Music track suggestions for beginner DJ

June 12, 2009 2:46 PM

I just bought a dinky music mixer for my PC, and would like some suggestions on specific tracks to try out on it. Would also like suggestions on bands to use in general.

I bought a Torq MixLab Digital DJ System from woot.com last week and realized that I have no appropriately phat beats to lay down. In fact, my new computer doesn't have any music on it whatsoever.

I need to populate my library with tracks that are for use with mixing. Any suggestions?

For example (please pardon my lack of lingo / understanding of DJ-ing):

"Try playing the intro of 'Digital Love' by Daft Punk by itself until the drums kick in. Once they start, fade slowly over to DJ Sir Beatsalot's remix of 'Crystal Rave'. When I was learning, this helped me get a feel for the basics...blah blah blah"

Any additional tips and tricks are welcome too.

posted by TimeTravelSpeed to media & arts (9 comments total)

You're looking for songs that have the same BPM to mix into each other, right?
posted by Juliet Banana at 3:18 PM on June 12

Well, I'm hoping my mixer will come with some sort of software that would do BPM adjustment for me (if not, I'm going to be searching for something that will) so I think differing BPMs are fine.

Although, if you know of any good tracks with the same BPMs, that'd be nice for instant-satisfaction.
posted by TimeTravelSpeed at 3:25 PM on June 12

It looks like the bundled software does beatmatching, syncing, and looping, so you're pretty well good to go once you install. As to which songs to use, well, use anything. Listen to the music you already have with an ear for motifs and refrains that you won't mind listening to for several beats. Most modern music has an instrumental intro for eight to sixteen bars, so scrounge through your CDs and MP3s for songs that have a good hook. Hell, mix some miles Davis with some Brittney Spears, Bach with Black Flag... the point is to experiment, not to follow a pre-defined script.

Some other stuff you might look into, if you're not already aware:
Audacity, a free, full featured audio editor.
freesound.org, a good source for noises of various kinds.

Back to the original question, what kind of music do you listen to and what are you looking to create?
posted by lekvar at 4:04 PM on June 12

I have a good idea of what I'd eventually like to do. Girl Talk, for example, clicks with me. One of my favorite mixes I've heard was "Hold Up" on Girl Talk's "Night Ripper" album when "Where is my Mind" by the Pixies is being mixed with hip-hop. I'll also want to throw in some funk.

But I have a feeling I'll want to start with mixing some basic electronica and/or hip-hop beat-matching, fading, etc and thought some tracks might be better than others for learning.
posted by TimeTravelSpeed at 5:02 PM on June 12

Radiohead did some remix competitions a while back where you could download individual tracks from some In Rainbows stuff - reckoner and Nude, maybe Weird Fishes too. It might be fun to grab those (maybe still available at the iTunes store?) and get Thom to sing over other songs, or mix in some Phil Selway percussion over the top of other songs.
posted by Cantdosleepy at 5:31 AM on June 13

Cantdosleepy: "Radiohead did some remix competitions a while back where you could download individual tracks from some In Rainbows stuff - reckoner and Nude, maybe Weird Fishes too. It might be fun to grab those (maybe still available at the iTunes store?) and get Thom to sing over other songs, or mix in some Phil Selway percussion over the top of other songs."

Remixing is nothing like DJ mixing. It just doesn't really work like that unless you're extraordinarily talented or lucky. Even then, you'd probably have to manually edit some of the tracks.

TimeTravelSpeed: "Although, if you know of any good tracks with the same BPMs, that'd be nice for instant-satisfaction."

You have a mixer. You don't need tracks with identical BPMs. The whole point of beatmatching is to fit the BPMs to each other before crossfading. Just look for minimalist tracks with little more than a solid 4/4 bassline or simply cut out everything else with the EQ before practising.

There are plenty of good DJ tutorials that can be found by googling too.
posted by turkeyphant at 10:16 AM on June 13

Update:

I just received the mixer and got it set up. Came with a booklet that actually gave a 3-song mini-set tutorial that was really helpful and is almost exactly what I was asking for with this thread.

turkeyphant, I appreciate the advice. Can you suggest 2 or 3 of your favorite groups that I could check out? I'm not really set to any one genre, I just want to get started and explore what's out there. I'm pretty much brand new to this whole area.
posted by TimeTravelSpeed at 1:26 PM on June 17

My advice is to start out with some progressive house tracks. Look for some 2003-2004 tracks from G-Pal, Pole Folder, Sultan & Tone Depth. Very DJ friendly tracks with good intro/outros. Beats are generally about 125 and 4/4, pretty ideal to learn beatmatching.

Don't worry about BPM, you should learn to beatmatch by ear. Many mixers and cd-turntables nowadays come with BPM meters, and general consensus is that they are a handicap, not a convenience. Once you get over the left-right confusion and can isolate beats from different sources in your head, you are set. However, if you want to make sure you at least put similar tracks together, you can use this to analyse and tag your tracks.

To echo what turkeyphant said above, doing mashups is extremely difficult with a conventional turntable/mixer. You may want to invest some time/money in a sampler or a copy of Ableton Live.
posted by sonicbloom at 12:43 AM on June 22

Thanks, sonic! I'll be sure to check those out.

Although I frequently use Torq's auto-beatmatching tool (which works well most of the time), I would prefer to learn to beat-match manually both for practical and aesthetic reasons. I've been able to do it a few times, but since my mixer doesn't handle very small tempo increases (usually does increments of 0.4 bpms) the songs go out of sync quickly.

Btw, I was able to find a few tracks on my own by going on iTunes and just browsing the top-selling electronic songs. I've found a few winners that way:

+ "Ghosts 'N Stuff" by Dedmau5 (This is pretty much the exact sound I like)
+ "Lights & Music" by Cut Copy
+ The Chemical Brothers (Used to listen to them, but forgot about them)
+ A few Daft Punk tracks I didn't already have like "Da Funk" and a mix of Around the World / Bigger Better

I also downloaded the standbys like "Satisfaction", and "Better Off Alone".
posted by TimeTravelSpeed at 11:40 AM on June 22