Beatmatching Tips

[CountenanT]

Nice diagram Deevey - just got a question about the technique for it though, would I be constantly re-cueing then re-dropping the track as well? Because surely if you just rode the fader on its own, even if you started the songs at the same time, you would have to wait for the songs to catch up to one another after the fader adjustment to see if it's the right adjustment would you? If you get what i'm saying.

[SlvrDragon50]

I'll try this out today, the diagram helps a lot.

So what you're trying to do is adjust the tempo fader until you don't get the double bass anymore, then you just recue the track when you're ready to bring it back in?

[CountenanT]

To go from there start, cos there's about a million techniques here, platter, no platter, fader, no fader etc.
What I do is:

1. Find my start point.
2. I'll always have it set so I can see the static track BPM (I won't go completely blind, I dont think theres any need), so i take a guess, 1% slower? 2% faster?
3. Wait for the start of the next bar in Track A (the playing track).
4. Press and hold my cue on track B
5. Too fast? Too slow? Adjust fader accordingly.
6. Drop it again
7. Repeat until it's right.
8. If I can't get it exactly right, and time is running out, then I use the platter.

I know that seems like a lot and/or really slow, but in reality it's all happening pretty quickly.

[deevey]

So what you're trying to do is adjust the tempo fader until you don't get the double bass anymore, then you just recue the track when you're ready to bring it back in?

Basically - yes

But not so much adjust as to "bounce" the fader up and down into smaller and smaller more accurate increments while the track is playing.

• How I do it is launch the track at whatever the pitch fader happens to be set at.
  
• If its too fast pull it all the way + to the max and push and pull the fader from big to smaller to smallest increments - generally its in 99% sync within 2 or 3 seconds of doing it and ready to mix.
  
• Simply re-cue, wait till you are ready to mix and launch again - If I find it goes out of time (which happens occasionally), I'll just pull and push the fader in smaller increments DURING the actual mix itself.

5 times out of ten though I wont pre-sync my tracks at all, I'll just launch on the first down beat at a point I know works on the other record, sync using the method above while mixing it in. Thats more down to knowing the tracks than anything else though.

I'm one of those people who decides even after I've had a track cued up for 4 minutes ready to go that I'll change it up at the last minute and mix and beatmatch it on the fly.

Best of luck

[SlvrDragon50]

https://soundcloud.com/andrew-hua-1/...-mix2013-03-10

Just threw that together. Just mixing songs together, no FX since I don't feel comfortable enough with mixing songs yet to deal with FX. Gotta work on dropping the songs in at hte right time now.

It's starting to get a bit easier. Most of the songs I mixed were 128 BPM, but there were some 127, 130, and 135 songs.

I did a manual beatmatch and then double checked myself by pressing sync to see if the % tempo fader changed or not. Got it within 0.1% every time!

Thanks for the help!

[mdcdesign]

https://soundcloud.com/andrew-hua-1/...-mix2013-03-10

Just threw that together. Just mixing songs together, no FX since I don't feel comfortable enough with mixing songs yet to deal with FX. Gotta work on dropping the songs in at hte right time now.

It's starting to get a bit easier. Most of the songs I mixed were 128 BPM, but there were some 127, 130, and 135 songs.

I did a manual beatmatch and then double checked myself by pressing sync to see if the % tempo fader changed or not. Got it within 0.1% every time!

Thanks for the help!

Sounds okay, except for at 13:18, when you're half a beat out with the drop - and stays half a beat out until the fade-out. If you had properly gridded tracks and used sync, you wouldn't have had that problem There's absolutely NO benefit to doing it by ear, just saying :P

Oooh, same thing at 25:12 as well, although it's only a fraction of a beat this time. Saying that, the audience in a club isn't going to notice either way lol.

[SlvrDragon50]

Yea, I think I panicked at the 13:18 mark because the song was getting close to ending, and I hadn't beatmatched yet haha.

I actually noticed during the song that the beatgrid was off so I was doing some regridding at the same time (which I've never done before).

More practice though! Gonna try to do a mix every day.

[johndavid]

Just a technical question, but how would one record the cue side? I've been thinking of putting up a video but I don't know how I would get that audio routed to the recording. Unless I reversed the order of operations and was matching the master deck to a cued deck in my headphones, but I still don't know how that would help you much. End of the week workday and my brain is mush maybe.

The best way would be to get a cable splitter on the headphone output.

One split would go to your headphones, and the other to the recording device/computer.

As for mixing the audio and video together it shouldn't be too difficult, do a clap sync with your hands, or start the video recording on the first kick and then in your video editing software you'll sync the video and the audio track together.


I think I'll make a manual beatmatching video with traktor, using a video camera. will post it here

[haze324]

There's absolutely NO benefit to doing it by ear, just saying :P

.

Say what?

This weekend there was someone playing before me. When I came on, I had to beatmach "by ear" to transition. There is absolutely a HUGE benefit to being able to do it by ear and not relying solely on software.

Goodjob to the OP for trying to master this.

[mdcdesign]

Say what?

This weekend there was someone playing before me. When I came on, I had to beatmach "by ear" to transition. There is absolutely a HUGE benefit to being able to do it by ear and not relying solely on software.

Goodjob to the OP for trying to master this.

Oh I completely agree; there are some situations where you HAVE to do it by ear. All I'm saying is, when there's the opportunity to have the software do it for you, TAKE it.