I firmly believe that counting will help you get to the "subconscious counting" phase a hundred times faster than not counting. When I started beatmatching, I would count out the bars and phrases in my head, so that I was sure that I would mix in a track at the proper place every single time. Eventually, (yes yes, after a LOT of practice) I caught myself one time mixing without counting at all.

This is a natural learning process. I highly recommend that you count in your head while mixing, or while a track is playing, so that you can get a sense of track structure. Eventually it will be very familiar to you, to the point that you will admire it all without struggling. This will come quickly with practice - counting isn't complicated.

Anyway I want to establish what a bar is here, because there are some discrepancies in this thread.

A bar consists of *4* beats -

beat - beat - beat - beat

Regardless of what's in between them, whether it be a highat or whatever. As for phrases, some people call a phrase 4 sets of 4 beats (i.e. 4 bars), while others call it 8 sets of 4 beats (i.e. 8 bars).

Now, because a "phrase" defines the basic workable "unit" in terms of mixing, a phrase is by right 8 bars. This is because "things change" *every 8 bars*.

Try it out yourself. Put on a track and start counting the bars when you hear the beat. Count to 32 - that's your phrase. Of course, counting to 32 will be annoying. You might try counting 8 bars instead of focussing on every individual beat. After the first phrase a new element will be introduced into the song, etc. The usual structure many tracks have is a 4 phrase intro, after which either (a) the track really "begins" or (b) there is a breakdown. For (a), the track continues on for 2 or 4 phrases (usually), before a breakdown. In any case, after the breakdown there is the main theme, or climax. Usually there are 2 breakdowns in a track, but you will often find tracks with 1 breakdown only. Anyway after the breakdown, the "climax" or main part *usually* lasts for 4 phrases before the outro begins, lasting 4 phrases as well.

Now this is what I find to be the "most common" formula. There are MANY exceptions. There are tracks with 6 phrase intros (like Push's remix of Picotto - Return to Cali), or even monster 8 phrase intros that last 2 or 3 minutes long. Also the climax may only last for 3 phrases (like after the 2nd breakdown in Dumonde - Can U Dig It), or you may only have a 2 phrase outro. It depends.

Hope I've helped. I see that you really only asked about the counting, and not the phrasing, but I hope the phrasing bit proved to be informative as well.

Last edited by Alccode on Aug-15-2002 at 19:04

quote:

Originally posted by S-a-M-u-E-l someone correct me on this if needed, but what i do, is (while one records is playing) take the records i am going to mix into, and find the first beat of the entire song. Then what i do is release it with the song playing out loud. Then, i make pitch adjustments to beatmatch it. Then i bring it back to the beginning again, release it, and make adjustments, and keep repeating that until when i release the records, i can leave it and it will keep in sync

That sounds good from a beatmatching perspective. You say that you bring it back to the beginning several times. Try this as a slightly different way - instead of starting over, release the cued up track only once and beatmatch it as well as you can, and *leave it as it is*, don't stop it, nothing - go do something else. From time to time, check the cued track to see if it's still in sync. If not, correct it.

This way you'll beatmatch the two tracks more accurately because of the fact that the cued record will be playing for so long. Let me elaborate: when you beatmatch a track for 30 seconds, that tracks are in sync for potentially 30 seconds ONLY. After that they might start drifting.

The longer you beatmatch, the more accurate the tracks will be in sync. It's not unusual for me to let the cued up track keep playing for several minutes, even for the majority of the record that's currently playing. Of course I bring it back when I need to mix it in.

counting is good to a point.

what i was saying, is that it helps even more to start listening for spaced events.

for example, lets say you have a track...
uns uns uns uns.. 4/4 beat
uns uns uns uns horn uns uns uns uns horn ...
the horn will tell you four beats have past
<8 beats> <8 more beats>
the "some sound" tells you 8 beats has passed
or...
uns uns uns uns will allow you to count two beats without really focusing on the beats.

I mix hardhouse and fasstt trance, mostly... 150-155bpm.. so counting each beat is a bit too much. even on trance, it's a bit fast to count each beat and keep your concentration.

the idea of trying to listen in this fashion is it trains your mind to recognize 2, 4, or 8 beats passing without any real mental effort, thus less distraction from things such as phrase breaks and beat matching, which you must pay closer attention to.

for *me*, this got me towards subconsious "counting" quicker. it also helps to understand the flow of music.

of course, this worked for *my* mind.. your mind is your own and you need to follow whatever works for ya!

-mer

You are absolutely correct, MERiDiAN5i2. I see what you mean now and yes, that method works just as well as any other.

Everyone is different and every DJ is different. There are also different ways of accomplishing the same goal.

The way you count is a bit more advanced than just plain ol' counting the beats though. When starting out, a beginning DJ may not understand the entire bar and phrase structure enough to know *when* the new "sound" will come in. He or she might miss it entirely.

In any case, with practice, one will get to the stage where he or she will not think about phrasing or counting, etc. It will all be natural. So all that really matters is practice (as everyone has been saying up to now ) - all these little "techniques" are just there to help out until it all becomes natural and easy.