Lessons

Lesson Info

Song Breakdown Demo

I'm going to break down this one record that I played earlier and I'm gonna do it on this board so actually if you follow along at home and I'm gonna have you guys fall on him later but let me uh me racist real quick um cool so this song is even in a in another language so you're not gonna you know for those who don't speak spanish so I could get hooked on the lyrics or anything like that I'm purely focused on the structure of the song and that's what I'm going to map out is the structure of the song I may not even know if this is a verse or if this is a course quite yet if I don't I'm just going to make notes on it and then I'm going to figure it out afterwards alright so kind of fall along to what I'm doing I'm just going to go for here we go point out the one of the phrase that would help to there you go good you heard that little change right there little double hit there two three for one that's a little interesting way wait wait hey wait no wait wait wait wait oh no way no way wa...

it uh no just that cool does this make sense of what I actually did? Yeah I mean like you can see that there's a lot of repetition, right? I mean this is I just made this sea on like c sub zero like this is like the same is this this this and this little first part there was that so this is like the pre course than this like this eye right here that's the pre course here this little section is just something different so this is all in phrases right now but I can then translate this to bars if I want so let me do that really quick so this is an eight bar intro there's this little one bar pick up think then goes into the first okay so then this first uh is eight bars also eh? This is really like four plus four uh eight for for this whole thing is eight um and then eight plus eight um slow four bar pickup thing eight for there, eh for okay so you're so you're take there's two different things up there right like the phrases is what you hear when you hear it change and then the bars are those air the beats you're actually counting all that out well I mean essentially it's the same because the this section is eight bars plus this other aybar's this whole section right here is sixteen bars now obviously I'm like there's a lot of like so let me clean this up how do we get into this song? Is there an instrumental intro? Yes right how long is it? Eight bars eight bars intro okay what else uh how do we get out of this song what is this the sections that like appear to be the like the highest point like the course that we shouldn't cut off like what would be the point that we would cut into the next song not till the all true you let the whole song play you could she she talks a lot yeah well so so this is what I used to think two is that like I would wait for like an instrumental bridge or like I'd wait for like a instrumental outro the only problem is like if I want to get out of this song sooner I can't I don't want to stand there just like hold on guys hold on it's come in I'll get there so you wanna have multiple options for like places to get out so here's what I would say is I would maybe mix out here could be appointed like then out so this whole section being like eight this like pre course into this short course I could use that so like sort of the first course would be eight bars all right so I'll use the pre course and that I just used that altogether um and then maybe I would use this section so this section here would be like the second part would be like eight plus eight right so get out there um and then maybe here same thing so then the third one will be eight plus eight to and then I've got an outro this is what is well basically the mind note for this entire thing like based on what I just did I don't need any of this information anymore I just need this it's a bar intro the first hook is eight bars second hook is essentially eight plus eight sixteen bars and what I mean by that eight plus eight like just repeats itself it's the exact same thing duplicated over so I could get out I could get out here probably instead of waiting teo get out there right so this is how I would then mix this all together now because of time or whatever I'm just going to the song that I'm gonna use to come in with I'm just going to use this instrumental track which does have this well here tell me how long the intro is here four eight yep two phrases eight bars cool so in this example with this right where I would put this if I use the first hook I'd lay it right under there right under that hook and then when I'm done with that hook I'm right into that record right if I were to do it on the second course I'd maybe do it on the second eight lay that right under there and then now I'm out into next song so based on this all this information now and doing it it don't make it a lot easier for me to do it right so I'm gonna mix it really quick just so you can hear what this sounds like of it then being under it and then this is I'm gonna give you guys both of these songs so even everybody at home like give you both of these songs you're going try with these two songs to see if you can mix them together we'll cover later on in the session we're going to cover the manual beat matching part of it which will help put it all together so later tonight after this whole thing is all wrapped up of day one you should technically be able to like have all the pieces to mix these two songs together as like as like a demonstration cool um so let me have actually all of you guys come up here so you can see my hands appear since you guys are here in studio um and em for one of you if you want you can plug in tow um here you can hear my q who wants toe here jose here since come on over here and put these on, we're gonna get into this later too, but like the I'm splitting my ears so I'm like I just have one year in so that the other ear I'm hearing the master and then the song I'm queuing up I'm hearing the q so you're able to hear exactly what I'm hearing so you hear that yeah they can't hear that we've got we've got a secret that they don't have um which is this right here cool um so I'm gonna play this song what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna talk to exactly what I'm doing with like getting it matched up or what not okay so this song is playing now this song is ninety two the song that's coming in is ninety five I knew that already so I'm trying to make my adjustments loose lois I sped it up I'm really using my body to help me now everything all the work that we just did now I'm like remembering where things are at that was actually the start of that his first course comes really fast way miss that one someone away for the next one I've got three much lined up I hear it on that so now I've got to pay attention we're writing a song right? So we're in the verse of the second verse so this is eight bars and then this pre course for eight bars and then into the hood instead of trying to count the whole time which will end up doing when you first start doing this you'll find the natural point of the song that's beginning the pre course e got another four bars get back to the beginning here comes right here and if I start and no way right so that's just how we do that and then that way look by figuring out this I've been taking out a lot of the guests work in terms of like when to come out of this record because if I hadn't done that I don't know if I would have known where to come out of this record it's just it's not a record that was that's easily defined as like a turn down for what or something like that that's a little bit easier to tell where the sections are this is a little bit more complex so by breaking it down I now have a better idea for when to come out now all of this information you might be asking yourself like, well, what do you do you do with all this? You know, do you just walk around like with a huge dry erase board like when you go in d j with like all of you know this information or do you write this all down on paper and then have all of these papers that are that have all that information? What I would say is if you're deejaying digitally you're at a huge advantage because one of the things that you can do with the software is you can actually write this note into the comments section into the comment I didn't even do it on itunes or what? What not you pull up the mp three, go to the comment feel then you can actually write in all of this information and when we come back after lunch, I'm going to really break that down inside of you inside of the software actually, I think that we're doing that tomorrow we'll break that down inside of the software and you'll be able to see I can also use q points to denote where the section changes are so like the points of interest, what I could do is that could set a q point for the beginning of the course let's say so that I know that. Okay, that is the point that I want to hit on dyken set up like, you know, I can use visual aids to help me, like figure that out, but one of the easiest things that I'm going to do is I'm going to write that information into the track that will then make everything so much clearer. I think, for you guys to see how I'm doing this, uh any any questions that anybody has? Yeah, here's a here's kind of a good question. Um, michael wants to know how long should I play a song before losing the crowd interest? So, like you're playing a track, you don't know whether you should take it out early and get into something else or if people are jamming teo and I want to cut it off early that's a great that's a great question I think that that's also why you know one of the most dangerous things to do as a deejay especially like a deejay that's playing different types of crowds and you know, different types of music. One of the most dangerous things to do is to get locked into a preset set, so to say I'm going to play a b, c d c in that order and this is where I'm gonna mix out of a mormon except maybe this is why this part of it is so important because it allows you to have a little bit more a little bit more freedom on the fly so that sort of the the easy answer to that would be really just depends like it's all situational so like you could be playing a song you don't think like in your mind you're like, oh my get out of this on its first course and people are loving it and so it's like, well, maybe okay, let me let this play, then they may let this breathe a bit and that's really the biggest part about d jane is also being able to read your crowd, read the audience and not be so in your zone now obviously if you're doing you know, if you're doing a setting mix like you're creating, like a demo mix or, you know, you just created mix at home and you want to record it and be able to upload it toe to a website afterwards that you can get locked into, like, okay, I'm gonna come out here and I'm going to do that, but that doesn't translate into live scenario at all. You need to be very fluid when it comes to deejay way have a couple of minutes left in this segment. Do you have time for one more question? Sure, yeah, how different are the methods you employ when you're remixing in software like acid? So if you are building like your own mixtape, for example, or demo tape or something like that, what do you do that's different about that versus what you're talking about here, or is it the exact same thing it's, like yours is what's really interesting is like this becomes the total bridge between playing other people's music and figuring out their music to then creating your own music and then creating your own remixes and creating your own tracks is like by studying the structure of other people's tracks and tracks that you like it then gives you the blueprint for what your tracks should be like, or even like even the half step there in like remixing and like being able like oh there's this one section like this one section this little one bar section like oh, I really like that and I want to use that for another song that I'm making understanding the structure of this and studying it and becoming a student of your collection allows you to really dive into that know that well so again you know I can't emphasize that enough it's really quality over quantity again like you know, having one hundred songs that you know really really well way better way, way way better that then having the whole bunch that you don't know handsome and really quick the piece of that too that's really interesting is like this is the way that, um I've mentioned like I go to the record store and I'd buy three three songs like three records because that's kind of what I could afford to buy at the time and that was what was out obviously in the digital age that kind of gone out the window I mean like you could download hundreds of songs like that so it really requires some self restraint on your guy's part as a deejay is toe like don't download everything yeah don't download or or put it this way try and separate your collection we're going to get into that too like tomorrow I think separate your collection but like download stuff and this is stuff that you want to listen to this is stuff that you're gonna deejay with make the separation on dh then you don't need to map out all of the songs that you're going to listen to you just need to map out the songs that you gonna deejay with you know? So I take it that way here's the track uh lopez v below and this actually I should explain the original version of this track actually starts with this one bar pickup this little four beat one bar pickup so what I did is I made an edit I took the instrumental section at the end spiced it doubled it up put it in the front of it so that I would so that I could have an intro so this kind of like is a teaser until like, what essentially would be another module all about like creating your own edits creating your own remixes and stuff like that. But again all that stems from really knowing the record knowing what you need, you know, knowing that you need someplace to get in and that you don't have that then you make that you create it so um uh but so really quick um there's a comment field so we're gonna get deeper into software um tomorrow we'll focus on um cerrado deejay software and also tractor tomorrow but if I click here this will give me the different fields and now you'll see this in also like a program like itunes or any really audio program will have like he's different you know categories these different columns that you can create so I'm using comment I could use any of these other ones if I want like genre you go crazy with like your collection uh I myself I wish I was a bit more detailed with my collection because I'm very envious there I have for a deejay friends that like have the year that the song was released have the producer who produced the record like have all that information in here so at any point in time they can search their library for like well you know what I'm looking for songs that um diplo created and you know, they typing diploma all of that comes up you know or, um same thing with genre you know that's probably somewhat of an easier one in some ways but anyway somebody's comment uh the most generic probably one on then I'm just going to write in the essentials here so it's like an eight eight bar intro what else we got in a bar hook and that's the first one and the second one is essentially an eight poops eight plus eight book it's on there so now when I pull up this track although our as I'm looking for songs I can then find songs that could go with that or like I know instantly before even load the song that this one has an eight bar intro um the other thing I can do this again is a little bit of a tease to tomorrow is, um e consent you points for a point of interest so we know that that's eight bars I can also type on this and say this is a instrumental and one of things that will talk about tomorrow is like being able to, like, figure out a strategy in a system so for me I'll tag this up really quick wait that's the beginning of the course right there so I just said if accu points and I can make this so I've liked color coded my q points in this for this program and I can say that this is my hook so for me, I know that in a bar marker would be red so every time I see a red marker that that section that is eight bars, so if you're looking at my screen here uh so any anything that I'm pulling up that has red section I know that this is eight bars that that intro is eight bars you know by just even seen it by seeing the colors and then I can also see all the comments of our next one this's the next booth really important that I get the exact if when I using a q point that I get exactly to that one and for me I use pink as a sixteen bars so this is a sixty miles by just looking at this now and let me do the last hope after this section wait that section there and this would be his will will be and this is actually just half of the intro that's four bars eso just by looking at this I know what this is and know where the next point is. Now the reverse of that would be this this one that we used this has an eight bar so I know that this red so essentially of that read the intro lines up with this one that's perfect there's two reds the two reds will line up it's basically that same tetris thing that we did that we were talking about does that make sense of like how I just did that but like this is saving now to the actual file this saves to the mp three so if I were to give this mp three to you it would have not only those notes that are in the comment field but it also have the q points that I set to it if you opened it up inside of cerrado so this is also good for like, if something happens in you ludes, like you change computers or something like that. Or you want to dj off your buddies. Computer. Could you take your music and put it on a thumb drive or something? Papa, right in. And all of your stuff will come up. Julia.