DJ / Producer Master Program Video Roundup! Traktor DJ, Theory Basics, Music Production + Performance

In this DJ / Producer Master Program video roundup, we highlight some of our best videos of the year from each course including DJ, Music Foundations, Ableton Live, Mixing and Mastering, and Sound Design.

Traktor DJ for iPad Tutorial w/ Endo: Harmonic Mixing, BPM Detection, Touchscreen DJing +

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m impressed with how Native Instruments have adapted Traktor’s design to take advantage of the touchscreen interface of the iPad, and they’ve also added in some new features that even go beyond what Traktor Pro can do on Mac OS/Windows. The best example of this is how the whole interface has been designed around the two parallel waveform displays, allowing you to control playback by directly touching the waveforms on the screen! This is a more useful approach than the typical “spinning platter”-style interface offered by many other iOS DJ apps, and controlling the tracks directly on the screen gives a much different feeling than DJing on a laptop and controlling your tracks with keyboard commands or a MIDI controller. – Endo

Music Foundations Tutorial – Theory Basics: How to Compose a Strong Melody w/ Max Wild 

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Writing a melody that sounds unique and memorable isn’t always easy, but there are a few steps you can take to make this process go smoother. I will be using four bars of Avicii’s “Levels” as an example. In my opinion (regardless of whether you are a fan of Avicii) this song has a very strong and catchy melody. When analyzing great melodies it seems that these all share certain characteristics. All strong melodies seem to have:

Pitches taken from a particular scale: Shape Rhythm Repetition Call and response

Upon analyzing the pitches Avicii uses, it seems that they make up a five-note scale called the pentatonic scale, in this case the E major pentatonic scale. The major pentatonic scale is a five note scale, which uses notes 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 of the major scale. The pentatonic scale has been used in music cultures all over the world and has a strong sound that we are all used to hearing, which is why it is a great scale to compose melodies with. Next we look at the shape of the melody, meaning do the pitches go up or down. We see that Avicii’s melody stays around the root ‘E’, it then jumps up to C# and plays the pentatonic scale downwards note by note back to E. (The only exception is the D#, which is taken from the E major scale.) For rhythm this melody primarily uses eighth notes, which propel the melody forward and keep it moving. There are several accounts of repetition: First of all the note E is repeated several times in bars 1 and 3. In addition, bars 2 and 4 are identical, and bars 1 and 3 are also almost identical. This brings us to call and response, in which repetition plays an important part. Bar 1 can be seen as the first ‘call’ or ‘question’, with bar 2 as the ‘response’ or ‘answer’. Bar 3 then ‘asks’ the same ‘question’ with a slight variation, and bar 4 represents the same response as bar 2. – Max Wild

Ableton Push Tutorial: Live Production and Performance Techniques w/ Dan Freeman

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I come from the world of live instruments and my background is actually as a jazz bass player where I learned to have an idea of what the song would be, but create something unique and new with every performance. When I got Ableton Push earlier in the year, I decided to challenge myself to see if it could do ‘live production’. By this I mean – starting with no prerecorded loops or audio.

It definitely took a lot of practice, and it feels like a really intense version of DJing. When it works it’s fantastic, but if you fail, it’s pretty evident. In learning to do this live production set, I learned a couple of techniques on the Ableton Push which that I will discuss in the next video. These will help you get some basic idea of ways in which you can use Push for production and or performance. – Dan Freeman

Sound Design Tutorial: Layering Drums – Native Instruments Battery 4 w/ Evan Sutton

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Layering is the spice of life. There are many reasons to layer drum sounds. We can add rhythmic complexity to a sound, which can lend to the groove and improve its overall musicality. Another advantage of layering certain types of drum sounds is that it can help the  sound to cut through a mix, such as in the case of an 808 kick drum. These techniques can greatly improve the sound of your drum tracks way before you get to the mixing stage. - Evan Sutton

Mixing & Mastering Tutorial: BASS Sounds – EQ, Saturation, Limiting w/ Decapitation + Alloy 2

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In the sixth and final installment of Dubspot’s Mix/Master video tutorial series, mixing and mastering guru Daniel Wyatt shares tips and tricks for applying saturation, limiting, and EQ on subbass and low frequency elements. Working with a sub-heavy moombahton dance track provided by Dubspot Mixing & Mastering graduate Meketrefe, Wyatt explains how to make the track richer and more dynamic using SoundToys Decapitator to add saturation and tasteful distortion and iZotope Alloy 2 for EQing, limiting, and shaping and enhancing the bass. These are universal techniques you can apply using plug-ins native to most host recording applications as well, including Ableton Live and Logic.

DJ / Producer Master Program

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