"Manual Looping" - AKA How I use beatjumping
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  1. #1
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    Default "Manual Looping" - AKA How I use beatjumping

    This post started out as a reply to another, but I kept typing it out and decided I should create a thread for it.

    I use beatjumping as a form of manual looping, and you can get really tight mixes doing it. Say Track A is playing and I want to mix in Track B once Track A starts coming down in energy. To do this, I'll start mixing inTrack B however many beats before the point where its beat drops:

    Let's assume I want to mix in Track B after 64 beats have passed in Track A (in other words, after 64 beats from now, Track A will come down in energy and it would make a good spot to mix in Track B!).

    But let's also assume that Track B's beat will drop in only 32 beats.

    So what I will do is keep playing Track B, and even visually I will see that the beat drops early, so I will beatjump back 16 beats and then again 16 beats (usually I hit the button a beat or two apart, always on beat) and then things will line up.

    "Manual looping" can be seen as sort of a safety net if you're not sure if your tracks will line up into a super tight mix, and it works great. Another advantage is that you don't have to press the button exactly after 16 beats have passed - you can press it more or less whenever as long as your beatjump length does not exceed however many beats have passed since the start of the verse. That sounds confusing so I'll illustrate it:

    Track X: Verse Starts / Beat 1 - - - - - Beat 16 - - - - - Beat 32 (Verse Ends)

    If I'm beatjumping every 16 beats in order to manually loop these 32 beats (thereby manually looping this verse), I don't have to press the beatjump button on beat 16 or on beat 32. I can instead press it ANY TIME after beat 16. This leaves you many options and depending on the track, sometimes it will matter when you beatjump back and you will have to decide for yourself what's most comfortable for you. However...

    ...the only downside is that you're stuck hitting the beatjump button every 16 beats or whatever you've set it to, making it hard to do other things at the same time like FX and so forth. For this reason I'm going to try to get into looping moreso and try to break my habit of "manual looping".

    Either way it is a great tool and can make your mixes sound very tight when you really don't want to mess things up. You can also become more inventive and start beatjumping with shorter jumps, say 2 or 4 or 8 beats to live remix your tracks. This works very well with vocals as to the crowd it will sound like an edit. To give a simple example, in "Satisfaction" the vocals are:

    "Push me / and then just touch me / until I get my / satisfaction" in a male voice.

    They then repeat, but in a female voice.

    If you beat jump accordingly, you can jump between the male and female voices without wrecking the actual lyrics. That is to say:

    "Push me (male) / And then just touch me (Female) / Until I get my (Male) / Satisfaction (Female)"

    Always stay focussed and keep count in your head - how many beats am I ahead? How many am I behind? It'll all work out if you drop the track at the right time (i.e. at the start of a verse).

    In regards to the VCI, I changed the four keys around the Preview button to beatjump for me. The <- and -> buttons will beatjump back and forth in Deck A, while the up/down buttons will beatjump back and forth in Deck B. These buttons are assigned to the third row of the beatjump buttons. With this setup I can only beatjump one preset length, usually 16 bars. I can always change this length within Traktor.
    Last edited by miyuru; 08-17-2008 at 03:37 PM.

  2. #2
    Dr. Bento BentoSan's Avatar
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    I have been recently put extensive beatjumping capabilities onto my VCI among with some other things, so can I vouch for the power of beatjumping. Theres really a hell of alot of track mangling that can be done using jumps. It works wonders on alot of drum and bass titles where i chop basslines in with other basslines and in and out of quiet areas of the track among other things. Its usually also possible to skip sections of the song you don't like on the fly which i find is really handy too. You can also extend or shorten areas of a song so they fit into your mix better.

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    Totally! I just love how safe it is as long as you don't get lost in your jumps.

    How have you changed the VCI to allow you to beatjump more readily?

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    Dr. Bento BentoSan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by miyuru View Post
    Totally! I just love how safe it is as long as you don't get lost in your jumps.

    How have you changed the VCI to allow you to beatjump more readily?
    Thats a secret until i get it up on the blog - then its a free for all.
    Last edited by BentoSan; 08-18-2008 at 12:17 PM.

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    Haha sounds good!

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    Dr. Bento BentoSan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BentoSan View Post
    Thats a secret until i get it up on the blog - then its a free for all.
    I hope so you have no idea how long ive spent on the idea

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    Tech Mentor Krome's Avatar
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    *digging out thread*

    Hey Bento, after finally having some time to play around, I also really fell in love with beat jumping. Did you put up your secret somewhere or is it still a secret?

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    Dr. Bento BentoSan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Krome View Post
    *digging out thread*

    Hey Bento, after finally having some time to play around, I also really fell in love with beat jumping. Did you put up your secret somewhere or is it still a secret?
    The plan was to incorperate this with some Bomes examples - i got a bit sidetracked as bomes 1.7 was comming out that was going to make some significant changes and i wanted to incoperate this is part of a bomes tutorial. Now thats out though (for pc atleast) i can do some tutorials.

  9. #9
    Tech Mentor Krome's Avatar
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    That'd be pretty cool!
    Especially some Bomes insight would help too. What I'm trying to get is what I've seen in Deckadance: You can put a loop, let it loop for some time, then when you disable the loop, the track continues where it would've been without the looping = it's kinda like the track keeps playing in the background.

    I'd be already happy if I could put that together in Traktor let's say for a 1-beat loop, played 3 times in addition to the first time, then a 4-beat jump. Running something like that in the right spot (using Decka) with some of my (psy) trance tracks sounds pretty awesome and I just want to do the same in Traktor
    Phew... many words

  10. #10
    Dr. Bento BentoSan's Avatar
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    Yeah i want that functionality too but sadly we cant do it with Traktor or Bomes at the moment because Bomes Traktor not Bomes has the appropriate functionality. Ideally that would be a feature build directly into Traktor, to do it inside of bomes would tempo synced code which isnt supported at this stage.

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