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.
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