In my opinion you need to first concentrate on beat matching before anything else. Learn the principle then practice it. Trust me if you jump in with trying to mix hard style tunes you will end up getting very frustrated.

Hard House is so very easy to mix. It has good speed, long long intro's and outro's to mix with and plenty of easy beats to hear. Once you have got used to beat matching try uplifting or hard trance. This will get you in to looking for cue points and blending tunes that are beat matched fine. Once you've mastered cue points and timing, then move on to hard style.

Hard style IS a cunt to mix. It isn't if you like that stop and start style mixing where you just stop the other tune as the other one cuts out before the huge bass line comes in. To me, that isn't really mixing that intelligently and its so obvious to hear. But, some people like that... - Hardstyle often has very short intro's or intro's that so quiet in relation to the other tune its hard to accurately hear whats going on. Also some intro's and outro's are strange in that they will have unexpected gaps. Also the bass lines are very heavy on hardstyle, so it will often sound swaped or too much to have both on full together.

To me mixing is about blending one tune in to another as cleverly as you can so that to the listener, it sounded like the music was supposed to cross over at that point and progess... Where mixes break up and then it goes quiet and the then the next beat slamms in I find it too chop and change for my liking... unless one record runs out as the other one breaks :) - I prefer one track to wind down as the other one steps up with clever use of shifting the bass and easier down on the mids at the right moment. But hey everyone has there on ways of doing things.

Starting with harder tunes to mix will frustrate you greatly. One of the first pieces of vinyl I bought was "Scot Project - Future is Now". I loved the tune but HATED it because I felt it was a bitch to mix. These days I find it fine to mix, but that's because I'm comfortable with my beat matching and can work out when its right to cue it off. You can't teach that, it comes with practice and hard work.

Please please... if your starting to learn to mix get some simple hard trance (early uberdruck tunes are often easy to mix...) and just try your hardest to ensure you can beat match and keep it matched for as long as possible. Once you've done that I would say move on to experimenting with different places to cue your record off... and then looking for places where records will change over together nicely. I feel it helps to go over and over a mix until you find you've found the mix your most happy with. Then you will always remember it with that record. As you get more experienced you will hear patterns in the music and notice trends in the groves of the vinyl even to help you even further.

I can't stress enough that jumping in the deep end with mixing only puts you off it and causes you stress. Work your way up. If you was starting out as a diver, you wouldn't head straight for the top board. You'd start with the basics and get better and better until you move up.

Hope that helps man.