants to hear
a train wreck of different beats coming
at different times. It's the number one thing
to keep your eye on. So even when you're
mixing using volume, crossing over, using your EQ's, keep an eye or an
ear out for hearing, whether you'll be
drifting out of sync. If they are adjust using the joke, we'll
slight adjustments. So it might be
noticeable to you, but to the average person, the average listener out there that's having
a great time. They're not going to hear the slight movements that you're making because they're not
really focusing on that. They're focusing on having the best time on
the dance floor. So yeah, small adjustments, not crazy adjustments because then it will be
really noticeable. But just keep an eye on your beats and whether
they're in time.
8. Final Thoughts: Congratulations, you have
just completed this class. You'll be able to use
these techniques now in order to perform
and record a mixed. Why not do that? Record a mix and share it
as your class project. Thank you so much
for trusting me and taking the time
to watch and learn. I found that the best way to
learn a new skill is to seek out somebody who already has that skill and learn from them. This is something that I'm
just personally passionate about and that's why I've
built my online structures. If you want to find
out more about me, you can check out my website, which is Becky safe.com. You'll also find me online on all of the social
media platforms, mainly on YouTube, on
Twitch, and on Instagram. I've found that whenever
I'm learning a new skill, It's important for
me to have people behind me support that
encourages me to keep going. And that's why the discord is a brilliant place to
come and hangout. So I highly, highly
recommend that you joined the discord and get to know the wonderful community
that I've built. And now everybody else
is helping to flourish. Until then, please
leave a review, let everybody else know how you got on and what you learnt. And I will see you soon.
Becky Saif, YouTuber, DJ & Music Producer
