Do you re-pitch tracks?

I was wondering what other's views on the matter are?

There was an Ableton DJ out the other night, who was re-pitching his tracks on the fly to make sure they fit together (I suppose the only reason I noticed is familiarity with the music he was playing, none of the other punters knew/cared). Are there any other Dj's that do this?

I have tried doing it by ear with Traktor, but I always had trouble returning to the original keys (This was before 2.6 when Keylock would move the dial past 0%, rather than keeping it centre, and just compensating in the background). I haven't actually tried since.

Honestly, I'm not a fan of it. When I'm familiar with a song, and I hear it re-pitched out, I notice it straight away and it bugs the hell out of me... But I admit I'm anal about pitch

Yes I do it - in both Ableton and Traktor, depending on the track, no more than a Tone though

It does bug me when someones voice is pitched up to a chimpmunk or the bass isnt throbbing the way it should due to it being pushed too high .. but TBH I found it much more apparent an issue when DJ's pitched up a track to +6/8% on a technics at least now we can pitch it back down.

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I have tried doing it by ear with Traktor, but I always had trouble returning to the original keys

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Why would you change it part way through the song ?

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Originally Posted by deevey

Why would you change it part way through the song ?

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Sorry I totally miss-worded that... and I'm probably going to struggle to reword it too. I wouldn't change pitch midsong. It was the way that traktor used to be setup to handle the Pitch Parameter.

When I last tried it, When you turned keylock on (and changed the tempo), when the pitch control compensated, it moves the pitch to compensate (So to some obscure number like +0.21, or however much it had to keep it in it's original key). My problem was that when you changed tracks, any changes to the pitch you made (In my case, I had the pitch control mapped on my X1's) remained.

So if I wanted to say, Pitch a track from Em into E#m (Deck A), The mixed out into another track in E#m in deck b, Then into a track in deck A again that was naturally in E#m, that track would be pitched in Fm. The problem was that when I Zero'd the pitch control (With keylock on), it obviously wasn't the original tracks key, it would be slightly above/below what the key was, because that compensation from keylock would be lost. I found it to be a pain in the ass, and too much fiddling to eventually get it back by ear, so I just... Well didn't bother.

I may have overlooked a simpler method, but I don't really have much of a desire to do it anymore either. More curious on other peoples opinions.

That's been fixed with 2.6 with the changes to Gain and Pitch, where Keylocked is still centre. That being said, I haven't given it another go yet.

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Originally Posted by rjc

Sorry I totally miss-worded that... and I'm probably going to struggle to reword it too. I wouldn't change pitch midsong. It was the way that traktor used to be setup to handle the Pitch Parameter.

When I last tried it, When you turned keylock on (and changed the tempo), when the pitch control compensated, it moves the pitch to compensate (So to some obscure number like +0.21, or however much it had to keep it in it's original key). My problem was that when you changed tracks, any changes to the pitch you made (In my case, I had the pitch control mapped on my X1's) remained.

So if I wanted to say, Pitch a track from Em into E#m (Deck A), The mixed out into another track in E#m in deck b, Then into a track in deck A again that was naturally in E#m, that track would be pitched in Fm. The problem was that when I Zero'd the pitch control (With keylock on), it obviously wasn't the original tracks key, it would be slightly above/below what the key was, because that compensation from keylock would be lost. I found it to be a pain in the ass, and too much fiddling to eventually get it back by ear, so I just... Well didn't bother.

I may have overlooked a simpler method, but I don't really have much of a desire to do it anymore either. More curious on other peoples opinions.

That's been fixed with 2.6 with the changes to Gain and Pitch, where Keylocked is still centre. That being said, I haven't given it another go yet.

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You mean your Key Knob would not reset correctly to center ? - Am I Right ?

You could map the deck load button to have Key Knob value of Zero if thats the case,

In Traktor/Ableton I pretty much change key on every track to something other than zero so would not have noticed that.

That would probably work :P

I have started re-pitching tracks a lot only recently mainly because im relatively new to Digital DJ'ing and have been learning my chops over the last year or so. But I play mainly Techno-trance and my style would be Harmonic mixing. Without being able to modify the pitch for pure harmonic mixing it limits the amount of blending I can do, but being able to move up and down a semi-tone or tone hugely increase the amount of tracks that will harmonically fit. As someone mentioned earlier I usually dont go beyond a tone plus I do it in traktor on the fly. When I load up a track i adjust its pitch using a button mapped to inc or dec the tone by semi-tones. (Of course the track has to be 'in range' of the key i want to mix into.

Of course there is a danger of falling into a trap of playing all tracks in the same key so as a rule I like to change key about every 4 or 5 tracks I load (I generally would never play a track from end to end and nearly always have at least 2 tracks playing even if one is just enhancing the rhythm, I also have the tracks hot-cueued to death.)

I dont thinkl I would like to hear top 40 type tracks re-pitched as top 40 is a different type of DJ'ing. I like to create new things on the fly (whether its good or not is another question), but typical nightclub Dj'ing does not require harmonic mixing and is really all about drops and cuts.