bagpuss
Basically an acapella is just the vocal part of a song. You can find acapellas on 12” singles or CDs, and on special acapella albums put together for DJs. A lot of record companies don’t like to put out acapellas as it encourages bootlegging of their artistes, whereas others, namely Defected, put out an acapella album every few months. In recent years, the floodgates have opened and there have been a host of remixes of tracks that started off life as bootlegs or just something a DJ would do in their set. Many were later signed and became bigger hits than the originals themselves.
If you don’t have a good record shop near to you it’s well worth a trip to one that’s DJ friendly or checking out one of the online record stores, as acapella albums are often hard to come by. That said, these days it’s possible to find almost anything if you know where to look. There are also websites where you can download acapellas as MP3s, then burn them to CD.
Before you even think about mixing your first acapella, it is very important to get your ‘beatless’ mixing skills up to scratch, as most acapellas don’t even have a hi-hat as a speed guide.
To choose your first acapella, try and use one which is a track you know so you can identify the correct BPM. You can of course still work out the BPM if you don’t know it, but remember it will take some careful counting. The next step you need to take is to listen to it very carefully and think about the structure. A tip here is not to expect the acapella to have exactly the same vocal as the normal 12” mix, as it’s often the radio edit acapella that gets used. This in itself can be very annoying, as it may break for four bars instead of eight, for example.
Once you have had a good listen to your chosen acapella, you now move on to the hard part. What are you going to mix it over? This is one part that I can’t definitively give you an answer to: trial and error was how I learnt, and getting the feel of records. Try at first to mix an acapella over something relatively unmelodic like a dub or a percussion-type track for practice.
When you feel confident with the structure and keeping it in time, try and think of a whole track or parts of a track that you think you could put it over. You need to think about the melody, when it goes up and down for example, and the way the vocal track is actually sung. Sometimes you can find a chorus that goes over a certain parts of a track and not others. This can be useful to enhance your set and can really get your crowd going if it’s a well-known chorus you are using.
An essential skill when mixing acapellas is the ability to make fine adjustments to the speed without the track whurring. This will be easier if you’ve followed my earlier advice in this series and don’t touch the platter once your mix is live, always making fine adjustments with the pitch fader on your decks. It is also a good idea to make your speed adjustment between words. The ‘push-off’, the moment when you first let go of your record, is another vital skill here so you can release it at exactly the right speed and have the fader up as you do it.
Remember: if you fail to prepare, you must be prepared to fail when mixing acapellas! I’ve heard many a DJ try and fail miserably over the years and it’s one of those situations where bad means terrible. You need to be able to get your mixing so tight that you can keep your mix in perfectly, even when your acapella track goes silent for eight bars or more before it comes back in.
Good luck!.
If you don’t have a good record shop near to you it’s well worth a trip to one that’s DJ friendly or checking out one of the online record stores, as acapella albums are often hard to come by. That said, these days it’s possible to find almost anything if you know where to look. There are also websites where you can download acapellas as MP3s, then burn them to CD.
Before you even think about mixing your first acapella, it is very important to get your ‘beatless’ mixing skills up to scratch, as most acapellas don’t even have a hi-hat as a speed guide.
To choose your first acapella, try and use one which is a track you know so you can identify the correct BPM. You can of course still work out the BPM if you don’t know it, but remember it will take some careful counting. The next step you need to take is to listen to it very carefully and think about the structure. A tip here is not to expect the acapella to have exactly the same vocal as the normal 12” mix, as it’s often the radio edit acapella that gets used. This in itself can be very annoying, as it may break for four bars instead of eight, for example.
Once you have had a good listen to your chosen acapella, you now move on to the hard part. What are you going to mix it over? This is one part that I can’t definitively give you an answer to: trial and error was how I learnt, and getting the feel of records. Try at first to mix an acapella over something relatively unmelodic like a dub or a percussion-type track for practice.
When you feel confident with the structure and keeping it in time, try and think of a whole track or parts of a track that you think you could put it over. You need to think about the melody, when it goes up and down for example, and the way the vocal track is actually sung. Sometimes you can find a chorus that goes over a certain parts of a track and not others. This can be useful to enhance your set and can really get your crowd going if it’s a well-known chorus you are using.
An essential skill when mixing acapellas is the ability to make fine adjustments to the speed without the track whurring. This will be easier if you’ve followed my earlier advice in this series and don’t touch the platter once your mix is live, always making fine adjustments with the pitch fader on your decks. It is also a good idea to make your speed adjustment between words. The ‘push-off’, the moment when you first let go of your record, is another vital skill here so you can release it at exactly the right speed and have the fader up as you do it.
Remember: if you fail to prepare, you must be prepared to fail when mixing acapellas! I’ve heard many a DJ try and fail miserably over the years and it’s one of those situations where bad means terrible. You need to be able to get your mixing so tight that you can keep your mix in perfectly, even when your acapella track goes silent for eight bars or more before it comes back in.
Good luck!.
Mensajes Fri 05 Aug 05 @ 3:59 pm
JeremK
Thankyou Bagpuss this is a very good mixing tutorial.
Mensajes Fri 05 Aug 05 @ 4:59 pm
brennan11
beatstreet.ca awseome record store, shipping is cheap!! and records usually coem with a song, its dirty version, clean version, instrumental, and accappella, very helpful, just thought i qould mention them
Mensajes Wed 10 Aug 05 @ 6:42 am
djej
This is a very good tutorial indeed. One trick that has helped me over the years...and it's not a brainbuster, but is to actually sing (in your head) the lyrics to the acapella. That helps me line it up properly when I drop it in. One of the more difficult things about mixing acapellas is the obvious lack of beat. But, if you sing to the instrumental you'll drop it in on time.
Mensajes Thu 11 Aug 05 @ 9:49 pm
brennan11
good idea djej sorta funni, but i think it might work well, i used to just put cues in the accapella and instrumental like 30 seconds in,and then when they met i just started the acappela, but i think i will try singing :p
Mensajes Thu 11 Aug 05 @ 10:37 pm