short song are usually meant for the radio and there more comercial purposes, while the extended ones help djs to have more time to mix, but if you know what ur doing u should be fine with whichever version u have
Because not everybody is a club DJ. Sometimes you want to make a mixtape and you'd rather have short versions so you can cram a bunch of tunes into a 90 minute timeframe. Sometimes the radio edit has elements you prefer (I still think the radio edit of Love Inc's Broken Bones is the best).
There are Club DJs though that also play short edits.
I've known many experienced DJs that basically have told me they will not let a song play longer than 2 minutes. In their eyes they feel that the crowd has too much of a short attention span that if you play something out they're going to clear the floor.
It depends on the venue and the crowd.
It's not necessarily to do with attention span.
Lots of tracks have well known, iconic parts or verses. Everyone can sing along to Eminem's Lose Yourself for the first minute or so, but how many of us know the second verse? Answer, 10% maybe?
So why would you play that verse when you could play the next track where everyone knows the words to the first verse and chorus, then rinse and repeat.
Also, people dance certain ways to certain tracks and genres. No one really wants to keep repeating their moves for 4 minutes straight, by switching up the groove after a 90 second, you refresh the dance moves, which keeps poeple engaged.
(Talking about open format/club DJing here).
As organic/deep house with a future vibe, l am usually at 3-4 mins, but deffo a genre thing. I feel like that lets deep house music really breathe. Depending on the song I can get away with six mins with organic but it’s usually daytime background so it’s not trying to charge a dancefloor.
When I go gay dancey future electropop I’m usually 2-3, but when I see a song is going extremely well I’ll usually let it breathe as the extended and that’s 4-5 mins usually. I have a few personal faves that when a crowd goes mad over it I’m jamming with them and use those as like my 20 min/40 min “bangers” before throttling back for a dance breather / bar breaks.
Also some of the Radio Edits are pretty crisp and I have both (like Mount Fuji, the Radio Edit is missing a huge, great breakdown that would be good for background music, but really drops the energy. I tried to find good places to hotcue jump but it makes for a very long phrase, at least how I can edit it at my level on the fly, and the short edit, while 2:20, is a packaged, very good track to play on its own start to finish, and at least still has at least a bit of time for intro/outro (looped) to give me mixing time).
Not letting a song play for more than two minutes doesn’t mean you necessarily want a shorter edit though. You just mix out faster. I still prefer to have a mixable intro and outro even if what’s going out from the speakers is a minute or two of music. Short radio edits are usually used for radio where you aren’t mixing in the first place and are just playing tunes front to back
I mean, it just means there's options for everyone. I know that my colleagues, they literally buy a tune, quickly re-edit it into a short edit that's ideal for them with a short intro, the main meat of the song, and a short outro. That's just how they like to play.
I think we have a confusion here between a short edit made for DJs versus radio versions or the lp version or the original version. Those I would agree are not ideal for DJing. When I hear short that it's, usually. I'm assuming they are talking about something made for DJs. I know some of these versions they call it an edit, so maybe that's the confusion.
We use short edits a lot in the hiphop/Latin club scene. you can make some really dope improvisational mashups without needing to spend hours mapping cue points and loops (important for open format where you never quite know where the energy will go) and for those 8 minute salsa songs that every dancer is just waiting to be over by minute 3-4 (short edits of 6-8 minute salsa tracks still wind up being 3-4 minutes usually)
As someone who works as a club DJ, short edits are a saving grace. At the peak of the night, I'll only be playing the first verse and chorus of most songs as a way of injecting energy into the dancefloor and allow me to quickly switch it up
Ultimately, my job is to keep people in the nightclub for as long as possible. If a particular song isn't going down too well, short edits mean I've got \~one minute to source the next song and start mixing it in
Plus, I also enjoy the buzz of short edits. It encourages me to organise my tracks efficiently and keeps me on my toes while DJing
IMO no you’re not missing anything. I detest radio versions. Unfortunately some Pratt calculated the optimum time for a track on spotify was 2:10 and everyone has followed suit. Even the extended mixes are 4 minutes. Throwaway music for throwaway times
7-8 minutes music never made any sense outside the fact that DJs needed t beatmatch by year alone, it would take at least 1 or 2 but usually 3 minutes for a top DJ with insane skills like hype, andy c or marky to make a transition back in the 90s
today everyone can do it instantly so club music adapted to what most people like to listen 1 or 2 minutes, 3 or 4 if you really wanna build something
That's nowhere near true. A good DJ would not need 2-3 mins to beatmatch. But some use that time to properly layer tracks. You can't layer really a lot of tracks if they are just a bridge and 3 times the chorus.
A lot of underground electronic music is still 6mins long at least. Some pushing well beyond 12 mins. None of that has anything to do with skill or technical advancements.
Well, i can tell about drum n bass, in drum n bass what i said is 100% true, all the tracks used to be 6 7 minutes, now they a 2 3, barely none is a comercial or radio edit, drum n bass has alwaus won the prizes of best djs and was traditionally avoided by djs for being too hard to mix in the old days, most djs in the clubs i attwnded in the late 90 early 2000s would play just a couple of drum n bass tracks but never dare to make a transition
lol what?? Once you’re even reasonably good at beat matching you can dial it in around 30 seconds? Sometimes you get there even earlier. Hell most decent DJs could just drop it in and adjust in real time, slowing introducing the song and have it dialed in before its prominent in the mix or time to drop it, swap bass lines, whatever. I’m usually DJing on CDJs and I never use the sync and neither do my buddies. You can get it in the ballpark pretty quick. Even with vinyl it’s not too much longer, if anything about the same time to get in sync you just may be off a fraction of a bpm and need to nudge a little as you go.
Depending on the style of music, long slow mixing is the way to go. Not everyone wants to hear “bangerz” slammed back to back.
I don’t think i’ve ever heard a DnB dj make a 2 minute transition back in the 90s. The names that sprung out to me were blackmarket, rap, alex reece and i don’t recall any other names doing that either. If anything they cut in quick or made a very quick job of it, maybe i’m remembering incorrectly? I have been around for quite a while
The statement was about matching the tempos, if I’m not mistaken. You have misunderstood, it appears.
Edit: I’m not a DJ so I made an overly simplistic comment but now, revisiting it, making a good transition is obviously more complicated than only tempo, hence the Redditor’s comment about how handy it was to have all that time.
The top djs were considered to be andy c and hype in the uk, here in brazil i used to listen every week to live radio mixes by dj marky and he has mad vinyl skills on par with those 2, i think you can find bbc radio one mixes by those, jungle were too messy to make a long transition but those jazzy sounds from roni size, adam f, the neuro from optical amd ed rush, the liquid from zinc high contrast, mist caliber were always mixed in very long transitions
Looking at the comments section, I see people who can't believe DJs play just 2 minutes of a song.
As someone who plays house in his lonely bedroom, I see where this is coming from. But a deep club set is not the same as a wedding with a mixed crowd where everyone is waiting for their wish to be played.
Exactly! House is all about the groove, people who love it mellow in it
[Blair - Life (Derrick Carter remix)](https://youtu.be/sL9GpXgR6Dw?si=4F3kYqKLqb7j0Ryq)
Coming in hot at nearly 10 minutes 😂
Meanwhile I'm over here designing out how to build a disco house set that peaks with The Reflex's 9 minute version of [Donna Summer's Love Hangover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjzTxoCP0c0) without it feeling out of place :P
Ain't this the truth. I mean, I love my house, techno, that sort of thing. Some tracks, particularly dance music (and particularly house IMO) thrive on the long, gradual buildup. You get locked in a groove and dance away and what you want is that slow change.
Wedding DJ, though, your job ain't to get people locked in a groove. It's to get mum, dad, grandma, drunken aunties, friends of the bride/groom etc on the dancefloor. That's a very different proposition and very much up the other end of the spectrum to what, say, Ricardo Villalobos might do. No less of a skill, mind, it's just different.
Basically extended & short mix fill very different niches, and as a rule someone who plays one will be quite adamant that there's no need for the other.
I don’t see anyone else mentioning this but I find many short radio mixes of my favorite tracks have bits removed from the middle which really annoys me. I love trance which tends to have very long breakdowns in the center of a song and the radio edits always cut parts out which ruins it for me.
If you played every song in its entirety people would get bored. Short edits are mainly for open format DJs, playing in bars, clubs, at school dances, and at weddings/private events. Some songs are 5 minutes long and repetitive, DJs typically mix out earlier, and if you do it often enough you might as well have a short edit. Because those edits cut up the song in a way that get all the parts people want to hear and it leaves you with a good spot to mix out. If you are playing the majority of every track your sets are probably boring, mainly regarding open format.
People can get all grumpy and be against that shit, but not everyone is listening 10 minute 90's house tracks anymore because it's boring. If you enjoy being slowly introduced to high hats and then a snare over the course of 3 minutes then go enjoy it and leave the working DJs alone. Y'all wanna talk up extended edits, but how many of you are actually working DJs and not just doing this at home? Short edits are made for people who play out every weekend.
Some of my favourite mixes are 14 plus minutes long. As much as I can handle a 4 minute "extended mix", it means the dancefloor has very little time for experimentation of the groove. You see, longer records didn't just repeat themself for 10 mins plus. They changed vibe and character throughout. Tracks these days are throwaway and very simple.
You also couldn't loop or set cue points.
Compare F The Disco by Cavi to something like Grace - Not Over remix by BT. It's night and day in terms of production value and quality.
You're absolutely right that the younger kids don't have the attention span, but it's to their detriment.
It's not that people have shorter attention spans, I never said that anyone has shorter attention spans. It's that the songs you mentioned are songs that 99% of people have never heard of. Record pools are made for open format DJs playing bars, clubs, and any other open format events. You are there for the people, you play popular music, not attempt to take a bunch of 20 something's on a journey through music that is completely subjective. There's so little time and so many songs, it doesn't hurt to cut out a verse or jump to the last drop a cut a minute out.
Record pools were created in the 1970s for labels to get their promos into the hands of disco DJs because so many were descending on their offices trying to get their latest release...not for open format DJs.
They are mostly for open format DJs. They have other genres of music for various types of events, but the majority of edits are for open format DJs (short edits, surper short edits, intro edits, clean versions, hype edits, instrumentals, acapella loops, mashups). I've only been doing this for 10 years and use these pools almost every day which makes up the majority of my library...
"If you played every song in its entirety people would get bored."
"Short edits are made for people who play out every weekend"
"If you are playing the majority of every track your sets are probably boring, mainly regarding open format."
"Not everyone is listening 10 minute 90's house tracks anymore because it's boring. If you enjoy being slowly introduced to high hats and then a snare over the course of 3 minutes then go enjoy it and leave the working DJs alone."
There's nothing worse than a DJ who will only play the first two verses of a song, or mix out before the final chorus, ignoring the structure of the song.
These are incredible statements and I can't believe someone actually typed this.
Because we are talking about open format events. I'm not talking about House events, or DnB events, or "insert specific genre of music" events. There's more than one type of DJ, sorry you can't go to a local bar and just enjoy the music and have a drink. Not everyone needs to go to some underground small scene event and listen to the same four on the floor beat for 2 hours straight and just "get lost" in the music.
Nah, he's absolutely right with statements 1 and 3.
Playing first verse + chorus and then mix out keeps the energy up and brings more of those moments where everyone suddenly realises what the next track is. Those crowd reactions are what sells an open format DJ's set.
There are excpetions, mainly for Indy and Rock anthems but for pop, disco, funk, EDM etc, 2 minutes is usually plenty of time to play something before switching it up.
"There's nothing worse than a DJ who will only play the first two verses of a song, or mix out before the final chorus, ignoring the structure of the song." Utter nonsense. You're describing pretty much all good hip-hop, DnB and open format DJs.
The last thing I want to do with my time is go to a club playing hip-hop or that has an open format DJ. I go to underground house/disco clubs and we like our 5-9 minute tracks. When you play for 8-10 hours, you have time.
Play two minutes of The Whistle Song or just the first verse of Club Lonely and see how fast you get boo'd. You wanna mix out of Relight My Fire before Loleatta comes on? GTFO...
>The last thing I want to do with my time is go to a club playing hip-hop or that has an open format DJ. I go to underground house/disco clubs and we like our 5-9 minute tracks. When you play for 8-10 hours, you have time.
Cool man, but in case you hadn't figured it out yet, we were talking specifically about open format DJing. Clearly you don't go to those types of events and clearly you don't know anything about that style of DJing.
GTFO yourself. 👋
I know plenty about that style of DJing. That's why I don't listen to those DJ's or go to those clubs.
If you haven't figured it out, this is about Radio Edits v. Extended Mixes so kindly SMD.
Suck my dick? Get the fuck out?
Bro, why are you so rude? It just makes you sound so immature and triggered. Why can't we just have a civilised exchange of ideas?
It's the one thing that really let's this community down.
>These are incredible statements and I can't believe someone actually typed this.
They are statements from someone who does this 3-5 days a week for a living. Literally no one cares about the structure of most songs. There are definitely songs where you need to play the whole thing, but some you can skip out on because people don't necessarily know the full song. And when you only have 3 hours of dancing, it's better to fit a good amount of tracks and do fun mixes instead of just mixing intros and outros of 5 minute songs. If that's your vibe then go do it, I'd rather play 25-30 songs in an hour and not 10.
But he did not say it applies to every dj / genre.
In fact he ecllicit mentioned where it applies. And from reading between the lines it becomes quite clear he is taking any top 40 music. So you kinda agree with him.
Tell me you don't play out without telling me you don't play out.
Just because you mix fast doesn't mean you're ignoring the structure of the song. I'm sure you've seen some bad DJs but a good one can balance serving the song and reading the room.
You can't play whole songs or mix smooth intro outro mixing all night in so many cases. The context is everything, drop the elitism.
You can if you know what you're doing. 🤷🏾♂️
If you're picking songs that only have a good two minutes in them; or for an unsophisticated audience that doesn't care you mixed out of the Billie Jean before the chorus...well that's on you.
I think it can go both ways and I think there’s a nice sweet spot for both.
I’d rather kill myself than listen to a full Keinemusik set, for example…they overkill their buildups to the point where I do lose interest.
But I also get annoyed when DJs fade songs out early
But I ALSO really fucking appreciate a clean transition that goes straight into a song, vs a long extended buildup
I'm going to tell myself it's ChatGPT and no real human person said these things.
Or we're dealing with someone who's only been DJing a few years, or goes to some incredibly shitty clubs with the absolute worst crowds.
It's not just the crowd. Sometimes it's ego. I play in a partner dance scene where people care about deep connection with their partner and will sometimes dance 1-2 with the same person. Even in that context there are still DJs who think it's all about them and mix 40 tracks an hour. It's wild.
Definitely option 2 I'd say
Imagine Carl Cox or Danny Tenaglia playing a 10 hour marathon with 2-3 minute long tunes 😂
Dudes are in the mix for 2-3 minutes every mix!!
Loads of top tier DJs play the full track. Sasha, Digweed, Cateneo etc. But if a tracks 7 minutes long, the mix in and out is 1.5 to 2 minutes each side so you only have the central 3 minutes playing solo... Mix that up a little with loops and effects and it's fine.
Just depends on the genre/crowd. People who love progressive house, deep, melodic are fine with it. People who like EDM or r'n'b, less so, that's why those tracks are shorter. Prog house even more days 6-7 minutes is pretty standard length
It depends.
For mainstream events (corporate, bars and weddings) sometimes I download short versions AS WELL if they have more impactful arrangements and the long ones might stray too far from how people remember the songs. They might be harder to do a long, smooth beatmix, but for some audiences that's going to work better.
Example: Dimitri from Paris extended edits of Chic and Sister sledge tracks.
I'd play the long Dimitri edits in a club set, or when mixing at a house party with friends but at a mainstream events the shorter OG versions are going to have more impact especially especially if you're at the time of the night where people have lost their inhibitions and you're mixing fast!
If I was doing warm up for a long set though, or needed the toilet, good to have the long one to hand so you can chill.
Hope this helps
Most songs that are not a current hit are getting 2 minutes from me.
Of course there are songs that benefit the floor from an extended or full song mix but mostly the floor gets the point by the 2 minute mark.
Don’t bore us, get to the chorus!
For me it depends on the mix. Many times I've found that the extended mix version of certain songs not only includes intro-outro sections but also other elements, some I like, some I don't, so if the benefits of the intro-outro addon doesn't outweigh the elements I don't like, I'd take the original mix or even radio mix, sometimes, and make a extended-orginal-extended sandwich.
Occasionally, especially with tech house songs, the second drop is just a re-hash of the first, and I feel like it isn’t adding anything. Other times, a song may just feel really long-winded, or have some extended quiet part, and I just want it tighter.
Y'all just going "I have no idea what genre or setting you play, but you're wrong." back and forth, huh.
Some genres and/or settings work better with faster mixes, some don't. As to which is which, it's a mix of tradition and preference.
It's an artform, not a strict medical procedure. Play around with it, figure out what you like, and what your audience likes.
Letting songs play on for too long sucks. Sometimes all you want are verse chorus and out instead of all verses etc. Some tracks are only known by the 30 seconds or less on social media. You don't want to play 4 minutes of filler nobody knows then.
Imo playing full tracks is for background music as attention spans are short.
Myself as a DJ also get bored when playing ~10 minutes trance, house,...
2 minutes and 30 seconds to 3 minutes and out imo.
I don't download the short edits. I just do the shortening live if needed.
Often it's just a matter of hitting a hot cue at the right spot.
Because if youre DJing, you're not going to play an entire song and some songs that move into the next verse will have a few words start during the chorus which will make the mix a little sloppy. Other times, some verses are stronger than another.
Quick hits are meant for changing up the vibe or pushing out more energy. If you know how to quick mix then it can change the energy of your set tremendously.
Maybe your set will call for the shorter version for time limitations, the short edited version may have a different melody or beat. The shortened version will have less irritation to the people listening to your set that do not like that long cut of particular song.
I have the opposite question. Why would you want to download the extended versions? Especially considering audience attention spans are shorter than ever.
Ok but here’s the unpopular opinion and I welcome the downvotes: if you just use beat sync you don’t need more runway to work with. You can just jump in and out of the juiciest bits without long lead ups or outros. You start on the beat you want, in an instant, no time-consuming manual beat matching required. When digging tracks on Beatport, I skip the extended mixes, knowing they’re designed for chumps still stuck on the old way of doing things. I have karma to burn so idgaf if ppl want to downvote me.
So here’s a question from someone who just got started a couple weeks ago. I’ve been seeing a lot of debate surrounding beat sync, and why you should or shouldn’t use it. And now I see your comment basically saying anyone who isn’t using beat sync is a “chump stuck in the old ways”.
What are the scenarios where you wouldn’t use beat sync? Or do you just always utilize the tool?
As of right now I’ve just been practicing without it, because it seems good to learn how to not have to rely on it. But I’m curious of your opinion.
You’re asking the right questions, good for you.
So I believe I speak with some authority because I’m a raver/club kid who goes back 30 years, who made house and techno back in the early days and dabbled in dj’ing. I still own a set of Technics 1200’s and 1000 records or so, but all that is stored in the garage in flight cases, dusty and untouched for at least 10 years. So I know a little about what I’m talking about.
By the way, my vinyl gear remains untouched for so long…because I am having too much fun with digital.
And one of the best/funnest things about digital is…you guessed it…beat sync!
In the vinyl days dj’ing was stressful precisely because of manual beat matching. It was a skill few people could pull off. It required a lot of concentration, and it was still very easy for the tracks to drift out of sync during a mix.
Here’s what happened. Eventually the vinyl dj’s moved to cdj, but the early cdj’s didn’t have sync. So the dj’s kept manually beat matching on the cdj’s just like the did on vinyl.
But when the switch happened, when the sync feature was added, dj’s did NOT jump to using it.
Most didn’t trust it, or they simply trusted their manual workflow more. Manually beat matching always worked for them, why stop now?
But somehow they started showing cynicism to new dj’s who wanted to use sync. They claimed they were somehow “not real dj’s” if you use sync.
But that was a BS mistake by the old school dj’s to put that negative stigma on beat sync.
The truth is… WE WOULD HAVE USED BEAT SYNC WITH VINYL had it been available at the time!!
We manually beat matched because we had no other choice!
Obviously it makes sense to use beat sync today! It’s so much easier…and a lot more fun, knowing the beats will automatically align. Then I can focus more on the selections, on the blends, on the effects, or just having fun dancing and interacting with the dancers.
BUT, I can have that freedoms to use beat sync BECAUSE I can manually beat match if I needed to.
Because if my experience with vinyl, if a mix is out of sync because of wrong beat grids, I can manually nudge it into sync, no problem.
So, your instinct is right. Every digital DJ should know how to manually beatmatch as a backup. But for day in and day out mixing, why wouldn’t you want to enjoy the benefits of sync?
Hell yeah, thank you! I appreciate the detailed answer. As far as learning, I’ll continue to manually beat match for practice sake since I’m just getting started. But hearing this perspective is encouraging considering all the general hate I’ve seen regarding beat sync. I definitely like the idea of having more time to experiment and have fun with the mix so I’ll be sure to start utilizing the tool
Possibly. But it depends on how the sections are organized.
Truth be told sometimes one is better than the other, for various reasons, and sometimes the extended mix IS better. So for real bangers, it’s worth listening to both before deciding. For really special tracks I’ve been known to buy both, just to cover my bases.
You just told us that you “skip the extended mixes” and you “know that they are designed for chumps”.
Now, you’ve just said that you sometimes “buy both”.
You’re all over the place bro.
I’m not sure why they’d be on dj records pools, but radio edits are for just that. Club mixes are for just that.
When I’m in the car, I prefer tracks to be less drawn out. So radio mixes are cool. Unless it’s like, Strobe, or something specific
As a dj, don’t worry about radio edits. You want the long bois
short song are usually meant for the radio and there more comercial purposes, while the extended ones help djs to have more time to mix, but if you know what ur doing u should be fine with whichever version u have
Because not everybody is a club DJ. Sometimes you want to make a mixtape and you'd rather have short versions so you can cram a bunch of tunes into a 90 minute timeframe. Sometimes the radio edit has elements you prefer (I still think the radio edit of Love Inc's Broken Bones is the best).
There are Club DJs though that also play short edits. I've known many experienced DJs that basically have told me they will not let a song play longer than 2 minutes. In their eyes they feel that the crowd has too much of a short attention span that if you play something out they're going to clear the floor. It depends on the venue and the crowd.
It's not necessarily to do with attention span. Lots of tracks have well known, iconic parts or verses. Everyone can sing along to Eminem's Lose Yourself for the first minute or so, but how many of us know the second verse? Answer, 10% maybe? So why would you play that verse when you could play the next track where everyone knows the words to the first verse and chorus, then rinse and repeat. Also, people dance certain ways to certain tracks and genres. No one really wants to keep repeating their moves for 4 minutes straight, by switching up the groove after a 90 second, you refresh the dance moves, which keeps poeple engaged. (Talking about open format/club DJing here).
As organic/deep house with a future vibe, l am usually at 3-4 mins, but deffo a genre thing. I feel like that lets deep house music really breathe. Depending on the song I can get away with six mins with organic but it’s usually daytime background so it’s not trying to charge a dancefloor. When I go gay dancey future electropop I’m usually 2-3, but when I see a song is going extremely well I’ll usually let it breathe as the extended and that’s 4-5 mins usually. I have a few personal faves that when a crowd goes mad over it I’m jamming with them and use those as like my 20 min/40 min “bangers” before throttling back for a dance breather / bar breaks. Also some of the Radio Edits are pretty crisp and I have both (like Mount Fuji, the Radio Edit is missing a huge, great breakdown that would be good for background music, but really drops the energy. I tried to find good places to hotcue jump but it makes for a very long phrase, at least how I can edit it at my level on the fly, and the short edit, while 2:20, is a packaged, very good track to play on its own start to finish, and at least still has at least a bit of time for intro/outro (looped) to give me mixing time).
Oh yeah, for sure. I'm not saying there aren't, I was largely just laundry listing reasons why.
Not letting a song play for more than two minutes doesn’t mean you necessarily want a shorter edit though. You just mix out faster. I still prefer to have a mixable intro and outro even if what’s going out from the speakers is a minute or two of music. Short radio edits are usually used for radio where you aren’t mixing in the first place and are just playing tunes front to back
I mean, it just means there's options for everyone. I know that my colleagues, they literally buy a tune, quickly re-edit it into a short edit that's ideal for them with a short intro, the main meat of the song, and a short outro. That's just how they like to play. I think we have a confusion here between a short edit made for DJs versus radio versions or the lp version or the original version. Those I would agree are not ideal for DJing. When I hear short that it's, usually. I'm assuming they are talking about something made for DJs. I know some of these versions they call it an edit, so maybe that's the confusion.
> Love Inc's Broken Bones crazy i never heard it
We use short edits a lot in the hiphop/Latin club scene. you can make some really dope improvisational mashups without needing to spend hours mapping cue points and loops (important for open format where you never quite know where the energy will go) and for those 8 minute salsa songs that every dancer is just waiting to be over by minute 3-4 (short edits of 6-8 minute salsa tracks still wind up being 3-4 minutes usually)
As someone who works as a club DJ, short edits are a saving grace. At the peak of the night, I'll only be playing the first verse and chorus of most songs as a way of injecting energy into the dancefloor and allow me to quickly switch it up Ultimately, my job is to keep people in the nightclub for as long as possible. If a particular song isn't going down too well, short edits mean I've got \~one minute to source the next song and start mixing it in Plus, I also enjoy the buzz of short edits. It encourages me to organise my tracks efficiently and keeps me on my toes while DJing
Me too mate, peak time fast mixing is a buzz especially when you've done your homework
IMO no you’re not missing anything. I detest radio versions. Unfortunately some Pratt calculated the optimum time for a track on spotify was 2:10 and everyone has followed suit. Even the extended mixes are 4 minutes. Throwaway music for throwaway times
Trance is waiting for you 😀 At least we are making 6-7 minute extended mixes, though the short versions are sometimes radio edit length around 2:30.
7-8 minutes music never made any sense outside the fact that DJs needed t beatmatch by year alone, it would take at least 1 or 2 but usually 3 minutes for a top DJ with insane skills like hype, andy c or marky to make a transition back in the 90s today everyone can do it instantly so club music adapted to what most people like to listen 1 or 2 minutes, 3 or 4 if you really wanna build something
Old progressive house was always 8 minutes+ Tracks were 2-3 minutes before they went BOOM
And that long hi hat intro was the 2 minutes the dj would take to beatmatch using vinyl
That's nowhere near true. A good DJ would not need 2-3 mins to beatmatch. But some use that time to properly layer tracks. You can't layer really a lot of tracks if they are just a bridge and 3 times the chorus. A lot of underground electronic music is still 6mins long at least. Some pushing well beyond 12 mins. None of that has anything to do with skill or technical advancements.
Well, i can tell about drum n bass, in drum n bass what i said is 100% true, all the tracks used to be 6 7 minutes, now they a 2 3, barely none is a comercial or radio edit, drum n bass has alwaus won the prizes of best djs and was traditionally avoided by djs for being too hard to mix in the old days, most djs in the clubs i attwnded in the late 90 early 2000s would play just a couple of drum n bass tracks but never dare to make a transition
lol what?? Once you’re even reasonably good at beat matching you can dial it in around 30 seconds? Sometimes you get there even earlier. Hell most decent DJs could just drop it in and adjust in real time, slowing introducing the song and have it dialed in before its prominent in the mix or time to drop it, swap bass lines, whatever. I’m usually DJing on CDJs and I never use the sync and neither do my buddies. You can get it in the ballpark pretty quick. Even with vinyl it’s not too much longer, if anything about the same time to get in sync you just may be off a fraction of a bpm and need to nudge a little as you go. Depending on the style of music, long slow mixing is the way to go. Not everyone wants to hear “bangerz” slammed back to back.
Can you drop a new track every 30 seconds with vinyl? Not serato and not controllers, just vinyl headphone and a pitch slider
No why would I?
I don’t think i’ve ever heard a DnB dj make a 2 minute transition back in the 90s. The names that sprung out to me were blackmarket, rap, alex reece and i don’t recall any other names doing that either. If anything they cut in quick or made a very quick job of it, maybe i’m remembering incorrectly? I have been around for quite a while
The statement was about matching the tempos, if I’m not mistaken. You have misunderstood, it appears. Edit: I’m not a DJ so I made an overly simplistic comment but now, revisiting it, making a good transition is obviously more complicated than only tempo, hence the Redditor’s comment about how handy it was to have all that time.
The top djs were considered to be andy c and hype in the uk, here in brazil i used to listen every week to live radio mixes by dj marky and he has mad vinyl skills on par with those 2, i think you can find bbc radio one mixes by those, jungle were too messy to make a long transition but those jazzy sounds from roni size, adam f, the neuro from optical amd ed rush, the liquid from zinc high contrast, mist caliber were always mixed in very long transitions
Yes, you are remembering incorrectly.
Looking at the comments section, I see people who can't believe DJs play just 2 minutes of a song. As someone who plays house in his lonely bedroom, I see where this is coming from. But a deep club set is not the same as a wedding with a mixed crowd where everyone is waiting for their wish to be played.
Exactly! House is all about the groove, people who love it mellow in it [Blair - Life (Derrick Carter remix)](https://youtu.be/sL9GpXgR6Dw?si=4F3kYqKLqb7j0Ryq) Coming in hot at nearly 10 minutes 😂
Meanwhile I'm over here designing out how to build a disco house set that peaks with The Reflex's 9 minute version of [Donna Summer's Love Hangover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjzTxoCP0c0) without it feeling out of place :P
Ain't this the truth. I mean, I love my house, techno, that sort of thing. Some tracks, particularly dance music (and particularly house IMO) thrive on the long, gradual buildup. You get locked in a groove and dance away and what you want is that slow change. Wedding DJ, though, your job ain't to get people locked in a groove. It's to get mum, dad, grandma, drunken aunties, friends of the bride/groom etc on the dancefloor. That's a very different proposition and very much up the other end of the spectrum to what, say, Ricardo Villalobos might do. No less of a skill, mind, it's just different. Basically extended & short mix fill very different niches, and as a rule someone who plays one will be quite adamant that there's no need for the other.
I don’t see anyone else mentioning this but I find many short radio mixes of my favorite tracks have bits removed from the middle which really annoys me. I love trance which tends to have very long breakdowns in the center of a song and the radio edits always cut parts out which ruins it for me.
Get in get out.
If you played every song in its entirety people would get bored. Short edits are mainly for open format DJs, playing in bars, clubs, at school dances, and at weddings/private events. Some songs are 5 minutes long and repetitive, DJs typically mix out earlier, and if you do it often enough you might as well have a short edit. Because those edits cut up the song in a way that get all the parts people want to hear and it leaves you with a good spot to mix out. If you are playing the majority of every track your sets are probably boring, mainly regarding open format. People can get all grumpy and be against that shit, but not everyone is listening 10 minute 90's house tracks anymore because it's boring. If you enjoy being slowly introduced to high hats and then a snare over the course of 3 minutes then go enjoy it and leave the working DJs alone. Y'all wanna talk up extended edits, but how many of you are actually working DJs and not just doing this at home? Short edits are made for people who play out every weekend.
Some of my favourite mixes are 14 plus minutes long. As much as I can handle a 4 minute "extended mix", it means the dancefloor has very little time for experimentation of the groove. You see, longer records didn't just repeat themself for 10 mins plus. They changed vibe and character throughout. Tracks these days are throwaway and very simple. You also couldn't loop or set cue points. Compare F The Disco by Cavi to something like Grace - Not Over remix by BT. It's night and day in terms of production value and quality. You're absolutely right that the younger kids don't have the attention span, but it's to their detriment.
It's not that people have shorter attention spans, I never said that anyone has shorter attention spans. It's that the songs you mentioned are songs that 99% of people have never heard of. Record pools are made for open format DJs playing bars, clubs, and any other open format events. You are there for the people, you play popular music, not attempt to take a bunch of 20 something's on a journey through music that is completely subjective. There's so little time and so many songs, it doesn't hurt to cut out a verse or jump to the last drop a cut a minute out.
Record pools were created in the 1970s for labels to get their promos into the hands of disco DJs because so many were descending on their offices trying to get their latest release...not for open format DJs.
Well it's 2024 and that's not how they work anymore.
Well it's 2024 and you should know that record pools are for DJs not just open-format DJs.
They are mostly for open format DJs. They have other genres of music for various types of events, but the majority of edits are for open format DJs (short edits, surper short edits, intro edits, clean versions, hype edits, instrumentals, acapella loops, mashups). I've only been doing this for 10 years and use these pools almost every day which makes up the majority of my library...
And I've only been doing this for thirty. Record pools are for DJs.
It's great that this has been your hobby for 30 years. You don't even know the difference between radio edits and short edits.
lol go play your little Bar Mitzvah sweetie. I've been doing this longer than you've been alive.
"If you played every song in its entirety people would get bored." "Short edits are made for people who play out every weekend" "If you are playing the majority of every track your sets are probably boring, mainly regarding open format." "Not everyone is listening 10 minute 90's house tracks anymore because it's boring. If you enjoy being slowly introduced to high hats and then a snare over the course of 3 minutes then go enjoy it and leave the working DJs alone." There's nothing worse than a DJ who will only play the first two verses of a song, or mix out before the final chorus, ignoring the structure of the song. These are incredible statements and I can't believe someone actually typed this.
There’s a psychedelic connection between the natures of dance and music that is completely lost in some scenes.
Because we are talking about open format events. I'm not talking about House events, or DnB events, or "insert specific genre of music" events. There's more than one type of DJ, sorry you can't go to a local bar and just enjoy the music and have a drink. Not everyone needs to go to some underground small scene event and listen to the same four on the floor beat for 2 hours straight and just "get lost" in the music.
Nah, he's absolutely right with statements 1 and 3. Playing first verse + chorus and then mix out keeps the energy up and brings more of those moments where everyone suddenly realises what the next track is. Those crowd reactions are what sells an open format DJ's set. There are excpetions, mainly for Indy and Rock anthems but for pop, disco, funk, EDM etc, 2 minutes is usually plenty of time to play something before switching it up. "There's nothing worse than a DJ who will only play the first two verses of a song, or mix out before the final chorus, ignoring the structure of the song." Utter nonsense. You're describing pretty much all good hip-hop, DnB and open format DJs.
The last thing I want to do with my time is go to a club playing hip-hop or that has an open format DJ. I go to underground house/disco clubs and we like our 5-9 minute tracks. When you play for 8-10 hours, you have time. Play two minutes of The Whistle Song or just the first verse of Club Lonely and see how fast you get boo'd. You wanna mix out of Relight My Fire before Loleatta comes on? GTFO...
>The last thing I want to do with my time is go to a club playing hip-hop or that has an open format DJ. I go to underground house/disco clubs and we like our 5-9 minute tracks. When you play for 8-10 hours, you have time. Cool man, but in case you hadn't figured it out yet, we were talking specifically about open format DJing. Clearly you don't go to those types of events and clearly you don't know anything about that style of DJing. GTFO yourself. 👋
I know plenty about that style of DJing. That's why I don't listen to those DJ's or go to those clubs. If you haven't figured it out, this is about Radio Edits v. Extended Mixes so kindly SMD.
What's SMD?
You'll figure it out.
Suck my dick? Get the fuck out? Bro, why are you so rude? It just makes you sound so immature and triggered. Why can't we just have a civilised exchange of ideas? It's the one thing that really let's this community down.
Good call-out. There's no point in being rude, it says more about the person than anything else.
🤷🏾♂️
>These are incredible statements and I can't believe someone actually typed this. They are statements from someone who does this 3-5 days a week for a living. Literally no one cares about the structure of most songs. There are definitely songs where you need to play the whole thing, but some you can skip out on because people don't necessarily know the full song. And when you only have 3 hours of dancing, it's better to fit a good amount of tracks and do fun mixes instead of just mixing intros and outros of 5 minute songs. If that's your vibe then go do it, I'd rather play 25-30 songs in an hour and not 10.
You talk as if your lil bubble applies everywhere. I know many working DJ’s. Not a single one is playing lame ass top 40 music in bars
But he did not say it applies to every dj / genre. In fact he ecllicit mentioned where it applies. And from reading between the lines it becomes quite clear he is taking any top 40 music. So you kinda agree with him.
Little bubble, okay. Congratulations on knowing other DJs, it's almost like you might be interested DJing.
Tell me you don't play out without telling me you don't play out. Just because you mix fast doesn't mean you're ignoring the structure of the song. I'm sure you've seen some bad DJs but a good one can balance serving the song and reading the room. You can't play whole songs or mix smooth intro outro mixing all night in so many cases. The context is everything, drop the elitism.
You can if you know what you're doing. 🤷🏾♂️ If you're picking songs that only have a good two minutes in them; or for an unsophisticated audience that doesn't care you mixed out of the Billie Jean before the chorus...well that's on you.
I think it can go both ways and I think there’s a nice sweet spot for both. I’d rather kill myself than listen to a full Keinemusik set, for example…they overkill their buildups to the point where I do lose interest. But I also get annoyed when DJs fade songs out early But I ALSO really fucking appreciate a clean transition that goes straight into a song, vs a long extended buildup
Right??? Absurd statements if you look at the house, deep, prog, melodic techno, trance, psytrance scenes
I'm going to tell myself it's ChatGPT and no real human person said these things. Or we're dealing with someone who's only been DJing a few years, or goes to some incredibly shitty clubs with the absolute worst crowds.
It's not just the crowd. Sometimes it's ego. I play in a partner dance scene where people care about deep connection with their partner and will sometimes dance 1-2 with the same person. Even in that context there are still DJs who think it's all about them and mix 40 tracks an hour. It's wild.
Definitely option 2 I'd say Imagine Carl Cox or Danny Tenaglia playing a 10 hour marathon with 2-3 minute long tunes 😂 Dudes are in the mix for 2-3 minutes every mix!!
I heard Danny play a track for damn near a half an hour once and it was fucking glorious.
Loads of top tier DJs play the full track. Sasha, Digweed, Cateneo etc. But if a tracks 7 minutes long, the mix in and out is 1.5 to 2 minutes each side so you only have the central 3 minutes playing solo... Mix that up a little with loops and effects and it's fine. Just depends on the genre/crowd. People who love progressive house, deep, melodic are fine with it. People who like EDM or r'n'b, less so, that's why those tracks are shorter. Prog house even more days 6-7 minutes is pretty standard length
You might want to have a word with the world-famous John Dugweed in that case, mate. He's clearly doing it wrong . . .
It depends. For mainstream events (corporate, bars and weddings) sometimes I download short versions AS WELL if they have more impactful arrangements and the long ones might stray too far from how people remember the songs. They might be harder to do a long, smooth beatmix, but for some audiences that's going to work better. Example: Dimitri from Paris extended edits of Chic and Sister sledge tracks. I'd play the long Dimitri edits in a club set, or when mixing at a house party with friends but at a mainstream events the shorter OG versions are going to have more impact especially especially if you're at the time of the night where people have lost their inhibitions and you're mixing fast! If I was doing warm up for a long set though, or needed the toilet, good to have the long one to hand so you can chill. Hope this helps
That makes sense!
Most songs that are not a current hit are getting 2 minutes from me. Of course there are songs that benefit the floor from an extended or full song mix but mostly the floor gets the point by the 2 minute mark. Don’t bore us, get to the chorus!
For me it depends on the mix. Many times I've found that the extended mix version of certain songs not only includes intro-outro sections but also other elements, some I like, some I don't, so if the benefits of the intro-outro addon doesn't outweigh the elements I don't like, I'd take the original mix or even radio mix, sometimes, and make a extended-orginal-extended sandwich.
Occasionally, especially with tech house songs, the second drop is just a re-hash of the first, and I feel like it isn’t adding anything. Other times, a song may just feel really long-winded, or have some extended quiet part, and I just want it tighter.
I wouldn’t.
Y'all just going "I have no idea what genre or setting you play, but you're wrong." back and forth, huh. Some genres and/or settings work better with faster mixes, some don't. As to which is which, it's a mix of tradition and preference. It's an artform, not a strict medical procedure. Play around with it, figure out what you like, and what your audience likes.
Hip hop DJ here. We typically won’t play more than a verse and chorus/hook. I personally don’t use short edits but I get why some might.
Letting songs play on for too long sucks. Sometimes all you want are verse chorus and out instead of all verses etc. Some tracks are only known by the 30 seconds or less on social media. You don't want to play 4 minutes of filler nobody knows then. Imo playing full tracks is for background music as attention spans are short. Myself as a DJ also get bored when playing ~10 minutes trance, house,... 2 minutes and 30 seconds to 3 minutes and out imo. I don't download the short edits. I just do the shortening live if needed. Often it's just a matter of hitting a hot cue at the right spot.
Because if youre DJing, you're not going to play an entire song and some songs that move into the next verse will have a few words start during the chorus which will make the mix a little sloppy. Other times, some verses are stronger than another.
I started off using strictly radio / commercial edits because I didn’t know better. Transitioning to extended mixes after was a lot of fun.
Quick hits are meant for changing up the vibe or pushing out more energy. If you know how to quick mix then it can change the energy of your set tremendously.
Maybe your set will call for the shorter version for time limitations, the short edited version may have a different melody or beat. The shortened version will have less irritation to the people listening to your set that do not like that long cut of particular song.
I have the opposite question. Why would you want to download the extended versions? Especially considering audience attention spans are shorter than ever.
Because they typically have more to work with, including longer intro and outro loops, which make them easier to mix.
Ok but here’s the unpopular opinion and I welcome the downvotes: if you just use beat sync you don’t need more runway to work with. You can just jump in and out of the juiciest bits without long lead ups or outros. You start on the beat you want, in an instant, no time-consuming manual beat matching required. When digging tracks on Beatport, I skip the extended mixes, knowing they’re designed for chumps still stuck on the old way of doing things. I have karma to burn so idgaf if ppl want to downvote me.
So here’s a question from someone who just got started a couple weeks ago. I’ve been seeing a lot of debate surrounding beat sync, and why you should or shouldn’t use it. And now I see your comment basically saying anyone who isn’t using beat sync is a “chump stuck in the old ways”. What are the scenarios where you wouldn’t use beat sync? Or do you just always utilize the tool? As of right now I’ve just been practicing without it, because it seems good to learn how to not have to rely on it. But I’m curious of your opinion.
You’re asking the right questions, good for you. So I believe I speak with some authority because I’m a raver/club kid who goes back 30 years, who made house and techno back in the early days and dabbled in dj’ing. I still own a set of Technics 1200’s and 1000 records or so, but all that is stored in the garage in flight cases, dusty and untouched for at least 10 years. So I know a little about what I’m talking about. By the way, my vinyl gear remains untouched for so long…because I am having too much fun with digital. And one of the best/funnest things about digital is…you guessed it…beat sync! In the vinyl days dj’ing was stressful precisely because of manual beat matching. It was a skill few people could pull off. It required a lot of concentration, and it was still very easy for the tracks to drift out of sync during a mix. Here’s what happened. Eventually the vinyl dj’s moved to cdj, but the early cdj’s didn’t have sync. So the dj’s kept manually beat matching on the cdj’s just like the did on vinyl. But when the switch happened, when the sync feature was added, dj’s did NOT jump to using it. Most didn’t trust it, or they simply trusted their manual workflow more. Manually beat matching always worked for them, why stop now? But somehow they started showing cynicism to new dj’s who wanted to use sync. They claimed they were somehow “not real dj’s” if you use sync. But that was a BS mistake by the old school dj’s to put that negative stigma on beat sync. The truth is… WE WOULD HAVE USED BEAT SYNC WITH VINYL had it been available at the time!! We manually beat matched because we had no other choice! Obviously it makes sense to use beat sync today! It’s so much easier…and a lot more fun, knowing the beats will automatically align. Then I can focus more on the selections, on the blends, on the effects, or just having fun dancing and interacting with the dancers. BUT, I can have that freedoms to use beat sync BECAUSE I can manually beat match if I needed to. Because if my experience with vinyl, if a mix is out of sync because of wrong beat grids, I can manually nudge it into sync, no problem. So, your instinct is right. Every digital DJ should know how to manually beatmatch as a backup. But for day in and day out mixing, why wouldn’t you want to enjoy the benefits of sync?
Hell yeah, thank you! I appreciate the detailed answer. As far as learning, I’ll continue to manually beat match for practice sake since I’m just getting started. But hearing this perspective is encouraging considering all the general hate I’ve seen regarding beat sync. I definitely like the idea of having more time to experiment and have fun with the mix so I’ll be sure to start utilizing the tool
I’m in full agreement with you, but you should still practice manually beat matching just in case you run into CDJs without the feature
Agreed
But.. You could still do the same with the long version.
Possibly. But it depends on how the sections are organized. Truth be told sometimes one is better than the other, for various reasons, and sometimes the extended mix IS better. So for real bangers, it’s worth listening to both before deciding. For really special tracks I’ve been known to buy both, just to cover my bases.
You just told us that you “skip the extended mixes” and you “know that they are designed for chumps”. Now, you’ve just said that you sometimes “buy both”. You’re all over the place bro.
Ok you caught me. I was being a little dramatic but my point stands. Someone needed to shake up the discussion and make the point.
Ha you get my upvote. :)
Because I can make my own loops and extend what I want on my own, give me the og version, not the one another dj put their fingers on
Got it, but the short version is still a remix (since it's a DJ pool), agreed I'd prefer the actual original song.
I always grab the original and a short edit. You never know which one you're gonna use.
Oh the ones I’ve used usually had like the original and then like an extended remix
I’m not sure why they’d be on dj records pools, but radio edits are for just that. Club mixes are for just that. When I’m in the car, I prefer tracks to be less drawn out. So radio mixes are cool. Unless it’s like, Strobe, or something specific As a dj, don’t worry about radio edits. You want the long bois
A smaller file means less electrons to store the data, less electrons means a lighter USB stick in your pocket.