Making A Mix People Will Listen To
For professional and aspiring DJs alike, a good mix CD is a must. The making of such CDs is equal parts science and art, made unique by your individual preference and style. When you’re done, your work could potentially win you new fans, or it might turn off even someone who had liked you before. To achieve best results with your new mix CD, you should keep to a few simple principles.
Plan ahead
Before you get down to record your CD, it will benefit you to outline the basic idea you have for it, at least in your mind. Make sure you know what comes after every track and what you have decided to do with each one. Also, a standard CD usually amounts to an average of 14 to 16 tracks, which is about an hour in length, so make sure you can fill that time.
Set goals for yourself
You should expect some kind of response from your listeners, and if you want your next CD to live up to those expectations, make it into your personal goal. If you want people enjoying your tracks and listening to them over and over again, still wanting more, make sure your work is up to that task. Don’t just rely on blind luck. If you want it to happen, make it happen!
Know your job
Despite what some people may want to believe, effects and blending amount to no more than a quarter of a DJ’s job. The rest is all about selecting the right tracks. You may have a strong desire to show off all of your coolest tricks in a single CD, but try to resist that urge. The same way no one will listen to a playlist that doesn’t have good music on it, your CD won’t succeed without any strong tracks to back it up. The quality of your mix will only go as far as your choice of music can take it.
Remember the classics
While featuring new and popular tracks is the best way to go with a new mix CD, it will only improve if you blend in a couple of big name classics to add an extra bit of flavour to it. It’s a great way to draw extra attention to your mix without making the effort too obvious. Only remember to add some unique twist to the tracks, so that there’s always some new sound to keep your listeners wondering.
Balance your beat tracks with vocals
Good beat tracks may be great to dance to, especially when you as a DJ can appreciate them for all the little things you hear that make them work so well on your ears. However, try not to make it into a pitfall and let your mix be overrun by these beat tracks. Just like any good party and dance event, your CD needs music that people can form a connection with. Tracks with vocals that feature catchy lyrics will give your listeners something to sing along to, even if only in their hearts.
Invent different themes
Building your mix around a single theme is, among other things, a great way to make your mixing into a fun and engaging process. Themes will play with people’s expectations too. It can be a good thing, or bad. Whatever you choose your CD’s theme to be, try not to make it too specific or obscure, otherwise it might turn off some people. Also be aware that representing a single theme too much will make your fans connect you with it strongly and it might be hard to brush off that impression in the future.
Find remixes to include
A well-made remix can add a new twist to even the most well-known track in such a way as to make it unique and memorable. If you happen to stumble over a lesser know (and good) remix of a popular song or manage to pull one off yourself, it will make your mix CD really stand out from the rest.
Blend it to perfection
If something doesn’t work in your mix CD, fix it! The blends may just be the most essential part of your mix, because no one will thank you for doing them right, but doing them wrong can make your mix a disaster! Make sure to only release your CD once the blends have been done to perfection, because listeners will inevitably associate your name with your latest work and if your latest work is no good, then so are you.
Apply effects sparingly
They can be a powerful tool in making your unique style stand out, but the more of them you will add, the more conscious your listeners will become of their presence. Once they start thinking about them a little too much, it will be easier for your listeners to find some faults in those effects and the magic will be lost.
Keep an eye on levels
Have them too high and the quality of your mix will suffer from distortion. If the opposite is true, listeners will have to focus too hard to catch any of the less prominent channels. Even if things seem just about right, it won’t hurt to put your CD through some additional cleaning and mastering. It might just be what it needs to become a really great mix CD.
Know your mix
Digital mixing may be the best way to go with your new CD, but make sure you know how to present it to a live crowd afterwards. Live mixing is still held in high regard among some DJs, because the music mix you create is an extension of yourself, and by showing you can take it anywhere with you and know exactly how to reproduce it, the mix truly becomes your own.
Namedrop yourself
Dropping your name in the middle of a track is a great way to remind listeners who they’re dancing (or bobbing their heads) to. It can also sound cheesy, and usually does. Once you’ve decided to give it a go and insert an announcement that features your name, make it count! If it’s done with the sole intention of getting your name across, don’t try fooling anyone by piling up effects on it or blending it in with the mix. It won’t work! Instead, be straightforward, invite an expert announcer and drop your name loud and clear. Some people might get annoyed with it, but at least they’ve all heard your name now. Besides, you can still spice it up by adding a twist to the announcement itself or the voice behind it. Write a self-aware message. Invite a famous DJ to chime in for you. Be creative!
Record live
While recording from a live set can be a bit tricky, it can be quite rewarding and can even turn out to be your one of your strongest mixes, if done correctly. Sometimes the best decisions are the ones you make in the feel of the moment and a mix recorded at a live event will reflect that. You have to monitor your sound levels closely and see that you don’t lose track of the event itself, but it’s all well worth the effort if it turns out to be as good as it can. Sure there are times when a live mix doesn’t quite capture that unique feel and mood of the event, but better to take your chances than regret not doing it later on!
Give it a name
Numbered mixes and those with generic names are an immediate turnoff. Of course it’s great if the mix CD can be sold on the strength of the DJ’s name alone, but why not take that extra step to make it original, instead of making a statement of mediocrity? Put some individuality into it, show everyone what the mix represents and give your listeners a catchy name to remember it by. When they’re sharing their thoughts on your latest work, you don’t want the conversation to reduce to a sequence of numbers and out of place words that don’t make sense to any of them. The name of your mix is the reflection of your music and should carry a lot of meaning with it. It should also be easy to memorize and mention in a conversation. Do it right, make the name of your latest mix CD ring in everyone’s ears!
Track your mix
This is an obvious one, as no one likes their 2-hour music CDs recorded in one big chunk of a sound file that you can’t (easily) skip through. It serves as a major source of annoyance for most listeners and can be very limiting. It’s not that hard to break up your mix into separate tracks and you should do it at all times. Otherwise, people might give up on your mix after hearing the first song and not liking it, with no obvious way to skip over to the next one. Your mix might be the best, but it still takes time to appreciate quality music for what it’s worth. By not tracking your CDs, you will be losing a lot of potential fans by not giving them enough time with your mix.
Make it shine
Complimenting your CD with a capturing piece of visual art is the oldest trick in the book. Your mix may be great, but no CD will truly sail without some quality art on its cover to back it up. It lets you communicate the style and theme of your mix CD in an instant to anyone looking at it. The abundance of different cover art types and styles has clouded the fact how powerful it actually is, especially if done right. You can draw or design it yourself, but if you’d rather someone else to do it for you, there are various professionals can be found online to work on it for a reasonable price.
Share it online
In today’s music industry, there’s no way to reach a wider audience without distributing your music online. While selling online is a pretty obvious thing to do, making your music available online for free, without any memberships or subscriptions, is just as necessary. There are so many music producers fighting for attention in this huge market that for quality music to find its audience, all the barriers between them must be removed! The benefit of attracting new listeners outweighs all costs. Start streaming your latest mixes and offering free downloads right now!
Fill out the info
For each of your tracks there is a big list of metadata that goes with it, waiting to be fill ed out by the artist. It may seem like an insignificant detail in the great order of things, but its absence will always be noticed. People must have an easy way of knowing the name of the track they are listening to, with no need look it up anywhere. It’s pretty obvious, really. In an age like our own, most cases of info-less CDs probably boil down to simply forgetting small details like that, so all you really need is remind it to yourself. More often than not, you only need to concern yourself with the artist name and title, since that’s what most music players display, but adding an image to your music as cover art is also a nice touch that’s taken off in the recent years.
Label your CD
Labelling your CDs is one of those monotonous tasks aspiring DJs bore themselves to death with, when it seems like it will never end. But that’s far from being the only problem about it. Even though it can get costly if done in colour and spread over a large number of CDs, labelling your mix is a must. The mix name, DJ’s name and website address is all the information that really needs to be on it in most cases, but that still takes some label space. That leads to costs of both money and time. You can always use cheaper labels and purchase them in bulk, but remember that quality will always make your CDs stand out and might be worth spending the extra.
Burn on a budget
Burning your CDs is where the real costs kick in, as companies might charge you more that you’d like to spend, especially on quantities under a few hundred CDs. The good news is they do all the labelling for you, but you still have to find the best offer out there for it to really be considered a bargain. The next level of savings would be to start burning your CDs yourself. While cost efficient in the long run, it requires a sizable initial investment and won’t be an option for most DJs who are just starting out. On the other hand, it offers you greater freedom of distributing your work to other people, without having to save it up for promoters and club owners. Besides, spreading your music around is the key to making your name known to the world and will automatically attract attention from all the important people that can make a difference in your career.
Now spread the word!
Your tracked mix CDs are now burned and stacked neatly in labelled cases with capturing cover art on them. Know what it means? That’s right, it’s time for the hard part to kick in! Developing your mix CDs might be a complicated process to go through, but the way you handle their distribution is what will determine your success. There is no point in creating the best mix ever if nobody will ever hear it, so make sure you give away your new CDs everywhere you go. Naturally, there must be a way to better target your audience, so the best bet is to distribute them through your latest event or appearing as a guest on somebody else’s. Make sure everyone has a great time and hand out the CDs of your latest mix to the crowd at the end of the show. You could even hype up the event by announcing you'll be giving out a mix you’ve held back from even uploading online. When the time for it comes, however, don’t shy away from a single content sharing site out there and don’t forget to throw your cover art in as well . Ask podcasts and online radios to play some of your tracks. Spread the word on social networking sites, emails, blogs, forums and everywhere else! Hype it up like only you could!
Rinse and repeat
You know how that saying goes. Anyway, once you’ve released your latest mix CD and spread the word about it, online and offline, it’s time to work on an even later one! However, you might not want to rush the release date this time, or any other time, for that matter. Doesn’t it hurt to see artists “sell out”, once they’ve become successful? It’s not so much the “selling out” part that matters, but the fact they’ve started churning out works of questionable quality, compared to their earlier ones. The same goes for DJs. While some might be comfortable with coming up with a CD every week or two, at that rate it’s impossible to maintain a consistently high level of quality throughout your career. You'll either have to repeatedly use the same songs or feature some bad ones. Neither is a good way to retain support from your fans. Instead, play it safe and only present your latest CD to the wider public once you feel confident in its quality.