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I think it took me about 6-8 months to get beat matching down to the point where I could take a set and practice it enough so that I couldn't tell the beats were off when I listened to the recording on my headphones. I'm about 3 years into it now and I'm still learning a lot of things. I'm great on beatmatching, but there are so many more important things IMO than beatmatching. Beatmatching is one of the first things and most basic things that you can learn, but you don't NEED to beatmatch to mix if you can cut well... I think that song selection and phrase matching/knowing when to mix in, is more important than having the tracks beatmatched exactly. You can get around beatmatching by using effects like fading the bass on one track etc. You have to come close to the beats and the songs have to mix very well, but you don't have to have them exact.
As far as cheating, there is no cheating because the point is to get the crowd hyped up, while sounding good. Beatmatching is, as I said, the very basic of dj skills, and so the less time you have to spend doing that the better. Whether you do this by putting BPMs on the records/cds, recording the tracks at a certain bpm, using a meter or even auto mixing them with some of the pioneer technology that is out there, it doesn't matter. Because now you can spend more time on effects or mixing in a third track's wicked beats etc. The "rules" of djing are changing quickly and those stuck on the just basics are going to be lost in the dark!
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