13 - Morpheus Set

This mix is PaulWay Mix 13, and it was mixed, appripriately enough, on Friday 13th live (well, nearly live) at Morpheus. It’s a small night organised by some friends of mine, where people with various musical tastes can get together and listen to each-other mixing and playing with music and generally having a good time. I’d been invited to play there by some other friends of mine that happened to be down from Brisbane at the time.

This was the first time I’ve actually mixed live at all, and it was a bit of a new experience. Yes, up until now all my mixes have been composed off-line, with plenty of time to fine-tune sections until they’re absolutely perfect. Which doesn’t say much for my mixing skills because there are some track fades which I am still unhappy with after all this time. So naturally you can understand that mixing live, with little or no actual practice at same, gave me a bit of a fearful surge of adrenalin, even though I was among friends.

However, everything seemed to go pretty well (apart from one ‘train derailment’ bit where I had the ending beat of ‘The Hypnotist’ set incorrectly). I had a really good time mixing, and there was a moment where everyone was watching over my shoulders watching me mix with this program in real time.

And this is where the other part of my discovery about live mixing. It’s one thing to watch a DJ mixing live, where you can see the turntables spooling out the music you’re listening to. But it must be another thing entirely – another much more boring and obsfuscatory thing – to watch someone mix in MixMeister. Because the point you’re actually playing, the point displayed on the screen, often has no relation to what the listeners are hearing. If you’re good at your job, you keep so far ahead of where the mix is actually playing that by the time the actual playback point has got to each fade it’s already seamless (or it should be). On average I was keeping one to two tracks ahead of the mix point,
so there was little point in watching me to gain an impression of what the mix was doing; and if there was a mistake in the mix (as there was with The Hypnotist) I was probably off doing something else with my headphones on and wouldn’t (didn’t) notice.

However, on the whole I enjoyed it. I want to do more live mixing, and I’m beginning to practice doing this by playing one output to one soundcard and then mixing on the other, as MixMeister allows. I can’t say that watching me is going to be as amusing as watching a ‘real DJ’ spinning real live vinyl, but OTOH what DJ can have over three thousand tracks, all arranged by BPM and easily searchable, available at their fingertips? I think I’ll stick to perfecting my way, right this minute… Though this mix might not be perfect, it’s an interesting first look at live beat mixing direct from computer.

Completed 13 Dec 2002

Styles

• Trance
• Techno

Files

• 13 - Morpheus Set 2002-12-13.mp3 - 160 kbps - 88.8 MB

Total play length: 01:18:22

Track listing

I welcome any suggestions, criticisms and recommendations for new music to listen to. I will consider doing specific mixes for people, but this is only a hobby. Hope to hear from you.