Hello i am new to this dj stuff and i have a question for you pros.
Is freestyling even possible? I am reading so much about phrasing (i cant get it to work… but beatmatching is no problem (no sync)) but everytime the author says:“set cue points… count backwards…” and so on. I want to sit at home, turn on my controller, pick a track and randomly mix another track smoothly into the first one… and even hit the phrases (without really knowing the tracks perfectly). Is this even possible ? i really want to be flexible and if i am starting to prepaire my tracks and build up a set… i have no changes and need to play this set again and again until i create a new one (remember: in this early stage i only want to play for myself at home and dont want to disturb anyone at a club ). My main problem with this phrasing-thing is that one track has an intro at about 16 bars, the next track has an intro about 32 bars, then vocals for 4 bars and so on… i read about the general rule of thumb that one only has to start the 2nd track after a phrase of the first track… but this doesnt work everytime (2 of 6 maybe?) i really want to improve myself and maybe someday play e.g. for my friends on birthdays (next goal slight_smile:
also i dont get why you always say: start counting someday you will know exactly where you are in a song so you know when to mix in the other song. do i really have to know my songs perfectly? its pretty hard for a new dj when you never listened that exact to your songs
i really hate that thougt to create an entire set at home so that alle the phrases are matching with the loss of all creativity… do u understand what i mean?
best regards (sorry englisch is not my native language)
This sums it up well. Although I don’t think having songs prepped is a bad thing or detracts from freestyling. It’s also fun to just get a random selection of songs you’ve never heard and see what come up with especially if it’s not your genre and takes you out of your comfort zone
When I first buy tracks online, I like to just dump them in a working folder and just mix. That is my preferred way to ‘get to know’ tracks and the placement of drops/vocals/transitions etc. Also gives me a chance to save common cue points along the way without a lot of stress.
[QUOTE]well i know my songs but i dont know when the vocals appear for example
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Thats what phrasing is, knowing when stuff is going to drop in and out, on most tracks that will be on some multiple of 4 e.g. @ 16 beats / 32 beats / 64 beats. If you start track 2 on the outro cymbal crash of track 1 it’ll most likely drop in correctly when it comes to the mix.
Yes you can “freestyle” without knowing exactly what will happen when, but thats what you should be doing when prepping. Just dropping random new tracks side by side without cues or loops / effects etc. is IMHO, the best way to practice as weird drops or offbeats of certain tracks will get burned into your brain for the next time you try to drop it.
Theres also a ton of ways to “cheat” using cue points / beat jumps / loops etc ..but it only takes a few seconds of scanning through a track to get an good idea of what will probably happen where and just wing it.
Out of curiosity - how many tracks do you have in your collection?
I made the classic mistake when I first set up Traktor of importing my entire music collection. This resulted in content overload, there’s no way I can learn all those tracks. I then wiped the list from Traktor and set up a different folder for just the tracks I’m going to DJ, and I curate that list much more diligently than I do for my listening music - this allows me to be much more intimately familiar with the tracks I am playing when I DJ.
The term freestyling is a bit gray, but my understanding of it is not that you don’t know your music, or that you don’t have cue points dropped in your tracks to let you know where you need to be working, it just means that you don’t have a playlist that you go through from beginning to end, but rather that you select songs that fit the mood.
A hybrid that I learned from another forum was the mini-set. This is where you have little sets of 3-5 songs that work well together (harmonically, genre, tempo, etc.) for which you have polished the transitions. This works nicely, because you get a good sound, but it also gives you the flexibility to move somewhere else if that particular style isn’t working for your audience. This is frequently what I’ll do, although I do also freestyle my track selection completely quite often as well.
If we’re talking about judging when to drop tracks in, and so forth, that’s one area where you should be using the overview waveforms in your software. You can judge quite easily when a breakdown is coming, or when the track kicks in.
Don’t go looking for hard numbers (x bars), just as an indicator.
It’s like when mixing on vinyl, you can judge from the grooves roughly where the breakdown is, where the outro starts, etc.
Combine that with listening to, and knowing, your tracks, and you can mix pretty much anything ‘freestyle’.
Like other people have mentioned I definitely find knowing your tracks in and out helps a lot not only in building transitions but most importantly for having a mental note of what other tracks it will go good together with.
Practice a lot without having any particular set in mind, just have fun with your tunes, the right combinations will come naturally.
Sometimes you get surprised how seemingly incompatible tracks might create something much more beautiful together. This is my favourite feeling in the world.
Also, don’t force the music. What I mean by that, take your mood and vibe into consideration when practicing, play what comes more natural to you in the moment, believe me, your brain will make the right connections in the future when you are looking for that next perfect tune.
notice at the top i’ve cut up each individual part of the intro of the song by 8 bar divisions, while simultaneously adding up the number of bars in the song. obviously, this is only the start of two songs but the point being driven here is that most dance music is a simple 4 to the floor, with 8 bar divisions. the wave forms displayed can give you a visual aid to see that this truly is the case.
so its totally possible if you can get a groove for a song. when i get songs i usually just set up cue points as points of references to what i call “events” such as; break down, build up, hi hats, or intros. usually about 16 bars out as a loop so i can drop the phrase in first and then worry about beat matching.
Honestly, at this point, I am of the opinion that freestyling is easier. When I work from a setlist, I worry about hitting the right transition points and all this jazz, but when I freestyle, it’s easier because I’m just choosing a transition, making it, and moving on.
I know I should probably do the same thing for a setlist, but when the songs are set in stone, then I start to have specific transitions planned, and yadda yadda yadda.
I guess you have a wrong understanding what ‘knowing your songs’ means..
If you don’t know when the vocals appear in a certain song, then you don’t know that song.
Knowing at which point in a song something new will happen is based on three different things: understanding the basic rules about song structures (phrasing), knowing what to look out for (typically changes get introduced by some kind of transitional effects, e.g. risers, drum rolls, ‘mini-breaks’), and, last but not least, actually knowing that particular song, especially the points where its structure may deviate from the ‘normal’ structure.
I have plenty of songs that have vocals even through the outro so I wouldn’t put too much faith in knowing structure = knowing when vocals are going to be used, depends.
? i really want to be flexible and if i am starting to prepaire my tracks and build up a set… i have no changes and need to play this set again and again until i create a new one (remember: in this early stage i only want to play for myself at home and dont want to disturb anyone at a club 
). My main problem with this phrasing-thing is that one track has an intro at about 16 bars, the next track has an intro about 32 bars, then vocals for 4 bars and so on… i read about the general rule of thumb that one only has to start the 2nd track after a phrase of the first track… but this doesnt work everytime (2 of 6 maybe?) i really want to improve myself and maybe someday play e.g. for my friends on birthdays (next goal 
slight_smile:
