I was wondering how much time people spend on prepping each track they use in their collection. I personally find myself working on this for 2-6 hours almost everyday, and its hard to keep up, getting new tunes all of the time. I’ve heard several friends who use Serato say that their music already comes with cue points set up for it. I’m using Traktor & VCI-100, working 5-7 nights per week. I usually have to re-set the grid cue, load, some loops and some visual flags for where I can cut out of the tracks.
I spend random free time I have during the day prepping tracks (~30-40min/day), and can usually bang out a song in 1-2 min. I set cue points at the end of the intro, the start of an outro, starts of breakdowns, and any cool vocal samples I like. My rule is that I won’t download new songs unless I have less than 40 to process. That keeps my quantity of downloads low and quality up.
I prep my tracks immediately after I buy them. That’s usually 10-15 at a time and it takes me 2-3 minutes each track. My prep incudes checking the grid, adjusting the grid if needed, marking vocal end and start, setting intro and outro loops and adding any cue points I might need. I also rate the song and give it an energy rating
I’ve always done the bare necessity when prepping tracks. I import fix tags/artwork, beatgrid.
Most of the reason being that traditionally I am using DVS in absolute mode and so don’t need load makers.
As for cue points/loops etc I do that when ever I have a jam session and mix that tune.
This is especially true now that I have use both traktor and itch.
Otherwise it would take ages.
When I was on Live, it took about 5-10 minutes per song to warp it, check it, cut it into sections, set follow actions, prepare loops, and figure out where to place it in my master als file so I could find it again.
On Traktor, it took about 3-5 minutes per track to re-do the grid (visually) from scratch since Traktor apparently doesn’t like me and never created a usable grid by itself, tag everything, and make sure cover art was available (and the same) b/t iTunes and Traktor.
Now that I’m back to SSL, I don’t do anything. Songs get added to iTunes and tagged (<1 minute/track), which updates smart playlists automatically, and then when I’m preparing to spin, I throw things from the smart playlists to manual ones that I actually spin with based on what I’m feeling for the set/night. Part of it is that I’ve been too lazy to map my lpd8 to SSL instead of just spinning in Absolute mode. I might get around to that at some point, but I still don’t plan on preping anything and if looping and cues don’t work the way I think they will…well, that’s one less piece of gear to worry about.
I normally tend to prep my tracks while I’m practicing them. Like I’ll do a practice set everyday for about an hour and I try to use the new music I downloaded. A lot of the time I end up mixing with songs I’ve never heard or listened to completely. Sometimes I have to set the beat grid while two tracks are playing, that way I can get the grid lined up perfectly. I dunno I’m a little weird like that. I rarely spend more then an hr and a half prepping.
yea i pretty much do the same thing. I’ll prep one track while the other is playing. Then I bring it in when i think it’ll sound good. if it doesnt sound good i try it again.
It’s not too bad, I don’t really have to burn that many CDs as I’m keeping my music library down to a minimum. It was annoying when I first switched back to CDs though
I do it when ever I import new songs into Traktor. I use a computer for download and ripping cd’s. Only songs I might or absolutely will play make it my laptop so it’s minimal how much song I need to beatgrid and cue up. First thing I do after is putting them through Mixed in key then listen to them in VDJ as I like the browser in VDJ. Then I move the good songs into a smartfolder and when finished sorting the diamonds from the dirt I move them to my laptop. That way I have the whole CD (Maybe a DMC Dance mixes) on one comp and only the songs that are any good on my laptop and less to beatgrid so in reality I do not spend much time as compilation/promos don’t get released on a daily basis. My only hope is that Traktor 2.5 will be better at guessing the grid, as of now Traktor would not make it through round one in any guessing games
I don’t tag my Beatport song anymore, I let a programme run this. Best programme I’ve ever found. Makes every tag like it’s on Beatport, including Key, Cover Art (this doesn’t concern me, because I know most of the tracks) and remixers.
I use my X1 to grid and set cue points, the grid is mostly zoomed in max. and then I’ll set my grid marker at the very first wave. 9/10 tracks are in good sync, sometimes I need to adjust them. Been figuring out if I shall use the metronome for this or keep it like it is.
It doesn’t take that long, maybe 1 a 2 minutes per song. Mapped the Hotcue 1 to a Load button, so it’s really easy .
so in reality I do not spend much time as compilation/promos don’t get released on a daily basis. My only hope is that Traktor 2.5 will be better at guessing the grid, as of now Traktor would not make it through round one in any guessing games 
.