Using BPMs to help beatmatching?

To make things even easier is to re do all your Playlist tracks to one bpm, for ex. to 130 bpm, that way you dont even have to worry if the CDJ do not displayed bpm, set that pitch control at +0 and you ready to go

LOL is all I can say honestly.

LEARN TO BEATMATCH WITH YOUR EARS IT IS ESSENTIAL EVEN WITH SOFTWARE AND BEATGRIDS!

Now get over it and practice.

Hey Ben,

Apart from Terry being right about being able to beatmix by ear (and really, once you have the concept, it’s not all that hard, just takes a lot of practice), let me explain a little something here.

The reason we used to label our records in the old days (vinyl), is because it was so much more important to not have too big gaps between bpm.

We are very spoiled these days. Everything is key-locked, meaning you can speed a track up by 6% (at 130bpm that’s a whopping 8 bpm!) and it will still sound exactly the same, just faster. Vinyl did not have that luxury. Speed (bpm) change equals key change. So, speeding up more than 1 – 1/2 % (there were some daredevils who’d do more, but I had more of a gentle touch), would mean the key change would become audible too. Big bpm swings were not something you did, unless you chose another transition method.

Nowadays I can effectively pick two tracks from any danceable collection, toss them in the players and make them work together (technically! Not gonna say a 120 bpm track will still sound peachy when played at 140).

Even so, I still limit the bpm jumps I do, but it’s a lot easier with all the fx, key lock and other stuff possible on software these days. So, I’ll still select tracks within a say +/- 3% span. Therefor it is handy to have some way of telling what track has what bpm. Purely for track selection purposes, NOT to make beatmatching easier.

For that, you still have to do the work and training. And just to warm you, half an hour twice a week is not gonna make you good at it (or even sufficient) in a week!

Best is to practice daily (better way to accumulate “muscle memory”) every day, than 2 sessions of 1 1/2 hour a week.

Good luck and greetinx.

My suggestion to re-record all the tracks from your Set-playlist to 130 bpm is if all the tracks in your set original bpm resides between 128 – 130 bpm, so yeah if you you have like one or two tracks in 124 bpm, I wouldnt re-recorded them to 130 bpm, as Chuck already pointed out to keep it on +/- 3% radius

Hence, we may conclude, adding BPM information to your tracks in one way or another is legit and helpful in selecting tracks.

As a tool for simplifying beatmatching it is a) no substitute for (learning) manual beatmatching and b) pretty useless.

Hope this helps getting you on your way. Whatever you do, keep the faith!

Greetinx.

p.s. we really ARE nice people here!

p.s. 2 <never-ending insane cackle>

😀

I’ve seen a lot of top DJ’s who have shared some of their music for free on Soundcloud for example, naming the track as something like;
“4A – 140 – artist name/song title”