Steelo

These are all skills that will just come with time and practice. it will take you a bit of time to be able to make sense of 2 different tracks playing at once. In answer to your questions:

1) Its a good idea to learn this with both headphones on and have the headphone cue split set to having probably just a bit more volume on the cue track as opposed to the master. I find the 9 O’clock position is good for me (its all personal preference). Hit play in time with the beat and listen carefully. If your not sure which is faster just nudge the track (the one you’re cueing up) either forward or backwards a little, with the jogwheel. Listen to see if it sounds better or worse (more or less in phase). If you nudged it forward and it sounded better, then chances are you need to speed up the track you’re cueing. nake a mental note of what position the pitch slider is at. Use this as your initial reference point. You know that the track is faster than this position so you know not to make the pitch any lower than this point. Increase the pitch a little and listen. If the track stayed in phase longer then you’re getting closer. If its worse then you would need to reduce the pitch. the basic process is nudge the jogwheel to keep the tracks in phase, adjust the pitch and listen. You will keep doing this until the tracks stay in phase. Keep making a mental note of the position of the pitch slider as a reference point. If you keep doing this and then you suddenly find that you’ve made the track you’re trying to cue, too fast then make a mental note of where the pitch slider is. Now you have 2 reference points to work with. You know where its too slow and you know where its too fast so you know that the right amount of pitch is somewhere between those 2 points. With practice this will become much easier. I would suggest that its better to learn to beatmatch using the jogwheels at this time. When you have mastered beatmatching, then you could learn to do it without touching the jogwheel.

2) The ability to beatmatch perfectly will just come with practice and time. You have to train your ears and your brain this new skill. I can beatmatch with ears only then look at the screen and it will be bang on (or extremely close to) most of the time. I would suggest trying to learn to beatmatch with just your ears as it is a valuable skill but one advantage of digital is having the information right there so you can use it you want/have to.

3) You could start it anywhere simply to match the pitch of the tracks if you really wanted to but it is much more useful and logical to start it at the beginning of the phrase as you can hear how the tracks will sound together (compatible keys and just generally how then blend together) and if you start it at a random pint then it could throw you off a bit.

Sorry I hope this wasn’t too longwinded and hopefully it will make sense. let me know how you go or if you have any more questions. Now practice practice practice!

OK when you’re mixing at a desk in you bedroom or a tiny tiny room. As soon as its anything bigger and there’s a few people in the room, you will find this system will be drowned out or distorting. you’d be surprised how well human bodies soak up sound

There is a massive audio quality difference between 320kbps and 128kbps. Anything below 192kbps is unacceptable for any public performance…I don’t event like anything below this on my ipod cause it sounds terrible. The lower the bitrate the more they have removed from the song, to crate a smaller file size. Armin Van Buuren has said that he doesn’t believe there is much, if any difference in sound quality above 192kbps but I feel if its on a big system then you may hear it.

Although there are a few variables, you would often start with more mellow tracks and build up the intensity/hardness/euphoria progressively through your set. It will come with experience but you will gain the ability to read the crowd and make a good assumption what they may enjoy next. For instance if you are playing a house/electro set and you play a tune thats on the harder side and people start going mental then its pretty safe to say you are on the right path. It all comes with practice and good musical knowledge.

D.J.Manhattan, post: 20915, member: 1201 wrote: Would you guys say then that song mixing / live remixing is mostly for the DJ’s Ego or say street rep? Because even my gf says that she hates when DJ’s switch out songs too fast. Although I think that to keep a good flow basic mixing is needed.

This is just an example of mixing/live remixing done incorrectly. It should add to the music, not take away. If DJs are cutting/mixing things out too early then they just don’t know what they are doing. It should be about mixing different elements of different songs and creating something new or elevating the originals. I don’t want to sound like and old man here (and I’m not old by any means) but the problem is its easy and cheap to get in to DJing these days. Any punk high school kid can get their hands on a laptop and a free copy of VDJ and all of a sudden they call themselves DJ’s, not having a clue about the basics before trying all this crazy nonsense with controllers. You gotta crawl before you walk.

Slip mode is decent but still has nothing on good old fashioned wax. Apart from scratching (and the enjoyment of using vinyl) turntables aren’t really necessary.