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How long?
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| ibz |
| How long since you first started mixing did it take you to get the hang of beatmatching? I have been mixing for a couple of days and I can cue up the same bpm very easily, but when it comes to different bpms and making one record faster and slower I really have trouble with it...I can have both records on the same beat for about 10 seconds then they go their seperate ways. Any suggestions or anything would be greatly appreciated as well. |
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| nerdgrl416 |
It took me 6 months to kind of get it and one year to do it right.
It's different for everyone.
Best advice I was given is practice.
You can't really find a shortcut.
Your ears need some time to adjust. Hope that helps. |
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| Zoso |
| quote: | Originally posted by nerdgrl416
It took me 6 months to kind of get it and one year to do it right.
It's different for everyone.
Best advice I was given is practice.
You can't really find a shortcut.
Your ears need some time to adjust. Hope that helps. |
I'll second these comments. It's like learning to ride a bike. You swear to God you'll never get it, then one day you realize that, holy , you finally got it after all. Hang in there. It WILL happen. |
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| ibz |
| OH, I thought it was something that people would pick up quite quickly...hmm... thanks for the comments |
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| Zoso |
| Well, I'm sure some pick it up quicker than others. That's simply human nature. But it really does take several months of consistent practice to be able to put on your phones, cue up, throw in the record, and then immediately say, "okay, this one needs to be sped up/slowed down". At first your brain can't tell which way it needs to go, and everything sounds like shoes in a clothes dryer. Just give it time and TRY to be patient, even though it will be tough at times. |
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| nchs09 |
| It took me about a year because i would only do it with my friend on weekends when we would get pissed drunk.... about after a year of getting wasted and spinning friday nights or saturday afternoon, i got the hang of it. |
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| nerdgrl416 |
| quote: | Originally posted by nchs09
It took me about a year because i would only do it with my friend on weekends when we would get pissed drunk.... about after a year of getting wasted and spinning friday nights or saturday afternoon, i got the hang of it. |
Good point I didn't mention, i didn't practice too often either.
Maybe the op will get the hang of it sooner than we did. |
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| Cro_Addict |
i got it in 2 days...u guys are slow...
seriously though...I got my cdj-800s about 3 months ago and I am just getting a hang of it. When I used the BPM display on the cdjs i could do it the first day and beatmatch a track in under 10 seconds..but now i covered it and am practicing to do it without the BPM display |
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| jupiterone |
| took me a few months, when i first started DJ'ing i got CDJ's which displayed BPM so i'd cover those up with sticky notes to get used to pitching by ear :p |
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| Lover Boy |
Agree with everyone on here, especially about it being like riding a bike, once you have it you'll never really lose it. Practise, practise practise.
As for comments on BPM counters, just got a CDJ800 and although I find myself using the BPM counter sometimes it's still only accurate to around 0.6% in terms of pitch so you still have to get it from there. Good tool if you know how to beatmatch anyway but if you NEED it then your ed.
Anyway don't worry too much about the beatmatching, it's all about the tunes! |
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| Nemesis44 |
It's also a question of your own perceived level.
The longer you do it the more critical you may find yourself becoming and faults that you hear a mile off are undetectable by a lot of regular non DJ folks.
You hear a lot of people say, "I have mastered beatmatching bla bla bla". But the truth is that it's a skill that is in constant development.
The more you do it the more proficient you will become.
I am currently preparing a guide for young DJs for this forum. It's actually geared towards people who want to start working in clubs. Have a read and see if there is anything in there that might be of use.
Cheers
Nem |
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| Nemesis44 |
Extract from Nem's Club guide that might give a few tips on how to improve Beatmatching skills. Or may not... time will tell.
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The Next Level
How to be a better DJ
Ok, so one thing I have heard many times on these forums is the following phrase “I have mastered beat matching, now what?”
Let’s get one thing straight from the start, you haven’t mastered beat matching, not even close. What you mean is that you have reached a level where in a controlled environment with sound that you are accustomed to, you are now at a level where you can match the beats of two records in a reasonable amount of time.
Let’s define the term ‘Mastered Beat Matching’.
What I would consider to be a mastered beat match is the ability to carry out this action in a creative context in a club environment dealing with intoxicated people, using FX, understanding and using your EQ correctly, reading the crowd and creating a good flow and respecting your time slot. It may be fair to say that you could call that mastering the art of DJing rather than beat matching per se. So be it.
But let us consider that you don’t even play out at the moment, what then? Ultimately the end goal can seem such a long way away assuming that this is your end goal.
For many DJs the act of playing out for the first time can be a very daunting experience and very often turns out to be a traumatic experience rather than the euphoria filled dance floor eruption that we all dream about. This can be attributed to many factors; firstly lack of readiness in terms of overall DJing skill, you are not at a sufficient level to be able to handle the distractions and/or sound issues that you may face. This is very common as it is rare for a DJ debutant to be in a position where they get to play in a great venue with great sound, good monitors and fully working equipment. More often that not, it’s a bar rather than a club with an owner who considers that DJing equipment is fine even if the DJs are getting electric shocks and the sound isn’t loud enough to play over the volume of the customers. That said, bars and DJing have their place and it is a great testing ground for eventual club DJing. You can still learn to read people, beat match in adverse conditions and let us not forget the most important part, build up a following and establish your name.
Do not get delusions of grandeur, basically you are nothing until you prove that you can pull a crowd and I don’t mean that to be cruel, I just mean in the business sense.
So, how can I reduce the risk of a bad experience when I play out?
Well, practice is the key plain and simple but that is not to say that you can’t improve your practice sessions. For the time being it would be useful if you separated the creative aspect of DJing from the technical.
When you spin and play a set on the sound system that you are accustomed to placing tunes together that you enjoy and you think work well would definitely be considered the artistic side. This is what defines you to your listeners and what the majority will base their choice to follow or to ignore.
A few things to try:
* DJ without your headphones, get used to hearing the beats etc. playing over a sound system that isn’t as accurate as the headphones where you have sound bouncing off walls that can distort what you hear. This will also improve your speed at matching records. Try and perform sets every now and again by actually starting to match at the point where you would start mixing. This is excellent for improving your matching skills and making them a lot faster.
* Try spinning whilst talking to someone and actually listening to what they are saying making the conversation the focal point and not the mixing. This will help you with distractions and will prepare you for the experience of being in a club environment.
* You could also try turning down all high end and reducing the midrange on your sound system (not your mixer) so that you get more of a rumble, and then try working with this to try and match with it. One of the key points with a lot of these exercises is that you learn the ability to recognise what you need and to work with the bare minimum. You get a lot of people on forums stating that in order to mix, they match based on the hi-hats, well in reality you may not always be in a position to get a clear impression of what they are doing in a DJ Booth. Admittedly good booth monitors will often give you a pretty clear picture of the sound, but you can’t guarantee this so variation of what you base your mix on is crucial.
As an addition to the above you can also try to get a separate audio system and play a separate music source whilst still trying to match correctly with the tracks that you are concerned with. Although I would state that this is probably not something sound good it will train your ability to hear the necessary elements in order to perform your mixes with plenty going on around you. I do hasten add that whilst this can help, it is not the be all and end all solution to becoming accustomed to playing in a club environment.
What you could also try if you are a vinyl DJ is to mix based on the sound that the needles are making. This is an old trick that used to be used by Josh Wink in his live sets, i.e. mixing without headphones.
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Cheers
Nem |
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