April 26th – During the prototype stage of this project, I allowed myself plenty of time to plan and experiment with lots of different material spanning multiple genres. This was an important consideration as to create these “hybrid” tracks I would need to ensure I had a variety of suitable sonic material at my disposal. I made sure to focus on harmonic mixing as this would prove particularly important when layering different pieces together allowing both to work in harmony.
April 30th to May 7th – Through exploring mixing different genres, I found that many resulted in quite boring performances and limited opportunities for layering. I finally decided on building my performance around mixing Techno styled tracks as I found the genre allowed for easy layering and longer transitions. Therefore, I used tracks by other artists rather than my own original ones as this isn’t a genre that I produce myself and these tracks allowed me to best demonstrate my ideas. I carefully studied each track in Rekordbox (Pioneer DJ’s music management and performance software) adding hot cue points to sections I wanted to loop or for reference of when to transition to the next track. These cue points were also assigned to pads on my controller allowing them to easily be triggered when performing.
May 11th to May 18th – I wanted to keep my performance engaging for viewers which would mean introducing new elements often. One of the main issues I encountered in the early stages was playing tracks for too long without introducing anything new, therefore leading to the mix sounding boring. When devising my performance, I experimented with introducing effects to transitions to make them more interesting and complex. Using echoes with different lengths to ensure transitions were not too sudden and combining this with high pass filters to build tension. As I begun to feel more comfortable with the introducing fader cuts to the mix, I experiment with adding them more frequently throughout the performance to add interest to the mix. Another problem I encountered was the limitations of only having two channels available to me, however I felt I was able to make the best of it.
Here I’m experimenting with how I can use filters to during transitions.
“Looping On The Go”
Here I am practicing improvising looping on the go and getting used to having two tracks playing at once, making sure to keep them both in time.
“Hot Cue Triggering”
In this clip I’m triggering hot cues on the go, as you can see the timing wasn’t quite right but this improved as I practiced more.
“Fader Cut Practice 1 & 2“
Fader cuts weren’t a technique I was particularly familiar with before this performance and something that took a fair bit of practice to master especially in terms of timing. As shown here there are a couple of times the timing of them were not as tight as they were come the final performance.