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Ok I got my turntables and beatmatched the day after. After about 3 hours of practice total. One week later I could beatmatch two easy tracks in like 5 minutes somewhat reliably. Two weeks later I almost always got em beatmatched in 5..
How did I do it?
The secret is that I had been practicing for about a year before hand?
How? Listening to great DJ sets on MP3 and tapping my foot.
Beatmatching is the mixture of the following: 20% developing your own style of manipulating the vinyl, %10 knowing what tune to pick to make beatmatching possible, and 70% listening.
I've found that you need to practice your ears, not your hands. As soon as you get frustrated trying to beatmatch.
Stop.. And just listen.. listen to your two records trainwreck and trainwreck .. close your eyes, and hear.. two songs at once.. tap your foot to one of them.. then tap your foot to the other one, then tap your foot to the other one.
Have a walkman handy, and listen to mixes everywhere you go.
Finally develop the one skill that will get you on your way to beatmatching. Listening to the tunes, and saying "they are not aligned" or.. "they are aligned"
once you can tell that you are going to get it very soon. Because then I recommend doing beatmatching in a reverse way. Instead of starting with two records that are totally not beatmatched and trying to beatmatch. Get two records with the exact same BPM (you have to have two with the same BPM if you have like 20 records). and put them on the decks with quartz lock.
Now.. get one going, slide the beat under the groove and push off (the VERY first skill you need to master). and get them going aligned.
Hear what it sounds like.. it will sound different than in your Tiesto mix, because your mixer, your headphones provide your ears with a very different experience.
What you are doing is training your ears to that experience.. Now take one record off quartz lock and move it a tiny bit off center. Keep in mind how much you move it off. Close your eyes and listen. Hear the beat slip out.. Hear what it sounds like. You know if it's too fast or too slow 'cause you changed the pitch. fix it by twisting the spindle or dragging your fingers on the platter or whatever.
Hear it drift off again. Notice how only a small change in the pitch leaves them relatively beatmatched. It sounds counter intuitive. But you will learn so much quicker when you are in control of what you hear, and you can train your ears. You can learn how much of a move in the pitch slider sends the track zipping past the other ones, you hear what it sounds like when they are together.
Then try pushing off these tracks with the pitch sliders close. And try to fix the cued deck as you hear it slip out. If you fix it by speeding up the disc, then pitch up, if you slowed down the disc and fix it slow down the pitch. You're beatmatching.
Now, if you don't have months of experience listening to two tracks at once, if they are lik 7 BPMs off from each other it will sound like chaos... And your best bet is to just hear that one is obviously faster than the other by listening to one then the other. Use that rule of thumb to get them ballpark near each other than use your technique to get the rest.
It will come. Just train your ears. It's 70% ear hand coordination and just plain out listening skill.
Hope this helps
-Esper
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