How to manual beat-match

[GhOSt]

Hey my fellow earthlings :)

I just bought me an American Audio Versadeck today and I'm finding manual beat matching abit of a challenge. I was so dependent on syncing in VDJ that the transfer of what I've learnt to this controller/media player is tricky most of the time.

Any advice is welcome on how to beat match properly, all I'm trying is to listen to the tempos and the timing at which the next song comes in

One love peoples!

[Era 7]

i think there is a guide in the beginner section.

EDIT:

aaah not entirely true but a pretty long thread that might be worth reading up on

http://www.djforums.com/forums/showthread.php?3879-Beat-Matching-Question&highlight=beatmatching

[spicaly]

the unit should display some sort of bpm, try to base off of that first, after that it just takes practice feeling if the new song your mixing in is either faster or slower than the song currently being played

[GhOSt]

those bpm counters on the displays throws me out abit, i just rely on what i'm hearing and try to mix it in from there, other then that i know i don't really know

I'm still a noob, never played at a club or any parties but really wanna make this dj'ing happen

[BurntToast]

This guy and his YouTube videos were quite helpful for me. What helps most is to fully understand what is that you're doing when you practice. The analogy of two cars driving next to each other is a perfect way to put it. Use the BPM counters as a starting point, but trust your ears for fine tuning.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX3GVeWIzh4&feature=relmfu


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWa7KCFIkzM


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLGWuaqYSas&feature=relmfu


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOSvyp04zNk&feature=relmfu

[Sigma]

Here's how it's done: -

1. Track 1 is already playing out of the speakers.

2. Select track 2, set the gain, then cue it up in your headphones.

3. Drop track 2 in, but only in your headphones. I like to use the 1 ear cup method, so you'd be hearing track 1 playing out of your monitors and track 2 in one ear cup of the headphones.

4. Now comes the tricky bit. Unless the tracks are the exact same BPM (unlikely!), track 2 will either be too slow or too fast. What I usually do is use one hand on the record (or platter if you're using digital gear) to try and keep the track in time - so I'm either giving it a little push or putting pressure on it with my finger to slow it down - and then with the other hand I'm adjusting the pitch slider accordingly. You can do it solely with the pitch slider, but you'll figure out a method that works well for you. It really doesn't matter how you do it, as long as you can eventually do it accurately and quite quickly.

5. If you mess up step 4, just cue up track 2 in your headphones again and start over. Also, if you think you've got the pitch about right, cue up the track and try dropping it in just in your headphones again. When you're just learning, you might have to repeat this a few times and each time you do it, you'll get closer and closer to getting the pitch right.

6. Once the pitch is as close as you can get it, you can drop track 2 into the mix for real (i.e. out of the speakers), but that's not the end of it. You would then pay attention to the tracks to make sure they're not drifting apart due to the pitch being slightly out. If they do start to drift apart, you would make the necessary adjustment to bring them back in line. Again, this takes practice as you may find that you adjust the wrong track, or adjust a track the wrong way (e.g. you speed it up when you should be slowing it down) which makes things even worse, but it all comes together with experience.

So yeah, just practice that and don't worry about how long it takes, or that you're trainwrecking. Over time you'll get better and better at it until it becomes like second nature. Also, the videos above are very helpful and basically demonstrate what I've just said (so I kinda wasted my time typing this really, lol).

[GhOSt]

@sigma lol it was worth reading thanks for the input and everyone else

I've only got my Versadeck today and I've already began trying those steps you mentioned already, there are possibly other methods maybe but from looking at those BPM counters, its not reliable from my short experience in my view

[Finnish_Fox]

the unit should display some sort of bpm, try to base off of that first, after that it just takes practice feeling if the new song your mixing in is either faster or slower than the song currently being played

Wackest advice ever. Fuck that shit. Use your ears.

[Finnish_Fox]

those bpm counters on the displays throws me out abit, i just rely on what i'm hearing and try to mix it in from there, other then that i know i don't really know

A) The BPM alone is not good enough to get things in sync.

B) Use your ears.

[Atomisk]

the unit should display some sort of bpm, try to base off of that first, after that it just takes practice feeling if the new song your mixing in is either faster or slower than the song currently being played

Wackest advice ever. Fuck that shit. Use your ears.

Lolwut dude I would so rep you again for that. I'd only trust a BPM display on a CDJ if it was a song that's been analyzed by RekordBox and has a quantized tempo grid.

PS: As for beatmatching: Just use your ears. If you REALLY need to cheat that bad you can just divide Track B's BPM by Track A's BPM. ie: 128/125=1.024... So you increase the pitch fader of the 125 bpm by 2.4%. Again, you should always use your ears, but this trick can be used when you know positively know the BPM of both songs.

[moyo wilde]

i think what spicaly was saying is that you can look at the bpm and see oh the incoming track is faster or slower and then use your ears from there. so it is just a starting point. not sure but i think most are accurate enough for that, although some are way off but then you know that pretty quickly when listening.

[ben mills]

I concur on not trusting a BPM readout. There is a big difference between 123.1 and 123.0.

Huge difference, actually.

[Boomcie]

beatmatching is for the birds......slam that hoe in



Edit: the alcohol has worn off a little.....check this link
http://www.djforums.com/forums/showthread.php?409-Beginners-Look-Here-(Some-helpful-Videos)

[Will MaXimal]

While your live deck is playing, just cue up a kick drum on the deck that you are trying to match. Start the pitch fader at 0 then let the record go. If the beat falls out of sync just rewind the record and slide the pitch fader either up or down depending on if the beat is too fast or too slow.

Repeat the process until the beat plays in sync with the live deck and thats beatmatching.

[RDRCK]

It just takes time and practice, friend, time and practice :)

You know what? Over the course of this thread, I devised a new argument as to the merits of learning to beatmatch manually on two turntables (or at least two CD players), without any visual cues.

You know how most of us liked really, really, really shitty music when we first got into "techno"? I mean, like ATB/Hex Hector/Doctor P/UK Hard House/Benny Benassi/Assnectar/Tiesto/Skrillex/Deadmau5/Aqua/Eiffel 65/SHM/Deiselboy/Alice DeeJay/God-F**king-Awful-Flavor-of-the-Week-top-40-remixes shitty?

Well, given that tastes evolve over time (the argument has been made exactly 489,782,532 times on this forum alone that the above acts are valuable because they serve as a sort of "gateway drug" for the better "more underground" side of electronic music), and given that learning to beatmatch manually, by ear, with no visual cues takes time (sometimes a lot of time, shit it took me like 5 years before I was really, truly confident/competent), perhaps taking that time would lead to less shitty music being played at electronic music shows... :tup:

I.E. Take the time to learn how to manually beatmatch brothers and sisters, it will allow your tastes a bit of time to evolve, and you'll play much less shitty music at your inaugural gigs for having taken that time :D You'll thank me for it later :tup:

[Defiance]

PS: As for beatmatching: Just use your ears. If you REALLY need to cheat that bad you can just divide Track B's BPM by Track A's BPM. ie: 128/125=1.024... So you increase the pitch fader of the 125 bpm by 2.4%. Again, you should always use your ears, but this trick can be used when you know positively know the BPM of both songs.

Cheating, that sounds like hard-ass work at 12:30am in a crowded bar with people screaming "will you play some hip-hop?!"

[RDRCK]

Cheating, that sounds like hard-ass work at 12:30am in a crowded bar with people screaming "will you play some hip-hop?!"

:lol: :tup:

[KLH]

I'm giving the OP some rep for asking a good meaningful question. It's important to know how to beatmatch by ear, IMHO... even if you use the modern tools.

EDIT:

You have given out
too much Reputation
in the last 24 hours,
try again later.

Well, the OP is sh*t out of luck.

-KLH

[DingDong]

ill add another trick to sigma that helped me out in the begining. i still dj only by ear even when im on serato or cdj's. I dont care about beat counters.

when i first started i figured out pretty quick that if you keep in the same genre, for example electro house. most of the songs are with in a couple bpm of each other. what this means is most are 128-130 bpm. Now here is what i would do.

1. play deck 1 out to the crowd.
2. cue up track 2 in your headphones.
3. look over at track 1. notice the pitch range (little hash marks either on turntable or cdj) NOT the pitch range or bpm counters on screen.
4. start track 2 (cued up in your headphones track faster than what track 1 is playing.
5. now you can almost gauruntee track 2 will need to be slowed down.

what im saying is if track 1 is at +3% hash mark start your cued up track at +4% then when you let your cued up track go on beat in your head phones you can be pretty sure you need to slow it down to match. So you let it go then either a. drag the dots on the turntabl with your finger and push the pitch fader a little bit in the slower direction Not a lot. See how it sounds. if its still drifting drag dots again (or turn the cdj jog) and push the slider down a little more.

This was the fastest way i learned to do it in the start. The main thing that you will need to do is practice and know your music. you need to focus on either the bass or the claps and hear wich one you hear first. with my method you will almost always hear the clap thats playing live and split second later hear the clap in your ear. thats how you know you need to slow it down.

teaching your brain to differentiate between what sound your hearing first is the hard part of beatmatching. once you get it down you can then just cue up a song, let it fly and ride the pitch fader. i can have a beat locked in about 5-10 seconds. after that i can hold 2min long mixes matched perfectly or good enough where i can make adjustments and ride the fader to where people cant even notice.

its good your learning to do it by ear. you dont know how many times i share serato with some dj's and i can hear the beats drifting, and so can they but then they have this puzzled look on there face b/c there staring at the lines on the waveforms trying to match them. somtimes it SOUNDS better when one of those lines is a little off from the other. But then that gets into eq and stuff and im just rambling on.

try my method, practice hearing what beat is comign first outside/or your ear, and get used to how much pressure to turn the jog wheel. little steps on the jog wheel.

[DingDong]

also i feel the most rewarding part of when your brain clicks. When you can keep time with whats in your headphones and whats playing out its great. i can cue up a track and drop it on a break down of the song playing live. no bass kicks... no claps, maybe some vocals and couple synths and im still able to match it b/c im so used to keeping the beat and time in my head. trust me its very rewarding. and you can have the confidence to jump on any equipment

[BurntToast]

One thing I find helpful for practicing is to purposely throw off my beat matching and get it back on track. Loop a phrase from each track. Choose phrases that are fairly minimal, but different sounds in each phrase... that way you can hear a prominent sound in each track. Match them up with the pitch faders, and then intentionally move a pitch fader in some direction to hear how off they are, then fix it. If you really want to get this down, you can move both pitch faders, that way you aren't always going back to the same BPM, ie. move both pitch faders to random positions and then choose one to match back to.

If you can learn to fix bad matches, then you will eventually be able to keep them from ever being bad. This will be crucial if you're ever in a live setting and something goes wrong. You'll want to be able to fix something wrong quickly.

[JamesRoss]

just keep practicing. Don't give up. I've been at it for years, wow, like almost 10 years now, and I still mess up sometimes. But usually that only happens when I'm trying to mix records that don't mix well anyways. some records just wont mix, you have to accept that.

Another thing you could do is hook up a metronome and practice matching to the set beat of the metronome. It's actually a pretty good way of learning how to beatmatch.

[gudy2shuz]

OP: I'll tell you something I have told a lot of people. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to have been beneficial to me:

First of all, I count beats in my head with ANY music that plays; even if I don't enjoy the music, I can't help but count the beats and phrases. I think anyone who has mixed over a few year has the same affliction.

I like classical music and love film scores and listen to both as much I can. The tempos/time signatures (especially with film scores) can change at any time, and I feel like those changes, and the beat counting that must change with it, sharpens my ability to keep tempo in my head, which ultimately affects how I mix.

Give it a shot. Listen to film scores consistently for a month, and count with it. And if this all sounds crazy.....f*ck it, blame the tequila.... :)