I do these mixes in Audacity, which is a great app for giving you fine control of the audio and where stuff happens, and all kinds of other things. I really don't know of another app I could use that would give me even half as much control, so nothing else really has ever threatened Audacity's role there. Sadly, however, one of the main things Audacity is missing (which plenty of other apps both for PC and for my Android do have) is beat detection and BPM synching. This meant that I haven't been able to do very good transitions, because I've been guessing and using trial and error to get a reasonably close BPM and mostly just having one song start on the last beat of the last song. This really kinda defeats the purpose, mostly, of doing these as megamixes which would approximate the set of a DJ at some kind of event.
I've come up with a workaround, which is somewhat tedious, but not too bad, and worth it. I load the tracks in Cross DJ Free, an app on my Android that has digital turntables. This will give me the BPM to the nearest tenth. I then write this down on a printout of the megamix tracks in order. Then, I calculate the percent change needed to get to my target BPM of 148. In case you care but don't know the appropriate formula, this is (in Excel or Google Sheets type formula) =(148-X)/X where X is the actual BPM of the track. The result comes out as a decimal percentage, so you need to mentally shift the decimal point. .0571428, for example (the result for a track with 140 BPM; a relatively standard one that shows up repeatedly) would require a speed or tempo change in Audacity of 5.71428%.
Although there are occasionally minor rounding errors that lead to tempos that aren't quite right, this only happens occasionally, and mostly the challenge is making sure that whatever element I'm leading off with on the second song in a transition is put at precisely the right spot against the track that is finishing up so that the beats aren't out of synch and so they end up with a suitably dramatic hand-off, usually by having the intro and outro play concurrently and the ending song give its last little bang right as the intro in the new track is ending and we move directly into the main body of the track. And then, of course, there's minor troubleshooting. But because this sounds so much better than what I was doing with all of my megamixes, I've actually gone back and started redoing them and saving them over the original versions. Because of the fact that the tempo is sped up on all tracks probably about an average of 5%, plus there's a lot of more intro and outro overlap rather than both playing out back to back, these megamixes are coming in quite a bit shorter too—10 to 20 minutes shorter so far seems to be typical for most.
And it's giving me an opportunity to not only improve the mixes, but also correct some errors or changes in judgement. The former is obvious; if I accidentally forgot to add a track, or duplicated one in more than one mix (both of which I've done and just lived with) then this is the opportunity to fix it. That's obvious. The latter is where I added a song that now I wish that I hadn't either because it didn't fit or because I decided that I was too generous when I thought it was good enough for inclusion. And I'm not sure that I've got a very consistent approach. In my very first megamix, for example, I included Immersion's "My Name is Acid" which is a decent acid techno song, but I found it kind of overly long and repetitive, lacking enough of the natural drama and emotion that makes trance more interesting to listen to than some other styles of EDM. I had waffled back and forth on keeping it; I ended up leaving it in. However, on the fifth mix, I had included one of the Jam & Spoon mixes of "Age of Love" by Age of Love. While this is a great trance song, it really just didn't fit the genre. Even with boosted bass and sped-up tempo, I could get it to sound like it fit; it was too sparse and minimal to "match" the rest of the megamix. I ended up replacing it with the Nik Import remix of Blutonium Boy's "Floorkilla" which maybe was almost an over-correction to the even harder side of hardest hardstyle, but it actually sounds quite a bit better in relation to the rest of the mix than the one that I had in there already does. I've also replaced an Organ Donors "99.9" remix with a DJ Dean "Ballanation" mix for the same reason; it just didn't quite fit on megamix 3 and I didn't really love as much as I thought I would when I added it after all.
So... I'm redoing all of my megamixes. I've got six completely done and another two in the final phases. My process is somewhat slow, but I don't want to shortcut it. Patience gives the best results.
- Listen to the old megamix twice in a row to make sure that everything in it is a track I still want. I was probably too reluctant to manually massage the results too, thinking that the randomization was half the fun, but I'm thinking that in at least a few cases, changing up the track order can give me a slightly better result too, and I've got at least one or two spots where I'm thinking of making some minor adjustments. Mostly this is to target tracks that I included but I now find that I don't think really merited inclusion in the first place; I was too generous the first time around. Sometimes once isn't enough, especially if I get mentally distracted for whatever reason, so I'll make sure to go through it twice entirely. I've already got for sure one more targeted for replacement in megamix 10 or 11 or so, but I might yet get more ruthless yet.
- Once I have my list ready, print off about half a dozen of them at a time. Load all of the tracks into Cross DJ Free on my Android and get the BPM. Write it down for all tracks.
- Start making the mix in Audacity with the first track. Using my Google Sheets document, overwrite the time stamp data with a calculation of the percent change needed. Once I've done the entire set, I can delete this entire column; I don't care about having it at all anymore. Modify each track as it goes into the mix to make sure I've got an exact start point and correct speed or tempo (usually speed, but I change tempo instead if I'm going downwards for the few tracks that are actually already higher BPM than 148, and I also do it if I'm changing by more than 9 or 10% because eventually it'll start sounding like the chipmunks version of dance music.) Carefully integrate each new track into the megamix until I've got all 12 tracks done. Save the megamix and delete the old megamix (if for some odd reason I ever want them again, I've got CD-R archives of all but the very last two I made already anyway.)
- Listen to the new mix at least twice before I consider it "done" to make sure no errors crept in while making them.
That means that an entire day in man-hours is dedicated to creating each new megamix, so it's no surprise that I've only done six of them, with stage four still needing to be done with 7 and 8 before I move on. (Actually, I did find some errors in 5 and 6, so I redid them again after already having redone them. I'm just finishing up my stage four with those before I can do stage four with 7 and 8. I will, however, probably overlap steps 1 and 4; i.e., I'll have two or three mixes going through it concurrently.
Anyway, that's way more detail than anyone at all wanted about how I'm doing this, but it's my blog, and I keep it as a journal for myself more than for any audience anyway, so tough. It's kind of taken over a bit of my free time, such as it is, so I'm doing very little of some of my ongoing project like my prettier AD ASTRA map or my Pathfinder Society Scenario summaries. Instead, I've redone the first six of my initial megamixes, targeting the first full dozen to be complete by... oh, I dunno. End of next week or so. Eventually, I'll have replaced all 108 of the ones I made, and from that point on new megamixes will follow that format.
As of right now, I have enough tracks for a total of 212 megamixes. Sigh. That said, new tracks are only coming in in a tiny trickle these days, and I will probably be a bit ruthless in eliminating some that simply aren't as good as I thought they were when I first got them. And I have no idea what I will do with over 200 hard dance megamixes (heavily focused on hard trance, but not entirely exclusively—part of the reason my numbers ballooned is that I started allowing some hardstyle in more fully too; especially early hardstyle.) I guess put the thing on shuffle and play it in the background of whatever else I'm doing, but I want to specifically hear hard dance music or something.
It's funny that when I very first started version 1.0 of this project, I only had 300 or so eligible tracks, and I thought that I was slowing down then too. Now, I have over 2,500 tracks. A side effect of that is that much of the stuff that I had early got sorted early and then was eliminated from my sorter. The first part of the megamixes have most of the "foundational" artists' work; guys like A*S*Y*S, Scot Project, Tommy Pulse, Cosmic Gate, DJ Wag, Kai Tracid, etc. After a while, these taper off and now I'm mostly showing newer guys like NG Rezonance, Costa Pantazis, Carl Nicholson, etc. This isn't entirely true, because I've bulked out a lot of lists of some of the classics where I had incompletions, and finding other permutations and early artists that I'd missed the first time around, and of course, there are still songs that have been on from the beginning that haven't ended up in output yet, but ideally, I'd re-sort everything. But I don't want to, because some of these associations I've got are already iconic in my mind, so I think I'll go with what I have. By shuffling the megamixes when I play them, I'll get much of the same effect. And I'll probably replace any tracks that I pull out with hand-picked newer songs, much of the time. When I take out Hardheadz "Wreck Thiz Place" in megamix 11, for instance, I'll probably replace it with Amber D's remix of Steve Hill and Technikal's "Theme from HTML"—although I admit that's mostly because I'm impatient for that particular version to get added in and it hasn't come up in any sorts yet.
Here's the half dozen I have already:
Megamix 001 REMIXED
Here's the half dozen I have already:
Megamix 001 REMIXED
- Arome—Here We Go [Midnight Mix]
- Underworld—Cowgirl [Tim Davison Remix]
- DuMonde—Never Look Back [Tiesto Full On Vocal]
- Jimmy the Sound—M.O.D.U.L.O. [One Vrs Edit]
- Kai Tracid—Trance & Acid [Derb Remix]
- The Juvenile—Hardcore Suckas [Trance Generators Remix]
- Blank & Jones—DJs, Fans and Freaks (D.F.F.)
- Avatar—Red Planet [DJ Wag Remix]
- Immersion—My Name Is Acid
- A*S*Y*S—Monster 303
- High Voltage—Bombs Away
- DJ Wag—Life on Mars [DJ Wag Mix]
- Phuture Punk—Der Klang [Junk Project Mix]
- Tommy Pulse—The Answer [Danny V Remix]
- A*S*Y*S—No More F***ing Rock N Roll [Original Mix]
- Pro-Tech—Free Your Mind [Y.O.M.C. Club Mix]
- Hennes & Cold—Can't Have Enough [Remix]
- Cosmic Commando—Heartbreak [DJ Vortex & Arpa's Dream Remix]
- Arome—Talk II Me [Talking Mix]
- Warp Brothers—Blade [Original Club Mix]
- Kai Tracid—Tiefenrausch [NRG Mix]
- Mr. Gasmask—Primordial Soup [Original Mix]
- System F—Out of the Blue [Original 12" Version]
- K-Traxx—Noise Tool
- Yoji Biomehanika—Ding A Ling [DJ Scot Project Remix]
- Guyver—Serious Sounds
- Mellow Trax—Phuture Vibes [Kai Tracid Remix]
- Dave Joy—Second Chase [Kaylab vs Reloop Remix]
- Pro-Tech—Dominating Power [DJ Wag Mix]
- Nomad vs Wragg—Roar
- Rebel Yelle—Affirmation
- DJ Dean—Ballanation [Virus Inc. Remix]
- A*S*Y*S—Storm & Thunder [Original Mix]
- Yoda—Definitely [Original Mix]
- Public Domain—Operation Blade (Bass in the Place) [A*S*Y*S Remix]
- R.B.A.—No Alternative [Dark By Design Remix]
- Miss Shiva—Dreams [Cosmic Gate Remix]
- Yakooza—Cocaine [DJ Wag Mix]
- Flutlicht—Das Siegel [DJ Natron Mix]
- A*S*Y*S—Acid Save Your Soul [Auf Die 12 Mix]
- DJ Session One vs DJ Virus—Future Shock [LeBrisc Club Mix]
- Solar Quest—Acid Air Raid [Choci & The Geezer's Remix]
- Derb—D.F.C.
- Guyver—Possibly [Original Mix]
- Arome—Hands Up!
- Cosmic Gate—The Truth [Ferry Corstein Remix]
- DJ Wag—Gettin' High [DJ Wag Mix]
- Planet K—Hockenheim [Pitlane Mix]
- Luca Antolini—A New Poison [Sa.Vee.Oh Remix]
- Hardforze vs Soul-T—Let the Beat Drop [Nomad Mix]
- Blutonium Boy—Floorkilla [Nik Import Remix]
- Pulsedriver & Rocco—Life on Mars [Rave Mix]
- Max Savietto—Alone [Sa.Vee.Oh Mix]
- DJ Darkzone—Overdrive [Vocal Cut]
- Tommy Pulse—The Answer (Part 2) [Temper Temper Remix]
- A*S*Y*S—Acid Space [Mindflux Remix]
- Logger & Gnetic—Hypertransfer
- Captain Tinrib & Sol Ray—Attack of the 50 Foot DJ [Original Mix]
- Tankis & Savietto—Octopus [Lost in Case Remix]
- DJ Virus—All Your Bass [Michael Fußeder Remix]
- DJ Scot Project—O (Overdrive) [Arome Remix]
- Mass Effect—Alphascan [Arome Remix]
- JK Walker—Re-initiate [JK Walker 2004 Mix]
- Tommy Pulse—Walhalla
- DJ Wag—Second Step [DJ Wag Reworx]
- Dave Joy—First Impression [S.H.O.K.K. Mix]
- S.H.O.K.K.—Isn't It All a Little Strange? [Flutlicht Remix]
- John Paesano & Braden Kimball—Daredevil Theme [W!SS Trance Remix]
- Reverb ft Flash Gordon—Providence [Reverb's Vocal Mix]
- Guyver—Funky Ass Beatz
- Hennes & Cold—The Second Trip [Nick Sentience Remix]
- DJ Merly Dee—Paradise [Original Mix]
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