Question about the One

[taiowa84]

Pretty basic question here but ive been learning to dj and am still not quite clear on this. I use traktor but that's not that important to my question. I like to play a lot to hip hop and reggae and in those genres musicians will often start there lyrics one or two beats before the one. When marking cues in songs would you mark a beat one count before the one where necessary and then start it from the 4 count when mixing it as to not cut into the lyrics?

I hope I explained my question well enough. Thanks

[Polygon]

If you know your tracks well i wouldn't mind having the 1 on the first beat. However if you prefer to have a visual clue as of when the track is going to drop, cueing the vocals dOesn't add up more than, say, 20 seconds to your beatgridding process

[Patch]

It's a good question.

You'd set your beat marker on the 1. The structure of the music, the beat, will not change because the vocals start early (or late).

So you'd add a cue point when the vocals start, and start your track from there. The downbeats of both tracks will line up.

[johney]

listen to the track and try to catch the rhythm, imagine the vocal running in your head.

not the greatest example, but similar thing happens here

the vocal sample starts on 4, so i just drop it one beat earlier when mixing,