Question about mixing on the fly..
When mixing on the fly, how do you guys time the bars perfectly? Not all songs have the breakdowns and build ups exactly the same, so how do you guys mix it so they match up perfectly? Phrasing my songs is the biggest problem I’m having. I mean I guess I can set up cue point and and prep for a mix but having a whole mix planned takes the fun out of it for me.
Its all about knowing your songs. Take the time to listen to your collection before playing out and keep a mental note of different parts of tunes that stand out. Things I would note are : BPM switches, Vocal samples, percussion changes, beat patterns, and sudden breakdowns. If youre using software like Traktor, write some notes in the comment section. For example: Long intro, breakbeat pattern @ 2:10, lots of vocal stabs.
You need to know that EDM has changes every 4 - 8 - 16 - 32 bars. So if the breakdown of a song comes in 16 bars after the intro, and you want it to mix with the breakdown of another song, start the other song 16 bars before the intro. Pretty easy.
Kind of on that topic, How do you find ‘16 bars before the intro’ in traktor?
As they say, house music, and music in general, is a feeling. You should be able to feel when the track is going through it’s arrangement and be able to pick up on those little audio cues. It doesn’t always have to mix from breakdown to breakdown.
Short of it, we are able to match them perfectly because we grew an appreciation for the music first and listened to the music and mixes an ungodly amount before we even thought about buying turntables and a mixer.
That’s like asking someone how the brake pedal works on a car and when do you know how to brake. You just have to get a feel for it.
well if you don’t know the tracks, and sometime you forget, like I so often do when drinking. I just put it in on the correct phase 32 beats. I can usually feel it. When I’m ready to mix out in a new track Im just pretty much sitting there prepared to change over. Additionally I wait for key moments to swap basses, bring in mid prior to the end of the phase so that if i’m surprised its really minimal.
Close, but not true, as some have an extra bar here and there that can mess up your phrasing if you’re not paying attention.
Sometimes i’ll mix builds into builds, but often one is longer than another and i when i feel i should press play i do, but when it comes to the drop, i’m often a bar or two out. Which sucks 
Can you just skip or rewind 16/32 bars from a certain spot?
Find the intro or drop .. beatjump back 16bars and cue 
… but thats not going to work if the outro of the previous track is 32 bars or 8, but it is a good guide.
In general beatjump can be handy to find tracks that don’t start or drop on a regular beat. Wrong Guru (adam k) for example has an extra beat at the start which would screw you up if you are playing it for the first time and assuming it starts on the first beat of a bar.
tap your feet and count to 4.
failing that, add the “beats” counter to your deck view.
haha sorry let me re-phrase. Just start it 16 bars before the breakdown.
Practice.
Phrase Matching (what you’re talking about) is the most important thing a DJ can do. There aren’t really short cuts, and I think a lot of the advise in this thread is crap. For one thing, 16 bars is a very short mix…30 seconds (or so) is nothing.
if you set cue point you can just drop a breakdown or build whenever. Basically you can drop at any point in time. You have to prepare your tracks for that though. Not something you can easily do on the fly, unless you cue the same track up and drop it whenever.
If you want to become a good DJ, i.e. a “better than the average bedroom jock” DJ, there is only one way: really get to know your tracks, as many in this thread have already pointed out.
Knowing what is happening at what time in any of your tracks is what gives you the opportunity to really mix seamless. And by seamless I don’t mean “unnoticeable” but without any unintended loss of flow or energy in the mix.
If you just count back 16/32 bars from every breakdown or whatever you’re basically stuck with the same kind of transition for the whole night, which eventually will get boring. If you know what’s happening when and know how to work with that knowledge your possibilities are basically endless.
If you, however, decide that the first method is good enough for you, you can easily use Traktor’s hotcues to make things easier for you. Just put a hotcue 16 and/or 32 bars before the drop/breakdown or whatever your point of interest is in that track. Now you have the hotcues markers in the waveform as a visual aid for your mixing. If you know that the track you want to mix in e.g. has a 16 bar intro before the first breakdown just wait until the playmarker of the track that’s playing out loud reaches the 16 bar hotcue marker and press play. Et voilá: a perfectly phrased mix.
Use your ears and not your eyes.
Learn your mixes.
Listen to your tunes over and over again. In the days of vinyl only DJs knew their tunes inside out because they played them over and over and over again.
[quote=“guiltyblade, post:13, topic:41838, username:guiltyblade”]
if you set cue point you can just drop a breakdown or build whenever.
[/quote]No, you can’t. Not understanding phrasing makes you think you can. To everyone who actually understands music, you sound like shit when you do that.
At the end of a phrase, you can use a cue point to jump to another phrase than the one you’re supposed to go to. And that helps. But if you have no idea when they are, you’ll still sound bad doing it.
Fixed.
Ok, there’s a lot of advice in this thread that doesn’t make any sense. Music in general is divided into phrases, bars, and then beats. Everything, and I mean literally everything that makes musical sense, is broken down into a number of phrases, often with slight musical variations measure by measure. The meat of a track is a number of phrases, builds are typically a phrase a break is typically a phrase or two. There’s no feeling to it, it’s pure math, but you develop a sense for counting bars and measures after you learn what you’re listening for.
If you can get a sense for counting measures and phrases, the technical aspect of phrase matching disappears. As long as you always cue at the beginning of a measure and phrase (protip, do this, always), layering builds over breaks becomes a matter of timing and knowing your tracks.
And for most of house and techno you’re just plain wrong stating that 4 bars would constitute a phrase, it’s 8 bars in the vast majority of cases (btw, your terminology is a bit off as well, “measure” and “bar” are basically synonyms in this context, what you meant was “phrase”)
In the end that might not be overly important, as most people probably don’t count that stuff but rather hear it/get a feel for it. But still: it’s 8 bars, just listen for it 
After a while though, you find you’re not counting, you just know
+1. Absolutely this, but until you’re at that point (or for those cases where they try to fuck you over with an extra bar at the end of a breakdown or something): check the Traktor manual and look for “beats to cue”