DJ CONTENT

Free Creative Mixing DJ Tutorials

10 Jan 2018 | Lead Pages | 3 comments

Welcome to Crossfader!

Hey, it’s great to know that you want to become a more creative DJ. Firstly let me thank you for taking the time to learn with Crossfader. We hope the following free lessons will help you expand your current skills, making you stand out from the crowd.

Let’s get started!

Lesson 01 – Finger Drumming With Hot Cues

Finger drumming is a fun technique used by many battle and routine DJs to introduce a new rhythm or switch up the mix’s vibe. Learn how to apply this technique and play along in time with the rhythm of another song. The critical thing to remember is practice makes perfect. The more you practice finger drumming, the more it will start to become muscle memory.

Simply set up a hot cue on a kick drum and clap or snare within the song’s intro as your base sounds to play like a drum pad.

Songs used in this tutorial:

Young Thug – The London
Drake – One Dance (Eighty-M Acap Intro)

Techniques or features needed for this tutorial:

Hot Cues

The tutorial below is taken directly from our DJ Hub, where you can find hundreds more tutorials, mix breakdowns, tech hacks and more!

Lesson 02 – Polyrhythmic Looping

Polyrhythm is the technical term for a piece of music that uses two different rhythms simultaneously. In this tutorial, you will see that we can set up a three-beat loop on a drum and bass song or a house song and then switch to either genre using this mathematical trick.

The critical thing here is to divide the BPM of the song you’re playing by 1.5. For example, if we have a drum and bass song at 180bpm and set up a three-beat loop, it will play in time with a house song at 120bpm. This is because 180 divided by 1.5 is 120.

This is a cool trick, but you need to pick a part of the song without any drums to make this technique sound clean. Check out the examples below and find out how to master this technique!

Songs Used In This Lesson:

Sub Focus – Solar System
Eli Brown – Desire (C3T Edit)

Techniques And Features Needed For This Lesson:

Manual looping
Crossfader cutting (optional extra)
Effects such as reverb can help clean up the transition

The tutorial below is taken directly from our DJ Hub, where you can find hundreds more tutorials, mix breakdowns, tech hacks and more!

Lesson 03 – Double Drop Tutorial

In this tutorial, you will learn how to double drop tracks together. This mixing technique is a great way to add something new to your sets and help you stand out as a DJ. The key features in this tutorial are using phrasing, mixing in key, and learning how to find the right tracks.

Tracklist:

Dub Phizix – Buffalo Charge
Vacuum – Tornado VIP
Chase & Status – No Problem
Sub Focus – Solar System
The Prodigy – Fire Starter
Buraka Som Sistema – Hangover (BaBaBa) (Casper Remix)

The tutorial below is taken directly from our DJ Hub, where you can find hundreds more tutorials, mix breakdowns, tech hacks and more!

Want more DJ lessons?

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If you found the lessons above quite hard to master then have a look at our Beginner DJ Courses. These courses are designed to help you master the core skills of beat matching by ear, basic mixing techniques, timing, phrasing and basic music theory.

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Intermediate DJ Courses

All of our intermediate courses are packed full of mixing techniques like the ones you have just learnt. The skills taught will help you stand out as a DJ, perform better with your equipment and impress any crowd. To view all our DJ courses just click here.

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3 Comments

Nathan Lo on 11th June 2018 at 11:18 pm

Hi Crossfader! I am a huge fan of your Youtube videos and came across this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hc8bmEaCqM&t=181s

I tried to use the link to obtain the free files mentioned in the video, but it keeps taking me straight to this portion of the website. Is there a way for me to obtain the files so I could practice the mixing techniques demonstrated in the video? Thank you!
Reply
- Jamie Hartley on 12th June 2018 at 2:52 pm
  
  Hey there, if you entered your email to get to this page then the download link for the music pack will be in your emails. If you can’t find it just drop me an email to jamie@wearecrossfader.co.uk and i’ll resend it.
  
  Thanks
  Jamie
  Reply
Mohit Balmik on 9th December 2021 at 10:48 am

Hi crossfader I’m big fan of you from India and love you 🤟🤟🤟🤟
Reply