Dizzle

Join a record pool that has unlimited downloads and go to town for a month or two?

Sounds like fun! You going to play any Buraka Som Sistema?
I’d imagine Portugese kuduro would go over well. Hangover is one of my favorites.

Once you’ve had more time to practice, you’ll realize that many genres, if not most, have a typical arrangement of phrases (e.g. Hip Hop tends to have verse, chorus, verse, chorus, break, verse; or Trap intro, build, drop, break, build, drop) and you can mix in the next track accordingly. Very rarely, if at all do I cut/slam in next tracks. Once you can beat match and understand the usual phrasing of the genres you’re playing you’ll find mixing/blending on the fly is both fun and easy.

As for on the fly mashups, you can create auto-loops and adjust them in you headphones such that you can find a pretty solid 8-16 beat loop in even live drummed track.

The only time you should be trying to just cut over to new tracks is when you’re changing genres drastically, doing a scratch routine, or both songs have vocals in the sections you want to mix.

Thanks for the update.

What were you playing from? Sometimes if I’m running too much in the background or WiFi is activated Serato Dj can have momentary lapses in music being pushed out to the speakers. It’s also possible that something conductive touched the platter and momentarily stopped the track from playing?

I have 7600 tracks in my library as I use the same laptop for mobile Dj gigs as well as the music driven nights I host/perform at. I’d say only 5% of my library has cue points and double-checked beat grids. Planning the entire set can help when you’re first starting out, especially if the idea of playing out makes you very nervous.

Most times now I either just select from the smart playlists and crates I’ve created. If there is a certain theme for a gig that I’m booked at, I might throw some appropriate tracks into a crate without any real consideration to the order I’ll play them in, since that should be dictated by how the crowd reacts.

Before I go too far off topic though, if you master your beat matching and learn the general arrangement of the genres of music you like to play, it doesn’t take much time at all to cue up the first beat and have it ready to mix in with or without cue points. The cue points just help to make the mixing even sharper,for instance if one song’s breakdown is shorter than the next song’s intro, but you want the incoming song to complete its mix at the drop, having cue points set up can really help with that.

I used to set aside 20-30min a day (usually during my commute to school/work) to beat cue point and beat grid new songs. This way, while my entire library isn’t “processed” anything newer will be, and as I begin to remove older songs that I don’t play / don’t fit my brand’s sound my library will eventually be fully populated with cue pointed and beat gridded tracks

Thanks for the headsup. I’ve been fighting with the system since yesterday trying to login. I think I even managed to subscribe twice with the same email. Is there going to be a single loving for the forums and courses?