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Forum: Music discussion

Topic: Mixing without headphones

This topic is old and might contain outdated or incorrect information.

ALL dance songs are 4 beats per bar. This means you can count a pattern of 1-2-3-4 over and over again, for every dance song ever made since disco.
Dance music was designed around the basic disco dance. Left foot forward then back to beats 1 and 2, right forward then back to beats 3 and 4.

Now this is a little complex to explain, but I hope it may assist many in their quest to become a top DJ.

To beat mix a song you need to have the songs play at the same beats per minute (sync), then focus on matching the first beat in the 1-2-3-4 of both songs. If the two songs are beat matched, it will sound in sequence when they are both playing together, If you match beat one of song one with beats 2, 3 or 4 of song 2, it will sound like a bag of nails!
Play a song on the a deck (e.g. Deck A, blue) and record the number where the blue light is on beat 1 of the 1-2-3-4 sequence in the section in the top in the centre. (I think this is named the beat grid) Do this for the 2nd song you wish to beat match. For the song on deck A, beat one has the blue light in position 1 in the grid for deck A at position 1 of the 1-2-3-4 sequence of beats. It will every time you play it throughout the song. For the song on deck B, beat one has the red light in position 3 in the grid for deck B at position 3 of the 1-2-3-4 sequence of beats. It will every time you play it throughout the song. So these songs are beat matched as shown with the red light in the grid two ahead of the blue light in the beat grid as shown.
You can right click on a song and save this "1st beat position" in a user field, e.g. Field 1 and display it in the bottom section. (Shown as User1) When you next mix these songs, you'll know song one is a "1" and the other song is a "3" and you can mix them without the use of headphones. Now of course this is not the real purpose, but it enables you to very quickly beat match the songs and not play loud music into your headphones for longer than is necessary.

I amended the Daylight deck xml, so that the saved 1st beat positions for each song are shown under the moving waves at the top beside the song names on the decks. They are colour coded numbers to match with the blue (deck A) and red (deck B) colours shown in the beat grid.

Happy mixing!

 

Posted Mon 12 Jun 17 @ 10:59 pm
AdionPRO InfinityCTOMember since 2006
Even easier is to actually correct the beat grid. In the BPM editor there are 2 buttons to move the grid left or right exactly one beat.
Simply do this until the display at the top is correct and you can just align that grid :)
 

Posted Fri 16 Jun 17 @ 1:29 pm
Awesome advice. I used to DJ disco music in college and am just starting my first livestream tonight so thanks for the pointers.
 

Posted Sat 19 May 18 @ 1:25 am


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