Traktor Pro: Is there a way to visually determine bars and phrases

[DJPhaidon]

what? 32 hotcues? in traktor?

Sorry, meant 32 cue points, only 8 Hotcues.

[PartyMcFly]

Um... there is a way to do this, actually.

Except it measures from cue points, and only works from the current position.

You need to set it in your Deck Display under preferences. You select one line to be Beats from Cue. I have mine set so Beats in Phrase is zero cause I don't like counting measures.

If you hover over the wave form summary display (at the bottom) it will also tell you how many bars away from the current position, but I haven't figured out 100% how to read it.

Oh my god, as always, you're so right!. I've totally forgotten about this.

It reads in a number format (phrases to cue point:beats to cue point), not a pretty graphic display, but still is more or less what you're asking for.

[peedot]

I have mine set so Beats in Phrase is zero cause I don't like counting measures.

How do you set beats in phrase to zero?

[belchman]

i vote you go old school and just get to know it.. one of the many beauties of dance music is that they stick to 16-32 bar phrases, and when you look at the waveform it's pretty clear where these phrases are just by looking at breaks in the waveform. experiment and you'll get to grips with it

I always do it in terms of the song length, and then compare the two decks.. ie if i have a 6.29 song and a 4 min song, if the breakdown of the second looks slightly smaller than the first, then i guess they're the same length (usually 32 bars)

[Jester]

whats wrong with tapping your feet and counting?

[Remote]

You shoudl be able to hear it. It not to hard to listen and guess the build up

[peedot]

I spin a lot of funk, hip hop, and r&b as well as all the edm stuff. For all my non edm music I like having cue markers at the beginnings of verses, hooks, and bridges so when if I glance up quickly I have a rough estimate of time before I'm suppose to drop in the next track.

[Sherlock Ohms]

Ermmm, get to know your tunes?

even with Funk & Hip-Hop it applies ...

[BentoSan]

I throw a 16 or 32 bar loop saved in my tracks so i can easily visually see how big the loop is on the wavform display. that makes it really easy to judge how many beats there are in a given section.

Having visual markers that arnt cue points would be nice though

[DvlsAdvct]

You set it in one of the Preferences, it's toward the bottom. Unfortunately they won't let me have anything fun at work so I can't check here.

But yeah, just make sure your cue points are where they need to be and put the Beats to Cue in the deck details.

And, well, I chalk this up to the same conversation as the beatmatching / sync conversation. You need to know your songs, but it's one thing to know your songs and another to have a detailed and complete break down of how many beats are in the breakdown, while trying to reference how many beats are in the build up of the next track. It just makes life a whole lot easier.

And, well, when you're working on the fly with a new release you haven't had a chance to really study life becomes a WHOLE lot simpler.