How does everyone re-mix/mix their tracks?

[TRohr]

(*This is more or less an extension of my "Help with music production thread."*)

 

I was wondering how everyone re-mixes/mixes their tracks live... please go into deep, deep depth when explaining your techniques if you are willing to share them with the world... i've been trying to find answers to my questions bellow but I haven't had much success....

 

Is DJ'ing really just stitching two tracks together? Isn't there more to it than that?

 

Usually, when I mix tracks together I introduce "Track A", rush to "Track B" and find a good place to introduce the track, go back to "Track A", add some effects and as the beat drops off into those little ambient portions between beats in PsyTrance tracks I start fading to "Track B..." with some cool effects.

 

With Psytrance it's so hard to beatmix without having the mix sound like a speaker submerged in a mud puddle. How do people make it seem as if one song has been playing the entire night? Sure, you can use a harmonized mix where all the tracks sound kind of similar, but how would you overlap "Track B" onto "Track A" for 3 minutes before "Track B" is even cued? How do you beatmix psytrance? So far I just use a 2-4 beat blip of a melody/Noise, SFX and use the X-fader to sort of flash it here and there into the track that is playing....

 

How do people drastically re-mix tracks live? I have tried using samples in those little ambient passages, and it sounds pretty cool but can you really consider that a re-mix? Would you consider "re-mixing" a track more production or just a DJ technique?

 

Finally, how does a psytrance festival go on for 3-5 days straight? I know that there will be a line up of a whole shit ton of DJ's but in their sets do they have two or three songs that they loop, and loop, and loop while adding all sorts of whirring noises and things? Or is it 5 hours worth of songs in a playlist and they are just hopping from one to the next every two minutes? Is there any break in the music?

 

Please bare with me guys... I am from a very sheltered city and am just now getting out and seeing the world. Psytrance is unheard of where I live. I will probably have some pretty repetative posts for awhile that state the obvious, but it's helping me find my inner musician!

[Drew05]

the music doesn't stop

DJs and live acts play music that suits the time of day/night

songs generally play for more than 2 minutes before being mixed

 

in my experience there are some creative DJs,

but more often it's a guy mixing from one track to the next

so song choice and reading the audience becomes more important than technical wizardry

 

 

 

i wouldn't consider adding voice samples to a song to be a remix

it would be pretty hard to genuinely remix another person's song on the fly

when you make your own stuff you can control all the separate channels live, add fx, mutes, transpose etc

but if you are playing a CD or wav/mp3 you're pretty confined

[supergroover]

mixing psytrance isnt that difficult to be honest. check out isratrance.com forum. I am sure there are many posts about how to beatmix tracks together. With the eq of the mixer you can make it sound like they are one track if you do it well. Which is a matter of testing and practice.

Most dj´s just mix two tracks. When A is playing to cue and beatmatch B. when A is finishing or when you think you have heard the interesting parts of A you mix in B at the part you want it to start. This can be done with as many Decks together as you can handle. In techno for example its more common to mix 3 or even 4 decks at the same time. Techno lends itself better to have more than one track play at the same time. With most psytrance that will become a big mess.

 

Remixing a track is something producers do. They cut some parts of a track and add it to their own songstructure. Or they reshuffle the existing parts of a track. Of course it is possible to mix (dj) several tracks together so it sounds like a remix but it is actually just several tracks playing at the same time.

 

Now a question for you to answer: what sheltered city are you from?

[TRohr]

what sheltered city are you from?

It's a little place in Idaho. Psychedelic trance is absolutely unheard of here and it sucks pretty bad. Every now and then there will be an extremely small 100 person gathering off at some campsite somewhere but nothing really interesting ever happens. Even at the local music shops in town there is no one to talk to regarding Psytrance. I'm actually going to be moving to Tokyo soon to study Japanese for a few years and I will be bringing all of my gear with me. A bit better venue to learn from the masters~.

[Aeros]

Mate, thats how it is nearly everywhere

 

If its not a festival the most you'll see at a party is around 200, maybe 300 at a really good one, and the pace is about one good/legit one per month.

 

This culture isnt' very well established, but thats better. Go to those 100 people parties, look around and talk to some people and you'll realize they are a family of partiers that have been together for every party for years. I prefer those vibes to the cheesy pop stadium trance/club clusterfucks with 5,000 people not having any sense of vibe or beat and just spying out which guy or girl they could mooch a night of cheap drunken attraction with. Or the 16 year old "ravers" who have a trunk full of glowsticks and seem to think colorful balls are psychedelic particularly when laying on the ground trying to look as fucked up as you can so people will think your E is more dope than theirs.