How house, techno, drum & bass, hip-hop and disco each want to be mixed; hard cuts, swapping drops, and acapellas.
Every genre has a mix length
- House and techno — long blends. Sixteen or thirty-two bars, drums under drums, the bass swapped on a phrase. The tracks are built for it: long intros, long outros.
- Drum & bass — double-drop culture. Short blends, drops lined up, and half-time / double-time tricks: a 174 BPM track over an 87 BPM one is the same grid.
- Hip-hop, R&B, pop — short intros, vocals from bar one. Quick cuts, word plays, and the acapella-over-instrumental trick below. Blending two vocals is a mistake.
- Disco and funk — live drummers, drifting tempos. Dynamic grids, nudging throughout, and mixes on the breaks where the drums are exposed.
- Open format — all of the above in one night, so the transitions from class 6 earn their keep.
TRACK FILTER on the player: My Tag from class 4, in the booth.
Hard cuts
The cleanest transition in a genre with short intros is no blend at all. Cue the new track on its first beat, and on the outgoing track's downbeat throw the crossfader — or pull one fader and push the other. Land on the 1 and nobody minds. Land on the 2 and everybody does. An echo on the outgoing channel the beat before hides a lot.
Swapping drops
- Hot cue both drops in rekordbox (class 2).
- Beatmatch the incoming track and hold it at its drop's hot cue.
- Count the outgoing track's build: eight bars before the drop, four, two.
- On the downbeat of the drop, hit the hot cue and swap the faders in one move. Two drops, one downbeat.
Acapellas
- Match key first, then BPM. A vocal a semitone off is worse than one slightly fast.
- Big tempo changes on a vocal need MASTER TEMPO on and less than ±8%, or the words warble.
- Layer it over an instrumental or a long drum section, with the instrumental's own vocal out of the way — never over another singer.
- Set a hot cue on the first word and trigger it on a phrase.
BPM and key on the browse screen — enough to pick the next track without the laptop.
Do this now
Build three ten-track playlists in three different genres and mix each the way the genre wants. Note the mix length that worked for each.