Great class, everyone! It was truly an honor having Thomas Golubić and Josh Marcy of The Arbiters in to explain the art and science of making beautiful mash-ups.
And wow, who woulda guessed that DJ Hapa and Mr. Choc of the World Famous Beat Junkies would stop by and see you all perform! Totally unexpected! Well now you have a story to tell - your first time DJing with Ableton was in a room with 3 of LA's best DJs. w00t!
More after the jump:
It was great to see most of you go up there and DJ. Keep working it and practice.
Ok, so, your next assignment is to work on a mashup of your own. I know after hearing Thomas and seeing his level of talent and musical genius that he draws from, it seems like a tall order. But, we still want you to give it a try.
Arbiter mashups are meant to stand on their own and are indeed complex and beautiful compositions. For DJing, however, you don't need to be a composer. I know Thomas mentioned simple 2-element mashups aren't interesting, but that depends on context. He's right, if we're talking about standalone songs. But in a live mix, 2-element mashups are great - they add variety, they delight crowds and put a creative twist on songs they've heard before. So keep that in mind. When you mash-up songs in a live mix, of course you usually don't let the songs play out for 3-4 minutes, but make transitions after a minute, 2 minutes, or even 30 seconds. So it's quite a different animal when you're being creative to move the crowd. My Twiistup mix is exclusively mashups for the first 22 minutes. Now, none of what I did was complex or as elegant as Arbiter material, but in a live mix, it made the hip-hop more exciting and kept the audience engaged.
So keep that in mind - you don't have to be like the Arbiters for this class. Start simple, then build up. It's very tough to go cross-genre, so maybe start with hip-hop mashups which are easier. As you get more comfortable, you can branch out - change a drum or bassline, chop up accapellas, etc.
Some things that can help you -
1. Mixed in Key - this program is great for figuring out mashup elements. It will BPM your songs and tell you what key it's in. It's not perfect and you still need to experiment, but it gets you there faster.
2. Listen to what's out there to help you. Some good repositories of mashups online are at Mash-Up Charts, Remix.vg, Mashuptown, and of course, the wonderful world of Bootie.
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