How are Hip-Hop tracks mixed?

[TyCast]

I know this is a EDM forum, but I know there are some Dj's out there who play some kind of Hip-Hop or related genres like Breaks or DnB.

I'm curious on the method.

I know the method for 4/4 kick drum based music like Trance, Psy-Trance, Progressive, House, Tech-House, etc.

You just match-up the kick drums and BPM's and blend together.

But with Hip-Hop and other break-beat genres, how do you overlap the basslines and kick drum without it sounding odd?

The only thing I can think of would be trying to match up the BPM's of 2 tracks the best ya could, then slowly cut the bass of the original track (cutting the kick drum and bassline) while slowly "fading-in" the bass on the new track, all while fading in the volume of the new track as well.

Is this how its done?

Seems like too many things at once.

Can someone enlighten me?

- Ty

[Chakra]

I have no idea either. I'm guessing segue mixing / beat juggling / scratching or other turntablism? the problem with hip hop is that there is basically no free beats whereas with something like.. Trance, it's free beat city.

[sea.envy]

you pretty much answered your own question actually, although the process you described is a little more involved than what most hip hop djs do. basically there is a lot of fader slamming and fx usage. don't get me wrong, i've seen plenty of rap djs that kick ass, but for every good one there are probably like 10 who couldn't even tell you what beatmatching is, let alone actually do it.

[schwyn.dr]

club rap dj's are terrible more often than not.
2/4 bar intros, 2/4 bar outtros if the songs permit. or however long you can manage still keepin the dancefloor in mind. but really tho, they don't really give a fuck how you mix. you can play the dopest 2 hr joint and all they're gonna remember is WHAT you played, not if that thing was the most technically sound effort you ever had.
avoid hook clashes obviously.
i came back to hip hop after years of breaks and house, and i did the same thing you're thinking.
cut the bass' equally, make it smooth blah blah...
if you get some solid loops goin on tho, add some delay's and all that, you can have some serious fun.
start spinnin hip hop w/your state of mind, then go to a top 40 club and get mad as fuck :mad:
there are dudes out there, j swing and flipout in van, and scene and jhawk here in seattle do know they're shit. so brief glimpses of inspiration can come. it's just so few and far between...

[quickster]

You just match-up the kick drums and BPM's and blend together.


NO, its a little more then that.

You dont just match up the kick drums, you match the measures up so they start and end at the same exact time! Same concept for every other genre....

[cosby]

Wow, this topic brought the haters out.

It's basically matching tempo and having short mixes, it's not really rocket science. 4-8 bars is typically the maximum time you are going to get for mixing two non-DJ-edit hip-hop songs. This is some "all first verses" NYC shit, but you can pretty easily mix in the intro of one song over the whole or half of the first chorus of another indefinitely and keep a crowd hyped. As always, try to avoid people rapping or singing over each other. Unlike house or techno, key matching and that type of thing is not really an issue since mixes are so short.

I personally find it much, much easier to mix hip-hop than anything else because that's how I started.

[burnt]

I've mixed hip hop for years. love it. love mixing it in and out of dnb as well.

I have what I think is kind of a unique technique so you might not want to take my advice. but like, with drum and bass, or breaks, or house, its fast enough and the emphasis is so kick drum heavy, that you just find the kick drum that's on the 1, and focus on that.

you can't do that with hip hop though. beats get complicated and aren't as consistent as with EDM, for one thing, and its slower for another thing.

so for me, what I do is match it on the entire loop or drum beat. the whole 4/4, the kick *AND* the snare.

another thing about hip hop is, unless you're doing a downtempo set, like lots of instrumentals by Daedelus and Alias and RJD2, ... if you're actually mixing proper hip hop with actual rappers then you REALLY don't want to do the traditional like, drop in the new record with 64 or even 128 measures left on the old record, then subtly adjust your levels until the new record is more prevalent thing. you won't be able to do that because at worst the rappers are going to drowning each other out but even at best the accompanying samples ... the samples from P-Funk or whatever .. they're going to drown each other out.

so basically you have, at BEST, about 32 measures to mix in your new track. maybe even as few as 16 measures, or even as few as 8. but that's ok. its really ok. at that point what you REALLY want to do is just focus on your track selection. find tracks that compliment the beat you were just playing, and find tracks with rhymes or rappers in the same vein as what you just played.

the whole concept is just completely different from beat matching and blending and eq'ing, and becomes MUCH more focused on track selection, and clean, fast transitions. the attention goes off of you as a master blender/mixer of beats, and completely focuses back onto the entirety of the songs you're selecting.

like schwyn.dr said, if you mix it clean, nobody's going to really notice. (although they WILL notice trainwrecks). what they're going to notice, and remember, is your track selection.

mixing hip hop is a kick in the fuckin pants man. have fun with it.

[burnt]

DJ Z-Trip really broke it down. the film Scratch has a DVD extra called "How To Rock A Party" where he basically explains how to mix hip hop really really well. I tried to find a video of it but couldn't. but he explains that shit really well, and the audio helps clarify the commentary.

[schwyn.dr]

give this a listen. it jumps around a bit, with 1 mix i'd love to do over-i think it sounds pretty fuckin ok...
it's not top 40, but definitely within the parameters of which you speak..

http://soundcloud.com/schwind-dr

it builds, gets faster, jumps into dnb when you might not expect it. but not in a contrived way....
then back to a more hip hop centered feel.
i'd love to hear some feedback :)

remember to listen to yourself when you play. if that's something that'll make you bug out behind your decks then that's all that matters : )
if you're havin fun, and showing it-then your energy feeds into those around you : )

[schwyn.dr]

Wow, this topic brought the haters out.

who are you referring to ?
i didn't see one person hate. hip hop is still what i love most, and will play out if asked more than any kind of edm. and from my experience, i told dude what i've known to be true.
you come from an edm background mixing point of view, and can adapt to the top 40, the only thing stopping you from getting gigs is your lack of people skills.

it's fun. it's not the runofthemill beatmatch shit. but you make it your own, you can do damn well.
:cool:

[TyCast]

So there seems to be multiple ways to mix breakbeat music. Interesting...

One way is the one I had an idea about, and that schwyn.dr described with fading in/out the bass EQ on the mixer, making it smooth, and then some....

And Charka brought up a good point: beat-juggling! I've heard it only with identical records on 2 tables, but never with 2 different beats. I think it could work, and it would probably sound pretty dope, if done right. But it would be tricky.

Then there's what burnt described which is beatmatching the 4/4 beat with the kick and snare? How could you match them up, especially the kick drums. Snares maybe, but the kick, not to mention the bassline, seems like it wouldn't match up. Of course, maybe you pro-Dj's are finding *just* the right songs to mix to make it smooth beatmixing.

But it makes what you are describing burnt, that its not really about beat-matching and smooth blends, but more about quick transitions and track-selection.

I've actually seen this to the extreme in some clubs I've been too where the Dj just makes a hard-cut transition from one track to the next, like he just shoved the crossfader from one channel to the next. I always thought that was a lame way of doing it coming from seeing so many cool EDM blend-mixes from raves, but I know that aint "true" Hip-Hop mixing.

I think I'll try mix some Underground right now....

[burnt]

So there seems to be multiple ways to mix breakbeat music. Interesting...

One way is the one I had an idea about, and that schwyn.dr described with fading in/out the bass EQ on the mixer, making it smooth, and then some....

And Charka brought up a good point: beat-juggling! I've heard it only with identical records on 2 tables, but never with 2 different beats. I think it could work, and it would probably sound pretty dope, if done right. But it would be tricky.

Then there's what burnt described which is beatmatching the 4/4 beat with the kick and snare? How could you match them up, especially the kick drums. Snares maybe, but the kick, not to mention the bassline, seems like it wouldn't match up. Of course, maybe you pro-Dj's are finding *just* the right songs to mix to make it smooth beatmixing.

But it makes what you are describing burnt, that its not really about beat-matching and smooth blends, but more about quick transitions and track-selection.

I've actually seen this to the extreme in some clubs I've been too where the Dj just makes a hard-cut transition from one track to the next, like he just shoved the crossfader from one channel to the next. I always thought that was a lame way of doing it coming from seeing so many cool EDM blend-mixes from raves, but I know that aint "true" Hip-Hop mixing.

I think I'll try mix some Underground right now....

a lot of times you'll have beats that are almost perfectly matched.
but I guess what I meant to say is, you listen to the entire measure, and match based on that.

you have to do a lot of previewing of your tracks. listen to them by themselves. lol, like that beastie boys song says "I started playin' records, she knew all the grooves".

I was thinking about this post yesterday and here's a fairly damn good mix of hip hop tracks. that isn't all cheesy club stuff, and isn't completely "song's over QUICK SNAP THE CROSS FADER OVER" type mixing.

http://fookingreat.com/?p=190
(if clouddead isn't your flavor, might want to ffwd to about 10 minutes in).

[HΩR£K€0R3]

1. time out all your tracks
2. Re-title them in order of BPM first so you will know what mixes with what.
3. learn your tracks
4. notice the beginning (sometimes) and end (usually always) has several measures of mixable beats without lyrics.
5. no mixing vocals on vocals
6. no "lil" artists (lil john, lil wayne, lil anything really) ((be a hater))
7. don't ever let your girlfriend pick your track list.
8. play hip hop and not overplayed radio bullshit. (underground only)
9. dont EVER listen to the radio to learn new hip hop. Real hip hop would NEVER be played on the radio.
10. Lastly, (with any genre) play for yourself. If you enjoy yourself on the decks others will too. Too many shitty djs try to play for the crowd. the fun dj's to watch are the ones that express themselves not express what they think the crowd wants to hear.

[HΩR£K€0R3]

Oh, and dont take requests.;)

[Mortal Grey]

^^^
RE:


9. dont EVER listen to the radio to learn new hip hop. Real hip hop would NEVER be played on the radio.

In most cases, people at the club want to hear a few commercial cuts. "oooh girl....that's my TRACK!!!" (runs off to dance). So I think it's good to be well versed not only on underground hip-hop, but also what's hot on the charts. You don't have to play a whole set, but playing one or two 'commercial' cuts may coax people on the floor. then you can be more experimental and play different stuff. Also, it all depends on the crowd. There may be occasions where all you play is underground music. Other times, you wouldn't want to play much.

10. Lastly, (with any genre) play for yourself. If you enjoy yourself on the decks others will too. Too many shitty djs try to play for the crowd.

Well. This is kind of true, but not really. if you're playing out, your job is to play for the crowd. So, really...The good dj's do play for the crowd. The shitty ones are playing for themselves. However, yes...You do want to have fun up there, and your energy is felt by the crowd.



ETA: I am so sick of people using the word 'hater' every time someone says something different than how you feel. Seriously, it's just an opinion, nobody is hating. People are allowed to have a different and opposing opinion, or critisize others based on their experiences.

[HΩR£K€0R3]

He was asking how to mix hip hop. Not top-40. Its important to know the difference. That was really what my point is. Also, if someone is paying you to show up to play you play what you want. (or I guess, in some cases what the promoter wants)

[Mortal Grey]

^^^ Do you consider artists like eminem, j5, tupac, biggie, snoop, dre, etc...hip-hop or top 40?

[HΩR£K€0R3]

^^RE: Rap. Classics.

And yes, they have their time and place. I dont think their place is in the hip-hop crate, IMO. Ive heard a lot of great mashup artists using all of top-40, hip-hop, 80's, rap, disco, even metal and make it sound dope. Think Ludachrist, Swamp, Dj-P, etc.. But they aren't "hip hop djs. I wouldn't even consider them djs at all. They musical genius transcends the limits of playing other peoples tracks.

[HΩR£K€0R3]

and eminem is just rap's version of shock rock. I think if a "hip hop" dj plays eminem he should be boo'd off stage. (again, just my opinion)

[Flying Mike]

Oh, and dont take requests.;)
Unless the request is bad ass....... But what are the chances?

[Flying Mike]

and eminem is just rap's version of shock rock. I think if a "hip hop" dj plays eminem he should be boo'd off stage. (again, just my opinion)
I do a mean D12`s Purple Hills mashed on Marty Party`s Shorty, and I`ll tell ya nobody is booing.

[burnt]

Oh, and dont take requests.;)

I'm down to play requests. if I got it. like I'd get the guys walking up saying "man, this is great but do you think you could play any Tupac?" then for sure I'd throw some Tupac in. why not?

****
but on the flip side, when you get those drunk cocky bitches staggering around in their skinny black dresses and spike heels, damn near about to fall over, shoving and elbowing their way through a crowd of dancers so they can finally walk up to you and shout/slur "CAN YOU PLAY SOMETHING WE CAN DANCE TO???!" .....

yea man, in those cases? I used to keep a black vinyl sleeve, all black except I'd scribbled "Something We Can Dance To" on it in gold sharpie. and if I'd remembered, I'd throw in a sleeveless record in there before the booking. like I had a record full of hip hop remixes of Motown classics. or a record of various LA/Long Beach 90's era classics. something like that.

and I'd go "hang on...." - then bend down, dig around, find the sleeve and be like "WHY YES I DO HAVE THAT ITS RIGHT HERE!!" :D