Audio Mixing

[Greetings]

I understand that what I'm asking for is a bit silly, after all how can you explain in a couple of sentences something that takes a good few years of practice to get good at. Nevertheless, I'd like to know the absolute basics of mixing audio on a PC. I need to "improve" a few tracks of house music - so basically I've got the ideas but haven't got the tools and skills.

Any advice on how this is done and what will be needed would be greatly appreciated. I don't even know what I should want to know, so to sum it up, I know absolutely nothing.

[poopipe]

poopipes mixing guide (not that I approve of doing this with anything other than vinyl)

learn to count to 4 (thats how many thumps there are in a bar)

bars come in groups of 4 (or multiples of 4) which are called something else

the idea is to line up the beginning of the something elses and make sure the thumps from both tracks happen at the same speed.

that's basically it

with house you also need to listen to the tune bit which is something I'm not familiar with on account of me only really mixing drum & bass

tools ? don't know - havent touched music software in a long time

[mat hudson]

you want a free trial of virtual dj! it's pretty good fun man.

[Has anyone seen my shoe?]

Ive got no idea what to do to mix

[spmcfadden]

Basically you have one track playing over the speakers and you listen to the new track in headphones. Number one first step is to change the speed of the new track to match the track you’re playing.

The song will have different sections, eg chorus and verse, and you want to get the different sections starting at the same time. Poopipe explained this bit.

Tracks tend to simplify at the end so if you start the new track towards the end of the first track then it will blend better.

Computer software tends to have auto beat matching which gets the speed the same and matches the beats together so pretty much does it all for you, which is probably the best spot to start at. It’s not proper mixing but it’s good to learn on to get the basics. There’s lots of free trial software available so just download some of those and see which you like best.

It will take a while of listening to music carefully to understand the structure to be able to fully mix tracks together smoothly, then to make it sound better you can pick tracks written in similar keys so the notes don’t clash, but music theory isn’t a quick or easy thing to learn…

[Greetings]

Cheers people, that's certainly helped me a lot

And thanks Matt for that program, it indeed is fun and helps in understanding what this is all about.

[MadManMike]

What you WANT is 2 x Pioneer CDJ1000 MK3's or 2 x Technics SL1210 Mk5's & a Pioneer DJM900.

What you can do it with on the other hand is what Mat said about.

However, if you want me to give you some tips add me to MSN

dirtyhastings@hotmail.co.uk

[CBProductions]

The correct term is beat matching or disc jockeying as audio mixing is classed as using recordings to create a mix which is then interpreted as a song.

DJ's get all the attention for something a machine can do... however the dj's are the creation behind that, if you dont have the creation side of it learning how to bpm match is pretty pointless.

The DJ's I know and work with all say to start on vinyl and then work your way to CDJ's as mike mentioned above. Also learn about what your mixer does and how you can work that to imrpove your set's once you get going.