Mix moves
Tease
Teasing plays a brief, recognisable fragment of a record — a few bars of a hook or a vocal — then takes it away without mixing it in. The record itself arrives later, or sometimes not at all.
In practice
Play four bars of something they know and take it away. The withdrawal is the technique, not the fragment.
Use the most recognisable four to eight bars, over the top of what is playing, on a phrase boundary so it lands cleanly. Then cut it and continue. Deliver it later in the set if the room stayed with it, and be willing not to if the moment passed — an unpaid tease is a small loss and a badly timed payoff is a bigger one. Once or twice a set is the ceiling; a DJ who teases constantly has trained the room to stop believing any of it.
4–8 bars
The fragment
Take it away
The actual technique
1–2
Per set, at most
Where these come from: Standard teasing practice in club sets — technique, not catalog figures. For what we can measure, see the part worth teasing.
Why it matters
It works on recognition. A crowd that has heard four bars of something they know spends the next ten minutes half-expecting it, and that expectation is energy you did not have to spend a record to create.
The discipline is in the withdrawal. A tease that turns into the full track immediately was not a tease, it was a rough transition; the effect depends entirely on taking it away while people still want it, which is uncomfortable to do and is the whole technique.
Frequently asked
How long should a tease be?+
Four to eight bars — long enough to be recognised and short enough that nobody settles into it. Beyond that you have started playing the record.
Do I have to play the track afterwards?+
No, and sometimes not playing it is the better call. A payoff delivered after the moment has passed is worse than a tease that stayed a tease.
How often can you tease in one set?+
Once or twice. A room learns quickly, and a DJ who teases constantly has taught everyone to stop reacting to it.
Related terms
Hook
The hook is the part of a record people remember — the vocal line, the riff, the moment that makes it that track rather than any other. Everything else in the arrangement exists to set it up.
Quick mixing
Quick mixing plays a short section of each record, often thirty to ninety seconds, before moving to the next. It is a style of set rather than a transition, and it depends on knowing which section matters.
Reload
A reload is pulling a track back to its start and dropping it again, usually seconds after the moment the crowd reacted to. It is native to jungle, drum and bass, garage and dubstep.
Layering
Layering plays two records together for an extended period as a deliberate combination rather than as a transition — a loop under a track, a percussion record over a groove, an acapella over an instrumental.
Explore: Reading the room · Hook · Reload · All DJ terms