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Recession 6 - With walkthrough

The 6th Mix I posted (back in 2001)

Due to some mis-management of my webspace, the Real Audio version of this is unfortunately now offline. Unless I here from people requesting this version, I'll leave it that was - as more people prefer the MP3 version - which you can get HERE (it's about 100Mb).

You'll notice that the first three tunes are the same as the last ones on Recession IV. Why? Well, I wanted to get the CD version done, and I also wanted to get a kinda best of thing for the Recessions. as I love the mix between these three so much - it ll kinda fell into place. So, if you've heard R4, then you'll have to listen to the first three tunes again in this one. As I said, it's mostly because it's set up for the full 72 minute mix, rather than a little taster.

Below is the tracklist, and below that is the breakdown of the mix.

  1. 1) Vangelis - BladeRunner
  2. 2) Art Of trance - Kaliedoscope
  3. 3) Stage One - Space Manouevors
  4. 4) Paul Van Dyk - Words
  5. 5) Paul Van Dyk - Alive
  6. 6) Amanda Ghost - Filthy Mind
  7. 7) Skip Raiders - Another Day
  8. 8) Amoeba Assassin - Speedway Revisited
  9. 9) Gergio Moroder - The Chase
  10. 10) Coma Aroma - In Aura
  11. 11) Underworld - Cowgirl
  12. 12) BT - Believer

1) Vangelis BladeRunner

Pressed 'Start'

2) Vangelis to Art of Trance

Now this one was cool. If you listen to this carefully, you'll hear when Art of Trance comes in to play. Mostly, you'll be able to tell because of the pops and cracks on the vinyl, but the key of the bass hum in the Bladerunner sample and the key in Kaleidoscope are just that little bit different. You can still hear the difference, but I got over it by killing the bass on Kaleidoscope when I started bringing it in, then as it got more dominant, brought the bass in on it while taking out the bass EQ on the Bladerunner intro. As to the timing of it – tell you the truth, it was sheer luck that as Ford says "Give me a hard copy right there" there was that little cymbal hit. Not a pro thing to say – but it's the truth, I've done that mix many times, and though I hit that point 75% of the time, I just hope I've hit the right point.

3) Art of Trance - Stage One

To tell you the truth, this has to be one of my favourite ever mixes. There's a couple I've done in my Dj'ing life that I think are on a par with this, but this just makes my back shiver sometimes - and I'm the one doing it!!

Anyway, so – Art of Trance goes into it's long breakdown, then comes back into the tune, then goes into a little 8 bar refrain short after – at which point the little widdly hook hits a point that gives me goose-bumps every time. It's at this point that I started Stage One from the very beginning. The bass Eq is right down at the lowest point that would still allow me to hear the bass-beat for beat-matching purposes, but really not audible enough to hear through the speakers.

On this mix – I used both the channel fader and the cross fader. So – I've got the channel fader at 0, and the cross-fader in the middle – with the bass on Stage One killed to an inch of its life. In a pretty slapdash way, I raised the fader on Stage one to the point that I could just hear a slight kick of the bass drum. You'll be able to hear some of the vocal samples going through Stage One. "In Deep Space……Abandoned" – all that kind of stuff.

After 16 bars (I think) of having it running just slightly in the background, I raised the fader of Stage One so it was at max at the end of those 16 bars. I then knocked the cross-fader VERY slightly off centre as to favour the new tune. Then I put in just a little turn of the bass – so you can now hear the "bow bow's" of the bass 'off-beats'.

After another 16bars – Art of Trance does a little drum roll to signify the end of its pattern, and goes into a nice refrain to end. At the end of this refrain, I took out the bass of Art of Trance to about ¼ it's original, knocked the cross-fader off just a little more, and brought the bass in full on Stage One.

Now it's just a case of moving the cross-fader just enough over towards Stage One that it is now completely dominant, yet you can still hear the drums in Art of Trance, and after 16 bars, as the vocal in Stage One goes "any crew……Negative" I closed off the cross fader and it's now into the second part of Stage One on the first beat. It's a bit sudden when you read it like that, but I think it's the best place to end the mix.

4) Stage One - Words

To tell you the truth, I worked pretty hard on trying to get this one into the mix nicely. I'd just got it that morning, and absolutely loved this mix of it.

I'll say now, the one thing I like about this mix is that it isn't as pushy when it comes to me trying to make all my mixes as seamless as possible. I knew that these two would go together in terms of structure – I knew the intro to Words would play nice over Stage One, even with that one bloody off-beat which makes it sound like I've cocked up (honest – it IS the tune). And I also knew that after the first three tunes being very well suited to each other – and sounding pretty similar and smooth – having a bit of a change like I did into words was either going to make people move, or just leave……if you're still playing the CD/MP3 then you know what one you went for.

Again, structure wise, this one's pretty simple. Stage One goes into its last breakdown, then 16 bars after it comes out, I started Words right from the beginning. Again, the bass was killed (completely this time, the hi-hat pattern is more than strong enough to make sure your beats are matched)

I think it's 16 bars it runs for through the mix, it might be 32 though – have a listen and you'll be able to work it out – if Words hasn't started after 16 bars, then it's 32.

Anyway, so – in the last 8 bars of the mix, I used the mixer to its potential. By taking up Words in volume, making the cross fader dominant on it, raising the bass EQ on it, and cutting out the Hi-hats at the same time – I needed a third hand. But I got there. The important part though was to have Words dominant in all senses bar the Hi-Hat pattern. Why? Coz I used the big yellow button on my DJM-600 –set to flanger. So – for the last 8 bars of the mix, I assigned the flanger only to Stage One, put it on its longest setting (16 bars+) and flanged down the hi-hats while bringing in the hi-hats on words slightly. What this did with Stage One was to take it out of the mix nicely, leaving it only slightly audible for the next 8 bars – while also bringing in a stronger hi-hat rhythm that was in Words. Then – at the end of the 8 bar flange, Words comes in full – I could have probably done with making the bass a bit more powerful when it came into the mix, but I think the effect I was looking for worked alright enough – at least for what I was trying to do. On tape it might not sound as good as it can, but I've done it live since, and it DOES work there!!!

5) Words to Alive

This is an interesting one. Since doing the mix, I've kinda grown pretty sick of Alive, but it's in there anyway. I think when I was doing the mix, I was going off it anyway, but I wanted something different from the Progressive stuff I'd played for the past 20 minutes, and wanted to signify a small change in the tuneage. So – I used Alive.

Actually, to tell you the truth, it's not the tune I'm not keen on, it's her "Aliiiiiiii….iiiiiive" thing that was annoying me in the end.

This is all shown by the fact that by using two copies of the same tune, I've cut an 8 minute tune down to 2mins 20seconds. But I'll get to the hacking of it when it comes to its turn (next)

The mix though from Words was pretty complicated. Again, it's pretty fortunate I bought myself the DJM600 with the sampler.

I can't remember the exact amount of bars I offset the mix, so all I can say is that I timed it so that Alive would go into the main chunk of its tune just as Words was going into the last little refrain (or mini-breakdown – whatever you want to call it.) I think it was about 32 bars, but I could be wrong.
I started Alive well before I actually did anything with the faders. Why? Well, I needed to be sure it was bang in time so that my playing with the sampler and stuff wouldn't be a problem. Normally, I'd just start it a bar before I wanted it to come in – use that one bar to start it, make sure there were no problems, but because it was a straight cut off mix (ie, the x-fader went across its path in one beat) and as I was doing the sampler thing, I didn't have enough brain power or hands to do it all at the same time.

So, that's how I did the bare mix of the tune – I lined up the tune so Alive started as Words hit the breakdown – with the x-fader fully on words through the intro of Alive, and as the last beat of Words occurred before the breakdown, I moved the cross fader all the way over to Alive, so the next beat was the first of the new tune. Hope you understood that.

But, the sampler etc. Well, what I did was load in a little bit of Words, 2 bars to be precise and had it running under the tune – you might be able to hear it – but I can't!! Then, as the mix was one bar away, I increased the level the sampler was playing at, and reduced the level that the real Words vinyl was playing at. Then, and the point when I did the cross-fader in one beat move, I did a single beat backspin on Words. As I said, I could have just moved the fader across with that one beat, but it didn't quite sound right, and I wanted to do both the backspin on Words, and still have the Words hook running for one bar after the mix. Which is pretty hard to do when you've just back-spinned. So, when you're listening to it, watch out for the single reverse bass drum as Alive kicks in, and the one bar of Words that fades out.

I was getting pretty pissed off with the sound of Alive by the time it came to do this mix, but I wanted to use it because it's a great tune to slip in half way to dip the power of the set before I got into the next section of it – which lasts for a long time. To tell you the truth, it's only the outro 32 bars of the tune I really like of the tune (coz she ain't warbling away) so I got two copies and chopped it right down.

I think it's only the first chop that's pretty obvious, as she starts to sing one thing, then you can hear me fading up the next part. This all explains why the break-down in the tune happens so soon. Coz I hacked out the intro to pieces.

I then did the same with the breakdown. I was actually pretty surprised at how bang on I got the chops through the breakdown. Well, I find it hard to remember what parts I took out when I listen to it now – so that must count for something!!

6) Alive to Amanda Ghost

Anyway. Alive comes out of the breakdown, then 16 bars after it, I started Amanda Ghost. I killed the bass to the point where there's just enough bass in to keep the vocals rich – but not enough for the bass to over-ride the bass of Alive already playing- so it wouldn't be problematic having it at a level where you could hear her voice clear enough.

I had it running under Alive so after the 8 bars of just drum intro, you can hear Amanda going "Come Inside……come inside" through it. After the 16 bar intro, Amada Ghost goes into its full tune. At this point I took out the bass on Alive, and brought the bass in full on Amanda Ghost. At the same time, I moved the cross fader to about 2/3rds of the way over – so it's really favouring Amanda Ghost, but you can still hear the drums from Alive. After 8 bars, a small refrain happens, at which time, I closed off the cross-fader so it's fully on Amanda Ghost as the first beat of her singing the main tune starts.

7) Amanda Ghost to Skip Raiders

This one is a really simple mix, which sounds so much better because of the filter effect on the DJM600.

Amanda gets to the end of the tune, she's warbling away, but the end of the tune coming up is signified by the singing stopping – the vocal starts to repeat "I'm drowning…" and that's it – just instruments from then on. This is where I started Skip-Raiders – right from the beginning.

After 16 bars Skipraiders goes into a 1 bar refrain on its beat – after which it comes back in full power. This is the key point in the mix.
But, the actual mix takes place 8 bars before this. I brought Skip Raiders in at the beginning of the tune, it had the bass pretty much killed right out of it, but I had the cross-fader in the middle, and after 4 bars, the channel fader was up at about 75% of full power. After 7 bars, there's another refrain thing – just something to let you know that something's about to happen. Here, I swapped the positions of the channel faders (Skipraiders now at 100% and Amanda now at 75%) and did the same with the bass EQ's – although, I tried to keep a bit more bass in Amanda – so to still give the little hook line some depth.

After 7 bars of Skip Raiders being dominant over Amanda, another little refrain happens. In case you care, I set the time on the filter to 2/1, pressed it at the beginning of the last bar, and took it out at the end (so it only went through half a cycle). As all this filter stuff happened, I just closed the cross-fader over fully to Skipraiders. Ok, it's pretty noticeable that something's changed, but I like the way it goes all hollow for a second.

8) Skip Raiders to Amoeba Assassin

THE most simple mix I've done in a long time.

Skip Raiders goes through the whole of the tune, with a couple of extra filter effects added by me. It goes through two huge breakdowns, then an 8 bar one near the end.

I think it's something like 24 bars after the little breakdown at the end that Skip Raiders just goes into beats. This is the key to this mix out point on Skipraiders. Amoeba Assassin has an 8 bar drum intro – then the bass-line comes in. This is the key mix in point for Amoeba.

So, I waited for 16 bars after the 8 bar final breakdown on Skip Raiders, and then started Amoeba – so there was 8 bars to go before the end of Skip Raiders. Therefore, as the end of Skip Raiders happens, the bass line comes in on Amoeba.

It was just a pretty simple case of Eq'ing the hi-hats out while closing the cross fader off for the next 8 bars – just move and decrease in time with the hi-hats to make it a little less noticeable.

And, the funny thing is, as much as I said I loved this mix, it's the only one on this mix that I think I really cocked up. I mistimed the fade out at the end a bit, didn't do it quickly enough – so the mix just ends pretty abruptly. Do it in a club, it won't matter. Do it on a tape/Cd and you'll notice it if you're looking for it (which I hope you will; now I've told you about it….)

9) Amoeba Assassin to The Chase

Again, another one that has an eight bar intro before it the bass melody gets introduced. So – it's just the same idea as with Skip Raiders. Amoeba hits a refrain towards the end of the tune, which is where I wanted The Chase to go into its bass melody – so I just worked out where in Amoeba the refrain begins, remembered when it was, looked at the grooves etc which helped me get the timing right, worked it out from the bars, all that kind of thing, then just started The Chase 8 bars before Amoeba hit the refrain.

Which is what I did, I started it 8 bars before, put the cross-fader in the middle, put the channel fader at 0, with all Eq's on The Chase at their optimum position. Then, as the refrain happened and the bass-line started on The Chase, I brought the channel fader up to it's max point, killed the bass out on Amoeba mostly and moved the cross fader over to slightly favour The Chase.

It took another 8 bars to complete the mix; mostly just Eq'ing out the hi-end of Amoeba, lowering the channel fader, and moving the cross-fader over. The Chase does a little widdly thing on the last of its 8 bars in the mix, which is a useful point to close the cross fader off and finish the mix.


10) The Chase to Coma Aroma

I've written in my site somewhere something about some tunes just don't like to mix with each other – and that it's pretty daft to try to crowbar them together just so it'll sound alright. Well, I went totally against myself here. With the last three tunes, I was trying to make a kind of similar, repetitive thing happen, get into a groove of sorts. The tunes were really powerful yes, but not in a kind of "Here's my hook, love it, dance to it, respect it" that a lot of tunes are – the previous three were powerful in their musicality rather than their hooks. That it took about 5 minutes for The Chase to get into it's main tune, that Skip Raiders was really repetitive, I loved. The way the three of them went together was lovely and this is why they make up the majority of the time in the mix. But I wanted to get out of it – one more tune and it would have become really stagnant, and no-one would want to listen on.

So, I stuck in an old, really powerful, really tuneful, well produced classic. I knew I wanted it to be Coma Aroma, but I was having issues with the mix as the keys of the two tunes are pretty much different, and a normal mix just sounded like shit. It had something to do with the simplicity of the end of The Chase and the bass line to the intro of Coma Aroma. I knew that if I could bolster the end of the Chase slightly, I'd take the edge off the out of key problem. It's still there, but it's now something that sounds quite good in my opinion, using the fact that the two tunes are out of key to signify a change in the mix after the past 20 minutes of seamless driving power. Of course, you're probably thinking I'm just saying that to cover a bad mix, but I wouldn't have uploaded it if I didn't like it, I think.

So, how did I get around the problem? Well, it all centres on the massive breakdown in the middle of the tune. And, again, the mixer. As The Chase hits this massive breakdown, I recorded it into the sampler – and then at the end – during the mix, played it back, to beef up the ending – which I think worked out incredibly well if I do say so myself.

So, the mix.

Coma Aroma has a nice long into – which finally hits solid beats after 16 bars I think – or it may be more – I don't count beats in the first place, but here I just wound on the tune until I heard bass drums.
The Chase is going full swing up until the end – where the main tune drops out of it, and all you're left with is the bass line and the drums (which is the end that I thought was pretty weak and wanted to bolster).
It's at this point, when it hits bass and drums that I started Coma Aroma. I let it run for 8 bars, at which point The Chase drops the bass melody, and just has a drum line. (This is where I started the sampler). At the same time, Coma Aroma does a really cool kinda reverse to its bass line which signifies the last 8 bars of the intro. At that point, I brought Coma Aroma full into the mix – without any kills on either tune – as the bass drum intro on Coma Aroma is really weak – and as the main tune of Coma Aroma kicks in after a one bar refrain – I just slid the cross fader across through this one bar, while taking out the sampler through the same bar – and as Coma kicks in, I think the change in energy is fantastic.

11) Coma Aroma to Cowgirl

I love this tune for the varying degrees of energy it goes through. The intro is like a beefed up American House tune, the drums are really frantic, the extra nuances to it are filling up the tune, and you're not really too sure how tuneful it is. Then, it all drops out – for a really long time – before coming back out into this insane sounding thing.

The mix was pretty straight forward. Coma plays through it's main tune – then hits a long refrain before going into a "WeeeoooweeeeeeeeOOOweeeee" part. I started Underworld there, with the bass killed, and the hi-end reduced a lot too – as it's really dominant in that tune. I had the cross fader set so that you could hear the drums, but it was really background stuff; basically, I just wanted it to sound like drums in Coma Aroma, just floating in the background a bit – not a mix, just a meld.

Coma hit into its main hook for the last time after 16 bars of this. 16 bars into this main hook, Underworld hit the bass line hook of the tune – I moved the cross-fader into the centre and raised Underworld's channel fader to 75%. I brought in its bass line and took Coma down to about 75%, with it's bass line pretty much killed. Notice that I've got both tunes playing out with the cross-fader at centre, though both aren't at their maximum positions on the channel faders – I wanted them both to be as loud as the other, but if both were at 100% then it'd just sound like noise.

Coma hits a repetitive refrain for the next million bars (well, it goes on for a long time) and after 8 bars, I took Coma out a little, and brought Cowgirl to its max position. Then, because of the length of the refrain, I just kept the mix going, with ever decreasing levels on Coma until the big long breakdown of Cowgirl.

12) Cowgirl to BT

This was a white label, that was completely unmarked and I was never too sure who it was, though I had suspicions it was BT. Then, the day it came to actually writing all this stuff down, I rented the movie "Go" – which BT did the musical score for – and what was playing through the "Rave" scenes in Go? Why… this tune!! So, I got to find out that it was BT, and even better the title of the tune – fate or what??

Anyway.

The BT tune has a really odd intro – one which if you lose a bit of concentration, you can really cock it up – so, I stayed away from starting the tune right at the beginning. About 16 bars into the intro, there are still little rhythmic happenings, but importantly, a clap is brought in – which is the point where I started it. And, I started it when Cowgirl goes into the little refrain at the end.

I kept the mix completely silent through the refrain, and brought the level of BT up for the 8 bars after the refrain, so it would come into power as Underworld just kinda weakens to nothing. Then I mixed on for another 8 bars, gradually EQ'ing out Underworld, while moving the cross-fader across a little bit with every second hi-hat, and that was it.

Kinda – well, I wanted to really get into the BT tune – not just a fade, not an effect thing, so – I thought about back spinning, or reversing the beat – what I ended up doing – strangely for me, was to scratch!!! If you listen to BT just as it goes into the main tune, out from Underworld, you can hear a little baby scratch thing going on – my one and only piece of scratching that I think I'll ever do. Impressed? Nah, I didn't think so.