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This sections covers most information required to step on stage as well as advanced techniques I have picked up over decades.
DJing
- Sliders & Knobs
...controls tempo and pitch, much like speed would on vinyl. As tempos increase or decrease, the pitch will rise and fall respectively. Key lock will retain all songs' original pitch. Most controllers and all professional digital mixer/turntable setups have a range function. This may increas the tempo variance from any combination of 6%, 10%, 15%, 25%, 50%, and 100%. 100% would change 100 beats per minute to 50bpm (negative) or 200bpm (positive).
Use the pitch fader to increase the compatibility of live mash ups or blur the lines on what genre your house track is. When 128 is sped up to 140, it can play pretend as a trance song. deep dub at 170 can masquarade as dark drum n bass.
controls the volume from negative infinity to ±0db. Use these faders to smoothly transition between songs. Bring a fader up to -6db from 0 to warm the audience up to what is being played. "Slam" the fader to fake out the crowd. Shutter two or more faders from active channels to chop tunes.
The crossfader is left to scratching. Beatmixing rarely uses the x-fader because battle mixers are prone to heavy wear.
is what controls the input volume. The trim, or input gain, should be set just before the green on a mixer. this will be between -10db and -6db. Mixing well produced songs will reduce the amount of times the volume will jump between transitions.
Most mixers come with a 3 band EQ and a Filter placed underneath the trim knob. Quality mixers like the DJM9 by Pioneer will reach -inf, where the FLX400, also by Pioneer, will sound like there is a phone playing the song in the background when any one band is turned all the way down (left). The only way to circumvent this garbage idea is with the filter sweep - a bi-polar cuttoff filter.
- Highs:
control the hihats, breath, and "presence" frequencies of a song. Use this to blend house, rock, and heavy bass music. - Mids:
handle vocals. Turn instrumentals down and boost singing in transitions to make the acapella fit naturally. - Lows:
take up the most space in a mix. be certain that only one track has bass active when two or more channels are at full volume. - FX Sweep:
is a wild card knob. some mixers have multi fx mapped to the filter sweep. others designate the filter sweep as a high/low-pass.
- Buttons & The Grid
The cue and cue points have their own functions. "Cue" is the start position of a track. When paused, cue can be set to a new point anywhere in the song. When a song is in motion, the cue will return to the "Cue".
Cue Points are hard coded into the metadata of the mp3 file. When a cue point is written, they can be jumped between on the drop of a dime. Start by placing cues 8 bars before the drop and once again at 16 bars before the drop.
The grid is dependant on the song's master tempo. Some specific DJ software (guess) cannot tell a transient from an ass wipe and now that's your problem. Use the grid align function to keep from ruining your shot with promoters lol.
The red marker is your down beat.
1st, set your tempo.
2nd, align red with the transient of the first kick in the drop.
When this doesn't apply, look for the
snare drum and set:
- halftime - the third line, to the snare transient. Think dubstep.
- standard - the second line, to the snare transient. Think DnB.
This is supposed to be an automated process, but then how would we know if a DJ is using the sync button? hahahaha. Quality software or something. Respect the beat grid. It will still affect sync free sets because some assholes may leave sync on following their set. Producers may write things off grid. Myself especially. Treat the grid like a loaded gun and try not to shoot yourself in the foot.
These are self explanatory. BPM can order by song tempo, title is alphabetical, date added is newest songs added by minute, by date, by month, by year, in linear order. Make a setlist if you're new to CDJs. The setlist does not do the work for you, but it will take a lot of context sensitive troubleshooting out of your first couple performances.
Synths & Midi
- Max for Live
