I usually quick mix at the peak of the night. I let songs play for a lengthier amount of time during the start of the dance and then quick mix more and more later into the night
You are absolutely correct I went to 2 weddings this weekend as a videographer, where the crowd had the right energy and was super excited to dance. But both djs played full songs and literally seen the crowd get bored, now they are just waiting for the party to end
Nick is so good at what he does, his mixing skills are out of control. Only DJs really appreciate how hard he goes on his sets because we know how difficult it is.
I have a general rule I typically like to mix in key & I typically do 1 chorus & 1 verse,most people don’t mind quick mixing if your transitions are smooth & clean
Phrasing is essential. Leaving one song at high energy while simultaneously bringing in the next at equal high energy is a recipe for a full dance floor. That's definitely where knowing your music comes in.
Full length and quick mixing are both situational to me. I’ve seen positive and negative responses from both styles - people that get annoyed when I mix a song out after first verse & chorus / people that get bored with the long mix. However, bored crowds still 2 step in the end rather than give me the evils and walk off to the bar 😅. I’m still learning but from my experience these have been my observations so far.
For me it’s mostly genre specific. If I’m playing music that’s verse chorus verse chorus, then I typically like to quick mix. Like if I’m playing Hip Hop for example. If there aren’t significant changes coming in the song, then letting it play out can definitely get boring. However, as a wedding DJ, you can’t blame the crowd for getting mad that you’re mixing out of songs too quick. You have to realize that the crowd is not there to hear you mix. It’s not your show. They don’t know who you are and probably couldn’t care less. So if they give you crap for quick mixing, then try to let the songs breathe a little more. Find a happy medium where you’re giving them enough of each song, without giving too much to where it gets boring.
He didn’t say the crowd gives him crap. He gets it. He understands the formula. He’s saying that djs that take his advice and do it wrong get the bad reaction from the crowd
I agree, is about finding a balance of where you play the 1st couplet and where you also play the 2nd one. Quick mixing or not. Building up the energy could also be even more important.
As someone who hasn’t even dj their first gig I’m so grateful to have found your page! I All about preparation and you have all the tips and tricks I’ve been curious about! Amazing content brother!
Creating a playlist definitely helps you mix faster rather than looking for songs. Also save the songs that worked at the last gig in your history into one playlist 💪🏽😁
Are there any pitfalls to preparing an entire set list for a gig? I’ve heard other DJs advise against it… but I kinda like the idea of having an entire playlist prepared in advance…
I've been a fan a fan of quick mixing for a while I've been a DJ for a long time since the mid-80s we always let the songs play out when I've been doing weddings I got into the quick mixing to keep that crowd going plus when you figure out after the after dinner and they're sauced up a bit they're ready to go this goes over real easy
Another huge mistake is DJ not practicing the transitions they want to do before the weddings. It helps to set up Key CUE points ( Nick has done video's on this) so your ready to quick mix into chorus, break downs, and 3rd verse that fire like Nick explained in Bottoms up. I start out every wedding with an edit/mashup so audience knows this these type of blends are coming thought the night. Great video NICK.
Very helpful points. Also don't forget to just feel the crowd. If they are dancing hard to the song, that's a sign that quick mixing might be a liability in that moment.
I do 2 verses and 2 chorus for most songs. The rest are situational. It works beautifully! Some songs you have to let run and some songs people only like the chorus. As long as your playing the best parts of the song you’re typically good. IME.
I do the same thing. If a song is playing like 2 to 2 and a half minutes...I'm normally transitioning to the next song. Unless it's a banger like "Back That Ass Up" that I don't need to cut
Curious what type of gigs you use this for? The attention spans I see most often for club gigs these days (which are inherently younger crowds) is 1 verse, 1 chorus max on most songs. Even starting to see it more in wedding and other non club gig crowds also.
@@Miguelrockwell I do more weddings than anything, but I also use this method in bars, at corporate gigs, and several other event types. I’m not doing clubs currently. I did those back in the mid 2000’s, so I’m sure things have changed a lot since then. It seems to satisfy their want to sing a long with the songs without boring them by playing the whole song.
I quick mix at every party every crowd type and they all love it. The absolute main mistake/problem/issue djs have with “quick mixing” is they don’t understand the 8 bar rule. They don’t even know the 8 bar rule exists.
Yes i'm agree, in France it's the same, sometime it's good to quick mix or sometime it's no appropriate, it's a analyse work about the crowds and what you are going to play for the gig/event, overall it's a lot of work to quick mix with a lot of bpm/style and technical variation, it's a work to find a good balance i think
Spot on! Honorable mention, quick mixing between genres. Imo gotta play atleast 3 songs between in a genre before going to a different genre. Still quick mix but if you switch genres to quick, you’ll get the u-turn of guests wanting to dance to that mixed out genre. Obviously if a genre is dead bounce.
This is gold! I would add: knowing when the crowd is done with a song. Some songs run out of gas at almost every party- Most of my crowds are always done with Mr Brightside after the second chorus. Made note of that and and now I mix out right after
Love this Nick thank you, I think a lot of DJ's don't realize quick mixing is a tool, just like your controller, software, STEMS, even the sync button. All of it is a tool that as the professional we have to know when to use. I did a wedding in May and had the dance floor packed doing some quick mixing and some long mixing and the groom came up and said "I don't think everyone is dancing because you are mixing to fast, just play the whole song". At this point I was mixing around the 2:30-3:00 minute mark of the songs because I knew this about the groom. So I started mixing end to end.....dancefloor died to the point where the bride kept asking if I could go back to her playlist when I was only playing from her playlist. Long story short it was a quick mix crowd but the groom wasn't hearing that and wanted the entire songs played from their playlist. 😵💫
Hey just wanted to pop in here and say thanks. I've been watching your videos for a couple of months preparing for a friends wedding. I'm about to do my third wedding, and I decided I want to go full time because it is fun. Because of your channel I feel very confident about my decision. So Thank you
Varying tempo is really the way to go with an open format crowd. If your playing techno. It’s different. But top 40 are people that want to dance to what they know and music with words
This is gold in video form. DJs play for years to learn this, and now kids get it free on the RU-vid. I only have 1 or 2 every other year that are "tough" crowds. My dad who's been a DJ since 1978 says there's no such thing as a bad crowd. The question is just, "what is going to get them up?" Yes we love a great crowd. I've seen a great crowd with a bad DJ, and they're having fun. So why quick mix? Why hire a good, expensive, and experienced DJ? Because you take that great crowd, and turn them into the best most wild insane crowd and melt their faces off! That's why.
Attention spans have changed so quick mixing helps keep you in the pocket, i do combinations between long and short mixing depending on songs as some expected parts maybe near the end of tracks.
The club crowd now has ADD/ADHD so quick mix is needed to keep attention and controlling the energy. Also totally agree with the BPM variation to create waves of energy so it doesn’t become melodic.
Yo I have been getting way better at quick mixing. People love It. I think for me it’s more a fear of messing up. I think the hard part too is running out of music especially if the couple or host has a specific type of style of music.
Overall sound advice, but like others mentioned, it is situational. When you're at a club, if you're constantly barraging the crowd with quick hits and a short edits, with no breaks in between, they actually get tired faster. Then everybody leaves en mass. Also, the club misses great opportunities to sell drinks, which funds almost everything in the club. So you have to pick and choose your spots to have brakes where you know people would get off the floor but maintain the rhythm for others. That way you have a natural flow coming in and out. With techno, tech House, soul House, etc, long plays allow people to get into the mood. EDM, guaracha, top 40, etc, are good for quick hits because you keep the energy up. But overall good tips
use loops when you quick mix is also a trick of mine when im not to shure of the phrasing. I loop the intro of the next song, let it play, loop a part of the out going song, then release the incoming track. and start cutting the outgoing loop on the beat and then fade it out.
Us old skool rave DJ are the quick mix masters! Typically we only used to be given a 45 to a 60 minute set so we had to use this technique to cram in a many songs as possible. You need to use the teaser mix first before your quick mix.
I quick mix almost all the time with no issues (maybe not quite as quick as Nick as sometimes thats TOO quick:), the only exception is where people are going mad for a song. I even recently had someone ask for Robin S at my last gig and they said 'and play it all please'. :) so i did.
Love this channel! Learning so many great tips. I DJ as a hobby because I love it. I am working hard to incorporate quick mixing and your guidance has been a huge help! Keep it up!
Thanks for this… I’m definitely gonna start practicing this… Do you think the quality of modern music has anything to do with why people’s attention spans are so small? As a 45 year old, I think most new songs are boring… so I can see why people just want to get to the next hype section of the next song
Shorter attention spans mainly. In the past we were trained to wait for things. Now with high speed internet everything is available immediately. If it's boring users are used to skip with ease. And that dopamine hit of "ooooh I recognise the track" is addictive. People don't watch lineair TV or actively listen to radio anymore. They're used to choosing themselves. As a DJ you provide people music without them being able to change the song themselves. So essentially you need to provide that dopamine hit faster than in the past.
@@IanDeVos- I think that people (regardless of age) will generally listen to older songs from start to finish because… older songs are complete songs. The fact that DJs are asked to “cut to the juice” of newer songs shows that newer songs are lacking. If newer songs were completely interesting from start to finish… would anyone want to cut them off?
@@jetdeleon perhaps but newer pop songs are already shorter on their own. And I do cut off older music as well. Some special tracks are changing enough throughout, but do we really need three times the same chorus? Plus: not everybody likes the same music, so a classic to you might turn me off. So if you insist to let it play, I might get bored/irritated. I don't really like to listen to older music than what I knew as a kid/teen. I'm younger than you, so I'm not going to enjoy that 80's stuff. I'm a 90's kid. Give me the 90's euro dance or late 90's - early 00's trance etc to get me going. And I also was into gabber hardcore back then. But I other than one or two hardcore classics I don't think I'd get away with playing longer stretches of hard dance without clearing the floor. Same with metal or any other specific genre that not many people know. Same with trance: Push - Universal Nation. Absolute trance classic. Gets played every time you'd visit a retro/90's party over here. With a huge "whooooo!" reaction every time. My wife doesn't like it, playing the full 10 minutes would bore her to death. Just like with others not into trance. But to trance people, it's one of the biggest classics ever. It's a tale as old as time that older people say new music sucks while older music was good. Kids growing up with current music will say the same thing when they are our age. Especially on occasions where multiple generations and walks of life come together it's not hard to see why you'd want to keep things moving. Even the number one classics are "meh" to others who would want to cut it short.
@@IanDeVos - it’s so subjective that it seems like a dilemma that will never be fully solved… at least not in perpetuity… One of my mentors explained his strategy which apparently works well for him as a wedding DJ… Because there’s such a broad range of backgrounds (hence various types of dancers) at a wedding, it’s important that the wedding DJ knows how to appeal to each of them… According to my mentor, the best way to keep wedding guests from getting bored is to learn how to rotate the various types of dancers in attendance… And the best way to do that is through what he calls “The Rule of Three”…. Which states that you never play more than three songs of the same genre consecutively… So… 3 songs at a time of each generalized genre: 3 hip hop songs, then 3 EDM songs, then 3 rock songs, etc… When you play 3 songs consecutively of the same genre, the fans of that genre will get to dance for approximately 10-15 minutes… which is just long enough to feel like they got a chance to have some fun, but not so long that they get bored with it while the other dancers feel left out and start to think about leaving… Once that set of dancers have danced to their genre for 10-15 minutes… you would start the next genre for a new set of dancers… This way, people are less inclined to think that it’s just going to be one or two types of music all night… they’ll know that they’ll have their turn… It’s worth mentioning that the underlying principle of “The Rule of Three” is not so much that it must be exactly 3 songs…. It’s more about the time duration… So if you can quick mix 7 songs into a 10-15 minute duration… you’ll have given one set of dancers enough time to have some fun, before moving on and rotating to the next set of dancers for their 10-15 min genre set… Does that make sense? And what do you think?
Honestly quick mixing is the way to go nowadays to keep the energy of the crowd,,, unfortunately ppl in this time and generation gets very bored fast and easily. I tell ppl that all the time… but as long as you follow up with another banger, the 4 ppl that want the whole song played will forget quickly and sing the new song you just threw on.
I agree 10000000% with all of this. Poor phrasing is my number one issue with most djs and the most difficult to explain why it isn't good to them. Learning a little bit of basic music theory as a dj is so important. I also dislike when two songs don't match in key or at least within a 5th of each other and a dj will slowly mix for 16 bars so they clash for like 30 seconds.
I am a nightclub dj but you think exactly the same as me. Although I hadn’t articulated it I do mix songs that are vocal forward or melody forward differently and when you said about skipping to Nicki on bottoms up I laughed cause I do the same thing. I have been to 2 weddings in the last few weeks and both had boring djs who didn’t quick mix and as someone who sometime only plays a chorus it was hard to not have my critics head on and know in 2023 when everyone is frying their brains on TikTok etc. you have to be fast and reactive. I also do the clockwise method of bpm riding. 😂 If you are any kind of dj listen to Nick he is right about this.
It doesn't work every time... That being said, when the dance floor starts I use the first minutes to understand what the crowd wants. If they don't react to known song intros and if I feel they get bored easily, I transition to quick mixing whenever possible. If they want to "listen" music while they're dancing, I do longer mixes. I believe in my country there is a tendency to the younger the crowd is, the most often I need to quick mix. Older people (Gen-Y and above) are used to listen and dance to full songs... That's just my experience DJing weddings for the last 15 years.
i saw apollo quick mix in the late 90s and thought it was a style best suited for the club. he would sometimes get on the mic after a quick transition and say "as we keep it movin." i imagine apollo learned it from club and radio jocks like cameron paul who were famous for their early 80s mega-mixes. nowadays cats like four color zack have taken quick mixing to another creative level. it's a method i've always preferred and aim to apply regardless of the setting. it does take tight organization and experience to fire off song after song. that said, it is also good idea to let a few songs in your set "breathe", especially those with a deep groove
I don't usually comment on videos but just wanted to say this is a great video. I agreed with everything you said. Keep doing your thing bro your helping a hell of alot of us working djs 👍🏻👏
Spend most of my time analysing the reaction to each song and finding the perfect next song than putting my head down and mixing so my decision to cut a long mix short will depend on the floor's reaction.
Great tips, love your videos and your IG mixes! I would add, though it goes without saying, looping key phrases while mixing out always gets the energy ratcheting up to max.
Always create great advice Nick. I never quick mixed until I started watching your videos, getting better. Been a Dj for years (vinyl) now controller but I like what you said about short edits...I got a great line to use in my printed promos when you said they want to get "lost in the music", love that. Keep up the great work...
If Its a hit song or the crowd is interested into the music, I tend not to mix out until the second chorus or do some stems play on the bridge with an intro track. I think there is a balance with letting the music do its job and know when you're doing too much on the decks.
The biggest. Mistake that I hear, when I’m a rare guest…it’s the “recognizable parts” that kill the mix. And freaking tic -tok is real. I hate that damn app. The song we brought back was “Ms. New Booty”. We forgot about it and boom, dropped one wedding, it was over! 👍🏽😎
I might use one or two short edits a night with mixing intro over outro. It works well as long as you dont do it too much. Just gives a different type of transition as well.
In my opinion there are two types of people: the ones that like dancing and the ones that like drinking and then drunk dancing. The first is there two dance and enjoy anything you throw at them. The second… well, I won’t talk about that group 😂
This is good stuff, I think its great if you can find a happy medium on this, way to many club dj's switchin the song every 7 seconds and just trying way to hard...let it breathe a bit peeps...lol
I quick mix. Its fun. Even easier with stems noe. But it is EXTREMELY time consuming to get it right. Although, you do more than quick mixing. Your groove is your creativity. And that takes even more time! So I would say it's more about the creative transition vs how long or short you played the song.
I just want to add a more professional word (quick mix), when I book events I offer “Medley style” = partial songs or “Regular style“ = full songs. Let’s try use this lingo. What do you think Nick?
What DJs today are calling quick mix was actually the standard way I learned to DJ my high school and college sets starting out. The artistry of it all is familiarizing yourself enough with songs that are considered anthems and not mixing out of the popular songs too fast totally killing the energy.
Close the Laptop and feel the music ... mix by mix .. work on 8 bmp shifts .. thats what we had back in the day ... how do you get from 80 to 120 in 6 songs ... you have to have that arsenal in your pocket. a well designed quick mix .. that can take from dead to alive quickly .. but it cant be something that you just tried to do on the fly for the first time. you have to have some go to flips. my opinion
I agree with ALL but 1 thing. Paradise By the Dashboard Light has never been played and or requested at any event that I've played or been.....wondering if that's an East Coast thing.
I agree with 90% of everything you're saying. However in one situation where you stay with a beat per minute for too long. Are we Talkin 2 songs 3 songs? I will stay from 98 to 105 sometimes five or six songs because I'm spinning at a skating rink and they're shuffling and they want the same beat. But I will change the beat with something tropical or something hip hop,some different sounding beats. Even though it's in between 90 and 105.🎉😊Good stuff.
Yes I quick mix Here’s my two cents on your mentioned 6 mistakes 1- pay attention and read the crowd to dictate mixing next track for quick mixing 2-phrasing- learn the music. Read the crowd. Don’t mix on off-beats, it sounds horrible. Do mic work 3-if you’re in the mix with just beats, great time to do mic work. Or just do slams. Slams can be just as effective as mixing 4-BPM range for me, 12 minutes is my sweet spot for most genres while still paying attention to the crowd. To me it’s more about genres rather than BPM. 5-just comes with experience. Mic work helps lead them too. Know when to mix, know when to slam. 6-agree. Keep learning the music
I'm primerily a house dj. But it depends on how I feel to determine what I play. I quick mix and long mix, but I try to let a track not go over 5 minutes. That track has to be interesting to keep it that long....
