Determining which songs to mix?

man, there’s no scienze or technics for this, it’s all up to your ears, when you hear two tracks that could fit together you just have to try…

I would First of all use a couple of tunes with the same BPM at the start then move to faster tunes, and then keep going and there you go, you’ve done it.

I tend to improvise HEAVILY! I pick out probably half as much again as I actually need and just judge the way the crowd is going. I start off with some pretty inoffensive stuff from different genres and see what goes down best. As a couple of people have said, I tend to sort of just get a feeling and usually just run with that. I try to get a decent ratio of weird/obscure to stuff everybody loves, usually around 3:1.

This is mostly because I cut my DJing teeth with a friend. We somehow convinced the bar we worked in to let us DJ, both brought along a stack of records we liked and ping ponged for the night, unless one of us got into a groove the other couldn’t match, which was always a handy time for a smoke anyway. We sort of ran with that chaotic side, throwing out stuff the other person hadn’t heard before, not telling each other what we were about to play etc. It was all quite rushed and frantic and genuinely a little bit scary, but in a good way.

Depends if ur talking about making a mixtape or a live set.
As a pro DJ I completely rely on my ears to match BPM, groove and key and this is something u need
to learn if your gonna be making 10% (or any %) of ur live set with requests… or even the fundamental skill
of DJing, playing to the crowd u have!
If ur going down the route of not taking requests u can plan in advance in many ways…..
but to be honest, if u do this ur gonna suck!

If ur making a mixtape or mashup compilation use every tool available to u, no shame
in buying ‘Mixed in key’ or using similar tools to make a great compilation.
If ur on a Mac there are so many widgets which can help with production with a single push of a button
such as ‘Tap’ which will give a bpm in seconds.
If ur on a PC…. sign up to Ebay and buy a Mac haha!

depending on where you want to with your sound and where you want to take the crowd there are many ways in which to determine song play , but just stick to the basics .. tempo, key change and youll be on the right track.

Listen to a lot of music and jut feel the beat. One thing I’ll do when I want to find new mixes is I’ll put on the first song (on my iPod or in iTunes), and just go down my songs until I find something that might sound good with it. Try singing along with the vocals (if there are vocals in the song) or trying to hear the other song’s main rhythm in your head. When you find some good matches, take note of them and later experiment. You’ll know a good mix when you find one.