The Mixing Process

So, for those that are interested in such things, I thought I’d write up a quick description of how I actually go about doing my mixes. I’m not an audio engineer, I’m not a professional DJ, and I don’t have any equipment to speak of, but I do think that I have an ear for music. I love doing this, and I’ll keep doing it until I don’t love it anymore.

So, let’s get into it!

 

STEP 1

This part is easy; Go find some music that you like! I usually buy everything through beatport.com, but there are other great stores like djdownload.com and juno.co.uk. There’s iTunes too of course, but let’s all agree to never shop there.

 

STEP 2

Decide what songs to include. Believe it or not, this can actually be very difficult. I usually restrain myself to one or two genres at most that go well together, and I never include the same song in more than one mix. Let’s face it, playing the same song in two different sets becomes kind of redundant. I also try to keep my mixes at a steady BPM, but this isn’t always possible. If I need to speed up I put the fastest tracks at the end of the mix so that I can end the mix with more energy and the BPM progression is constant. This can leave people wanting more when the mix ends, and that’s a good thing of course.

 

STEP 3

The intro. Once I have a playlist of about 20-something tracks, I usually focus on finding that one track that will instantly grab and hold the attention of my audience as soon as the mix starts playing. Sometimes I’m successful, sometimes I’m not, but you should always start as strong as possible even if you can’t find “that perfect one” anywhere in your list.

The first track is your attention grabber, but then you should take it up a notch to keep interest. By track number 3 they should be interested enough to keep listening for a little while so you can cool off a little, but not too much so they get bored. Finding the right track progression is what makes or breaks mixes for me personally, and I am never happy with a mix until I get the intro to feel right.

 

STEP 4

Arrangement and progression. I think this is by far the most fun – though the most time consuming – step. This is where the actual mixing takes place. I move tracks around, trying different transitions, editing them for time etc., all while giving the song’s key the priority for progression. To end up with an arrangement that feels natural, not forced, and keeps a nice groove going throughout, is always very rewarding.

Take a look at this screenshot for what a typical mix of mine may look like:

 

STEP 5

Volume adjustment/levelling. Once I feel that the arrangement is done, I go through each song one by one and tweak volume and EQ levels so that everything sounds equally loud. I also tweak the transition volumes slightly. This can be a time consuming process as well, and I usually listen through the entire mix at least four or five times before I export it to a .WAV file for post-processing.

 

STEP 6

Ah yes, the wrap-up. Once I have my .WAV file, I use a nice free editor called Audacity to check the waveform, and also apply some limiting and compression to the final render. Once the processed .WAV is done, I use foobar2000‘s excellent Converter to create the final MP3 using the LAME encoder at -V2 for optimal quality vs filesize.

Then of course, I upload it to my FTP and broadcast it all over the interwebz. Fin!

 

Sound like fun?