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Posted by shompton on May-01-2002 08:06:

Beatmatching

This has been bothering me for a few weeks now so I'm going to ask you guys and get some feedback. Generally, when I'm beatmatching, I'll find the spot on the incoming track where I want to start bringing it in, hold that spot until I hear a 4th beat in a bar (you know what I mean) and let them run and see if the incoming track needs to be adjusted up or down. I wheelback the incoming track to the original point and take a guess at how much adjustment the pitch slider needs, then I release on a 4th beat and let them run and keep adjusting accordingly, and so on. My question is, should I even bother bringing the record back and starting the beats out at the same time, or should I just try and adjust the pitch as the records are running and maybe nudge it a bit here and there to try and readjust them. When I saw Jules live, all he did was pop on the new track, wheel around a bit to find a place to bring it in and slide the pitch around for maybe 4 seconds... so it was obviously just a rough adjustment, and then he adjusted the pitch as he mixed in the new track. Is this something I should be trying to do? (I have my decks in the battle position so it can make that a bit harder).

Basically, I no longer have problems eventually adjusting the pitch and matching the beats and whatnot, but it can sometimes take a long time and I wonder if my approach/technique needs to be tweaked.

What do you guys think?

Posted by Great Outdoors on May-01-2002 08:50:

What I do is: I start the incoming track at an entirely random spot, not even neccessarily in phase. I beatmatch it a little bit, and I kind of give myself a "deadline" to do it, you know, like maximum one minute or something. Nudging and pushing the record would be normal for me at this stage. When I am satisfied then I will wheel the beatmatched track to the first beat and keep it there. When it is time to bring it in, I will then beatmatch on the fly, adjusting the incoming or outgoing one as according.
Most big-name DJs spend a minimal amount of time doing actual beatmatching IMO; most of them just rely on their live instinct and react as according during transition, so I think that's what we should be training ourselves to do. Hope that helps. Someone correct me if I'm doing or suggesting anything wrongly.

Posted by DJ A.i on May-01-2002 13:15:

as long as you are satisfied with the mix it doesnt really matter how you do it..... people have different styles so whatever advices you get its usually going to be right. but my advice is that you find a style you like(your own or someone elses) and keep practicing with it... basicly your goal would be that beatmatching and mixing will come to you like 2nd nature. =) good luck

Posted by qwertyu on May-01-2002 16:58:

mixing techs

quote:
Originally posted by DJ A.i
as long as you are satisfied with the mix it doesnt really matter how you do it.....

i agree with that!

here's my "technique":

lets say that the crossfader is on the left side, so track-left is what's down on the dancefloor...now i want to match the beats, i start up "track-right" only with cue listening, and with "track-left" in a lower cue volume. lets say "track-right" goes slower than track-left. so now i increase the pitch during cue, as much as i think it should be. let's say i was lucky, and got the right BPM on "right" now. then i "bend" it up 'till i got the two songs "beat matched".

You may think this is a really messed up technique, but no one's taught me to mix, this tech feels most natrual to me...i've found it out all by myself , though i know it's a bit crappy.

well i use other techs sometimes too, but this post is starting to get really big......however, you other people have good mixing techs too....i'll try them out!

cheers!

Posted by Great Outdoors on May-02-2002 08:23:

Someone once told me that the beauty of DJ-ing is that there is never a right way or wrong way of doing things. I think it is very true.

Posted by shompton on May-02-2002 08:44:

Very true. I guess my question wasn't really "how should I beatmatch", but more along the lines of "do you guys find that adjusting the pitch as the record runs, rather than bringing it back to a cue point with every adjustment works as well if not better?". I'm just looking for a way to speed things up a bit... and then hopefully from there I can work on minor live adjustments as I mix if and then maybe move on to just mixing the way I described above when I saw Jules.

Posted by kr00t0n on May-02-2002 13:50:

Here's my technique:

Cross fader is all the way to right, play the right deck to the crowd. Set the knobs and dials so that in my headfones, both decks can be heard. I set the left side track to its first beat and set the pitch to around the same speed (this comes with experience as you get to know how 'fast' your tracks are). I cue it on a 16th beat so that the riffs aer roughly even and nudge the left sided (silent) track forward or back depending on if its too slow or fast (again, comes with experience). I eventually get the left sided track to a very similar speed, usually holding pitch perfectly for up to 128 beats. I usually set the left sided track to be a tiny bit faster than the one playing, because I find touching a vynil to slow it down is more accurate than nudging it to speed it up. I then bring it all back and wait for the best cue point on the track that is playing. I cue the left track at that point and make sure the beats are on each other. I then whak to crossfader to middle (on a 16th beat mark) but have the master knobs on the left track down. I then slowly turn these knobs up to full power over the course of the mix whilst bringing the right tracks level down.

Viola, a mix kr00t0n style