I’ve recently purchased a Kontrol F1, and it’s so far been pretty neat.
I don’t typically use sync with Traktor, unless I’m doing a long loop, or want to do a 3rd deck. For straight up mixing, I use CDJ-2000’s in HID mode, and beat match manually. In other words, I don’t bother to manually beat grid all of my tracks, but Traktor usually gets the beat detection down really quite good nowadays.
When I use the F1, I of course have Sync turned on, with a track deck as master. If I wait for an upcoming phrase to begin, I often find that when I trigger a loop Traktor “waits” 2, 3 or 4 beats before starting the loop. Hmm.
I can turn off Quantize, but that means I need to throw the beat in at the exact moment, not easy to do.
So why is this so? I thought Quantize would just cause Traktor to match to the closest beat, but it’s almost as if the software has it’s own sort of phrase detection it’s trying to do.
There is a way to reduce the quantize… hold down the Quant button and select one of the lit up buttons on the second column… they are tighter than the first. the display will show the new value as you click. I think a lot of the remix sets default to a full beat.
btw… been using the remix decks more and more lately. Mostly to add extra layers… I mainly have an extra kick, hats, and some percussion going the whole set to add something when there are too many breaks. Can’t seem to come around to using it for “live remixing” yet.
No problem! Manuals are long and boring
You’ll get the hang of it.
The other very useful button in the Capture button… loop something in a track deck deck, hold Capture and another button in the 4x4 matrix and it captures that loop on the fly into the remix deck.
It really is a fun tool… just takes some practice and is better for some styles of music more than others.
Yep I’ve played with the capture button, very cool.
So more on the phrasing, I didn’t quite realize that the deck works the same as the other decks with regards to a timeline. The 1.1.1 beat timer and such… If I hit the “cue” button, it resets to 1.1.1. I had left the track playing, which really screwed things up.
If I accidentally set a “cue” point on the deck, is there a way to reset it and get back to 1.1.1 without loading a new remix set (or switing the deck type)?
Also, is there a way to trigger the “play” and “cue” for the deck without using something like an X1?
I don’t have anything mapped to cue points on my F1. I generally just load up one remix set with all of the samples I would use for the night and have it play the whole night through.
The Play button was never mapped, and was kind of annoying because I do have my setup to not load into a deck that is playing (if I were to switch remix sets). I do have it mapped now that I added an X1. Since my controller is only two channels, I mapped the bass treble, mids, and filter for deck C and D to the X1.
Have to play around with it to see if I can replicate what you are talking about.
You should now see that the deck is stopped at wherever you hit the “CUE” button. The timeline value up on the right will read some value of where you stopped the deck (i.e., 5.2.3).
Now, if you load a regular track onto another deck, and let it play, when you trigger samples in the remix deck they can be out of phrase from where you wanted the beats to trigger.
You can set the QUANT value to 1 to get around this, and as long as you count to the 1 beat when triggering subsequent samples in the remix deck, you are fine.
If you reset the deck by loading a new remix set, the timeline goes back to 1.1.1. I was just wondering if there was a way to do this quickly.
I see what you mean. But, think I never encountered it because I never hit cue (I used to on a CDJ, but never on a track deck or remix deck in Traktor because I set my hot cues for everything I need.) Also I don’t generally use the beat counter. It’s very helpful, but I guess I never paid much attention if it was at 1.1.1… I tend to visualize the wave more. Sometimes just trigger the cel again when they are on the 1.
Solution is to keep the Sync on the remix deck at all times. Which, I think is the way it was designed. If sync is enabled, it will be in matched… but, the loops will be where you cued them (possibly out of phase).
In the end, don’t see why you would want to hit cue on a remix deck. Maybe make your loops shorter or put them on separate cels if you want to trigger from specific spots.
You wouldn’t really, except maybe by accident. I was just trying to figure out how to get back to 1.1.1.
If you leave play on the whole set, don’t you find that your phrases get messed up?
I don’t beat grid all my tracks, so it’s possible a “1” marker could be off, screwing up the phrasing big time. It’s best if before I throw in a remix loop, I make sure the deck is on the 1.1.1.
I’ve been using it in a very simple way lately… I keep Sync on, and basically just have a 4/4 kick loop, a few hat loops, percussion, and some random vocal loops. My goal is to just fatten up tracks with weak kicks and add elements to make the transitions sound more uniform. It’s an experiment that I need to continue to enhance .
Since my whole library is beat gridded, I just sync everything to the master clock. The actual tracks can be matched and adjusted manually, but I use the master clock as the source to control the remix decks. I used to add an Electribe R to my sets when I was on CD, but found the inability to sync frustrating. In a way, they gave me the functionality I was looking for all that time.
I do want to start playing regular remix sets, but am taking small steps. I want to feel comfortable with the basics and know how to handle things when they go wrong without thinking about it.
