Whenever anyone wants me to teach them to mix, I tell them to go away and come back with a 2x45min ‘pause-button mix’.
That is, whether they actually use a tape deck and a C90 cassette (doubtful) or do it digitally is irrelevant … they’re not allowed to blend or EQ tracks together but have to know their music and know when the energy and sonic/tonal qualities of a track will follow the previous one well enough and the mix point mean the change doesn’t jar.
If they can’t make a pause-button mix that works, no amount of beatmatching, EQing or FX knob twiddling will prevent them clearing the floor; no amount of technical ability will save a shit set, no matter how hard you try to impress people with music that doesn’t belong together at all, never mind in that particular order — “a load of bangers I like with no thought given to whether they belong together” does not a set make.
And the restriction that it must be 2x45 mins means that they have to think about things in terms of ‘movements’ … like a classical composer; each half of the 90min set should work in its own right, stand on its own two feet: three or four slower/lower-energy tracks, three or four faster/higher-energy tracks, three or four faster/higher-energy still …
Click … turn the tape over.
Right, let’s have a bit of movement and put in a couple of tracks at the start of the next 45mins with lower-energy than we just finished on … and off we go again.
It obliges them to learn to structure a set without realising that’s what they’re doing.
It also lets me know how serious they are about it — if they won’t wax on/wax off but want to learn a one-inch punch right from the outset then they’ll likely not have the patience to learn how to do it properly and it’ll be a waste of my time that could be spent teaching someone who wants to learn how to do it right.
The technical skills can come later … and I’ll teach them those when (if) I think they’re ready … but, first, I want to know that they understand a dancefloor and how it moves and responds during a set … how to take people on a journey.
When they can do a pause-button mix that makes me think they have what it takes, I‘ll teach them how to do it the artistic way with decks and a mixer.
