THE MAIN TRACK

This is the part that contains the big drum sections and intro/outro. It makes up the loudest and most hard-hitting part, or ‘dance’ part of the mashup. In other words, it’s where the beats come in (more recently referred to as the ‘drop’).

In most mashups I’ve either made or come across, this is the element where DJs choose to go looking for a brand new track. Therefore, the audience is often being exposed to it for the first time, while the other parts are there to give them some familiarity. Here’s an example; you are putting together a mashup for a commercial venue, and you’ve just purchased a great new big-room track you’d love to play. However, the track is unknown to the audience, and it’s a little too high-energy for the venue. In order to make it work, you give the audience a breakdown using a current radio track to get them comfortable, before transitioning to 30–45 seconds of the main track. This way you’re able to give them something familiar to relate to, before using a smooth transition to ease them into the energy of the new track. In this example, the function of the mashup is to prime the audience for something new and fresh by tempering it with something they already know. But this doesn’t always need to be the case.

Some older ‘main tracks’ are too good to just throw away and stop playing. This is particularly true if it is a track you have produced, in which case the audience is expecting to hear it anyway. Therefore, it’s a good idea to use mashups to revitalise those songs you want to continue to play, so that they don’t become boring.

Wherever you source your music from, it’s important to get it at a decent audio quality—at least 16 bit wave files (.wav extension, CD quality) or a 320kbps (kilobyte per second) mp3. Often, you can only find acapellas in a less than adequate quality, but the main track is very important to get at good quality because it is sonically dense and will be playing on its own at some point. For newer tracks this is no problem, but finding older music at a high-quality bitrate is often difficult.

The way you source your main tracks—or your dance music collection—is really down to what kind of DJ you are. If you’re starting out, the most popular place to get new dance music tracks (at the time of writing) is Beatport.com. They have the largest range of dance music, and in addition to being a portal for purchasing the music itself, their top-100 structure makes it easy to see what DJs are buying within any given genre. Therefore, it is also a useful place to preview the music and get a sense for what DJs are playing (or at least buying) globally. Again, where you source your music from is highly personal, and there are a lot of DJs and fans who heavily discourage the idea of just playing what’s at the top of the Beatport charts in order to keep dance music from becoming generic and commercialised. So rather than get into that debate, I’ll leave you to decide whether or not Beatport is right for you in terms of discovering your music.

Online music blogs are also a good source for discovering the music you want to use. If you find a few blogs that post music you associate with in your sets, it helps you find the music you don’t necessarily find at the top of the lists on Beatport, as well as letting you know what is coming up over the next few months. Some music is even given away for free in return for social media follows or likes.

Record labels also do their own promotional send-outs, so it’s worth trying to get on their list if they produce a certain sound that resonates with your set. Labels like to see that you are somebody worth sending out their music to for free, so it’s a good idea to have some of your best sets up on Soundcloud, or some proof that you have a following before you contact them. If you don’t have much to show them yet—mashups may be your key to getting there.

For older music, you can rely on more traditional music distributors. Just be wary though that places such as iTunes generally use heavy file compression on their audio files, and you shouldn’t purchase them here unless the music is available in Apple Lossless (which is CD quality audio). When looking for old music, often your only option is to purchase the physical CD or vinyl on eBay or Amazon. It’s still worth checking Beatport or other dance music distributors to see whether the music has been re-released for the digital era.

BREAKDOWN TRACKS, CLASSICS AND NON-DANCE SONGS

This is where you get creative. In between sections with big drums, you can choose not to use the main track at all. You can choose to drop to a song in a completely different genre, or even speed, as long as you’re able to transition in a way that still makes sense. You could choose anything from the breakdown of a new or recent club track, to a classic house or trance breakdown, an old rock song, a pop track, or an R&B favourite.

What you choose to use as your breakdown track is very dependent on the ‘sound’ you want to create for yourself, and your knowledge of the crowd. This is the component that allows you as a DJ to take an audience wherever you want to. You can sidestep them into the world of radio music, back in time to a classic track or even into their favourite movie motifs.

If you need some inspiration, listen to a few sets from your favourite DJs. Genre and era are no barrier, so long as you can find other elements to successfully pair it with for any given mashup. In fact, some might say that the act of choosing a breakdown element is the most creative part of mashups, because unlike current club music, there are no charts to tell you what to use (with the exception of pop music). It all comes down to your experiences, your musical history, and your interpretation of what a venue or crowd might relate to. When thinking ahead for a specific show, think about the age of the patrons, the other acts they’ve had there, or whether the club is known for a particular sound. Similar to DJing in general, try to manage their expectations by balancing your breakdown choices between what is ‘safe’ and what is surprising.

VOCALS

When dealing with a vocal, DJs commonly use the term acapella. Traditionally, the word acapella (from the Italian ‘a cappella’, meaning ‘in the manner of the chapel’) means a piece that is performed only by voices, such as a choir without instrumental accompaniment. In the world of DJing and production, an acapella refers to an audio file with nothing but a song’s vocal performance on it. The internet is swarming with them. As discussed earlier, house music has known a long history of records being intentionally released with an acapella version. DJs now have access to an incredible range of vocal-only versions, and therefore an incredible potential for great mashups. Record labels such as Defected, understanding the value of these little gems, actually releases regular compilations of acapellas taken from their biggest songs.

It doesn’t just stop at dance music. Acapellas exist for songs of all styles. Often when music is being mixed down, vocals are exported separately in preparation for producers to use in remixes. Officially released acapellas have become less popular in modern times, so often you won’t be able to find them for new songs. However, there are still some tricks you can use to incorporate their vocals and exclude much, if not all, of their other elements. We’ll get into that later, once you are introduced to Live. In the meantime, a simple Google search for acapellas will bring up plenty of sources; my favourite for older tracks is www.acapellas4u.co.uk, which includes thousands of dance and pop/R&B vocals. When looking for newer vocals, a web search for the term ‘acapella’ and the name of the song should let you know if one exists pretty quickly.

Vocals are one of the most valuable tools in mashups. As a single sound rather than a whole track, they are far more flexible. It is much easier to blend an acapella with a full track than to try to blend two full tracks together. They are also far more usable because the human ear is a lot more forgiving on imperfections in the voice than it is on other sounds. By their very nature, vocals demand attention. For people who are only just getting into clubbing, vocals supply something lyrical to listen to, something they are used to from listening to radio and personal music collections.

MUSICAL RIFFS/SECTIONS

A rarer element in mashups, these musical riffs can provide big moments. If done well, they can be used over full tracks or break sections. Similar to an acapella, they are a section of audio that contains nothing but a single musical riff. Sometimes these are sampled from records that drop to a famous lead sound, or sometimes you can recreate them yourself. Often all you need is eight seconds of a solo instrument at the start of a song and you can sample it (borrow some audio from a track and save to a new file). Then you are in business.

Some classic examples commonly used by DJs are the iconic synth riff from Da Hool—’Meet Her At The Love Parade’, the synth strings from Tiesto’s version of ‘Adagio For Strings’ or the charismatic sawtooth melody from Pendulum’s ‘The Island’.

Musical riff samples can even be loops from classic rock/pop songs, such as the bass-line that appears on its own at the start of ‘Seven Nation Army’ by The White Stripes, the piano from Coldplay’s ‘Clocks’, or the famous string melody that opens ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ by The Verve. Having access to a single element like this makes it far more versatile; it can be used almost like a remix element, allowing you to chop and edit it how you want without other instruments from the song causing problems. Truly effective mashups can be made when you allow a song to play as-normal for a breakdown or main track element, but also sample a single riff from the song and use it throughout the mashup to help the whole piece blend together.

ADDED DRUMS AND EFFECTS

When combining two or more pieces of music together, you don’t always have everything you need. Sometimes, no matter how well you edit and arrange your pieces, there will be dips in energy, small sections that don’t join properly, or a need for a specific sound effect to help let the audience know what is coming next. In this case it is necessary to add your own sounds in order to create a feeling of continuity, and to replace sounds that have been lost as a result of your edits. In a best-case scenario, you can steal little loops or individual sounds from one of your elements, to keep the sonic flavour of the music in keeping with the rest of the mashup. These sounds can include a boom or crash that appears on its own at the end of a track, a section of the intro or outro utilised as an added drum loop, or even a single drum hit like a kick or snare, provided they appear on their own.

Other times, it is impossible to sample the part you want, and you need to have your own sounds ready to help you fill the gaps. It’s important to have a library of samples available to you that can fit any situation. Vengeance Samples are a popular yet genre-varied source for sounds such as drum loops, individual drum hits, sweeping sounds (upsweeps and downsweeps), sirens and risers, drum-rolls, impact sounds and more. There are many websites out there that sell sounds for producers though, you simply browse what you want, purchase sample packs and download them. There is also a collection of sounds available from the companion website for you to use (‘makegreatmusicmashups.com’).

Later, you’ll learn more about what each of these elements brings to the party, and about how each of them must be treated differently while you work with them in Ableton Live. It’s also crucial to correctly label and organise everything you use so that it’s easy to find the next time you want to use it in a mashup. We’ll discuss a watertight system of file organisation later on. But first, let’s look at how to choose the right mix of elements for your mashup.