It sounds like you’re asking how people set up their cue points. I can’t speak for everyone, but I notice most of my cue points are taken up at the beginning of the track to mark noticeable jumps in the build. I focus on that because that’s most likely where I’d be mixing in from.
I almost always have one for when the bassline come in, and usually another when the other instruments kick in. I usually like to leave a marker where the 1st vocal verse (or instrumental equivalent) begins. I usually have two to three left at that point, and I use those to indicate mix out points. Sometimes I’ll save cue #8 (I’m on Traktor) to warn about a very sudden ending that might not be obvious from the waveform.
Sometimes I’ve noticed some “minimal” songs take forever (3-4 minutes) to get going so I may have a giant gap between cue 1 & 2 to remind me that I’ll really have mix from the middle on this particular track. I may also have cue points for special fill-in sounds that fall outside the normal 8/16/32 bar structure (like vocals, drum rolls, sound effects and so on).
Usually breaks in the middle of the song are obvious from the waveform, so I’ll save my cues for something else. I’ll confess that I haven’t road-tested this as much as other people may have. I’m a bedroom DJ these days, although I’ve had plenty of real-word (mostly vinyl) experience. I’d be curious to hear from somebody who changed the way they programs their cues after some hands-on experience DJing.
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