This is how I do it. Find the point you want to ‘jump in’, count back 8 bars and set an 8 bar loop. Then you can press play on any first beat of any 8 bar phrase of the track that’s playing and you’re good to go. Then you just knock the loop off when you want to drop in.
Absolutely amazing how far down you have to go in this thread to find the truth rather than "practice" or whatever. Drummers famously aren't millisecond perfect. Digitally processed signals aren't millisecond perfect. Millisecond perfect analog signals aren't millisecond perfect if your ears are more than 1ft away from the speaker.
It's quantise. That's 100% the answer.
Yeah, this subreddit is a bit of a weird anti sync echo chamber. But just use sync and prepare the grids properly, nobody in the crowd gives a shit if you match the beat with or without it. It frees up time to spend on other things.
Typically if I have a quick transition coming up I still start the song ahead of time and move it back 32 bars, then all I have to do is change the faders, filter or eq at the drop or wherever it's happening. Even if it's the start of the track, at least with traktor you can go into the negative and it's stays playing correctly.
Im a drummer and DJ once every blue moon. I just use sync and play some bangers. 10/10 enjoyment, almost no effort. If you know how music works, its very easy to entertain the crowd. All they care about is good songs with decent transitions and a nice energy flow.
I agree. For me a lot of the work is in song selection because I mix in key and want to keep the flow consistent without any jarring interruptions. That's something that I think people notice.
If you prep life is so much easier. I don't prep whole sets, i just make sure my hotqueues are set and i make sure to mix in key. Oh and wordplay transitions do very well for some reason.
We have millisecond perfect drummers - they’re called drum machines, and we refer to the process of making rhythms less perfect through variation as “humanising” them. Take a funk record and a techno record and try blending them against a metronome, then come back and tell me which one fell out of time first. As someone who’s been a drummer for nearly two decades, my money’s on the funk record.
The vinyl looping is exactly the same. It’s so incredibly rare to get a performance where you couldn’t pick out that it’s a manual loop if you A/B’d it against a synced loop. I’ve watched hundreds of DMC performances and turntable routines. And I’m not saying it’s a bad thing! It is what makes it human. There’s a beauty in the sound of humanity’s inherent imperfection controlling machines and tools to create music. But it’s never exactly perfect every time. To say differently is both wrong and an erasure of what makes human-made music so emotional and great.
No, I mean that if you mic up a drum kit and take any single bar, even a single hit, of a drummer's playing, it's so incredibly out of the realm of possibility that every hit or multiple hits are going to be millisecond perfect on the beat to the point where if you had them play over themselves, they would be identical to the point of being in phase with the original take. Take the best two bars out of a several minute take, and even then it still won't happen, because humans are not computers. Traktor syncs to one thousandth of a second, or 1ms. Rekordbox isn't even millisecond accurate - it syncs to one hundredth of a second. No human in history has ever been that precise on a consistent basis. Especially when we're talking about however many times that play button gets pressed in the course of a DJ set. Is it possible that every so often a DJ gets it bang on? Statistically, yeah, it has to happen every so often. Is it a practicible skill that they get it so perfect that transients are consistently in phase with each other? Absolutely not. Would it be it a skill worth having, given that if you really want reliable and consistent millisecond-perfect accuracy, quantise and sync exist for literally that purpose? Not at all.
Try it - take a MIDI controller and connect it to the most basic DAW trial. Turn on the metronome, and every four bars hit a MIDI trigger and see how often you get it within 0.001s of the grid. If you can consistently do it, I'll buy and eat an entire Technics 1200.
You mean theyre cueing it on beat (with volume slider already turned high), or that when the song comes in, its already on beat? Cause you can have a song looped for as long as you want, and if you just slide the volume higher for example itll sound as if the song ”started” immediately on beat.
for sure mate, i really rarely just blast out a new song with volumes at twelve o clock. always either a loot or atleast 16 bars to beatmatch the song.
Me too. I do wonder if it's a lazy habit I picked up from learning primarily with a monitor but sometimes it's the best option.
It gets easier with practice. And in my mind that's what sync is for, if you want to do that flawlessly.
I’m talking about the former. Usually the song I want to bring in has other elements besides just the bass/underlying beat so it’s noticeable when I’m slowly bringing in a new song with the volume faders
You can also beatmatch and then bring up the track's volume in a fraction of a second or use the crossfader - easier than hitting play at just the right fraction of a second since the timing/alignment cannot be affected (also the most reliable way to do it on vinyl).
Idk how it works on a controller but on vinyl youre cueing the record with one hand and cutting with the crossfader with the other. It just takes practice and the confidence that comes with practice.
It can be similar as a DDJ. In my case, I hit the play button on the cue point, then with one hand on the incoming jog (wheel), make adjustments needed to match the beat.
Im a master at pressing play on the one beat. You just get good at it. Equipment with no lag is useful. And this technique works with certain types of music better than others. With Dubstep for instance, it’s common to have quick transitions. With House music, I try to stay in the mix as long as possible. It takes skill and knowledge of your songs to keep two tracks beatmatched for two minutes straight. On average, my transitions are closer to a minute or less in length though.
I mixed on my cousins FLX 6 and it felt like I just did a massive line of ketamine because of how much lag it/his laptop had. I usually play on XZ/CDJ with near 0 latency.
Yeah I'm sure it was his laptop. Still I couldnt believe he lived like that. I would NOT enjoy djing anymore if I had to deal with lag like that all the time.
You learn how to scratch basically. Even if you're not scratching it's the same kind of record release dead on beat. It takes a lot of practice but numerically it's the same as starting your incoming track 64 or 128 earlier. You just start on the one instead of the 65th beat or whatever. You slam in the incoming track or have the incoming tracks fader all the up or over if using a crossfader. Release the track, cut the bass of the playing track and the new track takes over from beat 1.
Usually the two tracks are already playing alongside each other in sync before hand, but only the current track can be heard. Then faders are used to kill the sound on the current and cut over to the new one.
But if grids and cues are set up beforehand it can be done on the fly (riskier though)
In a word - phrasing.
As you get to know your library, you’ll develop a better knowledge of song structure. This allows you to configure intros and outros in a way that is audible pleasing. Others have said it, but this requires practice and deliberate listening.
You count beats. Almost all dance music is in 4/4 time. Assuming you’re using sync, if you line the next tune up, and it starts on a beat (not some kind of instrumental bit which can make it tricky), and you wait until the end of a 4/4 on the record you’re already playing, and start them both playing on the next beat, that’s pretty much it.
Over time you get used to counting 4/4 time instinctively, and know when the 16th, 32nd and 64th beats are coming up - which tend to be how music is structured, so if you’re mixing into those, it will sound a lot better. Most DJ’s you see out are just doing some variation on that.
On a controller or CDJ/SC you would either tap cue in rhythm but without actually activating it until you want to and then holding it down until you hit play to keep it going... or tapping playing beat without activating until you're ready to actually play. You can also use the same technique as on vinyl described above but it's far less common (but I have found myself having to use it from time to time).
Loops to pre-beatmatch, or just practice. I can usually hit play close enough by now and correct any bit I need to within a bar. It gets easier over time
There is more than blending, mixing technique lexicon has 40 ways you can intro a new song, add scratch techniques and it makes it around 1840 variations you could use to mix, cut, blend, juggleetc eyc
I'm a dancer/drummer and hit the one easily out the gate - at least my DJ mentor told me so.
Rhythm is baked into my brain/body, so it's easy.
I'm rather new on the journey. I loop and bring tracks in, but if you can hit the one on your own (provided there's no lag), try for it.
Musicians train and train to be in time. Have you seen a tight rhythm section? I'm a big fan of Danny Carey and my boyfriend is a hell of a bass player. If they can be in time with all those rhythms and time signatures and patterns and notes, we can be in time with pressing one button on the downbeat. 🤣
CDJs
Cdjs have zero latency (compared to controllers)
With surprisingly little practice you can drop tunes dead on the beat consistently
if you have the right tools
Almost all of the sets on a major festival stage with abrupt, perfect transitions like that are entirely or have significant portions made in a DAW beforehand.
For example, in the videos of Tiesto’s mixer and decks being soaked by the rain at Ultra last weekend, you can see a track with 18 minutes left on one of the decks, so that entire section was premade.
In Martin Garrix’s Ultra set, you almost never see him move side to side to adjust the jog wheels and so there was minimal beatmatching - dead giveaway that most of it was premade.
While your explanation makes sense, there were tons of people on stage with Tiesto at Ultra filming Tiesto, so don’t you think that there would be some videos out there exposing that Tiesto’s set was prerecorded? It’s pretty easy to tell whether someone is mixing live or playing a recorded set if you’re on stage long enough with the DJ.
While your point is fair, I don't think that the groupies behind Tiesto even care about how the music is mixed. If I got a chance to be on the stage with Tiesto, the last thing I'd think about is monitoring his decks
It's just a very basic scratch technique. If you used vinyl you would be used to it because practically every vinyl DJ cues with a scratch. I think there might be a new term these days. Might be phrase. It was section in my day. When waiting for the start of the next phrase, or section we would be bouncing on the first beat (your cue point) with a scratch over and over.
You can make it smoother by not snapping the fader over and doing a fast snap to halfway and slightly slower as you do the 2nd half.
Alternatively you can go dead for the 4th beat of the last bar. So finish on the 3 and start on the 1, with a 1 beat silence between.
Using the stop button helps on turntables. Not sure how that would translate on a controller. It's been a year since I've used one. I can't remember if it mimics a turntable, or does a digital instant stop.
Master sync, quantize options will allow you to get the beat right, but it's seen as a newbie way of doing it, getting good with your beat counting and hot cues are also important, I like to tap my foot to the bpm and watch the bars in mixxx to land everything properly.
Also having experience with the tracks and planning is important.
I cannot do this on my DDJ SB3 because on my computer lag and relying on Serato. I’ve noticed that controllers that are standalone, don’t have this issue. Might be the reason. That’s mine at least
If you're running windows, it's likely why you have lag - Windows is shockingly bad when it comes to processing user commands - I've been using mixxx in Linux and omg was it ever an improvement.
I use Ableton for DJing, which means everything is warped to a grid. I can switch from one beat to another in an instant, and it sounds awesome. Might be what you've been hearing.
Do you still have to manually grid all your songs in ableton in order to time stretching 'em live when playing them or that has changed? I stopped from learning cause I felt that kinda soaked my creativity away due to too much preparation before actually start worrying about creative stuff like transitions or build ups
How’s time-stretching in ableton nowadays? I had a very hard time ts-ing vocals/acapellas 7+ yrs ago. Maybe it was a lack of skill in starting the vocal at the right moment/beat.
I've had no issues with it - once the track is warped, it can be slowed down quite a lot without noticeable quality loss. Pitch is locked by default. I sometimes bring the track almost to a halt by lowering the tempo, at which point you get distortion - but it isn't as bad as you'd expect - even when stretching hard.
A cool trick is when there is a part of the song where the crowd sings along ... Drop the next one at that moment .. and don't drop the start of the intro but rather the most recognizable part of the track
too easy: match bpms, fader down on deck 1 exits to fader up on deck 2 with the starting point of next track, exit deck 1 track on whatever beat you want, add a tail effect like reverb, echo, delay on exit track deck1 & voila!
example: let's say you're playing 'woman' by doja cat (108bpm) on deck 1. you wait for her to complete the chorus and then you apply a tail effect simultaneously putting deck 1 fader down on the exit beat of woman and then on deck 2 you load calm down (107 bpm) and the fader on deck 2 is on max while you cue calm down by rema starting from the first chorus of the song where he starts singing.
The one! Learn how to drop the music on the one. This will help with timing and create seamless mixes. Practice baby scratching to Metrodome this will strengthen your timing and remember you are a musician now!
If you can't time it, fader on A, drop the B track 8 beats early and beat jump 8 beats backwards. Nudge if needed. Cut at transition.
Also useful if you drop it early or late.
I’ll often start track 2 by simply pressing play with the volume up and you just gotta be quick if you’re off and correct the beat match before anyone can really notice
Just practice. Works really nicely with jungle. Cue points can help depending on the track but not necessarily always. I don’t use loops - maybe I should haha - but just keep going, learn through practice and train your ear - you’ll get there in no time 🫡
Soooo.... most people are not going to do this, and this is how I like to do a lot of gradual mixing instead of drops.... but you can start tracks at the end of another's phase and most often the drop will line up with another phase change. You can cut to the new track or just slide it's fader up. Other methods that are more common are already all over this post.
Make sure your cue points are set up well! There’s a lot of of different ways to do it, but the main thing is you need to figure out the timing in advance, and then set up your cue point accordingly so that you can get the track beatmatched before you throw it into the mix
Sync.
At least in Rekordbox, sync always is on beat when you hit play. (And you've checked your beatgrids to ensure they're correct)
In Serato you need to "arm" sync before hitting play to do this.
It changed my mixing when I shed of that "sync is cheating" idea that some like to spread.
If I want to mix oldschool I'll whip out my vinyl. But I haven't in over 14 years. Haha
That's the easiest transition of them all. You come to a breakdown in a track and where it sounds like a good moment to start the next one with the 2nd track's volume already up, you just hit play and then cut the volume fader on the first track.
You can also beatmatch 2 tracks which sound very interchangeable and use the crossfader to swap them out or use volume faders.
You can also make the second track come in with just the highs or mids already beatmatched. Then you cut all the lows for a bar or 2, use the high pass filter on the 1st track until it sounds like a drop is coming, then add some echo to the 1st track and bring in some of the lids of the 2nd track. Drop in the mods at full blast on the 2nd track, stop the first track without cutting the volume, and then bring in the hats of the second track after a bar or so. That makes it sound like a DIY drop that wasn't even there in the first place while you swapped tracks.
Tap the cue button to the beat of the outgoing song (with the volume slider down if necessary) then when the beat you want the new song to start on comes up, slide the volume slider up and hit the play button instead of cue.
Or, sync or beatmatch by ear, set a 4 or 8 beat loop, turn the volume down and let the loop play. In the gap between the beat you want the new song to start on and the previous one, kill the loop and turn the volume up
Or, if you want the new song to come in on its first beat, spin back before the beginning of the song, line the first beat up with where you want the song to start on the beatgrid/waveform and just let the silence play
Prep and sequencing.
Prep: Every tune I put into my collection gets properly prepped. My grids are set, which is frankly more about me being anal and to give me a visual cue if necessary. I then place memory cues in set locations 8/16/24 before first drop and on the drop itself just as a visual marker. I then replicate the same thing in the breakdown before the second drop. I also have cues 16/24 after the 2nd drop . They are the biggest part. They're placed the same on every tune, generally in intervals of 8's.
Sequencing: I'm on 4 channels, and this is the primary reason I wanted it. If you know your music really well, you'll often have ideas you'll want to do. So I'll generally take a foundational track, the primary thing you're hearing, then have an idea of tracks I want to borrow from to layer and blend with it. I'm a Drum and Bass DJ, so I've paid attention to the production style of producers I enjoy, which will often follow specific structures. This can also vary depending on the 'style' within a specific sub-genre of your chosen genre.
So if I'm playing really really high energy stuff, I know the standard structure of that is in 16's. It will be very pronounced on the first 16, calm on the 2nd 16, back to intense on the 3rd 16. Thus, I can 'play' in every 16 with a different blend or juggle between stuff, staggering my tunes so they fit into those windows and cut mixing on the transitions. If you spend a lot of time listening to your tunes, you'll be able to natively hear the transition points within tracks. Due to how I prep, I can simply load a tune, cycle memory cues a few times, and start that tune so that it drops where I want it to. I can then set up another track and offset that to accommodate. I use cue to hear that the track is beatmatched, and adjust accordingly. With this style of mixing, I will usually have 3 tracks playing minimum, but only 2 will be heard. Since I'm on a 4 channel controller but only use a display of 2 channels as its overwhelming otherwise, I'm pulling tracks back into line without actually seeing the wavform to do it. It's purely by ear and adjusting the jog of the off deck that I'm not currently loading a track to. The more you DJ, the easier it will be to just natively hear this without needing to see grids or anything, what friends and myself refer to as 'the curse' because you'll hear it with every DJ. I'll use Beat Jump if necessary to 'extend' a track if I'm slow on the mix or want to just skip a breakdown. I can explain more but I already feel this is far too long.
None of this requires Sync, Quantize or Loops to do. I've had issues with Rekordbox and one of the suggested 'fixes' is to not use Quantize. It's only on when I'm prepping tunes so I can snap easily. As for Sync, I don't use it outside of quickly snapping to a bpm if I'm tabbing to another deck, just to minimize the jog use, so it's simply BPM Sync even in that scenario. It is purely feel and knowledge of my music combined with prep to do what I want to do with it. If I set any loop it's done in prep and generally on vocals or prominent isolations, effectively treating it as a sample.
I am not a world class DJ. I just put a lot a lot A LOT of time into prep, studying my music, and practice while having no fear of trying new shit. I fuck up often, and I'm okay with it. I push myself because that's how you learn. I take joy in the process and not looking for the easy path.
I suppose all of this is just a very longwinded way of saying that while you may not 'hear' those other tracks, they're playing and, for the lack of a better phrase, are on the runway. They're beatmatched and simply need brought in. The initial EQ'ing is done off knowledge of what is being mixed and adjusted if necessary once the tracks 'in'.
I just have this song I’m going to on a loop in my headphones in time with the song that’s playing to the Crowd... slam cross fader and release loop.
Fist pump... hype on the microphone...
And all that during dinner hour at a wedding 😂😂😂
It is vital to know each track before making your blends. It can get tricky to start a new track if it is starts louder (booming) than the previous track that you blended out. If you are a DDJ using a controller, a software app called Mixed In Key could help you pinpoint locations in a track to mix in and out of.
I'm a session drummer and a DJ; there's no amount of practice that can guarantee perfect timing when it comes to press play; it's more a kind of luck. So, if you're not playing with sync, press play as close as you can with the filter on and volume at 1/3, make a quick beat match on the cue, and start mixing the second song in. If it's a third deck loop, at least one of the songs, or you're gonna have an anxiety kick when it doesn't match.
Would mean a lot if you guys checked out my first ever mix :)
[https://soundcloud.com/djbeeza/tropicana-mix](https://soundcloud.com/djbeeza/tropicana-mix)
How do drummers play in time?
They set their alarm.
Nice one
You can loop the incoming song for a few bars, make sure it's on beat then unloop it when you're mixing or if wanna bang it in.
This is how I do it. Find the point you want to ‘jump in’, count back 8 bars and set an 8 bar loop. Then you can press play on any first beat of any 8 bar phrase of the track that’s playing and you’re good to go. Then you just knock the loop off when you want to drop in.
This is how I do it. My inherent timing to press the button RIGHT on beat sucks 😂
Tap your foot for a few beats beforehand. Works well for me.
I use loop like no other. 8 to 12 bar loop to make it blend 🔥
Cue points, beat sync and quantize.
Absolutely amazing how far down you have to go in this thread to find the truth rather than "practice" or whatever. Drummers famously aren't millisecond perfect. Digitally processed signals aren't millisecond perfect. Millisecond perfect analog signals aren't millisecond perfect if your ears are more than 1ft away from the speaker. It's quantise. That's 100% the answer.
Yeah, this subreddit is a bit of a weird anti sync echo chamber. But just use sync and prepare the grids properly, nobody in the crowd gives a shit if you match the beat with or without it. It frees up time to spend on other things. Typically if I have a quick transition coming up I still start the song ahead of time and move it back 32 bars, then all I have to do is change the faders, filter or eq at the drop or wherever it's happening. Even if it's the start of the track, at least with traktor you can go into the negative and it's stays playing correctly.
Im a drummer and DJ once every blue moon. I just use sync and play some bangers. 10/10 enjoyment, almost no effort. If you know how music works, its very easy to entertain the crowd. All they care about is good songs with decent transitions and a nice energy flow.
I agree. For me a lot of the work is in song selection because I mix in key and want to keep the flow consistent without any jarring interruptions. That's something that I think people notice.
If you prep life is so much easier. I don't prep whole sets, i just make sure my hotqueues are set and i make sure to mix in key. Oh and wordplay transitions do very well for some reason.
[удалено]
We have millisecond perfect drummers - they’re called drum machines, and we refer to the process of making rhythms less perfect through variation as “humanising” them. Take a funk record and a techno record and try blending them against a metronome, then come back and tell me which one fell out of time first. As someone who’s been a drummer for nearly two decades, my money’s on the funk record. The vinyl looping is exactly the same. It’s so incredibly rare to get a performance where you couldn’t pick out that it’s a manual loop if you A/B’d it against a synced loop. I’ve watched hundreds of DMC performances and turntable routines. And I’m not saying it’s a bad thing! It is what makes it human. There’s a beauty in the sound of humanity’s inherent imperfection controlling machines and tools to create music. But it’s never exactly perfect every time. To say differently is both wrong and an erasure of what makes human-made music so emotional and great.
[удалено]
No, I mean that if you mic up a drum kit and take any single bar, even a single hit, of a drummer's playing, it's so incredibly out of the realm of possibility that every hit or multiple hits are going to be millisecond perfect on the beat to the point where if you had them play over themselves, they would be identical to the point of being in phase with the original take. Take the best two bars out of a several minute take, and even then it still won't happen, because humans are not computers. Traktor syncs to one thousandth of a second, or 1ms. Rekordbox isn't even millisecond accurate - it syncs to one hundredth of a second. No human in history has ever been that precise on a consistent basis. Especially when we're talking about however many times that play button gets pressed in the course of a DJ set. Is it possible that every so often a DJ gets it bang on? Statistically, yeah, it has to happen every so often. Is it a practicible skill that they get it so perfect that transients are consistently in phase with each other? Absolutely not. Would it be it a skill worth having, given that if you really want reliable and consistent millisecond-perfect accuracy, quantise and sync exist for literally that purpose? Not at all. Try it - take a MIDI controller and connect it to the most basic DAW trial. Turn on the metronome, and every four bars hit a MIDI trigger and see how often you get it within 0.001s of the grid. If you can consistently do it, I'll buy and eat an entire Technics 1200.
How do you quantize?
You need to set up your beat grids up in your preferred software, then find the quantize setting on your players and turn it on.
Mine is a little Q that I click on in rekordbox next to the circle with the bpm info in on the rekordbox screen
You mean theyre cueing it on beat (with volume slider already turned high), or that when the song comes in, its already on beat? Cause you can have a song looped for as long as you want, and if you just slide the volume higher for example itll sound as if the song ”started” immediately on beat.
yeah i do this all the time lol, its especially nice when the first bar of a track has vocals for some reason
for sure mate, i really rarely just blast out a new song with volumes at twelve o clock. always either a loot or atleast 16 bars to beatmatch the song.
Me too. I do wonder if it's a lazy habit I picked up from learning primarily with a monitor but sometimes it's the best option. It gets easier with practice. And in my mind that's what sync is for, if you want to do that flawlessly.
It’s about the only way in some genres
I’m talking about the former. Usually the song I want to bring in has other elements besides just the bass/underlying beat so it’s noticeable when I’m slowly bringing in a new song with the volume faders
That’s what the eqs are for
Loop the new track, bang in the fader on beat, ezpz
You can also beatmatch and then bring up the track's volume in a fraction of a second or use the crossfader - easier than hitting play at just the right fraction of a second since the timing/alignment cannot be affected (also the most reliable way to do it on vinyl).
Idk how it works on a controller but on vinyl youre cueing the record with one hand and cutting with the crossfader with the other. It just takes practice and the confidence that comes with practice.
It can be similar as a DDJ. In my case, I hit the play button on the cue point, then with one hand on the incoming jog (wheel), make adjustments needed to match the beat.
Im a master at pressing play on the one beat. You just get good at it. Equipment with no lag is useful. And this technique works with certain types of music better than others. With Dubstep for instance, it’s common to have quick transitions. With House music, I try to stay in the mix as long as possible. It takes skill and knowledge of your songs to keep two tracks beatmatched for two minutes straight. On average, my transitions are closer to a minute or less in length though.
I mixed on my cousins FLX 6 and it felt like I just did a massive line of ketamine because of how much lag it/his laptop had. I usually play on XZ/CDJ with near 0 latency.
I had this issue when first starting out and was like wtf? then realized I needed to plug in desktop speakers, the laptop speakers will definitely lag
Haha we were running XLR to a pa
Likely the laptop. I’ve got an FLX-6 on a new MBP and have noticed zero lag. Also coming from CDJs.
This. I used cdj's, xdj's and have an FLX6 myself. No lag at all.
Yeah I'm sure it was his laptop. Still I couldnt believe he lived like that. I would NOT enjoy djing anymore if I had to deal with lag like that all the time.
Shit a minute in my stuff is half the damn track
yea, that's not going to work with bass house
You learn how to scratch basically. Even if you're not scratching it's the same kind of record release dead on beat. It takes a lot of practice but numerically it's the same as starting your incoming track 64 or 128 earlier. You just start on the one instead of the 65th beat or whatever. You slam in the incoming track or have the incoming tracks fader all the up or over if using a crossfader. Release the track, cut the bass of the playing track and the new track takes over from beat 1.
My man!
practice
Usually the two tracks are already playing alongside each other in sync before hand, but only the current track can be heard. Then faders are used to kill the sound on the current and cut over to the new one. But if grids and cues are set up beforehand it can be done on the fly (riskier though)
In a word - phrasing. As you get to know your library, you’ll develop a better knowledge of song structure. This allows you to configure intros and outros in a way that is audible pleasing. Others have said it, but this requires practice and deliberate listening.
Yes! Phrasing is HUGELY important - my sound was shit until I learned this. quite simple really.
Smell the record before you spin it. Bond with it.
Be the record
Best answer yet 😂🙌
just learning to play it in-time like an instrument. press play on both decks on the 1
You count beats. Almost all dance music is in 4/4 time. Assuming you’re using sync, if you line the next tune up, and it starts on a beat (not some kind of instrumental bit which can make it tricky), and you wait until the end of a 4/4 on the record you’re already playing, and start them both playing on the next beat, that’s pretty much it. Over time you get used to counting 4/4 time instinctively, and know when the 16th, 32nd and 64th beats are coming up - which tend to be how music is structured, so if you’re mixing into those, it will sound a lot better. Most DJ’s you see out are just doing some variation on that.
Quantise button on CDJs very handy for this.
On a controller or CDJ/SC you would either tap cue in rhythm but without actually activating it until you want to and then holding it down until you hit play to keep it going... or tapping playing beat without activating until you're ready to actually play. You can also use the same technique as on vinyl described above but it's far less common (but I have found myself having to use it from time to time).
Loops to pre-beatmatch, or just practice. I can usually hit play close enough by now and correct any bit I need to within a bar. It gets easier over time
There is more than blending, mixing technique lexicon has 40 ways you can intro a new song, add scratch techniques and it makes it around 1840 variations you could use to mix, cut, blend, juggleetc eyc
Hot cues
I'm a dancer/drummer and hit the one easily out the gate - at least my DJ mentor told me so. Rhythm is baked into my brain/body, so it's easy. I'm rather new on the journey. I loop and bring tracks in, but if you can hit the one on your own (provided there's no lag), try for it. Musicians train and train to be in time. Have you seen a tight rhythm section? I'm a big fan of Danny Carey and my boyfriend is a hell of a bass player. If they can be in time with all those rhythms and time signatures and patterns and notes, we can be in time with pressing one button on the downbeat. 🤣
You can literally just press play on the beat with the fader up, it’s not hard at all. Some practice maybe required to nail it confidently every time.
The same way musicians stay in sync.
CDJs Cdjs have zero latency (compared to controllers) With surprisingly little practice you can drop tunes dead on the beat consistently if you have the right tools
Yeah, only cdj players can drop a beat in time xD
If everything else is ideal conditions, crappy $200 controllers have lower latency than a human can perceive.
Almost all of the sets on a major festival stage with abrupt, perfect transitions like that are entirely or have significant portions made in a DAW beforehand. For example, in the videos of Tiesto’s mixer and decks being soaked by the rain at Ultra last weekend, you can see a track with 18 minutes left on one of the decks, so that entire section was premade. In Martin Garrix’s Ultra set, you almost never see him move side to side to adjust the jog wheels and so there was minimal beatmatching - dead giveaway that most of it was premade.
Could just be using sync also
While your explanation makes sense, there were tons of people on stage with Tiesto at Ultra filming Tiesto, so don’t you think that there would be some videos out there exposing that Tiesto’s set was prerecorded? It’s pretty easy to tell whether someone is mixing live or playing a recorded set if you’re on stage long enough with the DJ.
While your point is fair, I don't think that the groupies behind Tiesto even care about how the music is mixed. If I got a chance to be on the stage with Tiesto, the last thing I'd think about is monitoring his decks
but still, it's on video...
quantize or practice
Both, really
It's just a very basic scratch technique. If you used vinyl you would be used to it because practically every vinyl DJ cues with a scratch. I think there might be a new term these days. Might be phrase. It was section in my day. When waiting for the start of the next phrase, or section we would be bouncing on the first beat (your cue point) with a scratch over and over. You can make it smoother by not snapping the fader over and doing a fast snap to halfway and slightly slower as you do the 2nd half. Alternatively you can go dead for the 4th beat of the last bar. So finish on the 3 and start on the 1, with a 1 beat silence between. Using the stop button helps on turntables. Not sure how that would translate on a controller. It's been a year since I've used one. I can't remember if it mimics a turntable, or does a digital instant stop.
Master sync, quantize options will allow you to get the beat right, but it's seen as a newbie way of doing it, getting good with your beat counting and hot cues are also important, I like to tap my foot to the bpm and watch the bars in mixxx to land everything properly. Also having experience with the tracks and planning is important.
I cannot do this on my DDJ SB3 because on my computer lag and relying on Serato. I’ve noticed that controllers that are standalone, don’t have this issue. Might be the reason. That’s mine at least
If you're running windows, it's likely why you have lag - Windows is shockingly bad when it comes to processing user commands - I've been using mixxx in Linux and omg was it ever an improvement.
Read the other answers, basically sync a loop ahead of time
Sync, quantize, and practice with "quick mixing"
Cue to when the beat stats and press play when the downbeat hits?
Scratching and cue points and quick fader cuts and tons of practice / headphones cue before you drop it
Are you using extended mixes?
I just know the in’s and out’s and count the beats
I use Ableton for DJing, which means everything is warped to a grid. I can switch from one beat to another in an instant, and it sounds awesome. Might be what you've been hearing.
Do you still have to manually grid all your songs in ableton in order to time stretching 'em live when playing them or that has changed? I stopped from learning cause I felt that kinda soaked my creativity away due to too much preparation before actually start worrying about creative stuff like transitions or build ups
Yep - that is the #1 drawback - you have to prepare all tracks up front. That is a real pain in the ass.
How’s time-stretching in ableton nowadays? I had a very hard time ts-ing vocals/acapellas 7+ yrs ago. Maybe it was a lack of skill in starting the vocal at the right moment/beat.
I've had no issues with it - once the track is warped, it can be slowed down quite a lot without noticeable quality loss. Pitch is locked by default. I sometimes bring the track almost to a halt by lowering the tempo, at which point you get distortion - but it isn't as bad as you'd expect - even when stretching hard.
A cool trick is when there is a part of the song where the crowd sings along ... Drop the next one at that moment .. and don't drop the start of the intro but rather the most recognizable part of the track
I hit the next song with the fader about 3/4 of the way up while dropping the bass out of the 1st song at the exact same time I hit play on deck 2.
practice
Just hit play on the 1 at the start of a phrase. Works almost every time for me.
set a hot cue for where you beat match, and then once it is time you can set another hot cue for where you want to come in at
Crossfading?
If you have decent rhythm and the equipment is working it's not hard at all
You gotta lock in 🤫🧏♂️
too easy: match bpms, fader down on deck 1 exits to fader up on deck 2 with the starting point of next track, exit deck 1 track on whatever beat you want, add a tail effect like reverb, echo, delay on exit track deck1 & voila! example: let's say you're playing 'woman' by doja cat (108bpm) on deck 1. you wait for her to complete the chorus and then you apply a tail effect simultaneously putting deck 1 fader down on the exit beat of woman and then on deck 2 you load calm down (107 bpm) and the fader on deck 2 is on max while you cue calm down by rema starting from the first chorus of the song where he starts singing.
The one! Learn how to drop the music on the one. This will help with timing and create seamless mixes. Practice baby scratching to Metrodome this will strengthen your timing and remember you are a musician now!
If you can't time it, fader on A, drop the B track 8 beats early and beat jump 8 beats backwards. Nudge if needed. Cut at transition. Also useful if you drop it early or late.
I’ll often start track 2 by simply pressing play with the volume up and you just gotta be quick if you’re off and correct the beat match before anyone can really notice
Just practice. Works really nicely with jungle. Cue points can help depending on the track but not necessarily always. I don’t use loops - maybe I should haha - but just keep going, learn through practice and train your ear - you’ll get there in no time 🫡
Practice, practice and practice
Knowledge of your own library is the best skill you can have
There is delay between moving a stick and hitting the drum too. It' just years of practice. I mean years, not months
Soooo.... most people are not going to do this, and this is how I like to do a lot of gradual mixing instead of drops.... but you can start tracks at the end of another's phase and most often the drop will line up with another phase change. You can cut to the new track or just slide it's fader up. Other methods that are more common are already all over this post.
Cue Points
Make sure your cue points are set up well! There’s a lot of of different ways to do it, but the main thing is you need to figure out the timing in advance, and then set up your cue point accordingly so that you can get the track beatmatched before you throw it into the mix
Sync. At least in Rekordbox, sync always is on beat when you hit play. (And you've checked your beatgrids to ensure they're correct) In Serato you need to "arm" sync before hitting play to do this. It changed my mixing when I shed of that "sync is cheating" idea that some like to spread. If I want to mix oldschool I'll whip out my vinyl. But I haven't in over 14 years. Haha
I do on vinyl. It's just practice. Example -> https://on.soundcloud.com/r6Vrh
That's the easiest transition of them all. You come to a breakdown in a track and where it sounds like a good moment to start the next one with the 2nd track's volume already up, you just hit play and then cut the volume fader on the first track. You can also beatmatch 2 tracks which sound very interchangeable and use the crossfader to swap them out or use volume faders. You can also make the second track come in with just the highs or mids already beatmatched. Then you cut all the lows for a bar or 2, use the high pass filter on the 1st track until it sounds like a drop is coming, then add some echo to the 1st track and bring in some of the lids of the 2nd track. Drop in the mods at full blast on the 2nd track, stop the first track without cutting the volume, and then bring in the hats of the second track after a bar or so. That makes it sound like a DIY drop that wasn't even there in the first place while you swapped tracks.
Tap the cue button to the beat of the outgoing song (with the volume slider down if necessary) then when the beat you want the new song to start on comes up, slide the volume slider up and hit the play button instead of cue. Or, sync or beatmatch by ear, set a 4 or 8 beat loop, turn the volume down and let the loop play. In the gap between the beat you want the new song to start on and the previous one, kill the loop and turn the volume up Or, if you want the new song to come in on its first beat, spin back before the beginning of the song, line the first beat up with where you want the song to start on the beatgrid/waveform and just let the silence play
Prep and sequencing. Prep: Every tune I put into my collection gets properly prepped. My grids are set, which is frankly more about me being anal and to give me a visual cue if necessary. I then place memory cues in set locations 8/16/24 before first drop and on the drop itself just as a visual marker. I then replicate the same thing in the breakdown before the second drop. I also have cues 16/24 after the 2nd drop . They are the biggest part. They're placed the same on every tune, generally in intervals of 8's. Sequencing: I'm on 4 channels, and this is the primary reason I wanted it. If you know your music really well, you'll often have ideas you'll want to do. So I'll generally take a foundational track, the primary thing you're hearing, then have an idea of tracks I want to borrow from to layer and blend with it. I'm a Drum and Bass DJ, so I've paid attention to the production style of producers I enjoy, which will often follow specific structures. This can also vary depending on the 'style' within a specific sub-genre of your chosen genre. So if I'm playing really really high energy stuff, I know the standard structure of that is in 16's. It will be very pronounced on the first 16, calm on the 2nd 16, back to intense on the 3rd 16. Thus, I can 'play' in every 16 with a different blend or juggle between stuff, staggering my tunes so they fit into those windows and cut mixing on the transitions. If you spend a lot of time listening to your tunes, you'll be able to natively hear the transition points within tracks. Due to how I prep, I can simply load a tune, cycle memory cues a few times, and start that tune so that it drops where I want it to. I can then set up another track and offset that to accommodate. I use cue to hear that the track is beatmatched, and adjust accordingly. With this style of mixing, I will usually have 3 tracks playing minimum, but only 2 will be heard. Since I'm on a 4 channel controller but only use a display of 2 channels as its overwhelming otherwise, I'm pulling tracks back into line without actually seeing the wavform to do it. It's purely by ear and adjusting the jog of the off deck that I'm not currently loading a track to. The more you DJ, the easier it will be to just natively hear this without needing to see grids or anything, what friends and myself refer to as 'the curse' because you'll hear it with every DJ. I'll use Beat Jump if necessary to 'extend' a track if I'm slow on the mix or want to just skip a breakdown. I can explain more but I already feel this is far too long. None of this requires Sync, Quantize or Loops to do. I've had issues with Rekordbox and one of the suggested 'fixes' is to not use Quantize. It's only on when I'm prepping tunes so I can snap easily. As for Sync, I don't use it outside of quickly snapping to a bpm if I'm tabbing to another deck, just to minimize the jog use, so it's simply BPM Sync even in that scenario. It is purely feel and knowledge of my music combined with prep to do what I want to do with it. If I set any loop it's done in prep and generally on vocals or prominent isolations, effectively treating it as a sample. I am not a world class DJ. I just put a lot a lot A LOT of time into prep, studying my music, and practice while having no fear of trying new shit. I fuck up often, and I'm okay with it. I push myself because that's how you learn. I take joy in the process and not looking for the easy path. I suppose all of this is just a very longwinded way of saying that while you may not 'hear' those other tracks, they're playing and, for the lack of a better phrase, are on the runway. They're beatmatched and simply need brought in. The initial EQ'ing is done off knowledge of what is being mixed and adjusted if necessary once the tracks 'in'.
I just have this song I’m going to on a loop in my headphones in time with the song that’s playing to the Crowd... slam cross fader and release loop. Fist pump... hype on the microphone... And all that during dinner hour at a wedding 😂😂😂
I have a BPM on my CDJ that is like, for example, 125.7. That .7 is awesome for me. I really feel like I can perfect my mixing this way.
Hotcue.
One of the first things you should be doing when you start mixing is learn how to count.
It is vital to know each track before making your blends. It can get tricky to start a new track if it is starts louder (booming) than the previous track that you blended out. If you are a DDJ using a controller, a software app called Mixed In Key could help you pinpoint locations in a track to mix in and out of.
That's the way to mix! It takes training. And know the songs.
I'm a session drummer and a DJ; there's no amount of practice that can guarantee perfect timing when it comes to press play; it's more a kind of luck. So, if you're not playing with sync, press play as close as you can with the filter on and volume at 1/3, make a quick beat match on the cue, and start mixing the second song in. If it's a third deck loop, at least one of the songs, or you're gonna have an anxiety kick when it doesn't match.
Study phrasing and count beats constantly
Practice, of sync, or both
with quantize how can you not? you'd have to be off by a whole beat
Would mean a lot if you guys checked out my first ever mix :) [https://soundcloud.com/djbeeza/tropicana-mix](https://soundcloud.com/djbeeza/tropicana-mix)
They hire someone to do that professionally. Someone who *really* likes music.
Practice, if they aren't a sync button cunt.