What's the Deal about Beatmatching anyway?

Heads up: This is post is not just about 'Beatmatching', it's music theory in general.

As a newcomer to DJ-ing, the first thing I did (as anyone would do) was to research endlessly on the internet on how to improve skills. Almost every forum thread I came across, the emphasis was on beatmatching. Wait a min? I thought that was to be taken for granted, especially with mixing tracks in the same genre. So why was everyone emphasizing on learning beatmatching skill? I felt it was mandatory enough with DJing that maybe I should stop calling it a 'skill', like it was something special.

It's like saying, "While learning to drive a car, one of the skills is learning to steer." You wouldn't be driving a car if you didn't learn to steer. It's Mandatory.

General advice goes like this - Match the BPM - Match the downbeat - Match the bars - Match the phrases, etc. But that information is not advice. It's supposed to be known and felt. As a DJ (or someone aspiring to be a DJ), one should first develop a deep understanding for music itself. This means, to develop an ear for beats, bars, phrases, keys, scales, everything technical required for mixing. These aren't concepts to be learned when the situation demands, these are to exist in the head, before even touching the decks.

Let's take the example of a person learning to be a guitarist. First, He's got to understand basic musical theory (before even touching the guitar), or at least have a pretty good feel of how music works. Then, he moves on to putting theory into practice. Right from pressing down the strings, to plucking and strumming, it's all practice, but not without primary understanding of music itself. Without the music theory, his practice is just robotic and blind memorizing. A guitarist would know this perfectly well. Did you ever come across someone who says, "I can play the guitar!", you hand it over and all they play is a line of "Happy Birthday to You"? That's robotic playing. For a guitarist who knows what he's doing, the next note or chord is not played just out of memory, it is anticipated based on how the song is flowing. It's... natural. It's music after all.

When we translate this to DJing, sadly, musical theory is thrown out of the window and people just jump onto the decks and start mixing. I think this is why DJing quality is deteriorating rather quickly. Moreover, established DJs complaining about the newbies using automatic tools, aren't even hitting the right spot. Beatmatching is only the tip of the iceberg, there's a lot more to be known than just 'beatmatching'. People with no knowledge of musical structure, tempo and scale just dive into this saturated pool.

I hate taking advice, so it would be hypocritical of me to give advice. But I would just like to state that for me, DJing is more than just beatmatching or phrase matching or other technical things that should have already been known in the first place. I'm not saying you should know how to physically beatmatch without even touching the decks (that's ridiculous). It's about already understanding how it works. It's about pre-visualizing a track before it's even played. It's about breaking down a track into smaller components in your head, without forgetting how it sounds when put together. Suddenly the SYNC button usage, the Vinyl vs Digital wars, and other 'shortcut tools' are irrelevant ramblings of frustrated people.

You're playing out music to an audience. You're playing out an emotion. Understand why you feel a certain way with a certain track. Understand how you can fill the gaps in the current track with subtle elements of the second track. Mixing is not simply, the 'skill' of aligning beats perfectly and crossing over from one song to another. You're trying to find that perfect piece that fits neatly into the gaps and solves the puzzle. When you step back and look at the larger picture, you and your audience have made a beautiful musical journey.

Is SYNC cheating? (A Short Post)

Walking
We kids in India often hear our parents/elder relatives telling us stories of their childhood days. The most common story is - "Back in the day, we used to walk several miles to our school, barefoot. Now all you kids do is, hop on to your car and get to your destination in minutes."

Yes people these days hop on to the car, to save time (and do more stuff during the time saved). When you're getting to school/work, how you get there is not as important as how quickly you get there. That being said, if you are lazy and avoid walking just because you have a car, you'll be in trouble the day your car breaks down.


DJing
We new DJs often hear the old school DJs telling us stories of their early days. The most common story is - "Back in the day, we used to beatmatch our tracks by ear, with no visual aid. Now all you kids do is, press the sync button and press play."

Yes DJs these days press sync, to save time (and do more stuff during the time saved). When your goal is to get the 2 tracks matched, how you match them is not as important as how quickly you match them. That being said, if you are lazy and avoid learning to beatmatch by ear, you'll be in trouble the day your software fails.

P.S : Obviously, there will be loopholes to this analogy, but it was just a random thought that hit my head after reading so many "Real DJ" comments on the internet. Either way, most Real or Fake DJs are not playing any real musical instruments, so criticizing that one extra button that saves a few seconds of your time seems like nit-picking for no reason.

Rediscovering Music Part 2 : Mixing in Key

So my last post about Rediscovering Music was written in April 2012. Close to 3 years later, I felt I had write something more about it. In 2012, I was very very new to the whole Electronic scene so I did not have any idea about how deep this genre really went, but as of 2015 after a lot of listening, I have to admit, it's deep, like really deep! 

For a relatively young and currently desperate genre, Electronic music has some of the most obscure artists and producers, some of whom actually prefer to stay away from the spotlight. And I've mostly found that these not-so-popular artists produce the best kind of electronic music. One of my favorite examples is Michael Cassette.

Anyway, apart from 'exploring' the scene, I've also been playing around a lot with my good old DJ Controller, the Numark Mixtrack Pro. I'm really really glad I brought it back to India with me. Should really thank my friends for introducing me to DJing, I enjoy it so much now, I can't help but play around with it everyday after coming back from work.

So Part 2 of Rediscovering Music is about Mixing in Key. Here's a home DJ with not much experience, writing a blog post about DJing techniques, how funny! But to be completely honest, Mixing in Key doesn't really have much to do with DJing. So much so that as far as I know, a lot of DJs don't even consider it or even know about it. Over the last few years (after my 'Rediscovery'), I've been paying a lot of attention to mixing quality at clubs. I may not be able to see who's behind the booth and what techniques he's using, but I can mostly tell what's going on, simply by concentrating on the elements of the individual tracks. Almost all of the time, I've found DJs mixing pretty decently, but not paying attention to the key. The smart ones usually get away with it by mixing the silent portions of the track or cutting the new track in at a good spot. During such times, the sudden key change doesn't feel awkward. But there have been enough times, when I've heard very well beatmatched but horribly dissonant mixing. It was immediately clear that the DJ was mixing out of key.

For a musically trained ear, in my personal opinion, out of key mixing is almost as bad as a non-beatmatched mix. It's not the trainwreck kind of bad, but definitely gives me a kind of awkward feeling like fingernails on a chalkboard during the transition of the 2 tracks.

Very soon after starting to experiment with DJing, I almost accidentally discovered key mixing with two tracks that went a bit too well together. It only took a few seconds to realize that they were composed on the same scale. I never looked back after that. And so I jumped back to the basics and laid out my keyboard in front of me. I sat and played each track against my keyboard and found the root notes for them and listed them out. Here I had another amazing accidental discovery. For a few of my tracks, I ended up noting down the fifth note of the chord instead of the root note. It still blended well with the track from 5 notes away. That was pretty interesting to me, but it also made a lot of sense. It was clear that the relation was musical and technical. I pulled out the paper and pen and started counting the 5th notes of every minor chord (almost all the tracks were in minor keys) and soon, I was ready. I had a full loop of notes. I got overly excited and went online to see if something like this was done before. To my disappointment I found it almost immediately - It's called the Circle of Fifths which has been around for a long long time. At least, I was happy that my loop of fifth notes was exactly the same as the circle of fifths, so I did get my musical theory right.

Another disappointment hit me soon after this, there was software out there that would find the key for you! It was unbelievable. It looked like every possible aspect of DJing that required skill was being eliminated with digital help. It's kind of sad actually. Either way, it wasn't going to affect me. I trust my ears more than any software and will follow my method to finding the key even if it takes longer. It will help me feel the tracks a bit better and find out the particular elements that give it its key. 

My Circle of Fifths mixing worked too brilliantly! It was the moment I decided, no matter what, I'm sticking to this technique. I don't care how long it will take for me to find that perfect track that keeps the vibe flowing and sounds musically right, but I will find it and I will use it.

For the first time, I felt confident that I could start recording my mixes and show it to people. I knew that my musically arranged tracks would undoubtedly blend well, and now I just had to pay attention to the feel of the track which was simple - just feel the track! My mixes were not going to be a bunch of my favorite tracks put together. They were going to be structured and arranged to form a proper musical journey which 'felt good' and was also technically sound. They may not be perfect, but they are very much 'human'.

Today's digital advancement seems to have made the whole DJing thing a kind of a lazy art. Technically, a non-musician with no sense of rhythm or scale, can still DJ because the computer helps him out by finding him the key, analyzing the BPM and also syncing the next track to match the speed. The "Press-Play" DJ is truly a reality. It's not a terrible thing to happen to music but taking these tools for granted is where things fall apart. Not all keying software is accurate, and not all BPM analysis is accurate. So when things go off, it's only the real musician who can save the day.

To close it off, I would say Mixing in Key may not be given enough importance in the world of DJing, but I put it at the top of my list for a well structured musical journey. It's something that almost feels natural to do. Hope the word spreads around.

Signing off with an embed of my latest mix on MixCloud.

Alpha Rex Epsilon - Harmonic Mix by Rajasekhar Lutikurti on Mixcloud