is it possible to pull off mixes in traktor (not traktor scratch) with old school or non quantized tracks… I dj at a lot of clubs that want to hear a diverse mix and use serato to make many small adjustments with the record to keep the mix smooth… Is it possible to beatgrid human drumming or control such adjustments accurately with a midi controller? would love to dump the heavy 1200s for a vci 100 but I need to stay versatile with the music selection (not always playing electronic…)
Yes of course. If you are beatmatching the old fashioned way, and adjusting the tempo with the 1200’s pitch sliders, then you can do exactly the same thing with traktor. Just leave snap and quantize off and continue to do it what way, this time with the VCI’s pitch sliders.
I’m also pretty sure that with alot of work, you could beatgrid human drumming, but it would need alot of adjustment.
A problem I have with mixing early techno/electro on Traktor is the time does drift out due to the early sync24 DiN methons they were made, making the beat grid impossible, which is the problem you’re asking about, right?
I solve this by loading them into Ableton first and Warping them all in time, export them as mp3’s and they’re perfect for mixing in Traktor.
(I don’t use Ableton for DJing because it’s not fun and doesn’t feel like DJing)
yep turn the phase meter off in the settings cos thats damn annoying when manually mixing in traktor ay. we are organising a new recorded set atm from my brother who uses cds normally, using traktor, and he won’t be using points, sync or any of that sorta stuff.
yeah just to echo what everyone else has said, most of the places i DJ at want a good mix of music and maybe only 15% of the music i play is accurately recognized by tractor. About another 15 or 20% i have beat gridded myself but the majority, more than half, I just have to mix the old fashioned way and tractor is great for that.
What i have done is to adjust the pitch range compared to Ean’s mapping: firstly the maximum so that it has a maximum of +/- 35%, then the sensitivity of the VCI pitch faders way down so that they move in 0.1 steps and set up some keyboard shortcuts that move up and down in steps of about 2.2 or so (Q and A for left with Z as reset and O and K for right with M as reset).
Therefor I can quickly use they keyboard shortcuts to jump up and down and get in the right ball park for pitch, and then on the VCI use the actual pitch faders along with pushing it on and pulling it back with the platters, just like before on records or CDJ’s, to dial it in.
Ontop of what the other guys have already said:
You could also get the tempo pretty close (but not perfect) then just keep your mix in time using pitch bending or alternatively some work on the pitch fader.
I would actually wager to say that its easier on a midi controller because there isn’t as much drift as there is on a turntable and you can use pitch bends which 1200’s do not have.
Totally agree, if you can beatamtch the old way, using this method is very comfortable. Plus if you add the control on pitchfaders you can do the same and more versatyle than with vinyl. Plus no worries on niddle skips… Thinking that you wont be able to the same than with a pair of 1200s is wrong. With Traktor and a good controller you will get more versatility than ever, just need to get to have a good workflow aquired by practice.
I use my jog wheels as pitch faders, which gives a totally more accurate control that the faders don’t. Then if the drum drifts you can just pitch up or down or bend slightly with the outside of the jogs.
Just recently started using this method myself. Been working on a new MIDI map for my VCI since getting fw 1.3. Love being able to get down into the decimal points of beats!
yeah for proper mixing being able to move up in 0.1 pitch its really a must i think in general, but especially if you are using music which isn’t very easy to beatgrid.
I set my pitch max and min to +/- 35% which is more than i’ll ever use normally (20% would have been perfect but not a choice) and i set the fader sensitivity to 41% which means that it goes +/- 6% within that range in 0.1% steps. So I can use hot keys to jump up and down in big steps and get close and then the pitch fader to get exact.
but yeah jog wheels as pitch fader is also interesting especially as i dont scratch much, might look into that.
How though? I’d love to know if that can be done, but I thought it was not possible to beatgrid individual beats… which you would have to do, to beatgrid human drumming.