DIGITAL MUSIC
Vekked is a seven-time world DJ champion and producer based out of Kitchener, ON. When he’s not winning
DJ competitions, he’s playing clubs and festivals around the world as well as doing music production and
scoring work. You can reach him at [email protected].
By Vekked
Making a Beat Juggle
F
or those who are unaware, a beat juggle
is a type of DJ composition created by
using two copies of the same song on
two turntables. The goal is to rearrange
the song live on turntables, manipulating the
rhythm, tempo, and even the time signature to
effectively remix the original song into some-
thing completely different. The goal of a good
beat juggle is to create something as different
and far away from the original song as possible
while still making musical sense and creating
something interesting.
In other words, you want to bend the prop-
erties of the original song as far as you can with-
out breaking it.
Source Material
The first step to creating a beat juggle is finding
a song to use. In theory, you can beat juggle
any song, but there are certain qualities that
will make it much easier to create something
that listeners can follow.
First, you want to find something that is
relatively sparse. Songs with distinct notes and
spaces between them enable the DJ to pause
the song manually between notes by tapping
the record (which is why this technique is re-
ferred to as “tap pausing”). If a song has mostly
1/8 th notes, isolating each note is relatively easy.
If there are too many fast or sustained notes,
using tap pausing becomes more difficult and
often ends up sounding messy.
After spacing, it’s good to look for some-
thing instrumental. When beat juggling, you
often use only a couple bars of the song and
rearrange the notes available in those bars. If
there are too many vocals, you end up hear-
ing a bunch of words repeated over and over.
I can’t say exactly why this is, but hearing the
same words over and over becomes repetitive
much quicker than drum samples or melodies.
Tempo is the next most important element
of a good beat juggle track. Any tempo can be
beat juggled, but as the tempo gets faster, you
have access to fewer techniques that you can
execute cleanly. On the flip side, as a track gets
slower, you become limited in the ways you
can manipulate the song. Many beat juggles
use the technique of slowing the tempo of a
song down by about 1/3 rd . If you beat juggle
a song that’s only 60 bpm to start and break it
down, it becomes 40 bpm. Even if you have a
sick enough sense of rhythm to maintain a solid
beat at 40 bpm, I’m not sure how many people
would be able to appreciate it!
Know Your History
Once you have selected a beat that fits this crite-
ria – and that you genuinely like – it’s important
to get acquainted with the history of the art
form. If you’re new to beat juggling entirely, I
recommend first checking out the X-Ecutioners
from New York, who pioneered the art of beat
juggling, as well as the Beat Junkies, who car-
ried the torch on the West Coast in the ‘90s.
From there, the Allies (most notably Craze and
A-Trak) pushed beat juggling to new heights,
and more recently, DJs like Shiftee and Precision
have taken it even further. It’s important to study
the greats not only to know what good beat
juggling sounds like, but also to know which
songs to avoid! It’s almost never a good idea to
use a beat that has already been used to make
a classic beat juggle. If you do, anyone who is
familiar with the history of the art will instantly
compare your routine to the other great rou-
tines that used the same song. juggle are just introducing the song being used.
As I mentioned at the beginning, the goal of
beat juggling is to take a song and flip it into
something as far from the original as possible.
Because of this, it’s important to let people hear
what you’re remixing before you dismantle it.
Otherwise, people won’t be able to appreciate
the contrast between what you started with
and what you came up with.
After the intro, the next step is to set up for
the breakdown. The purpose of the setup is to
bridge the gap between the intro and break-
down. You can’t just go from the original beat
and slam into a completely different tempo or
time signature; there needs to be some sort
of transition, even if it’s quick. This is what the
setup is for. In addition to facilitating a smooth
change from the original song to the break-
down, it’s also used to create tension before
the payoff of the breakdown comes.
Lastly, and most importantly, we have the
breakdown. I always tell my students to begin
their routines by working on a breakdown be-
cause a beat juggle is only as good as the break-
down. A beat juggle without a good breakdown
is like a pop song without a hook. You can have
the greatest intro and setup in the world, but
without an interesting breakdown, the routine is
relatively worthless. On the other hand, if you do
come up with an interesting breakdown, your
beat juggle will be able to stand up relatively
well even if you don’t have many ideas on how
to build up to it. Sometimes a simple intro and
setup is completely sufficient if the breakdown
is strong enough.
Juggle Composition
Beat juggles tend to follow a loose structure
of an intro, a setup or build, and a breakdown.
There is a bit of wiggle room, but those three
phases are in almost every great beat juggle.
Usually, the first four to eight bars of a beat Unfortunately, beat juggle technique is beyond
the scope of this article, but with this overview,
a good knowledge of beat juggle history, and
a little bit of an ear for rhythm, you should be
able to get started creating a beat juggle routine
of your own.
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 31