Mixing, or just playing DnB ?

[Nakatomi]

I had a wedding last weekend where unusually the B&G requested an amount of drum & bassy type stuff. All pretty commercial - Chase & Status etc. I think (and according to feedback I got later) I put a fairly decent set together but oh my god I had to really WORK. I think I'd have been pretty stuffed without stems to help make transitions between tracks.

What I ended up doing was make a 16 beat loop towards the end of the outgoing track, smoothly fade out everything til there's just drums playing then at the right moment start the next track & let the next track play from the intro. I could, I suppose have just chopped from outro to the first drop of the next but that'd miss the nice build-up. There's also the option of not mixing at all & just playing tunes back to back but with these tracks taking so long to get going (anything up to a minute or more) wouldn't there be a huge energy vacuum? I suppose that if I didn't have stems I might've got away with just using the channel filter but eew...

How would you play this? Would you use versions of the tracks with 'hotter' intros like 'DJ beats' instead (or your own edits LOL) ? I'm interested to know other people's takes on this..

[DeckstarDeluxe]

I haven't really played with the stems thing yet. I can mix pretty well but with dnb it's usually fairly quick transitions (plus most of my stuff is radio edits anyways).

Nice to get some material off the usual beaten path to play!

[DJ Jules]

I haven't really played with the stems thing yet. I can mix pretty well but with dnb it's usually fairly quick transitions (plus most of my stuff is radio edits anyways).

Nice to get some material off the usual beaten path to play!

Tracks like Baddadan are a pain as they have a HUGE (70 seconds) lead into the first drop. I have a few tactics for mixing - none of which are rocket science:

- Something similar to Justin - find a good place to loop somewhere in the track, stripping it right back and then dropping the intro for the next track in but keeping the beats from the previous to keep the energy up.
- Looping somewhere in the song, stripping the instruments (and or vocals/depending on the track) using stems, closing the loop to create a build and dropping the next track either where it starts to build into the drop, or at the drop
- If the track has a break where the energy drops (e.g. Gold dust, Nobody to Love, etc) then filter out the track at the break and play the next track at a point where it's building or where it's instantly recognisable (been doing this for years with nobody to love as the first "I know, you're tired, of loving somebody" immediately gets recognition).
- For "proper" D&B that doesn't have poppy intros or breaks, there tend to be house style intros/outros with 16 bars of beats that you can mix. Some of the current 87bpm tracks (e.g. bittersweet goodbye, anything by Luude, etc) have extended versions available with good intros.

Julian

[Nakatomi]

Thanks both.

I sometimes wonder how I'd scrape by without stems. Have I got too dependent on them? They're probably the main reason (other than sheer expense) why I've not even pondered a standalone playout system.

As for 'proper' DnB ithere's probably a geographic factor why it , or any DnB doesn't come up very often. Up here any fast stuff is usually just clubland or Andy Whitby donk

[DeckstarDeluxe]

As for 'proper' DnB ithere's probably a geographic factor why it , or any DnB doesn't come up very often. Up here any fast stuff is usually just clubland or Andy Whitby donk

Friend down here hosts specialist nights for them but I think it's an "aging" crowd. In my DJ life it's only really "rich rural young farmer types" that have asked for dnb and actually seem really into the genre.