How to change BPM effectively?

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

How to change BPM effectively?

Hello!

I love working and mixing with trance songs. So far, I’ve been mixing songs that have closely related BPMs (with +2 or -2 BPMs). Do you guys have any tips so I can match songs that are off by like 8 BPMs?

I just like to keep the variety of songs going and keep the party going as well. Don’t want to start off with a bunch of fast songs and hit the slow ones.

2

+1 on this topic… any vets wanna offer some suggestion?

3

have the song play, and slowly and gradually as the song plays, lower the bpm

if you use traktor, i recommend mapping a modifier and then making your jogs make these minute adjustments

4

Wouldn’t it be weird sometimes? I mean I’ve tried it and don’t get me wrong it works great, but at times you’ll actually hear the song shift in tempo.

But what can I say, there isn’t any other better way to do it in VDJ.

5
  • Ramp up the BPM by about 1 every 3 tracks.
  • Nothing wrong with a “soft mix” every now and then i.e if the next track with the higher bpm has a nice percussion free intro, layer that over the previous tune and just let it run out.
  • Ean’s famous “freeze echo” effect can work too (lots of examples/vids of that technique around here)
  • Get your second tune cued with the fader and all eqs in the middle, you might need to set some points for this to work proper. if it has a percussionless intro thats even better. At the breakdown in the first track, get the second tune going (advanced fx mode, delay). the idea is to get the first kick of the second tune lined up with when the first tracks beats come back in. Now here’s the fun part: crank up the bpm smoothly in this intro (wont be too obvious with just pads etc) If you’ve lined it up right, the bpm difference is irrelevant because right when track 1’s beat kicks in you are going to hit freeze in the fx, and it SHOULD sound awesome :stuck_out_tongue:
6

First off, thanks for the great suggestions!!! :smiley:

Only thing is that I am only using a Mixtrack and VDJ so my stuff is pretty limited. I don’t think I can pull off that freeze echo…

7

Just try a few techniques out, even the first one i mentioned works pretty good mate.

8

if you MUST beatmatch those song together, you could sync them and loop the songs in a rythmic part (try to avoid melodies that could introduce artifacts when abusing of the keylock), then slowly rise the tempo of the master track (the other one will be synced). play a little with fx (delays, beatslicer, etc) or/and samples so it doesn’t sound dull and release the loop of the new track so the phrase structure make sense, else it will sound weird.

It’s always better if you reduce the tempo gap by making the 1º one go faster as suggested and start the new track a bit slower than it’s original BPM to further minimize it.

Or you could just go with Ean’s trick and get away with it if done correctly. Follow his tips, he is golden.

9

140ish to 151ish (~8%) is a bit ridiculous.

Try just matching it with keylock on, and if that sounds weird, you can use Audacity to slow the track down in one step and do the pitch-correction in a second step. It sounds a lot better that way, it just can’t be done in real time.

If you don’t want to do that, you can push most trance up to about 144/145…and you might be able to take the 151 track down that low…but you kind of have to use it as the peak of your set at that point……

10

keep your tracks within a 6% range if you use keylock mate.