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-- how long before you could beatmatch?
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I bought my first cd decks about 7 months ago, and my TT's about 3-4 months ago. CD beatmatching came pretty quickly, but the TT's were harder. I spend A LOT of time spinning in my room...around 2-3 hours a day. it's something I decided I wanted to take really seriously. I woudl say my beatmatching is very good. It usually takes me about 30 seconds to get the match almost perfect, and then another 15-30 seconds or so to touch up and get it so they stay together for a few minutes. Again, I spend a lot of time practicing, and ultimately thats what you need to do to get good at it. The most important thing to do is KNOW YOUR RECORDS. When I buy new records and throw them on for the first time, I usually fuck up the mix. But as soon as I get familar with the song, it becomes almost automatic.

oh, I don't know if this wil help or not...but it's the way i tought myself to beatmatch. I always start the cued song so it's faster than the one playing. I find it easier to slow the song down and make corrections going slower than speeding the track up. So, I always come in too fast....slower, slower, slower, closer, closer, closer, BAM, matched. it's just easier that way for me. This way you're not guessing which way you're off. And it's easier just to tough the platter to decrease speed, than to push the record ahead a little bit.

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Originally posted by zizack oh, I don't know if this wil help or not...but it's the way i tought myself to beatmatch. I always start the cued song so it's faster than the one playing. I find it easier to slow the song down and make corrections going slower than speeding the track up. So, I always come in too fast....slower, slower, slower, closer, closer, closer, BAM, matched. it's just easier that way for me. This way you're not guessing which way you're off. And it's easier just to tough the platter to decrease speed, than to push the record ahead a little bit.

LOL, I am the complete opposite. I always try to speed up the next record. It is a habit now, they could be perfectly matched and spinning just fine but I will have to speed the one up a little.

Thats just me though.

IMO it's better to overshoot how fast the record is going when you're mixing so that way you can slow it down when needed instead of having to speed it up. Mainly because when you have to speed it up fast some people use a combination of pitch AND pushing the record with their hands for final touches. The bad thing with that is the mix night not be exact when you push it with your hand because you don't know how much you have to adjust the pitch in order to get it right. Also if you try that while doing the actual transition and there are vocals on the track, it will fuck up the vocal. If you are already pretty fast on the cued up track then all you have to do is slow it down via pitch and then adjust it (keep doing that) until it becomes perfect.

It took me less than a week to start beatmatching as I want. Now it's 4 months that I spin resords for 2-3 hours every day, I record my mixes, and I can say that the 90% of the records are perfectly mixed. I mix everything, trance, techno, house, progressive, old tunes, and sometimes together to create new sound and melodies. Before using with my decks I used a few time the cdj100s of a friend, but not for beatmatching, only to use the "wah" effect, tath I love! I even love the music in its every aspect and rapresentation, I listen a lot of music everyday, for hours and hours... The next summer I think I would go to play in some clubs, I know some right places!

Good luck to everyone that try to start djing, it's an awesome thing!

bye

quote:

Originally posted by Endlesswave IMO it's better to overshoot how fast the record is going when you're mixing so that way you can slow it down when needed instead of having to speed it up. Mainly because when you have to speed it up fast some people use a combination of pitch AND pushing the record with their hands for final touches. The bad thing with that is the mix night not be exact when you push it with your hand because you don't know how much you have to adjust the pitch in order to get it right. Also if you try that while doing the actual transition and there are vocals on the track, it will fuck up the vocal. If you are already pretty fast on the cued up track then all you have to do is slow it down via pitch and then adjust it (keep doing that) until it becomes perfect.

yeah, thats exactly what I meant. it's easier and more precise, for me at least to overshoot teh speed, and then slow it down.

quote:

Originally posted by zizack oh, I don't know if this wil help or not...but it's the way i tought myself to beatmatch. I always start the cued song so it's faster than the one playing. I find it easier to slow the song down and make corrections going slower than speeding the track up. So, I always come in too fast....slower, slower, slower, closer, closer, closer, BAM, matched. it's just easier that way for me. This way you're not guessing which way you're off. And it's easier just to tough the platter to decrease speed, than to push the record ahead a little bit.

Hey folks,

That's interesting as I have some facts that may make you think a little differently about that. It's not that I'm picking out Zizack in particular but this just happened to be the post I saw. So my apologies to you Z.

Some DJs will jump up at me and say that what I am saying isn't so but I promise you that it is.
When you slow down a deck (Technics that is) by touching the deck plate, the motor will always compensate for that slowing down by giving the overall speed 0.whatever% more. So by slowing the record down by using resistance you are making your mixing harder. I'm not saying that you wont be able to do it but you will make your life more difficult.
I use a couple of different methods of correction but for the most part I will ride the pitch. It's harder to do it this way but the correction will sound less offensive. The other as I have mentioned before is to hold down the 33 button and tap the 45 (This only works with 33s though) sort of like a pitch bend on a CD player.
From a technical point of view it's better to start slow and speed up, but then it also depends on how you hear it.

All the best
Nem

good story, congrats..

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Originally posted by SUNWmsf I started on some gemini belt drive tables back in 1991. It took me about 5 months (16hrs per day). the first 5 months, I had no clue of what i was supposed to do, or even what to match. I just played records together, and adjusted the pitch until i didnt hear out of sync snares. The song would run out before I was able to match the beats... During my learning time of DJing, I didnt have any help cuz i didnt know any other DJ's personally. I guess I am one of those "self-taught" DJs....(so i really dont know any of the tricks and stuff that the DJ's do cuz I wasnt exposed to any of it...) I had stopped DJing for awhile cuz my tables began to not work properly. The speed of the platter would change if the turntable was playing too long, the pitch would not adjust when I moved the slider..., etc... stuff like that. So I stopped DJing for about 5 yrs and started skateboarding.. Anyways... , I got a new girlfriend whose brother was into DJ'ing and also did Sound for concerts and performances at clubs. So I eventually got back into DJ'ing using his equipment. The both of us (my girlfriends brother and myself), did fraternity parties, weddings , hall parties..., stuff like that, and I got back into DJ'ing. After awhile, my girlfriend started getting jealous that I would go do shows and i guess she noticed that girls were peeping me out... So since my girlfriend was jealous, she wanted me to not do shows anymore. So, I stopped... I broke up with that girl about 2 yrs later, and started hangin out with some new fools... One of the guys was into music and he wanted to get some equipment. So the both of us went to guitar center and picked up some 1200/m3d's and a PMC05-pr mk2 mixer. I used his equipment for about a year, just to do bedroom DJing , and also parties at his ladies house when the parents would leave. I just recently go my own equipment this year ( ~Mar 2003). I can beatmatch on the fly , but If i want precision and have the time, it will probably take me about 20 secs, do get it. (NO adjustment - minor adjustments needed for 20 sec record pitch setup.) My new girlfriend wants me to DJ cuz it makes me happy. and when I drink alot, it sobers me up cuz i get all hyped up. My new girlfriend is cool... im getttin married to her in Dec. Im 30 now.

Great avatar!!!

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Originally posted by DJ Lazy Well ProdigyChild was my mentor when I started to mess around on his crappy xl500's. almost everytime I at his place I would mess around for awhile trying to beatmatch... and I was never really good at it, but I kept praticing, and one nite, semi drunk, and mixing, i finally beatmatched my first 2 tracks ever.. it was like the best feeling ever.. (I did fuck up the mix after that one tho ) So since then I have gone out, picked myself up some Gemini PT-2100's and a Gemini 676Pro2 mixer, and started DJing at home. its prolly been over a year since I actually started playing around with DJing, but I have had my own equipment now for like 4 months, and I can pretty much beatmatch now... prolly like 90% of the time... So it really just takes loads of practice...

a sad sad story

b4 i started spinning, i didnt even know what a bar/measure was. i had taken piano lessons, but i just memorized the notes and played them, didnt time it or anything, plus a horrible teacher. then about 4 months of just dropping in the 'break part' of tracks my friend who i hadnt seen in a while asked me if i knew about 16/32 count measures, oh boy. that was such a HUGE shock and HELP. the people at my local record store wouldnt tell me that, f*ckers. so after that it took me about 1-2 months, but didnt really get it down to 20-30 seconds until i learned to properly monitor it. and i didnt learn to monitor it properly until about 2 years into mixing. but now, i am well on my way. i was a true musical virgin and moron before spinning. ill admit it.
why would a local dj working at a record store just tell you to 'get the 2 songs going, and kinda pull one in and the other out'. what type of foul treachory is that?

Heya Ezbeats

I think that answer to your local record store not actually knowing what the hell you were talking about. (Shame on them not you).
I get to speak to a lot of DJs and beleive me, there are a lot of DJs on this forum who should be playing out but aren't if their knowledge is anything to go by. Naturally it takes more than just a music theory knowledge, but if you ask all the top DJs they will all know something about it. You can't be at the top and not know it.. unless of course you are a woman with a beautiful face etc. Take DJ Rap for example, very nice looking lady but she aint all that as a DJ (Someone who has been doing it as long as she has and still train wrecks twice in one evening is not acceptable).
I see it all the time when I play. There will be some resident who thinks he is the sh*t but in actual fact he just is sh*t. Your average TA forum reader pays more attention to the finer points than your average DJ and that's just a fact. What do you think brought you here in the first place.

On the other hand I don't mean to disrespect resident DJs either as there are some damn good ones out there and after all they are the guys who keep your club packed every weekend (assuming that it is).

And it is fair to say that you learn loads about music as a DJ... people tend to dismiss you as someone who just plays other peoples and there is no skill to it. Well we all know different.

Cheers
Nem

quote:

Originally posted by SUNWmsf During my learning time of DJing, I didnt have any help cuz i didnt know any other DJ's personally. I guess I am one of those "self-taught" DJs

I feel the same way, I knew no other DJ's when I started so it was just me in the basement teaching myself for hours!

I had been listening to the music for a couple years before I started spinning so I was familiar with song structure etc. already. It probably took me a couple months to beatmatch and a couple more to really have it sound decent.

I've been spinning for almost a year and I've got beatmatching down for the most part, Sometimes my tempos are still a tiny bit off so thats one thing I've got to work on.

The most important thing I've found is being able to hear if a song is too fast or too slow and correct it, this took the most time for me to learn

Re: a sad sad story

quote:

Originally posted by ezbeats why would a local dj working at a record store just tell you to 'get the 2 songs going, and kinda pull one in and the other out'. what type of foul treachory is that?

that has got to be one of the saddest things i've ever heard man.. pull one in and the other out!? mixing is a little bit harder than that my friend. the dude at the records store must have just been lazy or maybe he's not good at mixing himself. but mixing is about feeling the music, not "pulling" songs into each other. you can't mix unless you really feel that the two songs connect. i'm glad you've gotten help from one of your friends because four months is a long time to mix with dropping beats! keep up the good work... we wanna hear some mixes!

pEy

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Originally posted by VIO well, believe it or not it's true. arsalan posted that he was able to beatmatch his first time as well. remember that trainwrecking and having to making small corrections when the tracks go slightly out of phase are two different things. a trainwreck is a ruined mix. i never said i didn't have to make corrections to the tracks while they were playing but i didn't come close to trainwrecking. mixing records is *so* easy. i could easily tell if two tracks were even slightly out of phase especially with the studio monitors that i use. i started producing two years before i started djing, but the tracks i produced weren't really tracks meant for djs. they were still electronic but not really your standard dj fare. about three months before i started djing i used to load up a bunch of pvd, digweed, sasha and other dj's full sets on my computer and listen to them when i went to bed and let them play all night. i'm sure that helped me train my ear to tell when the beats were even slightly off. as for phasematching that's really easy too. that comes natural for anyone who's produced or was a musician before they started djing. djing in general is just really really easy. once you know how to beatmatch everything else is just cake. about 3 years ago paul oakenfold's agent told paul that djing was easy and that he was just playing other peoples music, no big deal. paul challenged her to play a live set at a club. she practiced for three months and ended up rocking the club. needless to say, oaky lost the bet. anyone can do it. i've never really understood why people are so enamored by djs. all we really do is play two tracks at the same speed and blend them together. it's the easiest job in the music industry. djing is just like anything else. some people pick it up really quickly and some take a bit more practice. just because i was able to do it the first time doesn't make me a better dj then everyone else, i just had lot's of musical training before i started that i'm sure contributed to it. also, i didn't have to learn how to dj i watched some djs and it just "clicked" with me. besides, i never said that i've never trainwrecked. i just didn't then. i was having a good day.

my friend beatmatched first time also, i had had my decks for a month and was utterly shite! he asked to come round and have a go and he beatmatched first time and just smiled at me, i was pig sick!

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Originally posted by Luke Terry i still cant

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Originally posted by VIO hhhmmmm... i ask because i was able to beat match the first time i tried. in fact the first time i every tried to mix i was able to spin/mix 4 trance tracks in a row beatmatched and phase matched pretty well. it completely blew away everyone who was there. i just never had to try, i just knew how. it rarely takes me more then 16 beats to lock up two tracks pretty well. i'm not trying to come off as arrogant or say i'm cool because of that. i'm just curious if anyone was able to beatmatch their first time.

bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha, my ass man. i guarantee your trannies lasted about 2 secs. i don't care if you studied piano for 7 years, that has nothing to do with beatmatching, neither does "reading up on it." i'm sorry man, but i gotta call bullshit here.......and laugh...bwaaaaaaahahahaha

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Originally posted by VIO djing is just like anything else.

So your telling me it's just like riding an ostrich and fucking a turkey at the same time!

If it's like anything else how come everyone in the world can't fucking do it. It does take some skill and practice. I know people who have studied piano for more than seven years and still can't spin for the life of them.

It is not as easy as you make it out to be, you can't just read how to do it and step up to the tables and throw down 4 straight.

exactly dude, the fact remains that your brain has to get accustomed to hearing the two beats so eventually it can differentiate the two and also tell by what degree one is faster or slower. dj'ing is a mostly mental (and i think emotional) skill. you really can't read, "get the beats aligned by adjusting the pitch" and suddenly viola, you are up there with pvd.

i said before, that before your ears are trained you can't even hear your own trainwrecks. this isn't really something i just made up you know. if somehow, you managed to get the songs beatmatched, well maybe it was luck, i don't know. i do know that it's a hard thing to do.

i have heard sets and seen many djs that are not exactly wonderful, and they have been spinning for quite a while. it's obviously talent related.

it just pisses me off when people say, anybody can dj.

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Originally posted by DJ Digityl bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha, my ass man. i guarantee your trannies lasted about 2 secs. i don't care if you studied piano for 7 years, that has nothing to do with beatmatching, neither does "reading up on it." i'm sorry man, but i gotta call bullshit here.......and laugh...bwaaaaaaahahahaha

call it what you will but there are other in this thread who stated that they were able to beatmatch their first try. are all of them bullshitting as well? why would i bullshit anyway? read every post i've ever posted, i never write bullshit. whether or not i could beatmatch my first time has no bearing on my skills now. listen to any of my promos and see if you can find any beats even slightly out of phase. as i stated before, i don't think being able to beatmatch my first time makes me cool or a better dj then everyone else. in fact i've never mentioned my skills in a single thread so i'm obviously not trying to say i'm the shit or anything to that point. the fact of the matter is i could beatmatch my first time, there is such a thing as being natural and with the other posts on this thread i'm not the only one so it's not as rare as i thought, and that's cool. if you don't want to believe me then that's your prerogative. as for being able to tell when the beats are even slightly out of phase that's just something you learn as a musician. i also used to play guitar and sing in a metal band years ago. you have to learn to stay on beat when you're playing the guitar (or the piano or every other instrument) and it's no different then keeping two beats in line whilst mixing. so, think what you want as long as it makes you happy. cheers.

p.s. don't forget to tell everyone else who posted that they could beatmatch the first time that they're just bullshitting too.

It takes talent, passion and practice for a dj to beatmatch, not a lot of people have the patience of practicing, not a lot of people have the talent of djing there are many people that were just looking at a dj one time in a club and they wanted to be like him, they djed for a year and voila, they soled there decks and no more dj for them.... Thats what I call lack of passion..

P.S. Nice website VIO

I have to side with Vio on this one. It seems like some people can't accept that some people just have a more natural feel for some things than others. Now while keeping things in a realistic perspective I will freely admit that my matching was no means perfect (and still isn't having heard some live mixes played back to me) I grasped the principles of it first time and built on it.

Just like Vio I had prior musical experience. I used to be a drummer and a bass player in a metal band (not at the same time obviously). I have also played bass in a ska/reggae band. Things that have been really valuable to me as a DJ. Music is all about being tight and understanding time signatures etc. DJing is slightly different but a lot of the principles remain the same in terms of key/scales and pitch.

Saying that, I have a friend who has never played a single instrument in his life but is clinically the best beat matcher I have ever seen. From first time onwards too. His tune selection leaves a lot to be desired but that's a different matter. That also suggests that beat matching is not the be all and end all of DJing very far from it in fact.

I'm sure certain posters have naturally ability in something else whatever it may be. Sports and so on. Some people have a musical ear, others are artistic and so on.

Just because someone was better at something to start with, does not mean you could not become as good or better. But Vio was just asking a question out of curiosity nothing more so take it for what it is and be a little polite from time to time.

Let it be said
However Misscreant does have a good point too. It is a subjective experience as whilst you think you may have been in time back then, perhaps if you heard it now you would look back and think 'DAMN that sucked'. As we progress as DJs our expectations rise to sky high proportions and we become our own worst critic.

Cheers
Nem

it took me 3 months to learn how to beatmatch. i was using a really low quality pair of stanton direct drive tables so that set me back. everytime i would touch the record, the platter would stop. it was very frustrating. after a couple months of messing around, i bought a book called how to dj (properly). that helped me out a lot.

I think if a person has had experience with making music (or even playing music for that matter), then your ears will begin to get trained as far as separating the sounds and keeping a pace. Music is just a composition of different sounds recorded to different tracks which are mixed-down to make the final song (well....music minus vocals).

In any situation, when you make music, you will probably be keeping some kind of homogenous pace throughout the song that you are playing on the piano.

I believe that VIO may have been able to beatmatch on Turntables his 1st time, but I doubt that when he began playing the piano for the first time,he was able to keep his piano keys pace with the same tempo as the "piano-tempo-pacing-device". (or whatever that device is called when it tick-tocks back and forth to train you to keep a certain pace when you play the piano).

Anyways, His initial trouble staying with the tempo when playing the piano is probably pretty equivalent to when a person begins DJ'ing for the first time and attempts to beatmatch (beatmatching a new record and staying with the tempo of the current record playing).

Anyways , VIO, the first time that you played the piano, were you able to keep the pace with that tempo device piano players use in their learning years?


In any situation, people learn to do things their own way... VIO's learning advantage for beatmatching was learning to play the piano in his adolescence.

It took me about two months... on CDJ100's.

About beatmatching for the first time, i have a friend who did that too, he studied piano for 12 years.
But of course he doesn't do that everytime; he does it once in three tries.

I guess piano people have a lot of sense of rythm...

hmm i think if you have passion 4 music you learn twice as fast as some other mofo or so, quick example .. between me and my sister she cant beatmatch even after 2 years she like's the music but she has not that feeling ( what i think makes you a good dj or not ) how ever i'm not the one to say i'm good but i know i have this feeling euhh

flash out. :P

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