Mixing classics is much harder than mixing House or any house-offspring like Techno or Minimal. Why? Because House music is DESIGNED to mix, most other genres are not. So, disco, pop, Top-40 and R&B for instance are just SONGS, and challenge you to find a way to mix them properly.
First, ‘setting the one’ can be a hassle for starting DJ’s. Like many pop-songs, ‘Wanna Be Starting Something’ by Michael Jackson (as used in the video) doesn’t start on ‘the one’ (first beat of a bar). So, you have to ‘feel’ where it is and set a new CUE-point there. In this specific case, even you RekordBox and/or ‘Quantize’ function won’t help you. It will even annoy you because ‘the one’ can ONLY be set with the Quantize function set OFF.
Once you succeed in copying the practise of the video, you are ready to search for other songs that might be hard to mix. If you actually try many different kinds of intro’s, the will really make you a better DJ, whatever your own specific genre is.
Every non-house song has it’s own problem. Beside starting with an ‘off beat’ Cue-point, it can have a very short intro, be very instable drum-wise or be very quiet or loud. The challenge is to mix each of these songs so, that it sounds logical and smooth to your audience!
If you run in to songs that you would love to play, but you just don’t manage, feel free to drop us a line! We are happy to help you. Remember, asking questions doesn’t cost money!
