Filing this one under “DJ Techniques” 🙂 …
As I am becoming more and more comfortable with my new Xone:3D hardware, I am learning a variety of fun tricks.
The hallmark of a great DJ is the ability to take a track and make it his (or hers). A technique that really piqued my interest, at a recent rave (EDC), is the layering of the same track twice, offset by a few beats or bars.
John “00” Flemming completely blew me away with a set at EDC 2007 using this technique. He was playing some great psyc-trance rhythms with delicious dirty bass, and using the multi-track technique to tease on each drop. I have been recently experimenting with similar techniques.
Here is a recording of this type of technique that I made using Ableton Live and my Xone:3D. The first dramatic drop is done by duplicating the track, offset, applying a High Pass Filter (HPF) to the currently playing track, along with a “ping-pong” Ableton filter, and then sliding in the 2nd track when the bass drops. The result is a climax which leaves behind some mids and highs which are then manipulated as the track progresses. Later in this example, the two tracks are faded in and out, which is another funky effect.
The sloshing highs through the middle of this example, before the track fading, is not part of the source track and is done using only the HPF on the remainder of the HPF+ping-pong effect.
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