TRANSITIONS

Now we come to one of the most important ideas behind great mashups.

Since we are trying to create a single ‘track’ that changes from one song to another multiple times, it is essential that we become good at making smooth transitions. Most of the following techniques in this chapter are designed to help you do this. There are a few things to consider for each transition you perform:

■ length (how long should it take to transition from one song to another);

■ point of realisation (when we want the listener’s ear to realise that it has switched to another song);

■ change in energy (whether the energy gets bigger, smaller or stays consistent).

The length of a transition depends on what kind of transition it is. The more sudden and surprising transitions may cut from one to another instantly or over the space a few seconds. These can be exciting, but if not done well, they can sound awkward and confusing. Longer transitions that aim to be smooth and subtle may take 16 bars or more. When executed correctly, they can create great momentum and smoothness, but if not, they can sound slow and boring. The most common transitions sit somewhere in the middle, over the space of an 8-bar section. Remember, when hearing club music, our ears are trained to think in 8-bar sections; we instinctively know that roughly every 12–18 seconds, an opportunity arises for the song to do something. Whether transitioning from a breakdown to a main track, or a main track to a breakdown, a length of eight bars feels natural and is usually the perfect balance between surprise/excitement and smoothness.

Somewhere between the beginning and end of this transition, we want the listener to realise that something new is happening. This generally occurs when the presence or loudness of the new element becomes greater than the first. This is determined by the speed and shape of the automation you draw into each element’s volume and filtering envelopes, which we’ll look at in detail shortly. In an 8-bar section, this crossover point may happen somewhere around the middle, but don’t be afraid to have it occur earlier or later depending on whether you want your listener to feel the change coming with plenty of notice, or for the new element to be more of a surprise. If you intend to do 8-bars of musical transition as well as bring in a vocal near the end, you will want to spread your two changes across this 8. Time your musical crossover to occur a little earlier than the middle point so that the ear has time to adjust, then bring in the vocal.

The aim of a mashup is to give the audience multiple songs combined into a track that still feels like one single piece of music. Sometimes the energy needs to rise up a little (such as when it transitions from breakdown to main track) or settle down a bit (when going into a breakdown or slowing down in tempo). But it is still important that any change in energy is intentional and gradual. The ear notices unnatural jumps in energy and draws attention to our edits, so during our transitions it is important to keep the energy level reasonably stable. This is more crucial as the transition lengths become shorter. If you perform a transition of four bars or less, you’ll have to work your volumes and filtering very hard to make sure there is no sudden jump up or down in energy. Relating to this, you need to make sure that the energy in the middle of the transition (particularly at the crossover point) doesn’t feel too high or low compared to the sections either side of it. You want it to feel like one smooth line of momentum.

By the way, don’t rely solely on your master limiter Device to control big peaks of energy during your transition. Overall energy and presence doesn’t just depend on volume, but also the filtering and bass balance between two tracks, which the limiter can’t control as effectively. Besides this, the squashed and over-compressed sound that occurs when overloading a limiter is perceived by the ear as loudness, so the energy will still feel unstable. Make sure everything is smooth before it reaches the limiter.

BRINGING IN AN ELEMENT

How you bring a new element into the mashup is dependent on your style, the type of music you’re using and how you want to manage the expectations of your audience. In a way, a mashup is just one sequenced unveiling of ideas—some things are revealed slowly, some spectacularly, some understated and some unpredictably.

The simplest way to bring something in is just to start playing it—or by bringing it in ‘cold’. Most elements within a dance track do this anyway; drum pickups, instruments starting or a vocal coming in. It is the most bold and honest way of bringing in a sound. However, because mashups are often trying to transition from one sound to another, not just add more in, we have to use gradual changes to hand the illusion of rhythm and key between songs. Because the dance floor loves 8-bar sections, this will usually occur over the space of 8 or 16 bars. Some sounds can be volume-faded in. If you don’t want the listener to really know that the element is coming in you can choose to sneak it in very gradually. Just be aware, it has a similar feeling to the moment when a DJ crossfades from one song to another in the club. Keeping this in mind, a fade doesn’t always sound intentional, and doesn’t necessarily make the elements feel like they’re part of the same song. A more classy way of bringing in an element is the use of a low-pass filter.

If you want the listener to hear that something new is coming up, but obscure its clarity to begin with, use low-pass filtering. The added advantage of filtering in is that as it gradually ‘opens up’; as its target frequency ascends it contributes a feeling of building to the section. When the element is finally revealed in full, dropping other elements out behind it doesn’t feel like so much of a let-down. The resonance or Q on the filter also plays a part—a high resonance creates a lot of focus on the cut-off frequency, directing attention to the movement. Low resonance allows it to happen more subtly, so that the listener might not realise anything is happening until halfway through the 8. Low-pass filtering an organic element in, like a rock song, also helps it to feel more ‘DJ’, more electronic; fitting it into the concept of the mashup more naturally. Often though, introducing an element via low-pass filtering requires some amount of volume automation in addition to making sure it feels even. Also, don’t be afraid to use your EQ to pull all the bass back on the new sound until you’ve finished filtering it in, and have completed the transition—particularly to avoid bogging up the bottom end with resonating bass notes or drums. Do whatever you need to do to make it fit.

The other type of filtering, as we have learned, is high-pass filtering. You don’t hear a high-pass filter used much as a method of bringing a sound in; usually a way of transitioning out of it instead. If you start an element with the high-pass filter all the way up; the high-hat, vocal sibilance and top end from the instruments and whooshes will suddenly be present in the music, but it will be seriously lacking in punch and foundation until the very end of the transition. When we bring an element in, we usually want it the other way round. It will also create a feeling of falling instead of rising, as the cut-off frequency moves downward. Still, if you want to hear an interesting example of a song that begins by high-passing in the first element, check out ‘Flawless’ by The Ones.

The method you use to bring an element in is crucial to how you manage the expectations of the listener—do you want to surprise them with boldness or use subtlety to create hints of what is to come? Is there too much musical information in the element to have it come in cold? Do you want to low-pass filter in a looping section of something and only then allow the section to play in full?

Another great way to experiment with how filters feel is to just loop a section of a mashup you’re working on and play with it live using the mouse or a MIDI keyboard controller. This will teach you a lot about how filters feel, and how those feelings can be used to your advantage to shape transitions.

HIGH-PASS FILTERING DURING TRANSITIONS

The business of high-pass filtering to transition out sounds is so crucial that we should look at it in detail. Every mashup you do will require some (if not lots) of it.

The dance floor loves taking steps forward into higher and higher intensity; it does not like taking steps back. But how is this possible? If a clubber goes and spends four hours in a nightclub, they’re going to hear between 700 and 1000 8-bar sections pass through their awareness. How can each one be bigger than the last? Part of being a dance music producer is basically ‘tricking’ the audience in a way where they don’t feel they are being cheated! Producers avoid fading things down, avoid low-passing things out, and when they drop something out cold, they substitute big sounds for new, little sounds they can build from. Like Indiana Jones, they always slip something into the audience’s awareness to replace whatever they have stolen away. This is pretty much why breakdowns work, although they in themselves have to immediately continue the trend of building too.

So that’s the crucial concept—when we drop something out cold, we must replace it with something new to keep the audience excited. What about when we transition it out slowly? Using a high-pass filter to slowly remove it from the mix is the smoothest way to get rid of it. The energy itself stays at full power; the high frequencies remain playing, keeping the intensity going, and therefore not disappointing our little dancers. As the filter frequency moves up, the feeling of rising continues to excite the dance floor and lead them into what they interpret as higher energy. But down the bottom, the lower frequencies filter out bit by bit, diminishing the presence or proximity of the sound. Of course, by the time the 8 finishes, we had better be ready to substitute something new in.

Conversely, the other methods such as low-pass filtering or volume fading pretty much always result in a noticeable fall in energy and an awkward transition. It can even ruin a big kick-in moment that comes afterward because the audience aren’t given any warning to expect it.

To ‘high-pass out’ an element, simply activate the Device at the beginning of the section where you want the element to filter out. Starting from the bottom, automate the frequency value to rise throughout the section until the sound has sufficiently disappeared. Remember, you don’t always want to high-pass the element out completely; having the filter rise to around 80 percent of its range will still allow the intense high-end frequencies to reach the listener, a perfect idea for the end of a build-up section. While the intensity continues, all of the lower and middle frequencies are filtered out, and the element will give the listener’s ear almost no foundation or key information, which leaves their perception open for influence from the next incoming element.

After you have set a basic automation path for the section, go back and listen to the smoothness of the filtering, and make any adjustments needed. You may find you need to smooth out some sections when particular elements such as kicks, basses or vocals disappear too suddenly. Also keep a close eye on the balance between the first element and the second; not only making sure that the first disappears nicely, but that the whole transition occurs smoothly. If you can’t make a transition sound smooth using filtering, you will need to try something else, or reconsider the two sections or elements you are trying to blend.

Remember to keep the crossover point between elements in mind when you draw your high-pass filter automation. The amount of bass being filtered out of your sound makes a huge difference to the amount of ‘presence’ it has, and is just as important as volume when balancing your elements. A subtle amount of volume fading can be used when high-pass filtering an element out, but just be careful that the energy levels stay smooth. Mostly it should be used to smooth out unnatural lurches in volume as the resonant filter sweeps past frequencies containing prominent notes or drums.

During the sections where you aren’t using a high-pass filter, it should be switched off. Use automation to have it switch on when you need it, and switch off when you are finished with it. The reason for this is that high-pass filters create a bump in volume around the cut-off frequency. When this frequency is set to its lowest value, you won’t hear this bass bump with your ears, but it will cause problems with your limiter and also make a mess of things when played out in a club, causing the volume to jump around unexpectedly as the club’s own limiter system catches big bass frequencies and attempts to squash everything down.

Additionally, there is a common issue with high-pass filters that you must be aware of. Due to the way filters work, if you try to draw automation that moves the frequency from a high value down to a low value in a split-second, you will get an enormous low-frequency pop in the audio. This extra surge of low frequency triggers a sudden attenuation from your limiter, resulting in a huge momentary drop in volume. See the problematic automation in Figure 9.1.

FIGURE 9.1
Sudden Jumps in High-Pass Filter Automation are Troublesome

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

There are two ways to avoid this issue.

First, you can be smoother with your automation. If you need to get the high-pass frequency value back down in time for an important moment (such as the kick-in of the drop), start pulling the frequency down as early as an eighth note before the kick. See Figure 9.2.

FIGURE 9.2
More Accommodating Automation

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

Even better, if you have an element high-passed up, but you need to immediately stop the filtering altogether (i.e. to let it slam back in with full frequencies), simply leave the frequency value up high, but switch the high-pass filter Device off at the point when you need your bass frequencies back, via automation. By bypassing the Device, Live will perform a quick crossfade back to the non-filtered signal, free of pops. Then you can let the high-pass frequency settle back down to its lowest value whenever you like, because the effects of it are no longer being admitted into the final audio (Figure 9.3).

FIGURE 9.3
Bypassing the Filter at the End of the Sweep

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

ADDED EFFECTS, SWEEPS AND DRUM BUILDS

Remember when we set up a folder for effects builds, whoosh/white noise effects and snare builds? Let’s look at times that we should use them. Frequently, while filtering up out of a breakdown and gradually introducing the main track again, you will find that no matter what you do, you can’t give it the energy and excitement it needs during the build. Sometimes it’s because the main track contains a build sound that is appropriate in its own breakdown, but in the context of the new track, it doesn’t sound energetic enough. Other times it’s because you need to perform such subtle and gradual fades during the transition that the beginning of it has absolutely no energy.

In situations like these, we add our own effects. Try to find snare builds and effects builds that complement the tracks you’re working with. Some effects have bright, electronic laser-beam qualities, others are smoothly filtered effects. Some snare builds are soft, sparse hits that don’t go too crazy, while others are intense, over-compressed snares that perform rolls like machine-guns. Each has its place, and you want it to feel like the builds are part of the original elements, rather than noticeably sticking out. Some genres won’t really welcome snare builds at all, and your energy must come from added up-sweep or whoosh sounds.

In sections where you need to abruptly cut off a track, or add drama to a particular moment, impact sounds such as reverberated booms or sine-wave sub effects can be handy. If you need to drop an element out and there is a sudden loss in energy, try one of these effects. This is particularly useful when coupled with reverb automation on the element you are cutting out. More on this later in the chapter.

Use these ‘helper’ sounds only if you need to. Less is more, and the less you need to add, the more natural the mashup will sound. The effects, drums and impact sounds the producer has picked out in the original piece of music will obviously be better matched to the song than what you pick. Occasionally you can even grab an impact or crash sound that appears on its own at the end of the track, and copy it over to an earlier section instead. This will save you trying to find your own sound, and will keep the added effects in context.

TREATING VOCALS

Sometimes, when using a vocal over an instrumental track, you may find that your vocals are hard to distinguish, even if they’re turned up quite loud. Instrumental tracks are usually mixed to fill up all the frequency areas nicely, and often don’t leave room for a vocal. The vocal will be ‘masked’ because there is already a lot of frequency information in the upper-mid area where the human voice lives. In this case, the simplest approach is to be sneaky, and use EQ automation to pull the clashing frequency band in the instrumental down, but only in the sections where you need your new vocal to play.

Loop and play back a section of the mashup where the two elements play together. On the instrumental track, either set up a new EQ or use an unused band on one of the existing ones. Push the gain of the band right up, set the Q or resonance to around 1 and play around with the frequency setting. Try to intentionally find the problem frequency where the instrumental seems to completely swallow up the vocal. If you’re having trouble hearing it, search between 1 and 6 kHz. Though the frequency setting will affect the instrumental, focus your ears on the vocal instead. Once you’ve found the frequency where the vocal seems to disappear under the music, pull the EQ band’s gain back below 0dB and listen closely to find out how far you need to pull it back until the vocal is clear enough. Try not to pull it down more than a few dB if possible, or there will be too noticeable a change in the instrumental. All we want is a subtle dip to help the vocal push out in front—pay attention to the moment when you ‘see’ the vocalist standing in front of the instruments. Note down how much reduction is required and set the gain back to 0dB. Finally, bring up the band’s gain value in the automation lane. Throughout the arrangement, every time the vocal appears, pull the gain value down to the amount you have determined you need to. As the vocal ends, allow it to come back up. Try to keep it subtle and the vocal will be clearer and easier to hear without the change in the instrumental being too noticeable.

The other way to help a vocal blend in is to use the Return Track you set up in your template. On the right-hand pane of your arrangement window, each track has send settings, displayed just under the Track Volume (Figure 9.4).

Notice how we are adding reverb at the send control rather than doing it with automation. This is because we want the reverb send amount at a consistent volume through the mashup. See if adding a very small amount of reverb helps the vocal blend better with the music behind it.

FIGURE 9.4 Sending Some Audio to a Return Track

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

USING LOW-SHELF EQ TO BALANCE BASS

When setting up a Live template, we discussed how having the low-shelf band on an EQ is vital to avoid low frequency clutter and confusion on the dance floor. Let’s look at the process of mashups and where to use this theory.

As a general rule, when two tracks that contain bass information are playing together, such as a main track and a break track, each track will be mixed and produced with its ideal amount of low frequency already in there. The kick will be nice and loud, driving the beat, and the bass-line and low-end instruments will take up as much space as they need to without making everything sound like a subwoofer party. Here’s an analogy that might help (if you play DJ sets live, this is the same idea as mixing between tracks).

If you think of a single track as containing 100 percent bass information when playing on its own, consider that when you mix two tracks together, you still want the total bass information coming out of the speakers to equal 100 percent. So, either one track should have the bass pulled out completely, or each track sits at 50 percent bass. Through experimenting, you’ll notice that the ‘feeling’ and illusion of the music will be dominated by whichever track is permitted the most bass presence. For pairs that contain different root notes, scales, energy levels, emotions or rhythm patterns, the track with the larger percentage of bass will ultimately decide which is felt more on the dance floor. People don’t want jumpy transitions, but they are also used to hearing intentional changes in energy every eight bars, so when you automate the low-shelf EQ band, try to use a mix of gradual gain changes and sudden gain changes. Use the draw tool (CTRL+B or CMD+B) to make immediate changes between 8-bar sections so that they make musical sense, as new sections are introduced or concluded. See the below breakdown example, where the presence is shifted from the bottom element to the top element a little bit more every eight bars, by changing the bass balance between them. Remember, to have the bass at ‘100%’ means 0dB of gain on the EQ, so it will appear as 0.5 on the automation lane (the middle) rather than 1.0 (as much gain as possible) (Figure 9.5).

FIGURE 9.5
A Mix of Smooth and Sudden Bass Transfer During a Transition

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

With this in mind, remember that transitions in or out of breaks must be treated with this bass reduction, as must hinting loop sections (explained shortly) played over a main track. Even if you are already using a high-pass filter to gradually shift the bass in or out of an element, it’s still a good idea to use your low-shelf during these transitions to make sure you’re not overloading the mashup with too much bass.

REVERSE REVERBS

Reverse reverbs are a very handy trick to have available when you need to bring something in ‘cold’, without the ear hearing any part of it beforehand. Let’s take the most common example, a vocal. The mashup begins with an intro then a breakdown, before bringing in a vocal from a completely different track with no warning. Even if it is key and tempo-matched, the listener may get confused by the sudden appearance of something that sounds foreign. In order to help them prepare for the sound, it’s a great idea to grab a very short section of the audio they are about to hear and use it to create a ‘reverse reverb’.

Though a normal reverb is an imitation of the reverberation that we hear when a sound occurs in an acoustic space, we can create an interesting effect by sampling some reverb and reversing it. Though it has an unnatural feel, it does do a really good job of telling the ear that a new sound is about to come in.

It even gives it a heads up on the specific pitch and frequency information of the incoming sound. This effect may only last a second or two but it is enough to prime the listener for the element.

Begin by selecting an important piece of the sound. For a main track you are about to introduce, the best piece to sample is the most upfront element, such as a bass or lead note; usually the first note (try to sample the piece just after the kick drum so that the reverb isn’t muddy). For a vocal, it’s the first word. The sample shouldn’t be any longer than a single beat. For an element that has drums in it, try and use a piece of audio that doesn’t have a kick drum on it, even if that means using just the second half of a synth note (Figure 9.6).

FIGURE 9.6
Creating a Reverse Reverb from a Selection

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

Copy the selection to the end of the Live session (after your mashup ends) and move it down to an unused Audio Track. Then place a long reverb on the Device Chain for the track. Use a nice long reverb that is at least as long as you want your reverse sound to be. For convenience, you can even copy the reverb Device from your longest reverb Return Track. After the reverb, move your second EQ or filter (whichever plug you use for high-pass filtering) to the end of the chain, after the reverb. Making sure the filter is switched on, cut off any boggy low end mud using the high-pass frequency value, particularly the remnants of any kick drums. At the same time you want to leave enough low/mid in there to give the ear the heads-up it needs. Somewhere from 250–300Hz should do it, but listen carefully to be sure. Aim for warmth without muddiness.

Once you are happy with the tone of it, select a long enough section of time in the session to catch all of the reverb tail and export it, calling it something that makes sense to you, such as ‘Reverse synth stab.wav’ (Export is CTRL+SHIFT+ R on Win, CMD+SHIFT+R on Mac). Remember that to export audio, it doesn’t matter if the clip itself is selected or not; Live will simply pay attention to the time selection (see Figure 9.7).

FIGURE 9.7 Export a Time Selection Long Enough to Include the Reverb Tail

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

A 16-bit 44,100 wav will be fine. Export it to the same folder as your mashup. Afterwards, re-import the wav file onto a new Audio Track and access its clip properties. Click ‘Rev.’ to reverse the sample. You should also un-check ‘Warp’, as there is no point in time-stretching an effect like this. Adjust the clip boundaries if un-checking Warp has shortened or looped the clip. You will likely need to turn the volume of the clip up as well.

Move it to the perfect spot in the arrangement so that it ends just as the element begins. Listen closely to make sure the loudest peak of reverb doesn’t occur too early. If it does, push the clip along until it ends right on the beat. When you play it through, it should sound like the reverb leads right into the word or note.

Much of the time, the listener only needs to hear a bar or two of reverse reverb to adequately prepare them. If you want to shorten the amount, use volume automation until it becomes audible later on the timeline (Figure 9.8).

FIGURE 9.8
Making the Reverse Reverb Fit into the Arrangement1

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

‘HINTING’ AND ‘LINKING’ SECTIONS

Often you will need to create a better blend between the different sections of your mashup. A great way to ‘get some of the feeling’ from your main track into your break (or vice versa) is to use subtle loops from one element under another. A listener may not be able to consciously notice why, but they will be able to feel more unification and harmony across the whole mashup. This is one of the most powerful tools you can use. You don’t need to do this every time, just in instances where the feeling/emotion/energy between your break and main track are a little too different. It also provides you opportunities to add your own pickups, or add extra energy in sections that need it.

To use a piece of the main track over a breakdown, steal a loop from the intro or outro. I suggest you find one single bar, from the simplest section of audio you can, either in the first or last eight bars of the song. Try to find one that doesn’t have any effects whooshes on it, or your ear will notice it looping; grab a bit from the middle of an 8-bar section. Make sure you put it on a different Audio Track in the arrangement, as you will need to apply effects and mix settings that are very different to your treatment of the main element. Use the Track Volume fader on the Audio Track to turn it down to at least –6dB, and use the EQ to pull the bass down as far as it goes. This will make the loop sound distant and subtle, and ensures there is no kick drum coming through. Now you can arrange it in your break. Use low-pass filtering or volume automation to creep it in slowly if necessary, and use volume automation and high-pass filtering to pull it out towards the end of the break. If the breakdown utilises an intentionally sudden change in energy as it goes into the build section, try ending the subtle loop abruptly to fit the breakdown. The important thing here is to keep the loop very subtle; it’s there to support, not to lead. If you’re not sure where to bring it in, try placing it at a spot that needs a little bit of pickup, or as a vocal chorus comes in. Check out the example in Figure 9.9. In order to keep the ‘feeling’ of the main track going in the break, it actually uses two loops. The first is a breakdown loop to keep the vibe of the synth going and make the breakdown feel connected to it. The second is a drum loop from the intro, used as a pickup and to prepare the listener to return to the main track. Without these two loops, the elements are just a little too different to feel cohesive.

Similarly, you can steal a loop from your breakdown track to use over the main track. It can be used to either prepare the listener for a breakdown, or to help build to it and tell the ear that something new is coming. Additionally, it can be used after the break to help bring the final section home. Again, use it subtly.

FIGURE 9.9
Using Loops from the Main Track to Add Energy to the Break

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

Often it is necessary to use side-chain compression or an LFO tool to make sure it doesn’t interfere with the kick drum, but only if the kick drum plays a regular four-on-the-floor rhythm (more on side-chain compression/LFO tool shortly).

Figure 9.10 is an example of a breakdown section being ‘hinted at’ over the drop. The audio in this section of the break element is already looping, so no manual loops were required. Notice the use of volume and low-shelf EQ automation to subtly bring it in over the space of eight bars.

FIGURE 9.10
The Breakdown Track Being Hinted at During the Drop

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

Following on from this idea, it’s useful to know that you can help your break and main sections to connect better by using short sections of the breakdown track in your main sections as a feature, and to remind the listener of the context of the mashup as a whole. For example, halfway through a beats section, towards the end of an 8-bar block, you can ‘drop out’ (temporarily mute) the main track and play a bar or two of the breakdown melody. The theory behind this is the same as what producers do within their tracks: dropping in little snippets of the breakdown in their main sections to help tie the whole song together for the listener. Such tricks are much bolder than the subtle art of hinting and sneaking audio underneath, so they are great to use in very choppy, aggressive styles of music, such as dubstep, trap and electro (Figure 9.11).

FIGURE 9.11
A Bold Cut Across to a Single Beat of the Breakdown Song

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

VOCAL LOOPS AND CHOPS

Looping and hinting don’t just have to apply to full-bandwidth elements. Vocal loops and chops are just as useful for both preparing the listener for an upcoming vocal and for having the feeling of a vocal carry through to a final section that you don’t want full lyrics in.

On a separate Audio Track with the same EQ and reduced volume guidelines in the ‘hinting’ technique above, pick a small section of vocal to loop. You can even use a section as short as one beat or half a beat. Try to pick a piece of audio from a long, sung note and create a clean loop out of it. Try to also use a note that feels comfortable over the music behind it. Again, you should consider using side-chaining if it seems to fight against the other elements when used over drum sections. Just like the idea we talked about when using ‘hinting’ loops over another section, the important thing is to keep the vocal loop subtle, never pulling more attention than the main elements. A common usage of this method is to ‘hold’ the last note of a vocal chorus, so that the note can extend all the way up to the end of a breakdown. To hear an example of what this sounds like, listen to the way the final note of the chorus holds in Fatboy Slim—‘Praise You’. If you want to get tricky, you can really chop up the vocal to make your own sentences, or fit the chops around the instruments in musical ways. Figure 9.12 shows a more extreme example where pieces of vocal have been chopped and arranged to create a repeating pattern, sitting in a rhythm that supports the main track. This pretty much makes it act like its own instrument.

FIGURE 9.12
Vocals Chopped into a Rhythmical Pattern

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

SIDE-CHAIN COMPRESSION (OR LFO TOOL)

When looking at hinting loops, I mentioned the use of ‘side-chain compression’ and ‘LFO tools’ to keep breakdown and vocal loops under control during your beats sections. Let’s look at this in a bit more detail. Ordinarily, a side-chain compressor is an effect used in mixing where an incoming peak in audio from one source triggers a temporary drop in volume on another track. It’s the kind of thing you’d hear on TV, where backing music is playing but it automatically drops in volume every time somebody on screen speaks. In dance music, the trigger to cause a drop is usually the kick drum, and the volume drop is applied to everything else in the mix. Extreme versions of this effect have become popular in dance music; for two examples, listen to the way the instruments ‘duck’ under the kick drum in the tracks ‘Call On Me’ by Eric Prydz and ‘Satisfaction’ by Benny Benassi.

Though this has become a very popular creative method for creating the ‘character’ in dance music, the technical purpose of this effect is to create sonic room for the kick drum, assist with the rhythm of the track and to keep the mix under dynamic control. In the mashup world, we don’t have the main track’s isolated kick-drum to use as our side-chain compression trigger, so if we want to create a ducking effect, we need a fake one. Therefore, rather than teaching you about how to use compressors, I’ll show you how to create a fake side-chain effect using a low frequency oscillator (LFO) tool.

Unfortunately Live doesn’t have an LFO tool built in (at the time of writing anyway), but there are some great third-party alternatives.

If you have access to the Max For Live database, you can search ‘LFO tool effects’ for free options. The one I recommend, though it is not a free plug-in, is a VST plugin—Xfer’s ‘LFO Tool’.

FIGURE 9.13
Xfer’s LFO Tool

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton and Xfer Records

Low frequency oscillators were first conceived in early synthesisers as a way of creating subtle variation to synth sounds. Whilst synth notes are made up of very high speed oscillations, low frequency oscillators create very slow moving wave-shapes, and can be assigned to impose subtle undulations on volume, pitch or filter frequency levels to create subtle variance on the notes. The idea behind this plugin is to take that theory and apply it at a specific rate that syncs with the tempo of a project, such as repetitions of a 1⁄4 note, 1⁄16 note, or bar. It can affect an incoming audio signal with an endlessly repeating pattern that applies change to volume, pan or filter frequency—based on the BPM of our session. We will set it to apply an effect that mimics what we would hear from a side-chain compressor reacting to a kick drum. The difference here is that the LFO tool will perform it in reaction to time, by applying a volume envelope to the audio signal on each beat. This way, we don’t require a solo kick drum track as a trigger.

A good starting point is the preset, ‘Sidechain-5’ (see Figure 9.13). The preset has a side-chain shape written into pattern ‘1’. At the beginning of each 1⁄4 note (determined by the rate at the bottom) the pattern loops, creating a quick drop followed by a slower rise back up to 100 percent. You can see the shape of this on the graph. In the LFO Routing section on the right, you can see that pattern 1 is being instructed to impose that shape on the volume of the signal, by an amount of 69 percent (set by the ‘vol’ slider).

Play around with the shape and depth of the envelope until you feel like it creates a rhythmic ‘ducking’ effect that sounds right for the track. The more you can alter the shape to feel ‘in-rhythm’, the more it will contribute to keeping the illusion of rhythm alive. If you’re unsure, stick with the preset shape. It only has to be a subtle dip in volume, just enough to pull the sound out of the spotlight. You can reduce the amount of effect it has on the volume by bringing the ‘vol’ slider closer to 0. Another great bonus of using a tempo-locked plugin like this is that it will follow tempo changes in your mashup.

Don’t forget to turn the LFO plugin off when you don’t need it, for instance in your breakdowns. Otherwise, the volume will jump all over the place when it’s not supposed to. Use automation to control the LFO tool’s Device On/Off setting and only activate it during sections where the main track’s kick drum is playing.

ADDED DRUM LOOPS

Sometimes, when combining two tracks for a mashup, you may find that there are certain 8-bar sections that lack a little energy, particularly during a breakdown that is a lot lower in energy than the main track, or during the build-up transition between breakdown and main track. You might also find that you need to create a point of difference between two breakdowns in one mashup that feel too similar.

Using added drum loops during breakdowns and build-up transitions are great for these situations. Using a simple loop with a neutral rhythm can add subtle energy lift to a section without affecting its key or emotion.

In both situations, ensure that you listen carefully to the tracks underneath and pick drum sounds that match the style of the track you are adding to. This will help them feel like they are part of the track instead of foreign elements.

First, let’s look at breakdowns. Many breaks taken from radio or classic dance tracks will be long ballad sections with little or no drums. This may be great when listening to the original song, but remember that in a mashup we need the energy level to come back up at least a little before we transition back to the main track, particularly if it is a big, powerful, high-energy one.

To help get us back to the peak energy, we can introduce one or more subtle drum loops during the break. The simplest rhythm is a drum hit on each beat of the bar. Be careful if your breakdown uses the complicated rhythms of breaks, drum and bass, or dubstep drums, because simple ‘4 on the floor’ rhythms can work against them. In terms of which drums are likely to work, try the following:

■ Kick: A simple kick drum helps add that thumping weight to the break, but will need to be silenced when the build-up begins. Experiment with volume and low-pass filtering. Too much kick presence makes the break feel like a main section, and confuses the listener. Listen to how kick is used in the breakdowns of tracks in your genre for guidance.

■ Claps: Whilst claps used to traditionally appear only on the 2 and 4 beat of each bar, a clap on each beat is pretty common with party-style tracks, and also became very popular during big-room music from around 2012–2015, so dance floors are used to hearing them. They can really assist the energy in a section by adding the atmosphere of a crowd, as well as providing a solid rhythm element for the ear to anchor onto. Pay attention to the track underneath when choosing between ‘real-sounding’ handclaps and overtly electronic claps.

■ Ride cymbal: A ride on each beat works wonders for providing intensity without affecting the rhythm or feeling of the track. It may need to be subtly faded out toward the end of the breakdown to leave some energy for the final drop.

■ Fuller drum loops with high-hats and percussion: This should be treated as a last resort. These really do help with energy, but they have the highest chance of sounding foreign. This will affect the feeling of the music a lot. Rather than adding your own sample, it’s safer to try and find hats or percussion by stealing a loop from one of the tracks, and treating it as you would a ‘hinting loop’.

If you plan on using more than one drum loop, pay very special attention to where you use each one. Every track is different, and you want to make sure you introduce feelings of intensity (ride), warmth and power (kick), and crowd-like momentum (clap) in an order that suits what is happening underneath. Also pay attention to any vocals in the breakdown; new drum elements can distract from a vocal coming in at the same time, but can be placed cleverly to increase the power of a vocal as it moves into the chorus.

Similarly, the build-up is a good place to use a drum loop if you find that the transition section doesn’t build up enough before the kick-in. Of course, as we have discussed, your first priority should be to make sure you have the necessary snare builds and build effects to help the transition work, as these are much more effective. However, if you still discover a need for more energy, try an added clap or ride loop. If the builds or track underneath fade or filter out toward the end of the breakdown, try to match the filtering using your own volume and filter automation on the drum loops. Listen carefully to make sure everything disappears at the same rate.

USING YOUR OWN INSTRUMENTS

For those readers who have experience writing and producing, there are a few instances where using your own instruments can be incredibly helpful, either to assist a transition or to add something to a section of the mashup.

When assisting a transition, an instrument can be used in the same way that a snare build, drum loop or white-noise effect would, helping to repair a drop in energy or support a weak build-up. These are a little trickier, as they not only need to be in the right key and rhythm, but they need to be instrument tones and melodies that fit with both tracks in the transition. The simplest instrument you can use is a ‘high-string’, named because this kind of melody line is traditionally performed with orchestral strings.

Using either a simple synth or an actual string patch, you can use a single high note bridging over the transition section, in the key of the mashup. This can help solidify the key of the mashup in the listener’s head, as well as providing something common that the ear can hang on to while the rest of the mashup transforms from one song to the next. Whilst this certainly isn’t something that you should need to use very often, it can be helpful during transitions where the key becomes hard to keep track of. In terms of specific synths to use for this, I often use a simple sawtooth patch from Lennar Digital’s Sylenth1, or for a simple orchestral string patch I look to ReFX’s Nexus 2 or Native Instruments’ Kontakt 5.

When working on a mashup that needs a little more emotion and power in its final ‘kick-in’ section, adding a subtle high-string can be helpful here too. This will work best if the main track element (drop section) is not too overcrowded or busy. The important thing here is that it must be subtle, or you’ll likely overcrowd the music.

The most rewarding situation to use this is when you have a main track that is big and tough, but not particularly emotional, and during the breakdown you transition to a very emotional track. When you come out of the break and back into the main track, rather than let all of the emotion drop away, you can keep a little of it going by putting a high-string note in the key of the track over the final beats section. High-strings help carry some emotion through into the final section and give new meaning to the main track.

PITCH EFFECTS

A handy Device that comes bundled with Live is Frequency Shifter. It’s a brilliant effect that can add a lot of excitement to a vocal loop that you have been playing towards the end of a breakdown. Often you either need that little bit of extra excitement as you filter your vocal up and out of the break, you need some help transitioning the vocal out of the spotlight, or you just need a special feature effect to make the second break more exciting than the first.

Though it can be used on anything, I find it works best on vocals.

To use it, place it in the Device Chain before the EQs. The setting you want to manipulate through automation is ‘Frequency’. Leave the other settings at their defaults. Making sure the value remains at 50 percent (or 0Hz) for the rest of the track, have the pitch automation rise slowly over your desired time, usually an 8-bar section. Be careful not to let it rise too high as it can start to sound a little ridiculous when pushed to its maximum pitch. Since pitching up like this is usually a way to finish off a vocal section like this, it is usually best to use it alongside volume or high-pass filtering automation to gradually remove it from the mix.

This is a very clever Device, and doesn’t present the delay time and CPU-load problems of a regular pitch-shifter, which would basically involve performing a constantly changing Warp calculation. Instead, as the frequencies move up, their relationship with each other falls apart, and the sound takes on a ‘ringing’, metallic sound that is great for transitioning it out when combined with high-pass filtering or fading. To hear this kind of effect in action, listen to the looping vocal in Armand Van Helden’s remix of Ou Est Le Swimming Pool—’Dance The Way I Feel’, as it frequency shifts during the breakdowns.

ARRANGING TEMPO CHANGES

So we’ve already discussed tempo changes in regards to how to import tracks that will require them. But how do we make them work in our arrangement? What extra techniques do we need to incorporate to ensure we perform a tempo change in a way that doesn’t empty the dance floor?

If you’ve ever tried abruptly shifting the tempo up or down during a set before, you may notice that it completely disorients the dance floor. Dance music is all about that steady, predictable beat. The brain can handle a certain amount of correction, but shattering the illusion of the music by messing with the audience’s expectation of the rhythm is the quickest way to get yourself in trouble. By a strange psychological effect, the weight this has when you hear it on headphones or in your studio is very small compared to the jarring feeling it creates in a nightclub. We can remedy this by being subtle and gradual in our tempo change, by giving the listener a rest from the beat, and using effects to mask the change.

First, let’s revisit what we talked about in the earlier chapter regarding breakdown tempos. We used the example of an R&B tune that usually sits at 90 BPM, and tried to push it closer to 100 BPM for the mashup. At this point you should make sure you have decided your intended tempo for the breakdown, as this affects the rest of the following steps. Don’t stress if you don’t get it right the first time—you may find that once you add in all your other techniques you can allow the tempo change to be a little greater.

As you approach the breakdown where you intend to make a tempo change, start slowing the song’s tempo very gradually. You only want to do this for around 1–4 bars. You don’t want the tempo to actually reach the breakdown speed by the time the break starts; instead, let it get to about halfway there.

At the point where the main track drops out, you need to make a choice about how to start the break. For tempo changes, there’s really two ways to do it. You can either continue straight into the new element, attempting to make the transition as smooth as possible, or you can use a safer technique, and include a 1–4 bar gap before you let the breakdown element start. Let’s look into the safer option first.

Leaving a gap before the new, slower element gives the listener a chance for their brain’s internal metronome to reset, and when the new element comes in at a slower speed, they are able to process it more easily, noticing the change much less. So long as you fill the gap with something, it will be ok. See Figure 9.14.

FIGURE 9.14
A Mashup That Slows Down for a Lower-Tempo Breakdown

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

Obviously you can’t just cut to dead silence for two bars or it’s going to sound like a mistake. It’s important to use some kind of effect at the beginning of the gap, as seen in the figure. Depending on the feel you want to go for, you can use a sample such as a white noise down-sweep or a boom. Alternatively, if you want to create the feeling of the main track dropping off into thin air, you may avoid the use of any impact sounds and simply have the main track automate to the long reverb send. I often use both of these ideas at once to create a big impact but still have the feel of the main track ‘hang over’ into the gap. Either way, you’ll want to have some audio spilling over before the breakdown track drops in. The duration of your reverb or effect sample may affect how long a gap you want to leave before bringing in your breakdown element. Above all, go back, play it right through to see how it sounds—and go with what feels good.

This is also a good moment to try a reverse reverb (explained previously) to announce the incoming breakdown element, particularly if it is an acapella or a very famous song riff.

If you have decided to use the gap option, you will not need as great a tempo slow-down in the lead up. You may find that you don’t need to gradually slow it at all, but just be careful. A subtle slow-down in the lead up tells the listener’s brain to expect a tempo reset, which makes the upcoming breakdown easier to process.

If however you decided that it’s absolutely crucial to have your main track flow directly into the breakdown element, that’s ok. One possible reason for this is that you are using a vocal or other element over the top that needs to continue without interruption. Another reason is if you are worried that the gap will ruin the momentum of the mashup.

If you need to keep your elements going, give the first four bars of your breakdown some space to settle into the new tempo by continuing the gradual tempo change we used in the main track. See Figure 9.15.

FIGURE 9.15
A Gradual Change in Tempo Prepares the Audience

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

It’s still important in this case to use samples and effects returns to help mask the tempo change, but be careful using booms and sub effects if your new break element contains low frequency information such as drums and bass-lines. Sending the main track to some reverb in the lead up to the break is fine too, just use your ears and maintain a good balance between using reverb to mask the tempo change and using little enough to avoid a total mess. A good white-noise down-sweep at the start of the break is a good way to smooth over the energy dip as all the elements of the main track disappear. Don’t forget to turn Warp off for all booms and noises, otherwise they’ll try to stretch as the tempo changes.

As we discussed earlier in the chapter, you can try to use those subtle loops taken from the main track element during the break to assist the continuity and make the speed difference less noticeable. Even though the loop will be playing back at a slower tempo, it will still help to keep the listener’s mind connected to the main element, and will make it easier for them to return to the main track at the end (if you are returning to the same song). Because Live has to stretch the beats out so far for this kind of time-stretch, any loop from your main track should have its Warp set to 1⁄16 Beat Interval during the break.

The best way to get back out of a down-tempo break and into your main track is to take advantage of the build section that pretty much all dance tracks have. Usually it’s an 8-bar section (occasionally 4, 12 or 16), and you can use this moment to bring the speed back up. During this section, try to keep the breakdown track running over the top in one of two ways.

The first option is letting it run as normally, continuing as it was. Musically, it should be a section that gives the breakdown a strong finish such as a chorus section. If the build-up is too messy, usually due to chord changes in one of the elements clashing against the other, pick the other option: take a short sample of breakdown audio from 1–4 beats in length to loop during the build. The best places to sample this are usually either a single beat right before the build begins, or the very first beat or bar in the build section. Choose primarily with the music in mind, what makes sense within the whole mashup, and secondarily with smoothness in mind, since you want the audio to loop nicely.

To make your choice of loop a musical one, try to use a section or phrase that fits key-wise with the section coming in. This can be difficult, but some experimenting should help you feel when some loops do fit over the build and some loops don’t. You might even find you have to pick a sample from the third or fifth bar rather than the first within an 8-bar section, depending on the chord progression in the break track.

Use the build section of the main track to decide how long the build section in your actual mashup will be. Before applying effects, automation or extra samples, first arrange the breakdown section/loop and main track to occur where you want them to. Click on the spot in the main track where the drums start playing again (the ‘drop’), and make a splice in the clip (CTRL+E Win, CMD+E Mac).

Remember that when you have spliced a clip into two, you can change the Warp settings on one clip and it won’t affect the other.

Though we have discussed it in the earlier chapter on Warping, let’s refresh on the setting required for this tempo-changing build section. Select the clip that represents the main track’s build, making sure Warp is enabled for the clip and that the markers are set up properly. Then, set the beat interval to 1⁄16. The slower tempo required near the beginning of the build will be too much for Live to stretch at 1⁄4 intervals, and the ear will noticeably detect drum or instrument hits in the wrong place; 1⁄16 ensures that it can catch all of them. Of course, once the mashup exits the break and returns to kick-in section, be sure to go back to whatever Warp setting (or Warp-off setting) you had. (Make sure you repeat this process if slowing down prior to the breakdown as well, temporarily changing your main track’s Warp resolution to 1⁄16.)

Next, set up the Song Tempo automation to get the mashup back up to the main tempo. Start the rise in automation as soon as the build begins, and have it reach the final tempo around two bars before the kick-in. It’s important to give the listener a couple of bars at full speed to re-acquaint their brain with ‘dance’ tempo before they’re required to actually dance (or fist-pump the air, depending on your crowd). This is super important! The audience is very sensitive about being hyped with 8–16 bars of anticipation, only to be deceived about when the beats will kick in. A tempo-changing mashup puts extra responsibility on you to ensure that the rhythm is very clear, or you will lose the illusion of rhythm. You might even have to make the beat more obvious by adding drum elements of your own.

Listen through the build closely. Make whatever changes to the slope of the tempo envelope you need to in order to make sure the change sounds as smooth as possible. Depending on what kind of drums, instruments or vocals are present during the rise, each build will require a slightly different approach. A straight line on the automation page doesn’t always feel like a steady acceleration to the listener.

As with a non-tempo-changing build, make sure you pull out the break track before any drop-out occurs in the main track, such as a 1–2 bar gap for a vocal shout, drum fill or hook melody. Just ensure you’ve reached full speed by the time this occurs, or the audience will lose the rhythm (Figure 9.16).

FIGURE 9.16
Accelerating Back up to Dance Tempo

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

Once you are happy with your tempo transition, then you can use any samples, effects Devices, automation, or filtering you think are necessary (remember not to use delays until after the tempo has returned to a static value).

If your breakdown contained a vocal (whether an acapella or as part of the breakdown element), often a great way to get back into the main track is to give the audience one more vocal hook to tie it all together before you kick back in with the main track. Keep in mind that though the vocal will play back at a tempo faster than normal, the brain is super excited for the beats to kick back in, and in this moment is more forgiving of speedy vocals so long as they are kept short (1–2 bars maximum).

Figure 9.17 shows an example that slows down into a break and speeds up into the drop again, using the techniques above. Notice the ‘Song Tempo’ automation down the bottom.

FIGURE 9.17
A Mashup with a Slow-Down Breakdown

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

TRANSITIONING BETWEEN 4/4 AND 6/8 TIME SIGNATURES

When performing transitions between triplet and 4/4 time records, you must be careful how they overlap. If you test the two competing elements together and they work without clashing rhythmically, that’s fantastic. Often though, they won’t, and the duplet and triplet subdivisions will hit off-time from each other, causing a clash in rhythm. Sometimes, due to sparsely placed snare hits at the beginning of the build, the triplet rhythm won’t become obvious until the last four bars, meaning you can make a gradual transition from one element to the other using volume and high-pass filter automation, and get away with little or no obvious rhythm clashes.

If there is still clashing however, the most successful way to make it work is to make the whole transition section either 4/4 or 6/8 time, rather than a mix of both. This means giving most or all of the volume and bass preference to one of the elements (most likely the breakdown element), and adding your own elements to help fill in any missing energy: snare builds and white-noise effects.

If you are moving from a 4/4 break into triplet time, you can usually get away with having the build-up remain in 4/4 time, but having it slam straight into triplets as it comes in with the beats. To help the transition, this means you generally need to use a reverse reverb made up of the main track’s audio to help prepare the ear for it sonically.

USING MULTIBAND COMPRESSION TO MAKE ROOM FOR VOCALS

Another thing I learned from a friend named Justin Blau, a.k.a. 3LAU, is a way to better fit vocals on top of drop sections. He once showed me a really simple and effective technique by using multiband compression side-chaining the high end of the instrumental using the vocal channel. So for any non-producers, whenever the vocal is playing the higher frequencies will be lowered and come back up whenever the vocal goes away. It helps because it allows more room for the vocal without compromising the low end (kick, sub etc).

(Pierce Fulton, DJ/Producer)

If you feel like trying a more advanced technique, this helper can provide a little bit of room for your vocals when working over a track that is a little too full in the mid-range. If you find that there is an instrument such as a big, honky synth or a treble-ish piano playing, it might mask the vocal and prevent you from understanding the lyrics. Turning the vocal up or the track down may sound too unbalanced, and as a result it’s necessary to pull out a little of the masking frequencies from the instrumental. The technique I showed you earlier on treating vocals—where you temporarily pull down an EQ band on the music behind the vocal—is perfectly fine for this, but if you are using an acapella, a multiband compressor can do this for you automatically. The multiband compressor only takes action when the acapella actually produces a signal. Therefore, it may be a good idea to try it if you have an acapella that plays so much of the time that it would be time-consuming to automate around.

As Pierce explains in the quote above, you can help give an acapella some space by setting up a multiband compressor over the instrumental. Set it to side-chain and select the vocal track as the key/trigger input. If you set it up to only affect a band of frequencies around the vocal, the instruments and mid/top-end information will duck out of the way to make way for the vocal, leaving the foundation elements of bass and kick to continue playing at full power. Compression is a very tricky beast, and I won’t go into teaching you how to use it in-depth because it generally isn’t needed in mashups, beyond what is covered in the book. I will however help you set a basic vocal–instrumental ducking compressor using Ableton’s Multiband Dynamics Device, available in Live Standard or Suite.

Drag the Device from the explorer into the Device Chain on the instrumental track. Place it before the EQs. The Device works by splitting the incoming signal into three frequency bands: low, medium and high. It then applies separate compression to each of them and sums them together at the output of the Device (Figure 9.18).

FIGURE 9.18
Live’s Multiband Dynamics Device

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

Begin by clicking the small power buttons next to the high and low bands, to bypass the top and bottom band. (Bypassing these bands will allow them to pass through unchanged.) Set the bottom crossover frequency to 600Hz and the top frequency to 5kHz. At the bottom-right, click the ‘A’ to show the ‘above’ settings, which allow you to set the volume threshold above which compression will begin. Set the dB value to –15dB (the threshold) and the ratio to 1:2. At the top-left of the Device, click the down arrow to show the side-chain section. Turn side-chain on, and set the track to the Audio Track the acapella is on. Turn the gain just under it down to the lowest setting (Figure 9.19).

Now, make a loop and play a section with the vocal and instrumental playing at once, where they seem to mask each other a lot. Slowly turn up that gain knob in the side-chain section until you hear it start to have an effect on the instrumental. You can also see when the compressor starts to kick in because of the orange numbers in the graph. These indicate how much the middle band is being attenuated in dB. Use your ears carefully and be very subtle. Remember that if a bunch of frequencies are sucked down to silence every time the vocal plays, it’s going to sound unnatural. Find a balance between vocal intelligibility and instrumental preservation. If you pull your whole instrumental back a touch, you might also find you don’t need quite as much side-chain effect. If you feel confident, feel free to play around with the compression ratios and crossover frequencies too.

FIGURE 9.19
Multiband Dynamics Set up for Side-Chain Compression on the Middle Band

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

GENERAL IDEAS ON WORKING EFFECTIVELY

Lastly, some very general things to keep in mind when working on mashups. These are simple principles that apply to any creative effort involving crafting music on the computer.

■ If you start to feel doubt about your mashup idea or how you have arranged it, take a 5-minute break, or work on a different mashup for a while and come back later. Once the memory of how the mashup currently sounds fades from your mind a little, you will be able to hear it fresh, making it feel like you are hearing it for the first time. This gives you clarity and helps you determine whether general ideas or specific moments actually work or not.

■ If you simply can’t make a mashup work, it might be a sign that it isn’t meant to be. If you need to employ ten of the strategies listed above just to make one transition work, the two elements probably don’t belong. Things should feel natural, and the less work you need to do to make it sound good, the more confident you can be in the original idea.

■ Err on the side of being more spacious, at least to begin with. People will react better to longer music that works than they will to fast-paced ideas that are confusing.

■ Check over every change you make by rewinding a couple of bars and listening through to see whether it had the desired effect. If you don’t listen to your changes in context, how can you know if they’re right?

IS IT FINISHED?

Once you believe you have achieved what you set out to do, it’s time to test it.

Grab a piece of paper and a pen. Rewind to the start of the mashup, hit play and step away from the computer. If you can, listen to it on your speakers, rather than headphones. Make sure you listen right from the start to the end. For this test, you need to change your mind-set. Instead of listening for creative ideas to add, you need to stop being the producer and become the audience.

So, imagine you are on a dance floor as you listen. Even close your eyes and visualise it. Feel the music and notice whether anything jumps out at you as too abrupt or confusing. Does anything pull you out of the moment? It is important to look away from the screen while you listen. Without a visual warning that new elements are about to come in, you are forced to use only your ears, and you will be able to hear things happen exactly as your future audience will. Believe it or not, this change in mind-set makes a big difference to how you hear things, and sometimes you realise you have missed the most obvious problems.

If you find changes you need to make, don’t stop the music, write them down and keep listening. Afterwards, change everything one at a time, then repeat the test.

If you are happy with it, check through once more, but listen on headphones. This time, all you’re listening for is clicks, glitches and pops that can occur while editing, usually where you have created splices in audio. It also helps you catch Warp settings that might not be 100 percent right. It’s important to do this check on headphones because these glitches are often hard to hear on speakers. Once you are sure the edits are clean, it’s time to export!

EXPORTING

So, after careful work and a focused listen from start to finish, you have decided you have finally finished your mashup. What now?

It’s time to export the mashup into a file you can take with you to your DJ sets, so that everyone else can hear how good it is.

Do the following (in order):

1. Make a selection on the Arrangement page to tell Live what you want exported. Remember that in your session, the mashup might not necessarily start right on 1.1.1, or end at the last audio clip. You don’t want an extra minute of silence sitting at the end of your file, or any leftover pieces of audio files you kept at the end of your timeline. More importantly, you don’t want to select the wrong sections and accidentally cut off the start or end of the track (yes, I’ve regrettably done this a few times). The easiest way to make sure you get what you want is to make a selection using the first and last piece of audio in the mashup. Zoom right out and click the very first piece of audio, which should be your intro. Then, holding shift, click your very last piece of audio, which should be your outro. Don’t worry about which tracks or clips happen to be included in that selection, Live will only be paying attention to the time selection (Figure 9.20).

2. Go to File and click Export Audio/Video. In the dialogue that opens up, make sure the following settings are selected. Most of them will be already set by default, but check anyway (Figure 9.21).

(a) Rendered Track: Master

(b) Render as loop: Off

(c) File Type: WAV

(d) Sample Rate: 44100

(e) Bit Depth: 16

(f) Dither Options: No Dither

(g) Convert to Mono: Off

Make sure you export to the folder your Live session is in. Live automatically directs you to the folder it last exported a file to, which usually happens to be the last mashup you worked on. So just be careful.

  Also make sure you name your file properly. Label all the necessary information in whatever order works for you, but stick to the same format with every mashup. Make sure you include the key. I would suggest something like ‘Title (Your name’s Mashup) KEY.wav’—for example:

  ‘The Greatest Mashup Ever (DJ Awesome Mashup) F#.wav’

  If you like to have ‘Mixed In Key’ information in the title, that’s fine too, just try to leave the musical key in there to make things easier for you later on when you come back looking for more mashup ideas.

  Also, if it’s important for you to have the artists’ names on the file title, put that in too, but keep in mind your file name will start to get pretty long, and get cut off on some file systems or DJ hardware.

  Note: In future versions, Live may include mp3 or other audio formats as options for exporting. If so, feel free to export in these types, so long as they are universal. It will remove the necessity for the following step.

3. Take your finished wav file and convert it to mp3, if that’s how you like to keep your DJ music. Of course, there is always an ongoing debate about the fidelity of using CD quality wav versus mp3s, but rather than influence you one way or the other, I’ll leave that decision to you (and I’ll stay out of the debate!). Just make sure the mp3s are 320kbps (kilobytes per second). Any lower than that will sound awful when played out. To convert to mp3, I would recommend a fast, batch-converting application. On Windows I use a very useful and free program called Flic Flac. If you leave the program on a 320kbps mp3 setting, you can simply select one or more wavs in your explorer and drop them onto the Flic Flac window, which then creates mp3 duplicates. There are many more out there though; even iTunes can be used for it, although it is not quite as quick and convenient, and leaves both versions hanging around in your iTunes library. After it is converted, you might want to include the various artists included in your mashup in the mp3’s artist tag properties, if you didn’t add them into the file name. For example: ‘DJ Legendary Guy vs 90s Classic Group’. Up to you, it’s a bit of extra effort but it makes searching for mashups easier when you can’t remember the name you gave it, which can be helpful at gigs. It’s also respectful to the original artists to keep a record of whose music you’re using, in case anybody asks about them after hearing the mashup.

4. Copy your mp3 to your ‘Finished Mashups’ folder. Remember when we set this up earlier? Leave a copy of the mp3 in the original session folder too—just as a backup.

5. Import the mp3 from the Finished Mashups folder, not the session folder, into your DJ music collection in Rekordbox, iTunes, Traktor or whatever you use. Remember, you’re now going to move the session folder into an ‘old’ folder to get it out of the way—since it’s finished. We don’t want your DJ music program to lose track of your new mashup. How you organise it into your sets from here is totally up to you!

FIGURE 9.20
Creating a Time Selection for Exporting

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton

FIGURE 9.21
The Export Window

Screenshot Appears Courtesy of Ableton