Who taught you how to beatmatch?
Ive watched the videos and read a lot but after months I still haven’t mastered beatmatching without looking at the BPM readout.
How did you learn?
I hear a lot about how people were mentored or learned from a friend.
Im craving to be able to play strictly analogue.
I don’t have anybody that I know that knows how so I’m kind of in a hole
I taught myself. It’s something that you don’t get; then you get. It’s easier done than described.
Use 2 copies of the same record. You’ll get noticeable phasing when the beats are properly lined up.
I can match beats with the same song (Thats pretty easy)
I struggle with songs with different BPMs without the readout
my mate showed me after I bought some tables a few years ago… then practiced and failed for about a month… after 3 i could match anything poorly… after 6 could do it well… after a year I didn’t even think about it and it just happens automatically with ear-hand co-ordination and muscle memory.
the only good vid I have ever seen that explains what is happening is MICL’s animation on youtube… that said it’s not something that can be taught but the paradox is you can learn it… that’s some zen shit there lol 
!
Its the best to learn on TTs. Most genuine way to learn the craft. What really helped me a lot when I started out was DVS. I took the beginning of Warp 1.9, with its sharp clock click sound and just looped that shit, and beat matched it to to several songs. With a sharp loop like that, slight fluctuations like it hitting too soon or too late are really obvious, you can focus on getting a feeling for the speed control. When I felt good about it, I started looping drum beats and beat matched that stuff, then eventually worked up to songs, then mixing on phase.
Just keep practicing. Persistence is key. You will get it. 
my cousin who DJs in Chicago taught me when he was visiting, great thing was he taught me by ear so its something I’m used to
I taught myself on Turntables and CDJs this week. I already knew the theory behind it, so it was a matter of putting it into practice, and practicing for hours.
Wow, that take’s me back. In 97 or 97. At a late night party session in deepest darkest Chorlton-Manchester. Tried for week’s after a generous friend borrowed me his decks (moving house) then one night under tuition from him it was a ‘Eureka’ moment.
After that I was teaching him how to mix DnB. About the time DnB in Manchester was all about Techstep, in my humble opinion the best era of Drum and Bass.
I Digress.
It’s always a goof idea to have your hand on the pitch hovering over the vinyl at the same time to begin with. Don’t stab at either the pitch or vinyl. Finesse. Bit like riding downhill on a mountain bike with brake’s.
Practice with the same record’s, preferably two with distinct high hat’s and deep bass. Best to focus on the High’s of the record to get the beat and tempo matched correctly.
As I said without tuition from someone who know’s it’s a learning curve but persevere and it’ll be another ‘Eureka’ moment for you.
ye Just comes with practice really haha, if you use cdj’s, make a set list with different bpm from track to track. cover up the bmp screen and just keep practicing beatmatching from track to track don’t worry about whether the tracks are in the right key or not its just practicing a technique, just make the set list contains tracks with different various beats figure out which go with which etc start with tracks that only have a couple of bpm difference then 4 bpm difference, then mix it up eventually youll get it. if your using a controller with a laptop have a friend use the laptop facing away from you and load different bpm track into each channel for you so you dont know what each tracks bpm is
If the track playing is faster then the track you drop, I find it easier and quicker to speed the track up faster then the one playing then slow it down to match the bpm, it takes longer to try catch up with a track. If the track you drop is faster just slow the track down. if im not movin around nodding my head to the beat I tend to lose concentration, your body acts like a human metronome lol I always count with the track playing out loud then when you drop a track eventually you hear straight away when you dropped the track in - slightly to earlier \ to soon or whether the track slows or quickens out of time
Taught myself on vinyl quite a few years before there was any kind of media player with a BPM readout available. When I learned CDJs only the Pioneer CDJ 1000 mk1 was available so the BPM readout was totally unreliable anyway, but I never played CDJs often enough to really master them the way I did vinyl.
Why not just put some duct tape over the BPM readout so you stop looking at it? It will suck at first but if you force yourself to not look at it you’ll get much better at doing it by ear.
Of course even with vinyl I used to write numbers on my records, so it’s not that far removed from a BPM readout I suppose. Even used to do math in my head using the percentage lines on the pitch fader. So it all depends how “blind” you want to be.
on vinyl in the early (ish) hours of the mornings after too many long clubbing sessions, when my friend was brave enough to let me on his decks. took a few sessions before i even came close to a half decent in-sync mix - and had been buying my own vinyl a long time before that - so always used tunes that i at least had some idea about. it’s a lot easier with vinyl than on controllers. not tried cdj’s but i expect them to be the easiest to beat match on due to being able to redrop it on the beat just by releasing and pressing again. as others have said… u don’t get it and then u do
Taught myself on belt drive tables in the mid 90s when didn’t have enough money for direct drives. Learning on belt makes it about 1000 times harder then it needs to be
Learned on vinyl with tutelage from DJF…Marc Stokes videos helped a lot. I copied them before the site went down and re-hosted them: http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg054r/sky_videos/
There’s a few in there (basic beat matching, basic scratching, setting up a tonearm, and a funny one where he put a candle on the record because its target light was out).
These are not my videos. They were made by Marc Stokes, an awesome British house DJ. He’s had an impressive career, from years in Ibiza to residencies in the UK, though never made it huge. You can find him on DJF as Marc.S.
The big jump for me was switching away from pitch bending by touching the record/spindle/platter and just riding the pitch fader. Adjustments are a lot smoother, and it forces you to think a bit differently about what you’re doing. I’ve gotten really lazy of late because of having SSL…I’m thinking about turning the waveforms off. But, them, I’m also thinking about just buying vinyl again too……so I’m weird.
Taught myself on 2 belt drive panasonic(not technics). Still have them. I think teaching myself lends itself to my views on beat matching.
My dad, I found his old turntables, he was amazed they still worked, 2 original Technics 1210’s…he picked back up like it was nothing and taught me…Once I got a controller, he called me a cheater lol.
self taught
The BPM display is a tool. why cover it up? I just don’t get that. I will say it for the millionth and 1 time, 20+ years ago when I bought a new record, the first thing I did was to take out my little electronic metronome and time out the BPM of the song, write it on a little sticker and put it on the record sleeve. All my records were in BPM order. Why is knowing the BPM treated like its cheating? It wasn’t anything innovative, it made sense, knowing the BPM of the record means I know what records have the same tempo, what records were close in tempo, hence I know what records will be able to beatmatch with out sounding sped up or slowed down because there was no keylock. Now mixers, cdjs, software all have the BPM right in front of you and you guys want to cover it up, I don’t get it. I would have killed to have it right in front of me 20 years ago. I know some of you will say how its not accurate because its .343943947397% off, it doesn’t have to be perfect, its has to be in the ball park and then you use your ears to beatmatch, knowing the BPM doesn’t garuntee the records will be beatmatched correctly, or the phrasing will be matched. Use the technology to your advantage. In 20 years from now, or maybe 5 considering how fast technology moves now, on the forum there will be a post every other day asking " Am I mixing in key the right way by covering up the KEY display so I can guess what key its in? Is this the right way to learn how to mix in key?"
not sure why you’d do that - with practice only takes a few seconds to get the records in the same ballpark anyway. there again i’m too lazy atm to beatgrid my tracks so is another reason i would never have been bothered to calc the bpm before and label the records anyway
and yes the bpm readout is just another tool - but if someone wants to really learn how to beatmatch u can’t beat only relying on your ear - train your ears first and then use the tools u have available when they are.
what i do make notes of tho is what tunes go fantastically together - tho once you’ve mixed them a few times u don’t need those notes either. my collection is fairly small tho and building it up quite slowly.
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In 20 years from now, or maybe 5 considering how fast technology moves now, on the forum there will be a post every other day asking " Am I mixing in key the right way by covering up the KEY display so I can guess what key its in? Is this the right way to learn how to mix in key?"[/QUOTE]
key detection is overrated imho - doesn’t take much to hear what tunes work with each other. they’re no where close to perfect - so if u can’t hear what tune is clashing with another one then you probably shouldn’t be dj’ing anyway. it is another useful too tho and i use beatunes to help manage/fix my itunes collection which does it for me anyway.
LOL, you don’t know why I timed out all the records? For the same reason mixers, cdjs, and software have a BPM display, so you know the tempo of the record and what easily goes with what without having to think about it. The goal is to match the beats and have 2 tracks playing simultaneously synced with each other. That is the goal. My goal wasn’t to see if I could guess that this record is a little faster than this record and let me guess how much I have to slow 1 down and speed this one up, that takes way too long, I don’t have time for that. I want to know that this record is 120, my next track is 121, I have to bring this down 1bpm to match the other, bada bing bada boom, its done. Mind you, this was a turntable that didn’t have a pitch slider with increment markings, it had a little wheel and you watched the strobe light refelecting off the turntable to know how much you were speeding up or slowing down. The final outcome coming out of my speakers was the goal then as it is now.
Agreed, I have never, and will never mix in key, IMO its severely limiting and frankly just a waste of time. I was just making the point that me saying why cover up the BPM is the same as someone in 5 years, when eveything shows the track’s key, saying why cover up the key display.
maybe useful if u have a massive collection of records. i had a few hundred i guess - but mostly knew which were tempo’s that would go together. when i selected the tunes i’d take for an event i’d already have selected records that are in the right ballpark and i knew would go well together so wasn’t bothered before i put the record on and started to beat match how far apart the bpm’s were as i knew it wasn’t going to take me long to get them in sync. only takes a few seconds to get within the right ballpark.
mind u… i was never up to the standards of some of my friends - who could literally almost put any record on and drop it in right way - adjusting the tempo while spinning it faster/slower with their other hand and could get to the right tempo sooooooo fricking quickly. i wasn’t bad tho on vinyl
don’t know how many records i had actually… but filtered it down to my best 300 or so - and that’s all i have now.