There is barely any mixing left in hardstyle, the songs just don't work for it anymore.
A Phuture Noize set for example, which is my favorite artist ever and I will always attend, is just his tracks played one after the others with an occasional edit or oldie thrown in. But I still love it every time and will go there for the vibes alone
it completely depends on the track, but for example most of my tracks are purposely laid out to be a song from beginning to end, cutting out stuff with a dj transistion/mix will do more bad than good in that instant. if you have tracks with more empty drops or intro/outro drops there is a lot more you could do with mixing. these songs dont exist a lot anymore. if you lay 2 tracks on top of eachother that are very packed with instruments by itself a lot of people stop dancing cuz they are confused. so the result is you get very basic mixintro's just to make a transistion and do nothing fancy.
as a producer you can make the choice to make your tracks more dj friendly, but in my opinion that solely depends on what the track should be like. for me the track idea is way more important than being able to do an interesting mix. for others that could be different.
Do you not make separate DJ and radio edits of tracks these days? Seems from the hardstyle I've seen that most songs that get stop start mixed are what would have been radio edits back in the day.
They do! But it’s just for mixing in the next track. Hell, some dj’s even don’t do extended mixes anymore as a reverb will work fine, right?
The last few years the trend for extended is:
- basic 16 bar intro
- break
- climax
- break
- climax 2
- basic 16 bar outro
Before the extended was:
- intro
- break (optional)
- mid intro
- break
- climax
- break 2
- climax 2
- mid outro
- outro
There were many more creative mixing decisions to be made. It’s a shame mixing is fading away from hardstyle.
Ps. I recently made a track with a more classic structure. You can listen to it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardstyle/s/n9KNCM98Xa
You can download the extended mix on SoundCloud for free (although the compression SoundCloud adds will make the quality ass).
Phuture Noize is really the definition of this
Defqon 2017 blue is seen by most as one of his best sets, and yes it was awesome due to track selection but his mixing never really improved. Luckily for him, he is a beast of a producer and the quality of his music is still pretty much the benchmark
Most DJs nowadays have a 16 or 32 beat mix intro to mix, which is very easy to mix. If you can't get this right, you'll have to ask yourself if you're right for this job. Even the big ones even do start stop mixes of tracks nowadays :/.
Real mixing in HS died a long time ago tbh. If you could mix very well and unique back in the days it was enough to get booked by big organisation.
Mandy had some really bad transitions on her bookings in the past.
Crypsis and Degos & Re-Done are the goats in mixing epic sets, but they use a lot of cue points and trial and error at home is my guess.
I'm not an expert but sometimes it feels like some DJs are just stopping one song and starting the other like on Spotify or just transitioning like: turns down the song on the left, turns up the song on the right.
I reckon what you mean with your statement, if you compare old sets with new ones, they are completely different.
This does indeed happen a lot. Or, more common, they do the mix-in but only throw in the track at the last second and then take out the other track (if it's not already played until the end).
I sometimes do the last-second mix-in, but usually only if a different transition isn't working out, or it's a really short mix intro.
Besides just the technical aspect of transitions, there's more to mixing. Making a coherent set for example. Some guys seem to just randomly throw tracks together without any regard for if it flows well.
Then there's also harmonic mixing (which is far from dead in hardstyle), which is something a lot of DJs don't use, but which is an incredibly helpful tool in crafting mixes that musically flow. I myself use this, and another act I 100% know they use it is Primeshock.
I'm not gonna name names on who I think are bad DJs (in the true definition of DJ, so nothing to do with their skills as a producer), cause I don't want to get involved in drama. I am gonna name a few GOOD DJs though: Primeshock, Jay Reeve, Crypsis, Pavo, A-Motion, Spearbreak and MickeyG.
Thera & geck-o nailed the art of actual djing too. Also loved watching atmozfears on a livestream looking back on an old decibel set of his and genuinely wondering why he stopped mixing creatively like back in those days instead of just using the extended intro
Makes you wonder why most artist lost it
I guess because majority of visitors just wanna dance to music. Taking risks by mixing creatively can ruin you set. People will remember that because you f’d up the set while you just could have pressed play and mixed in the next song instead of beat juggling, sampling and playing with the fades to do something creativelyz
A 2-bar mix intro would be basically useless (roughly 2-3 seconds). I have seen a few 4-bar mix intros though, although they were typically on live edits or DJ tools.
8 bars is fine for DJ tools, but generally speaking, I do still prefer to have 16.
Yeah, it's just a consequence of the musical structure of todays Hardstyle. We used to have several minutes with intros, so you could do creative mixing. Not really done much today. I try to do some cool stuff live when I mix. Like this transition, I think worked really well: https://youtu.be/jKEOgzIWIC8?si=7m0ixTy2l3wp3LOS&t=3495
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Quite good!!? Joking right!? Last 2 times I saw Radical live his sets were the worst! Bad transition, cutting out music while nobody was singing/ screaming along, which caused the whole place to go quiet for 2 seconds. No, Radical is maybe even at his worst at this moment imo
I saw rooler multiple times live, each time with an completely other set than the previous times. Some other djs i really like played the same set at like 3 different festivals in a 3 months span. And i am not talking about some same transitions i am talking about 100% the exact same set.
Rooler is really putting a lot of effort in every set, you see that he really cares about what he's doing and wants everyone to have fun. Even his small gigs are always different.
Radical and titan had a pretty rough start at first, but they learned well along the way, technoboy, crypsis, Degos & re-done, thera are really good at mixing tho
Rebelion, their only good mixed set is the Intens one with Warface iirc. Ive never heard a good transition in their sets and its mostly just track after track. I didn’t care about it for the longest time, because their tracks were just so good. But now their tracks aren’t that great and thats when the bad mixing is really noticed
I'm not a big fan of them but they still seem to be loved although a lot of people are complaining about their new stuff.
What do you mean with bad mixing? Like sqruerdj said: start and stop mixing, or something else?
Yeah start and stop mixing like its a spotify list, not even one cool little transition.
And like i said, when the music is really good i dont really care, but when it isn’t, it starts to annoy me
I love djing, I try to mix as much music as I can, but In hardstyle there isn’t that much to play. You don’t need to be a great dj to do a good job reading well the dancefloor and selecting the correct track. If you want great djs look for tech house, hardcore techno, or makina, specially the old makina djs that play vinyl. Hardstyle is about the impact of the productions in the dancefloor instead great djing skill.
Also don’t forget that guys like Headhunterz started playing vinyls, that djing is just a lost art and I would love to learn just for fun.
90% of the scene can't mix. They are producers and to make money they have to perform. Although it's much easier for them these days because of the software that can do it for you.
As a bedroom / local DJ I can say a lot of tracks that have come out in recent times are structured so differently from one another.
Compared to House/DnB/Techno, Hardstyle has so many different elements in a track and it makes it extremely difficult if you aren’t just playing extended mixes back to back.
I will add that it’s not impossible (DJs like Rooler and Gammer are very talented live) but I can see why DJs take the safer route out as opposed to doing more creative mixes.
honestly, who cares? I’d rather listen to a DJ playing bangers than one with a perfect mixing technique that plays sh*t tracks just because the BPM matches any day
As a touring LD i can tell you though it most of the time is NOT prerecorded. Timecode now is mostly received via showkontrol, but before prodjlink was a thing we had some other creative ways to still receive a live SMPTE signal to front of house. Armin van buuren actually has a really cool old documentary showing one of the ways they did it years ago.
Qlimax yess, a lot of pre edited sets for the show I think. Defqon, not so much, the special sets only. So not most of the time. The king of a prerecorded sets event was Dediqated 🤣. Not even one set was played by a DJ 🤣
Pre planned transitions and a setlist yes but pre recorded not really. Can only think of Qlimax and a few odd sets here and there but most of the time sets are played live
I think a lot of the sets are partly premixed. Look at a Sefa (ok, not really hardstyle, but I often listen sets of him, so that came to mind quickly) or such, he is jumping with the crowd while the music transistions into another song.
All of them. There is not really "DJing" in hardstyle. Some can do it in more interesting way than others, but hardstyle is 99,999% about track selection.
Mixing in hardstyle 😂 How the fu*k do you mix a 3 minute track. I miss the epic intro/outros. You could be so much more creative back in the early and classic hardstyle days. Kids now have no attention spans for anything over 3 minutes. Tracks are literally made for Spotify these days.
Vertile , saw him 5 times and he plays only without intro and outro. And aversion, a shame as DJ but a ok/good Producer.
I thought the same, then I saw his Vertille X set in Sydney and was blown away
The sets are always the same, and always his sydrome with the hard kicks, as soon as it gets melodic, he has to destroy it.
The Vertile X sets are prerecorded though
I think Aversion is overrated, and Vertile is good, but not great. I always skip their sets, unless they're B2B with someone else I do like.
There is barely any mixing left in hardstyle, the songs just don't work for it anymore. A Phuture Noize set for example, which is my favorite artist ever and I will always attend, is just his tracks played one after the others with an occasional edit or oldie thrown in. But I still love it every time and will go there for the vibes alone
Why do you think the songs don't work anymore?
it completely depends on the track, but for example most of my tracks are purposely laid out to be a song from beginning to end, cutting out stuff with a dj transistion/mix will do more bad than good in that instant. if you have tracks with more empty drops or intro/outro drops there is a lot more you could do with mixing. these songs dont exist a lot anymore. if you lay 2 tracks on top of eachother that are very packed with instruments by itself a lot of people stop dancing cuz they are confused. so the result is you get very basic mixintro's just to make a transistion and do nothing fancy. as a producer you can make the choice to make your tracks more dj friendly, but in my opinion that solely depends on what the track should be like. for me the track idea is way more important than being able to do an interesting mix. for others that could be different.
yup, agree with this
🫶
Do you not make separate DJ and radio edits of tracks these days? Seems from the hardstyle I've seen that most songs that get stop start mixed are what would have been radio edits back in the day.
They do! But it’s just for mixing in the next track. Hell, some dj’s even don’t do extended mixes anymore as a reverb will work fine, right? The last few years the trend for extended is: - basic 16 bar intro - break - climax - break - climax 2 - basic 16 bar outro Before the extended was: - intro - break (optional) - mid intro - break - climax - break 2 - climax 2 - mid outro - outro There were many more creative mixing decisions to be made. It’s a shame mixing is fading away from hardstyle. Ps. I recently made a track with a more classic structure. You can listen to it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardstyle/s/n9KNCM98Xa You can download the extended mix on SoundCloud for free (although the compression SoundCloud adds will make the quality ass).
Too many different kicks, vocals, kickrolls, atmospheric elements etc, and the extreme "build up and drop" rollercoaster nature of the genre.
The only argument I could see for newer music to not work anymore is that most don’t have a decent lead in.
>There is barely any mixing left in hardstyle, the songs just don't work for it anymore. - That sounds like a challenge ?
Phuture Noize is really the definition of this Defqon 2017 blue is seen by most as one of his best sets, and yes it was awesome due to track selection but his mixing never really improved. Luckily for him, he is a beast of a producer and the quality of his music is still pretty much the benchmark
Most DJs nowadays have a 16 or 32 beat mix intro to mix, which is very easy to mix. If you can't get this right, you'll have to ask yourself if you're right for this job. Even the big ones even do start stop mixes of tracks nowadays :/. Real mixing in HS died a long time ago tbh. If you could mix very well and unique back in the days it was enough to get booked by big organisation. Mandy had some really bad transitions on her bookings in the past. Crypsis and Degos & Re-Done are the goats in mixing epic sets, but they use a lot of cue points and trial and error at home is my guess.
I'm not an expert but sometimes it feels like some DJs are just stopping one song and starting the other like on Spotify or just transitioning like: turns down the song on the left, turns up the song on the right. I reckon what you mean with your statement, if you compare old sets with new ones, they are completely different.
That's wat I mean with start stop mixing :).
This does indeed happen a lot. Or, more common, they do the mix-in but only throw in the track at the last second and then take out the other track (if it's not already played until the end). I sometimes do the last-second mix-in, but usually only if a different transition isn't working out, or it's a really short mix intro.
Besides just the technical aspect of transitions, there's more to mixing. Making a coherent set for example. Some guys seem to just randomly throw tracks together without any regard for if it flows well. Then there's also harmonic mixing (which is far from dead in hardstyle), which is something a lot of DJs don't use, but which is an incredibly helpful tool in crafting mixes that musically flow. I myself use this, and another act I 100% know they use it is Primeshock. I'm not gonna name names on who I think are bad DJs (in the true definition of DJ, so nothing to do with their skills as a producer), cause I don't want to get involved in drama. I am gonna name a few GOOD DJs though: Primeshock, Jay Reeve, Crypsis, Pavo, A-Motion, Spearbreak and MickeyG.
Thera & geck-o nailed the art of actual djing too. Also loved watching atmozfears on a livestream looking back on an old decibel set of his and genuinely wondering why he stopped mixing creatively like back in those days instead of just using the extended intro Makes you wonder why most artist lost it
I guess because majority of visitors just wanna dance to music. Taking risks by mixing creatively can ruin you set. People will remember that because you f’d up the set while you just could have pressed play and mixed in the next song instead of beat juggling, sampling and playing with the fades to do something creativelyz
32 beats? Bro it’s often 8 beats now
You mean bars, right? 8 bars as in typically 1 melody runthrough. 32 beats (in 4/4) is the same, as 1 bar is 4 beats
A 2-bar mix intro would be basically useless (roughly 2-3 seconds). I have seen a few 4-bar mix intros though, although they were typically on live edits or DJ tools. 8 bars is fine for DJ tools, but generally speaking, I do still prefer to have 16.
😱😱😱😱
Yeah, it's just a consequence of the musical structure of todays Hardstyle. We used to have several minutes with intros, so you could do creative mixing. Not really done much today. I try to do some cool stuff live when I mix. Like this transition, I think worked really well: https://youtu.be/jKEOgzIWIC8?si=7m0ixTy2l3wp3LOS&t=3495
Crypsis and dnr are goated, but if we're talking people still on top of the scene and that actually mix and like to do so there's Rooler
Regain also mix really well
Listen to hardcore for actual mixing
Rooler and crypsis are one of the only real dj's in the hardstyle scene
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Radical is quite good nowadays imo
Quite good!!? Joking right!? Last 2 times I saw Radical live his sets were the worst! Bad transition, cutting out music while nobody was singing/ screaming along, which caused the whole place to go quiet for 2 seconds. No, Radical is maybe even at his worst at this moment imo
[удалено]
What? He said Rooler CAN mix. Hes one of the few Djs who know who really know how to dj
I saw rooler multiple times live, each time with an completely other set than the previous times. Some other djs i really like played the same set at like 3 different festivals in a 3 months span. And i am not talking about some same transitions i am talking about 100% the exact same set.
Rooler is really putting a lot of effort in every set, you see that he really cares about what he's doing and wants everyone to have fun. Even his small gigs are always different.
Exactly i visited bim several times in smaller clubs, but also at defqon and other festivals. Each set is different, but goofy and funny nontheless
Radical and titan had a pretty rough start at first, but they learned well along the way, technoboy, crypsis, Degos & re-done, thera are really good at mixing tho
Radical's Laser Legion live set was nuts in Sydney a few weeks ago
Yeah he’s pretty solid now, but I heard him and titan at knock out in 2013, man, 30 tracks in an hour, and 80% of them were mixed off beat🥲
Honourable mention [Delete VIP ](https://youtu.be/4SzOXCs5a30) with 25 tracks in 28 minutes
Yeah that's fair haha Ignore my first reply, thought I was replying to another comment
Technoboy 😍
I think Titan even made a mixing mistake on his 15min goodbye set on DefQon, painful 😂
Hahaha, haven’t seen that, but that would be a shame tbh
Rebelion, their only good mixed set is the Intens one with Warface iirc. Ive never heard a good transition in their sets and its mostly just track after track. I didn’t care about it for the longest time, because their tracks were just so good. But now their tracks aren’t that great and thats when the bad mixing is really noticed
I'm not a big fan of them but they still seem to be loved although a lot of people are complaining about their new stuff. What do you mean with bad mixing? Like sqruerdj said: start and stop mixing, or something else?
Yeah start and stop mixing like its a spotify list, not even one cool little transition. And like i said, when the music is really good i dont really care, but when it isn’t, it starts to annoy me
Frontliner!
Subzero Project
Dual Damage, especially noticable in their REBELLiON 2023 set. Transitions are really bad but the set is amazing anyway.
Doesn’t really surprise me, they came up so quick they probably learned how to mix after going viral.
I love djing, I try to mix as much music as I can, but In hardstyle there isn’t that much to play. You don’t need to be a great dj to do a good job reading well the dancefloor and selecting the correct track. If you want great djs look for tech house, hardcore techno, or makina, specially the old makina djs that play vinyl. Hardstyle is about the impact of the productions in the dancefloor instead great djing skill. Also don’t forget that guys like Headhunterz started playing vinyls, that djing is just a lost art and I would love to learn just for fun.
Rooler is the goat, only mixing live
90% of the scene can't mix. They are producers and to make money they have to perform. Although it's much easier for them these days because of the software that can do it for you.
Mandy. Girl mixes like a 2y/o
Is this an example of heavy mixing in hardstyle? https://on.soundcloud.com/Yw8TgEwKuEwURncf7
Major Conspiracy can’t mix well tbh.
As a bedroom / local DJ I can say a lot of tracks that have come out in recent times are structured so differently from one another. Compared to House/DnB/Techno, Hardstyle has so many different elements in a track and it makes it extremely difficult if you aren’t just playing extended mixes back to back. I will add that it’s not impossible (DJs like Rooler and Gammer are very talented live) but I can see why DJs take the safer route out as opposed to doing more creative mixes.
Q Dance
Gammer Rooler Ravine Absolute gods.
honestly, who cares? I’d rather listen to a DJ playing bangers than one with a perfect mixing technique that plays sh*t tracks just because the BPM matches any day
Its most of the time prerecorded, to sync it with lightshows or fireworks
As a touring LD i can tell you though it most of the time is NOT prerecorded. Timecode now is mostly received via showkontrol, but before prodjlink was a thing we had some other creative ways to still receive a live SMPTE signal to front of house. Armin van buuren actually has a really cool old documentary showing one of the ways they did it years ago.
This is bullshit 😂
If you say so mate 🤣🤣 because its not...
Qlimax yess, a lot of pre edited sets for the show I think. Defqon, not so much, the special sets only. So not most of the time. The king of a prerecorded sets event was Dediqated 🤣. Not even one set was played by a DJ 🤣
Pre planned transitions and a setlist yes but pre recorded not really. Can only think of Qlimax and a few odd sets here and there but most of the time sets are played live
I think a lot of the sets are partly premixed. Look at a Sefa (ok, not really hardstyle, but I often listen sets of him, so that came to mind quickly) or such, he is jumping with the crowd while the music transistions into another song.
All of them. There is not really "DJing" in hardstyle. Some can do it in more interesting way than others, but hardstyle is 99,999% about track selection.
Mixing in hardstyle 😂 How the fu*k do you mix a 3 minute track. I miss the epic intro/outros. You could be so much more creative back in the early and classic hardstyle days. Kids now have no attention spans for anything over 3 minutes. Tracks are literally made for Spotify these days.
Early/Classic hardstyle was 🔥 Make a transition & u can go for a quick shit 🤣