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-- After beatmatching, should I return to song's intended original tempo?
After beatmatching, should I return to song's intended original tempo?
So after you beatmatch, are you supposed to slowly increase/decrease the tempo of the track to return to its original/intended tempo?
Let's say I got a track that's going 120 bpm, next track's 128. I can slow down the 2nd to 120, but do I slowly increase it back to 128?
Sorry, I'm new to all this! please educate me. I tried reading about beatmatching on websites and they don't really say.
no. you should keep tracks at the same tempo you had them when beatmatched. only change tempo when you are going in one direction intentionally. for instance, if you've been playing at 124bpm for a while, and the night is progressing, you might want to start playing faster. so after your mixes, you could nudge your tracks up a bit. be subtle about it, so the listener cannot notice.
but by no means do you HAVE to do anything with the pitch slider after a mix. only do something if you want to. i've recorded sets with basically the same BPM all throughout.
also, try to avoid playing tracks that have a huge BPM difference than the one that's already playing. most of the time, pitching a record up or down a lot makes it sound like crap. there are exceptions when you get some really good results, but generally, dropping that 145bpm hard techno track when you're playing 125bpm deep house is a bad idea 
A good rule I have read about is the 4% percent rule. Don't try to mix any tracks that have a difference greater than 4% of the track you are mixing into.
I don't even have my own tables yet and cannot use this theory myself so this could be rubbish. Can anybody back me up on this?
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| Originally posted by Nickerous A good rule I have read about is the 4% percent rule. Don't try to mix any tracks that have a difference greater than 4% of the track you are mixing into. I don't even have my own tables yet and cannot use this theory myself so this could be rubbish. Can anybody back me up on this? |
I think it can be done if your starting off with an ambient/downtempo track and you the incoming track has a higher BPM. Match the first 16 or 32 bars and then bring it back up gradually to around the original BPM, so that your whole mix isn't the same BPM as the ambient/downtempo track, which most are like 120 and under. I mean if your going from an ambient track to a progressive house track with an ambient intro, it works without doing much to the tempo, cause you would likely do a quick fade in. If your going from the ambient track to a track that just starts off with a kickdrum, your best bet is to gradually increase it in intervals. However, the tracks should still be somewhat in the same vacinity BPM wise (no more than 10 bpms a part i'de say), your not going to go from a 115 bpm ambient track to a 135 bpm trance track. With Master Tempo, doing these kinds of things sounds a lot better, but those are mostly on CDJs, not TTs (a few have "key correction").
I prefer to remain within 2% and equalize the BPM after a mix, taking care to do so in an atonal sequence without beats... pitching tracks up or down starts to bring them slightly out of key; best to restore it to the original state intended by the artist, I figure--it sounds smoother... on the other hand, you will find that no one really gives a damn out at a party, so you can easily take shortcuts without incurring wrath 
I suggest you to start learning with tracks that have a clear and big bassline so you can hear what's going on.
and you only have to increase or decrease the incoming track. so when you have a slow track increase the bpm, when you have a fast track decrease. don't move the track is playing on the speakers, just the track you're listening to through your headphones. Once both tracks are playing out you can adjust a little bit the beatmatch touching the desk or the vinyl (it deppends on the dj style) to get one track slower or faster.
It's fine to do this if you're going in the direction of the incoming track, but ONLY after you have mixed out of the outgoing track, eg. crossfader is all the way on incoming track or fader of outgoing is down all the way.
You can generally raise the tempo without master tempo or key lock or whatever, but you must do it subtly. I found that when using Traktor (software program), it's best not to increase directly on the beats, since it sometimes cut of part of the kick or other element.
For your example, if you had one track @ 120bpm, you would beatmatch by matching the 2nd track (128bpm at 0%) to 120bpm (8/128 * 100 = 6.25%) with the pitch fader at -6.25% (I think this is correct mathematically... kind of absent minded at the moment) and perform the transition.
If the subsequent tracks you want to mix are around 128 or higher, it is fine to slowly increase the tempo up to 128 while only the 2nd track is playing. Note that it's preferable to gradually increase the tempo to 128 over a few tracks rather than increasing it 8bpm over 1/2 of the track. You could also increase the 1st track up to something in the middle of the two tempos, say 124bpm and meet it half-way.
Hope this helps a bit.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Nickerous A good rule I have read about is the 4% percent rule. Don't try to mix any tracks that have a difference greater than 4% of the track you are mixing into. I don't even have my own tables yet and cannot use this theory myself so this could be rubbish. Can anybody back me up on this? |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Liam That's a silly rule. haha. there are no rules to mixing dude. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by EvilTree And you can also use the master tempo button on CDJs to stop tunes from sounding too shitty pitched too high or low. |
Master tempo only sounds bad when you have the pitch slider either too high or too low. There's a certain range where it sounds acceptable, before it starts sounding bad because of interpolation or dropping too many frames.
The new firmware from Pioneer does help make Master Tempo sound better, but I haven't really had the chance to play around on my CDJs since I updated the firmware.
how much you pitch up depends on the track. Some tracks will sound horrible and some tracks sound like they are blatantly too slow on 0% and need almost the whole 8% to sound good!!
Tech will pitch up well where as euphoric trance for example with nearly always sound silly past 4-5%
Although there are guidlines dont follow them too stricly because you will kill alot of your creativity.
Some people spin break beat tracks at a totally dif RPM on turntables.
The thing about key lock is that going 2% on one brand of players may sound ok while it sounds totally crap on another brand that uses different algorithms.
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