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Hot Cue Use

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  • August 28, 2015 at 7:15 am #2246001
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Hi there,

    Quick tip: to make your posts readable, stick some extra lines (paragraphs in there), rather than just keep everything stuck together.

    You can use a hot cue live. Some software actually let’s you set the sync to the 1st beat of 4, making it easy to just hit that button and it will wait for the 1st downbeat to arrive to jump to the cue in perfect harmony. Since I don’t use this feature in my software (Mixvibes Cross) a lot and I use Serato only very occasionally at the moment, I can’t help you with that.

    Obviously with quantize working correctly for most music, counting will work fine. Just hit the button slightly before or on the beat and it will keep the sync perfect. Experiment and practice is all I can advise.

    Hope that helps.

    August 28, 2015 at 7:10 pm #2246141
    Snakecharmer
    Participant

    Oh ok so people do use them live to bring in a new beat. Thank you!

    So, another quick question (since you have years experience), for house music, do good DJs follow the mix the outro with the intro format??

    August 28, 2015 at 11:10 pm #2246211
    Stazbumpa
    Participant

    Depends on the records you are trying to mix and what will sound good. For a lot of records it works fine, for others not so much.

    One particular tune I play at the moment has an intro with no beats, so I loop an 8 beat section at the end of the record and mix that as my “intro” before thumping the cue point I’ve set at an appropriate point near the beginning when the time is right to end the mix and play the record.
    For me that’s the best sounding way of bringing that particular record in.
    The is one of the things I love the most of digital DJing, I can rearrange how the record is mixed because thanks to loops and hot cues the track no longer has to be played in a stricly linear fashion.

    Also, that counts as using a hot cue live 😉

    August 29, 2015 at 12:09 am #2246251
    Todd Oddity
    Participant

    I normally use a few hot cues to mark various start points in the track, and then yes, drop them live to start a mix. The next few mark breaks and such and are just there so I have a little clock reminding me exactly how many seconds I have left to pick another track. In some cases I will also use them to hop over parts of songs (ie. if there is a long break I don’t want to sit through I’ll drop a hot cue at the end of it and on the last beat before the break, hit the hot cue and, boom, skipped that).

    With most controllers having 8 per deck available, play around with them and use them however you feel works for you.

    August 29, 2015 at 12:31 am #2246261
    Snakecharmer
    Participant

    Thanks for that post it was super helpful! This is all so new to me and I literally know no one who is into DJing so it’s an interesting learning process. I’m a female so makes knowing people in the field that much harder. ?

    Seems like learning to DJ is a skill you learn mostly on your own anyways right? ☺️

    August 29, 2015 at 1:45 am #2246301
    Stazbumpa
    Participant

    Unfortunately the DJ world is dominated by guys and I think it suffers for that, however there’s probably a lot more ladies into DJing than you might think.

    As for learning, I was lucky because I had a couple of friends who got their first turntables about the same time I did so I had people in the same boat as me. This helps a lot when your first mixes sound like a pair of trainers in a tumble dryer; there’s people who can relate to it directly and laugh about it.

    Think of it in terms of separating the DJing into 2 parts; the techniques and skills will be most likely practised alone, however discovering music you want to play is something you can enjoy with others.

    The DJ learning experience can be solitary but in my opinion that’s no bad thing. The music itself, on the other hand, is for everyone 🙂

    August 29, 2015 at 8:02 am #2246381
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    For skills you really should check out the How To Digital DJ Fast course. It is the best way to get jump-started into the technique and skill part of DJ-ing. It will teach you what and how to practice to advance quickly and also prevent you from spending time practicing the wrong things or the right things the “wrong” way.

    It’s a very good investment for a starting DJ imho.

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