Start your library and make playlists!

Mixing 104

Where to start getting music?

Once you have software and a controller, you need to start getting music into your HD, laptop, or USB. Where you get your music can wildly vary for different people. Some subscribe to DJ record pools that may require monthly payments, or use the iTunes or Google online music stores. Other savvy individuals may use different methods of  acquiring free music. A popular method for those who want to speed this process is in befriending another established DJ and asking if you could copy their library music. This requires the use of HD's (hard drives) though, as you could be looking at 10,000 plus songs requiring a lot of space. 

Playlists, playlists......playlists

Once your library starts to build up begin sending the music into playlists. Listening to all the music you have and sending them into these lists individually is fine, but use the software options (such as filtering by bitrates, BPM, chord/key) to speed up this process dramatically. Depending on the type of DJ your are, the way you organize your music can differ as well. A regular club DJ will have lists for different top genres with sub lists showing remixes, and separate lists of the same genres with old school classics and top 40 (new popular music) in each. There is no one perfect way to organize your music and playlists but here are some ways DJ's do it.

• Separate their music by it's bitrate first. The most common format for music which is MP3, can come in low bitrates (128 or lower) which makes your music sound less clear, and the frequencies off. Your best quality sounding tracks should ideally be at 320 bitrate. 
• Organize their music is by genre, but make sure their playlists in each include sublists that identify the new releases, old classics, and whether or not it's an original mix or remix (very important in EDM mixing).
• Use coloring, labeling, commenting options to identify if the song is high, mid, or low energy. Even within the same genre songs can have different reactions from the crowd. They also add effects used in the labels or comments to remind themselves how they mix in or out.
• Separate lists should be made to separate your sampler MP3's such as short vocals, effect noises, BPM transition songs, and DJ plugs.

Prepare function and auto-mix playlist

The prepare function that your softwares provides helps you to cue up a list of selected songs that once played will go away from the list. This allows you to make short lists of songs that won't be separate playlists that bog you down in an already growing list of playlists. The auto-mix playlist is like any playlist in your software except that it will depending on your settings mix the music passively top to bottom. This feature though cannot replace real mixing and should ideally be used sparingly.