The Milkcrate

How I create mixes...

Posted By: Shagz
Date:

Update 2006-10-15: Check the comments page for a long post I made about the legal implications of DJ mixes and other dj activities.

Just starting to get rolling on Disc 2, nothing new to report there. However, I thought I'd talk a little about my process for making a mix, the steps I take to produce a CD, as a lot of people have been asking that question lately. (probably 'cuz this one has taken so long)

Every DJ is different of course, as every DJ is an artist in their own way, and the making of a mix is an artistic process. Two painters may create pieces in the same style, similar brush strokes, but the way they approach the canvas can vary drastically. Some do it off the top of their heads, pulling the latest and greatest out of their crates and slamming it down as they feel it. Others obsessively plan each and every mix, carefully fine tuning their track list to perfection. I'd probably fit somewhere in the latter category.

I'm definitely a slave to my Muse, both for my ideas and for my motivation. I can produce a mix off the top of my head, but I prefer to wait for inspiration to strike. The Muse usually will pick up on a few songs that I've picked up recently and go really well together, or sometimes only a single track, with the rest of the mix falling in around it. Often it starts off with a feeling, mood or concept, something that I want to say with a selection of music, which sometimes has something to do with things going on in my life at the time, or just a general feeling about the world and my or our place in it, or a change in the season or world events or whatever. And still other times, mixes are inspired by particular people in my life.

By "motivation" above, I mean my willingness to work on something. I usually can't force myself to work on a mix, I really have to be in the mood. If I force it, the results are usually quite mediocre. Most people wouldn't be able to tell, but for me, it's quite obvious that I didn't bring my "A" game to decks and the results show it. Or if I'm working on the track list, I usually end up making bad decisions and need to revise the track list in some way when I'm in a better mood.

So once the Muse has spoken, I begin by making my track list, pulling out music both recent and dusty, trying to figure out what goes together and will help realize the message that I'm trying to convey. I select tracks not only for how they sit beside each other or their content, style, energy level or mood, but I also choose tracks based on how they might help me get from Point A to Point B in the mix.

In my most recent mix, there were a few key tracks that I know had to make it into the mix, but on their own they couldn't go beside each other. They were just too different. So I selected some other songs that move the feeling of the mix from the first set of tracks to the next, and either help make the change gradually, or make a sudden change in style or tempo less awkward.

Generally speaking my mixes go on some kind of journey, increasing and decreasing the energy in the mix, creating hills and valleys until ultimately reaching a "peak" of some kind. (The peak doesn't necessarily have to be something really energetic; it can also be a quiet song with very poignant lyrics, or a golden oldie that everybody knows) I don't really enjoy dj mixes that don't vary things; playing the same tempo, sticking in the same genre, maintaining the same energy level through out or worse, making it go up and down in a predictable fashion, doesn't make for an enjoyable listening experience, in my opinion, so I always try to avoid that. (This is another reason why I focus on making a tight track list and planning things in advance)

After the track list is done, then it's time to actually sit down and record the mix. Over the years, this process has changed and evolved. When I first started, I was mixing live, straight to a 90 min tape. If I goofed up, I had to decide whether I was going to stop the mix and go back to the very beginning and start all over again, and hope I don't make another mistake somewhere else, or live with it and keep going. This ended up giving me mixes that had little imperfections in them and usually ended up running into the unrecordable parts of audio cassettes, cutting tracks off.

As "flying without a net" as it was, it was a wonder that I practiced as little before hand as I did. By comparison, I actually spend more time *now*, practicing and nailing down mixes with the relative safety net of digital editing and re-takes than I did when everything had to go in on one take.

As for digital edits, yes, I have done some in the past, and still do them today, but more to fix things like records skipping due to clumsy fingers or down right terrible train wreck mixes that just aren't acceptable. For a long time after moving to straight digital recording, I was still trying to do everything in one take, but eventually it just got really frustrating and time consuming. So does that make my mixes "impure" and not a true representation of reality? Yes, but in my defense I'm still using turntables and CD players and not "pro-tooling" a mix. :)

Once my mix is in the can, I set about cleaning it up and putting in track markers. I record my mixes into an old version of Sound Forge (back when it was still developed by Sonic Foundry, before Sony showed up) that allows me to do all the basic types of clean ups I need to do, which include taking care of pops and cracks from the records (I zoom in and attempt to "draw" them out) and making sure the audio levels are more or less consistent across the mix (don't want people having to turn the volume up and down all the time) as well as normalizing everything up.

I recently discovered an audio utility written in Java called Click Repair which does a pretty freaking amazing job of cleaning up clicks and pops. It's shareware, but you can buy a license for $25 US which I highly reccommend; the guy who made this deserves some props! It's not perfect - there are some pops and clicks that you just have to edit manually, it doesn't work very well on certain kinds of music, and it doesn't give you a "preview" mode to help determine the optimum settings - but for relatively free, you can't go wrong.

I've also been looking at Sound Soap 2 from Bias, which is a more robust cleaning program, complete with a preview mode and also deals with noise reduction in addition to click and pop removal. Macintosh only, however.

Now that I have the audio cleaned, track markers in place, I make my individual tracks (just cut and paste the audio out of my main file into a separate file) and then burn CDs to back everything up. After that, it's a few days tooling around in Photoshop to design the album covers, maybe getting some photography done depending again on the theme, message or feeling of the mix. Print off the art, burn the CDs and package it all together using the Jewelboxing system and we're done!

The whole process could take a few weeks or a few months, all depends on the Muse.

Your Comments

Interesting
Posted by: Shazbot on

If I'm recording a song from hardware, I chart out the general sequence I want on pen and paper and do it all in one take. My mixes I do entirely on the computer (though I am now fairly reliable with the CD mixer).

Interesting process you have though.

Sony screwed up all Sonic Foundry's products, in my opinion.

Great post
Posted by: travino on

I find it interesting that so few people have commented on this post, as it is one of the longest and most detailed you've ever written.

It confirms my belief that no matter what type of "art" people are making, there is always an intangible element involved that the artist has no control over. Call it motivation, inspiration, or luck, and it always has a hand in the final outcome of any project that is planned.

Great stuff!

Thanks!
Posted by: Shagz on

Thanks for the thoughts guys, much appreciated. Hoping to do a few more like this in the future, especially since I'm moving to a whole new digital system in Serato Scratch.

I'm hoping to document the whole transition in kind of "Serato Diary", talking about the pluses and minuses of the experience. Hopefully it will inform others who are thinking about going all/semi-digital or are just interested in djing in general.

Hope every one else enjoyed this post! Feedback always appreciated! Ethics for dj's
Posted by: Craig on

Cool Article.
Okay, so I've just pirated my first copy of Ableton live, and I started dropping some of my favourite downloaded mp3's in to it and Ableton's making it really easy by somehow magicly making the beets all line up for me so that I don't really have to do anything to create a cool sounding jumble of noise.... And all this got me thinking of a very important question related to your article. What are the ethics of dj'ing? What can a dj actually do and what can't they? are there limitations on what you can sample and what you can do with the sample? or what you can do with a track? which limitations are actually important and come in to play in the real world? (as apposed to just theoretical uninforced copywrite laws and stuff)
http://justsomename.blogspot.com/ DJ Ethics...
Posted by: Shagz on

Well, you've kind of mixed a couple of different things into you question, so I'll treat them as two different things plus a bonus round: one from the DJ perspective, two from the DJ-producer perspective and three from the turntablist perspective.

(NOTE: if there are any legal eager beavers out there who want to clarify or correct my understanding of dj legalistics, please jump in)

For a dj, defined as someone who mixes songs, sometimes uses effects to alter the songs they're playing, and sometimes mixes two songs over top of each to create something new - but NOT actually editing audio to make that song - there are legal issues around broadcasting and making/selling mixes.

First, for broadcasting (playing music anywhere for a large group of people), the radio station or bar/club will already be paying, or should be paying, a license fee to some Canadian music legal entity (I don't know who exactly; some Canadian equivalent of the RIAA I suppose) in order to have permission to play pre-recorded music at a venue. So the dj doesn't have anything to worry about (usually).

Case in point: the hall that my brother rented for his wedding reception did not have said license. Andrew would have had to pay some extra money up front to temporarily have the license so that he could have a DJ at his reception.

For mixes, that's a bit of a gray area. For one, small record labels, especially dance music record labels, are not going to raise a stink about bedroom or small-time djs who use their tunes to make mix tapes and sell them. It's great promotion for the small record labels. Generally speaking, big record labels don't care either, although they don't really need the dj to promote their stuff.

A few years back, during the Napster witch hunt days, there were several cases in New York and Toronto where small record stores were raided by cops for this "pirated" material and all the illegal mix tapes and CDs were confiscated and presumeably destroyed. In Toronto, Play De Record was the main target from what I remember, and lots of tapes, including those by famous Toronto hip hop icon Mixmaster (I believe that was the name), were all nabbed. I believe raids continue to happen in New York, but I haven't heard of anything happening in Toronto in a LONG time.

I digress...once you want to mass produce a mix to be sold in record stores, then you're in trouble. You or your record label have to get permission from and pay money to every other record label or the artist of the tracks you want to use in your mix. A lot of commercially released mixes go through a number of revisions due to licensing problems. The DJ will come up with the track list, but will sometimes have to discard certain songs that he did not get permission for and have to find others that he can use, or he might not be able to use them because they're bootleg remixes. (more on that later)

The DJ can certainly just go ahead and mass produce a bunch of CDs and sell them, but if the CD is produced in large enough quantities and the DJ's name is big enough, he'll get his butt sued by any major record label or artist who cares to challenge him for a cut of the profits he's making.

So, releasing a DJ mix without doing the licensing is generally illegal, and is *definitely* illegal if you're making a lot of money off of it. But most record labels don't seem to care as you're promoting their stuff, and if you're only selling a few CDs, it's not that big of a deal ie. they'll come after you if they can make money off of you.

For a DJ-producer, defined as someone who is a DJ but who also makes their own stuff (remixes/mashups of existing songs, or re-edits, or their own original material) and then plays it out, you can be in more trouble here.

Bootleg remixes and mashups are totally illegal unless they are done with the permission of the original artist and record label. Most of the time though, a dj will produce a bootleg/mashup/remix and he'll be the only one with a copy, so the bootleg is running very low below the radar because it can only be heard when he spins, so most record labels won't notice. If the bootleg gets distributed (by mp3 or actually producing vinyl "white labels" - records with blank labels so the original bootlegger can't be tracked down) then the dj-producer is starting to push his luck.

(Interesting aside: when the cops raided Play De Record, they took all the mix tapes, but not the white label bootleg vinyl.)

If the bootleg becomes incredibly popular, widely distributed, and comes to the attention of the record label/artist, one of two things will happen: the record label will issue a cease and desist order and crack down on the original dj and anybody distributing the bootleg. The DJ will probably get sued. Or they'll hire the dj, pay (or not pay, 'cuz the DJ did it illegally from the get go) them for the remix and release it themselves as an official remix.

With mashups, you generally won't get the latter, because the mashup is made of two, usually very popular, songs, and while you might be able to get permission from the one, you most likely won't get it from the other.

Edits are a little tricky. All the dj is doing here is moving the individual parts of the song around, creating a new "arrangement" if you will. The earliest djs-producers back in the 70's got started this way. Indeed, it was the genesis of disco and everything that came after it: djs would take these short 3 min pop songs, edit them on reel to reel tape to extend certain parts of the track that made people go nuts on the dancefloor. (Hip Hop djs were doing this by using two copies of the same record and cutting back and forth between one copy and the other in order to play the "breakbeat" from funk songs over and over again) These were the first "club mixes".

I digress again...since it's only an "edit", I'm not really sure what the legal case is here. It's below the radar more so than a remix because the DJ isn't introducing anything "new" - no new sounds, beats, etc. They're just re-arranging things, so it's not a dramatic change and not as easily detectable. But you're still changing the copyrighted material, still changing the artists vision, so I'm guessing the dj-producer is still doing something illegal. Still, if the dj's flying below the radar, nothing may ever come of it.

We haven't even talked about the sounds a dj-producer uses IN a remix, as many of the sound sources and samples that a dj-producer might use are not cleared either, so he can get sued that way as well.

A sample has to be almost completely destroyed and buried under effects manipulation in order for a producer to use it without paying the original artist or record label. If even the slightest hint of the original sound remains behind, the producer has to clear it.

This is why, in the 80's and early 90's, a lot of hip hop was sample-based, because you could get away with sampling a Beach Boys or Aerosmith riff and just not pay anybody anything. The rest of the music industry eventually got wise and cracked down, so a lot of stuff that came after (and indeed, a lot of hip hop produced today in teenager's bedrooms) was all made using either live instruments (sythisized or natural) or really stinkin' old and obscure samples that the original copyright owner didn't care about. Only P. Diddy and Wyclef have the cheddar to rip off The Police and Enya.

I digress again...Turntablists...well, this is *kind* of a weird one, 'cuz they're making music...out of other people's music. It's like collage: you're using existing artistic material to create new artistic material.

I think most of the original rules apply. For performance, it's up to the venue to have a license. For releasing music, if you don't have your original sound samples cleared or completly buried in effects, it's illegal, but if you're really below the radar then no one's going to come after you.

So there you go....hope that answers your questions! Wow!
Posted by: Orneryboy on

That was fascinating! Both the original article as well as the most recent comment you posted answered a lot of questions I had about the whole process, as well as the legality of it all. I've watched you work within a live setting before, so I know a little about the technical side of what actually goes on, but it's really interesting to learn more about the creative process that goes into the making of mixes.

Man, I still remember quite clearly how years ago, l didn't understand why everyone was making such a big deal about DJing, and in my cynicism, I thought that there was nothing to it but playing a bunch of records in sequence. Man, was I ever ignorant! :) It wasn't until I met you that I began to realize just how complex the whole process is, and how it really is its own artform, with each DJ having their own unique "voice". Re: Ethics for djs
Posted by: pATRICK on

There are no limitations, boundaries, or an ethical codes to abide by when making music. Make your music the way YOU want to make your music. It shouldn't be confined by legal and business issues. If you hear someone's song and like it, and want to use in a mix, a sample, or whatever, do it. Your paying homage and promoting the artist, trust me. If your making your music around the idea of paranoia, you better rethink making it in the first place. Go underground. Go originality too. There are too many DJs in my opinion that just mix together other peoples' work. We need more MUSICIANS, that is, people who make their own sounds and progressions from scratch.

How I create mixes...

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