Progressive bpm increase

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Progressive bpm increase

Good evening all,

I have some questions regarding setting up a set that starts around 100 to 110 and ends up around 125… In fact, i was wondering how to make sure that I can sort of tell a story with the bpm evolving little by little… Thus, how are you doing generally?

Setting pre-defined sets related one with the other?
i.e. 105 then 110 then 115 then 120 then 125?
Or progressive evolution in between, song after song or waiting for a break without some sort of rhythm to launch any transition?

Another question: let’s say that you have songs you like between 118 and 122 bpm, that you would like to mix… To you set an intermediate bpm like 120 bpm, on which you’ll adapt all the songs?

Thanking you in advance for your answers,

F.

2

I play a track regardless of its “root” BPM if it fits properly with the next track I want to play I’ll pitch it up or down accordingly even if thats -8 or +8

Theres literally no hard and fast rule when it comes to BPM, some people get anal about playing stuff at the correct BPM, but thats what pitch faders are for! If it works, it works - if you want to pace the night just move the pitch fader up a few notches slowly on every track.

3

True but master tempo algorithms are still not perfect (especially in Traktor) so I generally avoid playing the whole track pitched.

4

Deevey is partially correct. If it works you can do it, but not all tracks can move 8% in pitch. For a lot of them it just sounds wrong. If you want to start at 110 and end at 125 you want to have different genres to choose from. But there’s no need to plan everything. If you have a wide taste it’s pretty easy.

The answer to your other question is don’t worry so much about it. You can do it both ways, most people won’t even be able to tell the difference. If you are going to up the bpm in a track, do it suddenly during a low volume part or a break. That way it sounds like it’s part of the song.

5

This is eaxactly how you do it. Always has been done like this.

6

No, if I want to play a song, I load it, beatmatch it (or have sync on), and see how it sounds. If it doesn’t sound messed up, I play it. If it does, that’s when I look at the BPM and pitch adjustment to see what would need to happen for it to sound less messed up and I either adjust accordingly or pick a different song.

It’s really not as complicated as you’re making it as long as you have ears and know how to use them. You’re a DJ. Your ears are supposed to be more sensitive to this kind of thing than anyone listening, and your headphones are supposed to be higher-quality than basically any of the sound systems you’re playing on so you can hear these things.

They’re pretty damn good. Traktor’s Hi-Quality version, Ableton’s Complex Pro mode, and Pitch’n’time for Serato can go plenty far for any halfway normal DJ set, and even Pioneer’s old algorithms can do 118 to 125 over the course of a set…that whole set is only a 6% change, which is less than 1 semitone of adjustment at any point.

If a song is really far off the BPM I want to play it at (say, a trance song at 140 that fits better with the trancey house sound at 124ish, which would be like 12%), I use offline pitch conversion to make a 120-something BPM version and save it, since those sound even cleaner. I use Pro Tools to do it, but Audacity can do it in 2 steps (tempo change first, then pitch shifting) and be nearly inaudible.

Yeah…I was about to say, the easiest way is to give the pitch fader a little nudge at basically any point (or a knob if you don’t have pitch faders). If you’re using keylock, you can do it basically anywhere. If you’re not, you have to be more sneaky.

This is actually 100% of the reason my turntables & DVS are setup right now…I wanted to have faders there in my face to remind me to do it. But, really, it doesn’t matter. As long as you pay attention to what you’re doing, just about any way to do it works.