Tips on phrase matching.

[Dj Noriddim]

the problem that I've encountered with lots of songs is they don't follow a perfect phrase pattern. Lots of songs have a 4 beat blip before a drop, which completely throws shit off...

How does this throw things off can you explain. Those last stutter beats will end the phrase if your phrasing is correct that 4 beat blip with sound as if it signaled the new track or its apart of the new track itself.

[photojojo]

I prep my tracks with intro and outro loops so that if I grab a song that I might not remember every detail about I can put it in a loop that ends at a new phase. I also put cue markers at the beginning and end of vocals.

[rjc]

You will find most music can be divided into chunks of 32 (8 bars of 4/4 timing), so when I first get a track, I like to skip through the track in chunks of 32 to see if there are any non-standard sections. You'll often find in breaks, or occasionally at the end of a chorus that there may be an extra 8 or 16 beats, so I like to set a cuepoint after (incase I've blended the track and forgotten) as a quick escape.