who can mix FUNKY music? .no joke, who??s the KING?
planless
819 Posts
serious question!mostly a mix which contains funk music isn??t mixed. 
some of them, if it??s a better mix you can hear at max. 1-2 bars from the new song in the currently song.but i think someone must did it so far, a mix in a TECHNO style (mix related). maybe 4 or 8 bars with a lot of EQing, where you think damn is it the new or still the old song. sure i know it??s a tuff thing to mix like that. SORRY if i missed a mix from the soulstrut site 
Comments
trick question.
the real gutbucket funk would never want to be indisinguishable from another.
unless you listen to that j-rocc jb mix, which sounds like an 80 minute james brown song.
You don't hear funk mixed this way because it wasn't made by computers, and funk djs are often more talented than their glowstick waving counterparts.
This is so simplistic... Clich?? alert!
Man have you ever been to a real techno party?
I mean no Sacha, Paul Oakenfold or bad mainstream stuff... stuff like Detroit shit? Guys from West London? Theo Parrish? Underground resistance?
Don't want to sound rude, but you talk like you don't know shit about what you're talking about.
There's no easy or hard style to mix, there are bad and good DJS, period.
assuming the funk drummer isn't completely off beat, its not that difficult to make pitch adjustments on the fly....especially if you are using Microwave and can see the waveforms.
i'd beg to differ on that techno argument...to the extent that you really have to know your records to make a techno mix sound tight. if your calling funk djs talented for having good/better taste, ok, but dj skills are another ballgame.
Been to many a techno party / rave / club from underground to commercial. I never see techno djs doing anything other than fucking about with eq and effects.
I'm not referring to taste.. to each his own. What I'm saying is it takes a lot more talent to mix two funk records together than a couple of four-on-the-floor monotonous techno tracks.
Are you serious about having to know your techno records? What the hell is there to learn? 16 bar intro.. 32 bar verse, 16 bar breakdown.. lather rinse repeat. You can see the whole song structure by LOOKING at the wax.
Dude, there is a very simple reason why you don't hear funk tracks being mixed into eachother over an 8 bar period for the most part: because live drumming very rarely maintains a computer-esque perfection for such a period of time. It just wouldn't be possible without constant and precise adjustments.
Also, while I can understand your desire to hear next-level mixing in the genre of funk, comparing techno and funk DJing really is apples and oranges. They are different mixing styles and cater to an entirely different taste.. I dunno how to put it more specifically, but they just seem wholey incongruous.
if you hear me dj, im not doin fade in and outs to bring in the next song. everything is mixed. i know quite a few dudes on this board that mix like this.
i think its part skill, part knowin your records really well
i'm not a techno dj, but ive played enough house songs to know that its not that formulaic. moreover, i'm sure techno djs would argue that a good techno set is a lot more than matching bars and beats.
there are talented djs playing all types of genres. btw, if your argument is that it takes "talent" to mix two funk records together....you need to re-evaluate what it is you consider to be talent.
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paul nice
muro
josh and luke
spinna
45 king
qbert
rob swift
etc etc
Mixing records the right way is not just have the same RPM on both records. Rhythm structure has nothing to do with that. You talk about math and metronomy when I talk about feelings and skills. Talking about "glowsticks" or "four-on-the_floor monotonous tracks" when you refering to techno just show your lack of knowledge and respect about this music.
Some funk songs are blendable but given the differences in composition and arrangements, I'm not sure it makes sense to blendmix funk songs except in those cases where you really have two songs that can build into and out of one another.
As others have said, one of the real challeneges is finding songs that you can cleanly and smartly segue between.
That said, I'd be really curious to hear a 4-8 bar blendmix between 2 funk songs (pre-disco)
When I started working at my job, one of the guys here was a tech house DJ (I didn't know what that was at the time) and the first thing he asked me when I told him I was a DJ was how long I could hold a mix. I wasn't really sure how to respond so I just said "I dunno... however long it takes." He looked at me like I was crazy. Whole different world in the techno scene.
If you want to hear and judge for yourself... I got a grip of mixes on my site. http://www.djferrari.com
funk aint about that seamless shit...Id rather have my facemelted by someone like Tony Janda, or High-C unearthing the Bartells of the world, playing 2 hours worth of badass raers that are seldom, if ever heard than some dude with skills blendin' some worn out record into "Hey Joyce" or some shit...big deal.
You sound like a raver.
Since you're the techno expert, why don't you post up some techno tracks that are rhythmically diverse with varying song structure. I'm not saying this to be confrontational, I'm honestly interested in hearing this. I've heard some housey tracks that were a little more varied, usually the sample-based stuff. But straight-up techno? That would be a new one.
So you don't think it's possible to have the facemelting records AND mix them? Why make such a distinction or are you that against DJing?
It really depends on which two records you are trying to mix--their arrangement, how consistent the drumming is, alladat. I do mix some funk records on some four-bar (sometimes longer) overlay shit, but sometimes, it's better to just drop it in.
Also, as you can tell from checking his posted mixes, Ferrari is nice with the funk mixing, so add his name to the list.
That's exactly your problem: for you techno = rave party
You obviously heard cheap wack techno in a desert with some drugged fluo dressed kids when you were a teenager.
I'm no expert at all. And I have 10x more rare groove records than techno one. I just were open to various music during all my life. That said and based on that, I know you can't judge any style as long as you're not really into it.
Anyway..
So if I follow you, a track based on the same rhythm on its whole lenght is boring? So you agree 99% of hip hop is monotonous and boring as well? Cause a hip hop track is usually based on the exact same breakbeat rhythm.
Even funk classic like the JB's stuff are based on the same hypnotic rhythm.
Your argument about rhythm is corny. You sound like my parents saying "techno tracks sound all the same".
As for your education about techno, not house (which is not the same music but I doubt you could find any differences..) I named you some artists: Moodymann, Theo Parrish, King Britt, the whole Detroit scene, Recloose, some of the early Daft Punk tunes on Roul??.. The originators like UR or Derrick May (that killed everything when he was mixing in Paris last summer), the list is far longer than this, once again I'm not an expert.
So here's the thing: I checked out Ferrari's "Funky Penguin" mix and I think it demonstrates the challenges in mixing records from a genre that was not designed with mixing in mind (unlike hip-hop, techno, disco, etc.) This is not meant as a cap on Ferrari because I think he does a really skillful job of staying in synch for multiple bars but in many cases, I found the overlay of two funk songs to be jarring and discordant. The instrumentation clashed, sometimes songs were conspiciously out of key with one another and songs often times seemed in competition rather than smoothly giving way to the next. I don't think that's a limitation of Ferrari's mixing skills - I think that's the limitation in trying to blend-mix funk songs: it's a rare case when you can effectively overlap two of them and have everything sound compatible with each other. Even the most gutbucket funk tunes have some level of basic arrangement operating and the introduction of a whole 'nother set of instruments, rhythms and melodies rarely is going to sound like it's natural. Maybe if you don't know the songs at all...it'd help but even at the parts in the mix where I didn't instantly recognize the new song being mixed in, it was still obvious that the mix began because things suddenly felt chaotic and/or awkward.
Just .02