Gig tomorrow – first time on CDJs!

Yep, should work fine with the 2000s, they are rekordbox compatible. Just make sure you copied the cue-info to the stick.

As far as beatmatching goes, use your ears. Set one track a lot slower than the playing track (or faster, whichever you prefer). Cue it up, hit play on a downbeat. It will start to wander quickly, nudge forward. Ask yourself better/worse? Should be better, right? Move the pitch fader faster a bit. cue/play on the downbeat, listen, wandering? Nudge, etx.

The amount of nudge depends on the time it takes before the wandering becomes audible and coincidentally the speed with which the gap grows. If it takes long and the gap grows only slowly, use small nudge and small pitch fader adjustment. Is it still quick and fast, bigger nudge and fairly big fader adjustment.

The “cheating” way is to look at the bpm of the playing track (it’s there after all) and set the one on the other track to the same. Now find the first downbeat on the incoming track and cue it at that point (hit play/pause, spin platter til the beat and then hit cue). Stutter start cue button a few times to listen if you cued it right. Then hit play on the first downbeat. Wait for the gap to start (should take a bit, since they should be close to the same speed). When you hear it wonder, do a short (max 1/4 turn) nudge forward and KEEP YOUR FINGER on the jog. Listen. Better? Then release and move the pitch fader ever so slightly. Nudge til sync again, wait for wander. Smaller nudge still. Better? Etcetera. If the forward nudge makes it sound WORSE, nudge back through where you started and about the same distance backwards. Listen. Better (should be now)? Then small pitch adjustment slower. Repeat until you feel confident it stays synced long enough to do a nice transition.

Good luck and greetinx.

Or you could know the tracks you’ll play to the extent of “16 beats after 2nd break” “after 1st chorus”, then counting does the rest. Obviously you can write things down (I think, but 900s been a while for me, that there are little dots somewhere on or under the timeline for cuepoints but not sure) for NOW.

My point is that intimate knowledge of the tracks you play, gives you way more flexibility. Let’s say you found a nice spot to mix out after 1:45 playing time. You are playing the track and the crowd is tearing up the dancefloor! Here you are at 1:45 fading it out. Bit of a waste of a succesful track on the one hand and not quite fair to the crowd. If you don’t depend on cuepoints for mix out points and you know the tracks well, you have the option of saying, well … I normally mix out after the first break, but there is two more after which I can mix out. Let’s see what the crowd does and I’ll mix out after the 2nd or even 3rd break. Just examples obviously, but I hope the idea comes across.

A much worse scenario is if you found a nice mix out point after 3:55 and 30 seconds into the track you see people NOT liking the song at all. By the same token you now know where the first feasible mix point is at. Quickly load your next track, hit the correct mix-in cue point (this is where I think cue points are the right tool) and start transition at the first available spot.

Give yourself that flexibility. It is worth it in the long run.

I know there is a lot being said here about preparing sets. And I do believe it’s good practice, but NOTHING beats knowing your collection well and being able to make a playlist on the fly. I once went to a gig at a big sportsclub (350+ people in the clubhouse). It was a themed 80s night (this was late 90s or so). So I did my homework, collected lots of good 80s stuff, spending about an hour or two going through a rather extensive CD collection. I marked everything I wanted to play with little sticky notes on the CD’s so I could find it easily (I knew where stuff was approximately, but this cut search time in half or so). I never took out the CDs but always brought the entire collection.

20 minutes into the night I just “felt” the 80s vibe wasn’t going to happen, despite the organisers best effort to spruce up the clubhouse in an appropriate style.

After some experimenting, I ended up playing the latest high energy dance music mixed with danceable rock all night and everybody went home sweaty and happy. I don’t think I played more than a handful of the selected tracks after I switched themes. So much for two hours of prepping.

Point in case, don’t become too dependent on what you prepped and things like visual markers of where a good mix-out point is. By all means, use all tools available to you to make your DJ life easier, including the sync button if you like, just don’t let it be the only way you can do it. You never know what situation you’ll run into.

Hope that helps.

Greetinx.