Beatmatching by ear

You should be able to hear the ballpark BPM after a while, i count to everything i hear without even meaning to.

With CDJs though, if im mixing tracks i dont know the bpm of id never trust the counter, always use tap.

If you've every played with another DJ or with live musicians, it quickly becomes apparent why beatmatching is important. You can't ask a drummer what BPM he is playing all the time, and if someone kept asking me what the BPM was while we were playing together, I'd be annoyed. You just gotta ride that pitch fader.

Wow thanks for all the quick and plentiful replys. I will definitely apply what you all said and practice my ass off. One question though what does riding the pitch fader mean, does it mean just messing with the pitch fader until the two drum patterns are in sync? All of you were very helpful and if I have any questions ill definitely ask here again and any more information would always be appreciated :)

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Originally Posted by chromelobes

Wow thanks for all the quick and plentiful replys. I will definitely apply what you all said and practice my ass off. One question though what does riding the pitch fader mean, does it mean just messing with the pitch fader until the two drum patterns are in sync? All of you were very helpful and if I have any questions ill definitely ask here again and any more information would always be appreciated :)

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Riding the fader means touching only the pitch fader to get the tracks beatmatched. It can be a bit harder/slower than using the platter as well, but it helps you avoid unpleasant dips/peaks in pitch (if you're not using keylock) and lets you beatmatch one-handed so you can do it while setting up another track, tweaking effects/eq's, etc.

And yeah, beatmatching by ear is important not only for when you can't just sync, but also to train your ear to hear when two songs are precisely beatmatched instead of just being close. At the end of the day, seeing that two songs in sync is nice, but hearing that they're in sync is what actually matters.

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Originally Posted by keeb

Riding the fader means touching only the pitch fader to get the tracks beatmatched. It can be a bit harder/slower than using the platter as well, but it helps you avoid unpleasant dips/peaks in pitch (if you're not using keylock) and lets you beatmatch one-handed so you can do it while setting up another track, tweaking effects/eq's, etc.

And yeah, beatmatching by ear is important not only for when you can't just sync, but also to train your ear to hear when two songs are precisely beatmatched instead of just being close. At the end of the day, seeing that two songs in sync is nice, but hearing that they're in sync is what actually matters.

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Perfectly summed up!

its now about knowing what the BPM of the next song is down to a number, what more important is being able to tell if the next song is faster or slower than the last. After a lot of practice, you start to get a feel for how much faster or slower the pitch bend makes the song play.

This video did it for me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsEg-cq1hVg

DON'T look at the BPM's, phase meters, or wave-forms. The goal is to rely completely on the beat and your ears. You'll need a pair of headphones to cue up a track in one ear and listen to another track through your monitors.

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Originally Posted by keeb

And yeah, beatmatching by ear is important not only for when you can't just sync, but also to train your ear to hear when two songs are precisely beatmatched instead of just being close. At the end of the day, seeing that two songs in sync is nice, but hearing that they're in sync is what actually matters.

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^^^^ This.

So many people are missing this skill these days. It's so much more then the act of actually mixing, till your ears are properly trained it's quite hard to tell if a track is say 0.2 of a bpm off due to a slightly botched grid....

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Originally Posted by Shishdisma

No, I mean a pitch indicator, +/- a % value. Assuming we were thrust back into the 70s and BPM indicators weren't on every single piece of hardware imaginable, you would very easily get by with just a % change value and a tempo value written on the label.

The reason why this discussion is ridiculous, is that people in this thread have a definition of "by ear" stuck somewhere in the 70s, whereas actually beat matching by ear on modern equipment entails one less arbitrary step. Is using a pitch fader using something "other than your ears?" What about a pitch reset? Or an accurate tempo adjustment? Including blind tempo matching in "beatmatching by ear" is extremely arbitrary, because the basis is that 1200s didn't have a tempo inidcator, so all DJs wanting to call themselves able to do so must follow that heritage, even though the actual technique is exactly the same and just as "by ear" on CDJs.

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Lol dude. Please stop. Its completely different experience vinyl to CDJ. Additionally beat matching by ear is beat matching by ear. Everyone is on the same page expect you. Two track, no aids, just pitch faders and nudging a platter. The whole point of this exercise especially these days with technology doing the work for you isn't to match faster, or anything its to train you ears when something is wrong. To improve you skills as a DJ, to utilize, and train your greatest tool, your ears. Take a lesson from Carl Cox then get back to me.

Technology is NOT perfect. BPM counters, tapping in a beat, grids, BPM displays, all that stuff out there doesn't analyze a track 100% correctly. When we put stuff in traktor a good majority of tracks can come out slightly wrong, same with CDJ 2000s, rekord box, mixed in key, the bpm can be slightly off. They might be "in the ball park" and sound alright, but to sound perfect you need to train your ears to recognize the difference between slightly off and perfect. Maybe alright is good enough for you, but as a DJ we all strive for a perfect mix every 2-5 mins.

That way you know how to correct it easily too. How many times have I heard a track slightly, just slightly off when someone is playing who hasn't trained their ears and it goes unrecognized completely because hey have no clue and rely on the sync, phase meter, display whatever. Many people are hear a track is off, but not many people know how to fix it quickly. Without knowing this skill you can actually make the beat matching turn out worse, aka, going the wrong way on the pitch, nudging the wrong way, etc, to the point where the whole thing just train wrecks, and it only takes about 5 seconds for a track to sound semi ok to completely wrecking its ass off.

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Originally Posted by CollyT12

This video did it for me:

DON'T look at the BPM's, phase meters, or wave-forms. The goal is to rely completely on the beat and your ears. You'll need a pair of headphones to cue up a track in one ear and listen to another track through your monitors.

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Also cover up the Vu meters, you can visually beat match using those too.