im jus wondering

[connor]

as i only currently own hardstyle and hardtrance records at the moment but what is it like in comparison to mixing techno? ive heard some ppl say its alot harder to mix techno and to keep away from it till my mixing is alot tighter...
but more and more over the last yr or so my ear has been going towards the techno sound and away from hardstyle which i am slowly finding boring so i was jus wondering what are ppls views on mixing techno? is it more difficult or does it follow the same basic rules?

[TechMouse]

From a point of view of...

1. Get two records in time.
2. Mix.

Then yes, I suppose it follows the same format.

(Please note that the following is only IMHO - different people work in different ways and conceptualise differently, this is just what I think...)

The main difference is that with Techno you tend to aim to hold your mixes for much longer. That's because there's a fundamentally different mixing philosophy at work.

With most electronic music (Breaks, D&B, House, Trance etc.) tunes follow a standard structure. You have an into, a tune and an outro. You mix the intro of one tune into the outro of another and so on, into a long chain of music. So far so good.

With Techno, because of the very abstract and rhythmic nature, you can play two tunes at the same time and end up with a whole that is greater than the sum of it's parts. In this sense, I see DJing Techno as more a case of inter-weaving two walls of sound to create something new.

Apologies if this all sounds rather pretentious, but that's just how it works in my head. ;)

[FIK]

Well, here's my view:
Because techno is 'loopier' than other types of electronic-music, there's more area for creative mixing. You know, fader cuts, eq, back spins, external fx. That's what sets techno dj's apart. I mean, if you look at a dj's like Ben Sims or Claude Young for instance. Their technical skills are amazing. I can't imagine Tiesto doing these things .He has to wait untill the break has passed and he can hardly do anything because it would **** up his melody. That's not me against Tiesto that's just reality. Other genres just rely more on melody, breaks and recognition, whereas techno (for me) is all about not recognising. Also because techno is more repetitive, you can mix it a lot faster (records per hour that is)That's why you often see three decks. Alltough a lot of techno has breaks, in most cases you can mix right trough them in order to make it sound like it's a part of the break and track.

[Artone]

In this sense, I see DJing Techno as more a case of inter-weaving two walls of sound to create something new.

Well said!
It's very exciting to kinda remix tracks as you go by playing 2 or 3 records at the same time. As a dj I would be bored to death if have to wait for a record to finally come to the outro! it's just not that challenging.
And by challenging I don't mean only the skills to have 3 deks running in sync for couple of minuets since thats only skills and doesen't have much to do with creativity but have it sound good and hopefully more exciting. so you are not only playing one record after the another but creating something new out of the existing tracks.