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A tip for fast beatmatching


Steve

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Good technique for EDM but wouldn't work so well with hip hop really. I'm so glad I learnt to beatmatch with hip hop. I remember I once met this dude at a party and he was like "oh you're wasting your time, you should start with house and move on to hip hop because beginners can't do it".

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That tends to be how I teach it, but I advocate going back to a reference point each time you change pitch until you start to get comfortable because I find beginners get confused about which beats they're lining up if they're doing it totally on the fly...

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Beatmatching is a dying art. I was listening to this guy's hip hop mix on DJ Forums to give him some feedback, and he was dropping tracks off time every time, but they'd immediately become perfectly locked and synced within about half a second. Out of time drops, bad phrase matching, really wacky song selection with no thought put into it, no scratching or any flourishes of any kind, but absolutely perfect beatmatching because he was using Traktor which did that part for him. I can see why people use it, and while it's handy and takes the risk out of fucking up a blend, it can make a n00b sound acceptable enough that they'd get work in a bar/club.

 

Hip-hop is a harder to mix than all EDM IMO. EDM is designed to be mixed. With hip-hop, the BPMs can vary wildly and the song structure can leave you very little room to work, which forces you to be creative, but even then, people are just extending out intros so they can use a DVS to do a boring EDM-style blend every time instead of switching things up a bit.

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Hip-hop is a harder to mix than all EDM IMO. EDM is designed to be mixed. With hip-hop, the BPMs can vary wildly and the song structure can leave you very little room to work, which forces you to be creative, but even then, people are just extending out intros so they can use a DVS to do a boring EDM-style blend every time instead of switching things up a bit.

 

Agreed, is why I like playing hip hop, its a bit more creative! Although I do use serato so cheat a little bit...

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Agreed, is why I like playing hip hop, its a bit more creative! Although I do use serato so cheat a little bit...

It works both ways. Serato and the like can make you more creative cos you can do stuff you couldn't do on regular vinyl, but it also means that n00bs can make life easier for themselves but that usually leads to boring sounding mixes. There's loads of DJs on DJ Forums who say "if I don't have to worry about beatmatching, I can concentrate on doing other interesting things", but then what they actually do isn't that.

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Agreed, is why I like playing hip hop, its a bit more creative! Although I do use serato so cheat a little bit...

It works both ways. Serato and the like can make you more creative cos you can do stuff you couldn't do on regular vinyl, but it also means that n00bs can make life easier for themselves but that usually leads to boring sounding mixes. There's loads of DJs on DJ Forums who say "if I don't have to worry about beatmatching, I can concentrate on doing other interesting things", but then what they actually do isn't that.

 

LOL! That's exactly it Steve. I remember you posted a mix of someone's where you said "this is a great example of how to creatively use a DVS" but it could have been on DJF.

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Yeah man, that was that billybobbarmcake guy. He used Serato to add to the mix with hot cues and loops and stuff, rather than to compensate for his own lack of mixing skill. I started talking to that guy when he first started and I could tell he was really passionate about DJing, so I always knew he would never be one of those suckers cutting every corner he could. He put a lot of work in and became really good. I think he moved to Australia and works full time as a DJ now.

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Maybe ok for beginners but once you get a feel for it you do it pretty much instinctively anyway. Also once in the mix it's better to make any needed adjustments one the pitch fader rather than touch the platter imho but I dunno why the fuck I'm telling you lot any of this lol.

 

On the hip hop vs dance music for learning to mix its just 2 different things imho, I know very few DJs that can do both well, I know hip hop djs who can't beatmatch & mix for shit & I know dance music djs who can't mix hip hop for shit, amazingly both groups think they are superiour and therefore bother groups are cunts!

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it can make a n00b sound acceptable enough that they'd get work in a bar/club.

 

I encounter more of these getting paid gigs in Leicester than DJs who actually know how to beatmatch and mix properly

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it can make a n00b sound acceptable enough that they'd get work in a bar/club.

 

I encounter more of these getting paid gigs in Leicester than DJs who actually know how to beatmatch and mix properly

 

It's coz they just do it to get paid and therefore have no standards as to what they're willing to play and therefore get jobs in bars (as well as other things im sure)

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  • 1 month later...
Guest loop skywalker

mixing is for gays.....just drop the next record in anywhere for that surprise element...off beat ..on beat..i think it sounds much better

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  • 4 weeks later...

one thing i like about the sync feature is it completely removed the alarm i felt when djing out live. i cannot stand leaving a track on for too long, because basically immediately after recognition comes distraction... meaning as soon as you recieved the "oh, i really like this tune" from your typical party goer, youre already being forgotten about. so i always had this feeling like im losing the crowd during the beatmatching process. i found using sync i can remove the anxiety of, "am i gonna make this one, or should i try another tune right quick?" and can even use hotcues to completely cut out the middle versus' and hooks, jump to the end, and mix out using the last few breaks as most tracks were intended. (essentually turning a six minute track into a two minute track that allows me to use the initial instrumental breaks to mix in and the last few instrumental breaks to mix out). prior to going digital, i wouldnt allow this alarm to stop me from throwing an instrumental into the mix to scratch over and then use doubles of the same track to juggle the vocal version in, but i now no longer need to purchase doubles to use an instrumental and an album version, i can just creat a loop of the break from the original track itself.

 

i know its crazy to admit anxiety, or insecurity about mixing on a dj message board, but if you find you can mix every track you play in seconds without ever a moment of doubt then i think youre not leaving your genre comfort zone enough.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I'm so very grateful that I learned beatmatching when I was 13-14......its pretty automatic for me now so I can't imagine I'd ever use sync....I like having full control of my mix and it would feel really odd to let a computer do it for me.

 

As for my current technique....I usually find the first beat of the bar and (in headphones) I'll play out 1 bar only in time with the 2nd record....and cue back to start and repeat until it lines up properly to my ears. I can usually beat match two different tracks I've never heard before in about...3-5 seconds I'd say.

 

...having said that I've also probably spent thousands of hours behind turntables so I can see why rookies would want to cut corners...but just like anything else...its ALL about fundamentals...cause what would you do if you had to rock ALL vinyl someday?

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  • 3 weeks later...

i can do this dpending on the recording that will be mixing in. if the mixing in record is fast then ill do this. but if the recording mixing in is slower, then ill keep speeding up and not immedately make it faster than the one playing. when you mix hip hop you need to get it down and you have several poitns for transition. to mix this garbage you can buy hella bars and drop it anytime so this tyep of music only pussy asses will do because its easy shit

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  • 1 year later...
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So I have a basic question. To set up the question-- So you beatmatch the beat, right. Then some people harmonic mix too, right. What about phrasing of the songs? IDK if that's the right word for it... but like say in a perfect world scenario you have at least an 8-bar phrase into for every song so say you have a hiphop song with a 16 bar hook and you drop the next record in halfway through that hook so the last 8 bars of the hook is mixed and playing at the same time as the into 8 bar lead in of the new song and so the result is the new record's first verse kicks off perfectly as the last one's hook ends. Hopefully that makes sense so far. So hang in there with me... So, obviously that's not always the case where you have a clean 8 or 16 bar phrase at the beginning of a song. Sometimes when I'm mixing I don't quite drop in the new song perfect so it still has say 4 or 8 more bars after I've dropped out the old song before the new songs really kicks off--which brings me to my actual question--do yall consider that a fuck up or sloppy mixing? Everything is still beat matched and it's not like I'm cutting off a verse but it's not a perfect verse/hook/verse/hook/new verse/new hook/etc. My goal is to have it be that way but doesn't always happen. What I'm wondering is do you guys as listeners to other people's mixes see that as a flaw in the DJ's mix or that it doesn't really matter if it goes an extra 4 bars. It's the type of thing a casual listener wouldn't notice but I've wondered if among DJ's that considered bad mixing. I've never done a 2x4 set with someone but it seems like at the very least that could screw up the flow especially if there was an accapella playing. That's what made me think about it. Hopefully that question makes sense.

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