Benefits of Cueing
Hey guys, I’m a little confused.
Why do people use cues? I’ve been trying to learn cueing but I just can’t seem to get the hang of it. Where in a song, do you assign hot cues?
I know this is kind of an open ended question but please try to bear with me, I’m just keen to learn!
Thanks so much.
I usually set my cue points at the beginning of a song, at the drop, and where the final breakdown/outro is. Lets you get to different parts of the song with ease. Basically if you have certain parts of a song that you want to jump to all the time then set a cue there, it’s a very useful tool if you take the time to set them up.
Thank you so much!
That’s what I thought you use cue points for but I run into two problems with them. Should I assign them at the actual breakdown/drop etc. or a bar before just to make it should a little smoother.
When I press a hot cue, the song stops and jumps to that point. How do I stop this happening?
Thanks so much.
I try to think of Cues/Hot Cues a bit like a continuous sampler it allows you to mash/edit your track or simply drop random sound fx.
Simple Example: I might have 3 or 4 cue points in a track (I don’t mash too much).
Cue1 - Normally the first mixing beat of the track, your initial start point and where I either beatmatch or sync from.
Cue 2 - Where the Bassline kicks in.
Cue 3 - Breakdown in the track.
Cue 4 - Track Outro / Loop
In essence it means you can de-construct a track, shorten it lengthen it, rearrange it, play it backwards, end to beginning, play it from a random position or drop in sections on beat.
Hope that makes some kind of sense.
[quote]When I press a hot cue, the song stops and jumps to that point. How do I stop this happening?
[/quote]
Sounds like either you have an issue with latency where your computer can’t handle the jump to a cue point, or pause is maybe assigned to the hot cue button as well.
edit damn you and your mou5y head, got in before me 
Deevey hit the nail on the head but i’d also add vocal in’s an outs…
as far as where to set the cue, its really up to you and how you want to play that specific cue.
Remember there are also 4(might be 8) beat markers (not cueable) that you can lay down on tracks through the advanced menu. This might help keep things “tight” if you use the Beats to Cue in the info header.
Some vocals are great for cue’ing too, first examples to come to mind are Knobbers and Warp (“Now push it” and “Whoop Whoop!”, respectively), fun to sample every now and then and super easy if you’ve got a cue point set up!
[quote]Should I assign them at the actual breakdown/drop etc. or a bar before just to make it should a little smoother.
[/quote]
There’s no right or wrong answer to this one, if it feels and sounds right then its right.
Some tracks just don’t lend themselves to dropping on a break due to whooshy noises, sound fx, vocals bleeding in etc… you’ll need to figure that out on a track by track basis.
This.
Hahah well you went way more in depth than I did, and pointed out stuff that I neglected to mention such as: [quote]In essence it means you can de-construct a track, shorten it lengthen it, rearrange it, play it backwards, end to beginning, play it from a random position or drop in sections on beat.[/quote]
Oh and by the way, it’s a bear, not a mau5.
I agree for the most part, but a little quantization and snap action makes it all sound natural in most cases.
And these times a thousand. There’s no right or wrong seeing how they are tools for artistic license.
I don’t.
I don’t like how disjoined hot cues always seem to sound, and I hate that I never seem to put them the places I end up wanting to use them (and hardly ever want to use the same one twice).
I do place a load marker where I want the track to load and have that available as the first hot cue just in case something weird happens…but it never does.
If I want to use a hot cue, I usually do it the old fashioned way…load a double of the track, scan through it, drop it where it’ll fall at the right place, and hit the crossfader when it’s time. I think it sounds better than just hitting a hot cue, and I enjoy it more.
As others have pointed out, you can drop a number of cues here and there to mark key parts of the tracks. You don’t necessarily have to use them as hotcues to jump to however - if you’re displaying “beats to cue” in the deck details, it can help you time your mixes/phrasing and if you’re ahead, loop one of the tunes appropriately until you are in time (and by looping I mean “rocking a timecoded deck back and forth waiting for the right time to let it go”, “playing with cue/play like you would on a CD deck” or “beatjumping/looping controller/X1 style”, whatever suits your fancy).
Be careful : you CAN go overboard with this.
I.E. relying on it for every mix which will glue you to your screen, mapping all 8 hotcues for every track, then storing some more cuepoints if you feel like you need to remind yourself of more events and finding out it defeats the purpose of doing it in the first place since you can’t time a “real” track event happening 4 cues later…