In this video I'm going to take you through how to mix hip-hop music.
Hip-hop is very different style of mixing compared with house and other electronic forms.
There is no right or wrong way to do it. I'm just going to take you through three of the most common methods.
The first is beat matching, the second a straight cut and the third scratching.
So we're going to look at the first method of mixing hip-hop music. This is going to be using a simple beat match, similar to mixing other forms of electronic music, such as house.
To do this we're going to mix smoothly from the right hand deck to the left hand deck using our EQs and our crossfader.
I'm also going to be listening to the left hand deck in my headphones to make sure that it's coming in on time.
Okay, and now I'm still thinking about my mix points and my phrasing, when I'm going to drop the next tune in.
We can count it in. I'm going to just cue it in my headphones and go one, two, three, four...
Bring the bass out just so it doesn't sound muddy together.
Bring the crossfader in.
Bring the bass in.
And then the smooth transition.
In that demonstration I mixed two tracks together using a beat match to create a simple blend.
In the next demonstration I'm going to mix two tracks together with a quick and fast cut.
So both channel faders are set all the way up. I'm not going to use any EQ, I'm just going to use the crossfader to transition from the right deck over to the left deck with a quick cut.
I'm also going to use a little scratch, which I'll cover after this, to bring the tune in.
So to summarise that mix there it was using a simple cut, using no EQs, just a crossfader to do a quick transition from the right deck to the left deck.
I also used a little Baby scratch just to add a little bit of interest, which we'll take a look at now along with some other scratches.
Scratching is predominantly done using the crossfader and sometimes the channel faders, but for this demonstration I will simply be doing it on the crossfader.
There's a few things you need to do before you can start. Go to the Serato preferences, and open the mixer preferences.
You need to change the crossfader curve from slow or medium, or wherever it is, to the fastest it can possibly be. That's with it all the way on to the right hand side.
The reason for this is you want to make sure that when the sound comes in it's the loudest it can be with the shortest amount of crossfader movement.
So if you move the crossfader to the left you want it to come in at about there.
So, if we play a track on the left hand deck and then just bring it in.
I've only moved it a tiny way to the left before the sound is at 100 percent.
Now we've changed the crossfader curve control on our SB we're going to use the crossfader in conjunction with the platter to start scratching.
The first scratch we're going to do is the Baby scratch. It's very easy, anyone can do it, hence why it's called the Baby scratch. So let's check it out.
You want to do the Baby scratch on the very beginning of a sample, or the very beginning of the transient of a beat. I've got a kick here, if you play that...
And you can just hear...
... the Baby scratch involves a forward and a backward movement on this transient or sample to create a wicky wicky effect which is associated with scratching and the scratching sound.
So if I move the platter forward and backwards... and then do that a bit faster, that's the Baby scratch.
That's just simply on a kick of a tune. You can do it on snares, or anything with a harsh attack. So yes, give that a go.
So now we've had a look at the Baby scratch, the next one we can look at is a simple scratch called the Transformer and that's really only used with the crossfader.
For this you'll need to load up a sample. With the Transformer you're basically cutting up the sound into small segments using the crossfader.
So again that's why it's really important to have that really sharp crossfader cut-in point.
What you want to do there is play your sample, and then move the crossfader to just chop it up. So you're almost going boom-boom, boom-boom, and transforming the sound.
So let's check that out. So play the sample. Then...
...all I'm doing there is just playing the sample on the platter, so just releasing it and then cutting up with the crossfader.
Then you can take it another step further and you can actually move the platter in conjunction with the crossfader. You can create some cool patterns, so let's try that.
So the next scratch we're going to look at is called the Chirp scratch.
It was actually invented by Jazzy Jeff. The reason it's called the Chirp is it supposedly sounds like a little bird chirping.
This is another more advanced scratch. With this you both need to use the platter and the crossfader to create this sound.
So in order to do the Chirp you want to start with the very, very beginning of the sample...
...the very first bit. And you want to start with the crossfader open, and by open I mean you want to start it so the platter is playing out.
You can hear the deck that you want to play. So, the crossfader is actually in the central position.
And then you want to move the platter forward so you're getting the very first bit of the sound, and when you do that you want to bring the crossfader over to the right. So you cut it out, like this...
...so move the platter forward and just cut that sound.
Like that. So you only get a tiny, tiny little bit of sound.
And then once the platter's forward you want to pull it back and then move the crossfader to the open position so you're cutting it back in.
Like that. Then if you move it forward again I'm going to cut it out.
And then move it back.
Then if you do that quicker and quicker and quicker it sounds like a Chirp. Let's try it.
So now we've gone through three different techniques for scratching, we've looked at the Baby, the Transformer and the Chirp scratch.
Let's just try and apply those over a beat and see what we can come up with.
In this tutorial we've covered three different techniques of mixing hip-hop music together.
We've covered scratching, we've covered cutting in one tune to the next and we've also covered beat matching two tunes together.
With scratching the key thing is practise, practise and more practise. Hope you've enjoyed it.