I very recently bought a Numark Pro to try a little bit of mixing because I am a big fan of electronic music. I think I know the very basics by now, and I recently started to learn to beatmatch by ear. All I do is pure bedroom DJ’ing, I am not expecting anything out of it for now. It’s pure for fun. Would love to have the skills to play in a club or so in the future, but for the moment it is just a hobby. I was wondering two things:
I am having a lot of problems to beatmatch two songs if they’re having a different audio source (1 from cue headphones, 1 from monitors). Is it ‘acceptable’ / a good way to simply beatmatch with purely with headphones (both songs going through the headphones)? Or is it really crucial to learn to hear one song from monitors and one song from the headphones?
Beatmatching two 4x4 dance songs is going pretty good.. but sadly there are loads of songs with harder patterns and songs that are more noisy, is there any trick or there any easy tips to mix songs together?
I hope my questions aren’t too newbish, this is just my first post here. It’s all bedroom DJ’ing but I would love to get a solid start, that’s also why I avoid the sync button. Other advise or beginner tips are welcome as well.
Learn to mix through the monitors (and your cue’d track in headphone) and also through your headphones alone. Sometimes in a club/party thats too noisey (sound wise) or no monitors or broken monitors or you just need that reassurance, then you might need to mix in your headphones.
A good tip is adjusting your monitor levels AND your headphones levels to suite and compliment each other. I cannot stress this enough.
Also, headphones placement is important. I NEVER have it covering my ear. One can sits on my shoulder so my ear is maybe 1 to 2 inches away so I can hear the high hats/percussion (important this) with the high hats/percussion from the monitors.
If a track is all kick drums to begin with, try your best to mix it or find a part where the percussion starts.
I’d say that you should do what works best for you. Workflow will be different for everyone. As a side note, it might actually be useful to be comfortable mixing in just headphones. A lot of club PA systems have a significant delay in the audio between your mixer and the speakers.
One tip my friend uses is to listen to the hats and other higher frequencies and use them for matching. GJ on wanting to learn the fundamentals of the discipline!
Try using the CUE/MASTER knob on your software/controller/mixer/whatever to balance the sources into your headphones, I find it very helpful (nonetheless I am a disaster in beatmatching).
Nah seriously, if you practice, you’ll do it. It’s best if you don’t use Sync and it’s good if you don’t get in to the habit of using sync all the time for your mixes. Try beat matching with just your monitors (both channel faders up) and then develop it using one ear on one track with headphones (cue mix or whatever the fuck it’s called) and the other track on the monitors… You’ll get the hang of it
One option to take baby steps would be to use tempo sync so you get a hang of the phrasing and how the jog wheels affect the music, and once you’re confident, turn off sync and learn the pitch fader.
I can’t mix one ear headphone, one ear speakers… I always get the tempo right in the headphones then mix in by taking the headphones off and readjusting my focus to the speaker output.
That’s how I do it… In a club setting you should really be using your booth monitors more in my opinion because they’re usually right in your face and they will pick up on the little things before the actual sound system, giving you a second or two to make adjustments…
What is critical is to learn to beatmatch ONE way…and then to generalize the skill to other ways. Pick ONE way…split cue in the headphones, full mix in the headphones, headphones & monitors…whatever is most intuitive for you as you are starting. Stick with that way until you get pretty good as beatmatching.
CAREFULLY record the bpm of all your practice songs. Start with EDM (anything that uses a stable bpm like a drum machine). AVOID songs with live drummers while you are learning.
Technique 1: Have the incoming song cued to a “1”…preferably at the beginning of a phrase (8 bar segment). Count the beats in the outgoing song until you reach the start of a new phrase…and start the incoming song on the “1”. The two songs will be “in the ballpark” at this point.
Technique 2: Make a solid 8 or 16 count loop on the incoming song. Count the beats in the outgoing song until you reach the start of a new phrase…and start the incoming song on the “1”. The two songs will be “in the ballpark” at this point. When you are done making the transition, release the loop on the incoming song.
Work on blending or crossfading the songs over the next 32 beats. Use EQ to cut some bass from one song. Alternatively use a dedicated filter to help blend the songs together. Repeat until you are comfortable.
Set aside dedicated practice time. I find that 15-20 minutes, two times a day works best for me…you will probably be different. You should notice significant improvement within the first 20 hours of dedicated practie time.
Regardless of whether you’re doing it in headphones or headphone/monitor, having the volumes appear “equal” so one song isn’t dominating the other is very important for me. I usually tap my foot to the currently playing song’s beat. Some songs, especially in house are easy with the 4 on the floor aspect. Sometimes I have to move to a different part of the song I’m cueing up to find a spot that I can beat match. Other times I have to change what I’m listening for. At times, I’m listening for the kick, others either the hat or clap on the 2nd and 4th beats, other times I’m making sure the bass line or synth hook are contained within the 4 beats in the currently playing song.
And just practice…daily. Don’t always use the same songs to practice once you get it down a bit. (which it sounds like you have) This will force you to have to listen for different things or look for different spots of the song to match. I usually try to find a drop of the incoming song and set a cuepoint there. Play, listen, adjust, back to cue point to test again.
