i normaly just look at the BPM of the other track, match those two and then beatmatch them (by ear ofcourse)
It’s simple.. Cover or hide all forms of information for beatmatching e.g. waveforms, tempo, BPM etc.
And just practice manually trying to get it. Years ago back in the vinyl days if you were a DJ that was solid at beatmatching you were classed as a good DJ but that practice could have taken months if not years to master. Now a days on a CDJ you can learn beatmatching quite well in a week or two.
Just practice and you should be fine and remember it WILL take time. If it doesn’t take you long, i need some tips from you for my mates that are learning lol.
This, exactly. Beatmatching by ear is just that, there is absolutely no reason to know the BPM of the tracks. Music from a similar genre will generally be in the similar range in any case and anything outside of ±8% (for TTs in general) you’ll have to be a bit clever how you mix the tracks. For example, the only cues you have using vinyl is the audio itself and colour depth change which you can use to identify breakdowns etc.
You are joking I presume? 
That is certainly not the way either myself or peers learned to beatmatch on vinyl.
No, I mean a pitch indicator, +/- a % value. Assuming we were thrust back into the 70s and BPM indicators weren’t on every single piece of hardware imaginable, you would very easily get by with just a % change value and a tempo value written on the label.
The reason why this discussion is ridiculous, is that people in this thread have a definition of “by ear” stuck somewhere in the 70s, whereas actually beat matching by ear on modern equipment entails one less arbitrary step. Is using a pitch fader using something “other than your ears?” What about a pitch reset? Or an accurate tempo adjustment? Including blind tempo matching in “beatmatching by ear” is extremely arbitrary, because the basis is that 1200s didn’t have a tempo inidcator, so all DJs wanting to call themselves able to do so must follow that heritage, even though the actual technique is exactly the same and just as “by ear” on CDJs.
fuck off out of this this thread mate. its obviously got nothing to do with you and the way you operate.
I’m just happy that when my eyes fail to the point i need reading glasses to see a LCD display or are just too plastered drunk to focus on one i’ll still be able to match the beats 
hehehe :thumb up:
No, they have the correct definition on ‘by ear’, and they are on topic. Believe it or not there are plenty of times where a BPM counter can’t be trusted, and you may have heard of this thing called a DVS.
It’s quite clear you’re young and inexperienced at gigging, let the people who have experience give advice.
I play “Name That BPM” on my iPod all the time. My wife thinks I’m a total nerd on car trips. A song will come on and I’ll be like “95!” Then I’ll go back and check it later to see if I’m correct. Most of the time I’m damn close.
This is the point the OP is trying to get to. Removing much of the guesswork or reliance on the technology.
I ususally line up bass hits and if its off, you can easily hear it. Just put two songs on and turn your laptop around or something.
You should be able to hear the ballpark BPM after a while, i count to everything i hear without even meaning to.
With CDJs though, if im mixing tracks i dont know the bpm of id never trust the counter, always use tap.
If you’ve every played with another DJ or with live musicians, it quickly becomes apparent why beatmatching is important. You can’t ask a drummer what BPM he is playing all the time, and if someone kept asking me what the BPM was while we were playing together, I’d be annoyed. You just gotta ride that pitch fader.
Wow thanks for all the quick and plentiful replys. I will definitely apply what you all said and practice my ass off. One question though what does riding the pitch fader mean, does it mean just messing with the pitch fader until the two drum patterns are in sync? All of you were very helpful and if I have any questions ill definitely ask here again and any more information would always be appreciated 
Riding the fader means touching only the pitch fader to get the tracks beatmatched. It can be a bit harder/slower than using the platter as well, but it helps you avoid unpleasant dips/peaks in pitch (if you’re not using keylock) and lets you beatmatch one-handed so you can do it while setting up another track, tweaking effects/eq’s, etc.
And yeah, beatmatching by ear is important not only for when you can’t just sync, but also to train your ear to hear when two songs are precisely beatmatched instead of just being close. At the end of the day, seeing that two songs in sync is nice, but hearing that they’re in sync is what actually matters.
Perfectly summed up!
its now about knowing what the BPM of the next song is down to a number, what more important is being able to tell if the next song is faster or slower than the last. After a lot of practice, you start to get a feel for how much faster or slower the pitch bend makes the song play.
This video did it for me:
DON’T look at the BPM’s, phase meters, or wave-forms. The goal is to rely completely on the beat and your ears. You’ll need a pair of headphones to cue up a track in one ear and listen to another track through your monitors.
^^^^ This.
So many people are missing this skill these days. It’s so much more then the act of actually mixing, till your ears are properly trained it’s quite hard to tell if a track is say 0.2 of a bpm off due to a slightly botched grid…
Lol dude. Please stop. Its completely different experience vinyl to CDJ. Additionally beat matching by ear is beat matching by ear. Everyone is on the same page expect you. Two track, no aids, just pitch faders and nudging a platter. The whole point of this exercise especially these days with technology doing the work for you isn’t to match faster, or anything its to train you ears when something is wrong. To improve you skills as a DJ, to utilize, and train your greatest tool, your ears. Take a lesson from Carl Cox then get back to me.
Technology is NOT perfect. BPM counters, tapping in a beat, grids, BPM displays, all that stuff out there doesn’t analyze a track 100% correctly. When we put stuff in traktor a good majority of tracks can come out slightly wrong, same with CDJ 2000s, rekord box, mixed in key, the bpm can be slightly off. They might be “in the ball park” and sound alright, but to sound perfect you need to train your ears to recognize the difference between slightly off and perfect. Maybe alright is good enough for you, but as a DJ we all strive for a perfect mix every 2-5 mins.
That way you know how to correct it easily too. How many times have I heard a track slightly, just slightly off when someone is playing who hasn’t trained their ears and it goes unrecognized completely because hey have no clue and rely on the sync, phase meter, display whatever. Many people are hear a track is off, but not many people know how to fix it quickly. Without knowing this skill you can actually make the beat matching turn out worse, aka, going the wrong way on the pitch, nudging the wrong way, etc, to the point where the whole thing just train wrecks, and it only takes about 5 seconds for a track to sound semi ok to completely wrecking its ass off.
Also cover up the Vu meters, you can visually beat match using those too.