DJ lesson 8: Know your upfaders from your crossfader
Let’s recap some fader basics. Faders are the knobs on your mixer that move up and down, or left and right. The ones that go up are – you guessed it – upfaders. The one that slides left and right is your crossfader?
Don’t fear the faders. They’re just fancy volume knobs.
An upfaders will be assigned to each deck or player, so you use them to turn up the volume on whichever tune you want to hear – or both of them at once. As long as both faders are up, your crossfader will lower the volume on one channel and increase it on the other as you slide it across.
Moving from one song to another can be done in two ways with your faders:
1. Have both upfaders pushed up and use the crossfader to move from one tune to the next.
2. Put your crossfader in the middle and use the upfaders to bring one record in and one record out. You push the fader up on the song you want to hear and bring it down on the song you want to fade out.
Now play with your mixer and see what feels right.
I use different methods for different mixes. For example, if I’m dropping in a new tune with the bass EQ turned down, I’ll fire it in with the upfader, switch the bass at the right moment and slowly fade the old tune down. I’ve always felt this gives me more control.
A DJ friend of mind swears by his crossfader and does sexy long blends with it.
So it’s really a matter of what you feel comfortable with. And the only way to find out is to jump on your decks and start practicing.
Choose two tunes that you love, hit play and start playing with your faders. Notice where one tune takes over from the other when you use the crossfader - and when you move one upfader up and the other down with the crossfader in the middle.
I’m not a scratch DJ, so I won’t talk too much about that here, but it is worth mentioning that most mixers let you adjust the settings on the crossfader’s curve.
A normal curve for straightforward blending and mixing reduces the sound level gradually as you slide the crossfader across. If you want to scratch, you’ll need to use a scratch curve, which brings the new channel in at full volume, virtually as soon as you move the fader.
Most modern mixers let you choose your curve.
Grab a beer
Forget about beat-matching for an evening. And just make a list of 10 of your favourite tunes. It doesn’t matter if their bpms are wildly different, or if they cover loads of different musical genres, In fact, it’s better if they do.
Now put one on, listen to it and enjoy it.
Think of one that might feel good next and cue it up.
When you’re ready, hit play on the new song and fade over to it.
Again, don’t worry about beat-matching.
Do the same with the rest of your tunes.
As you go through your music, think about where it makes sense (and sounds better) to do a fade. If you’ve had horribly clashy fades, try fading over a breakdown or quiet part of the song instead.
When a fade sounds good (or even amazing!), try to draw it out, and don’t be in a hurry to cut the other one. Think about why it sounded good. Were the two songs jammily beatmatched, did you start the new song at an ideal moment, did the songs have the same feel and energy level?
After this exercise, you’ll be feeling more confident about your faders, without getting distracted by beatmatching. It also forces you to really ‘listen’ to your music and think about how it feels and is structured.
Are you starting to feel like a DJ yet?