Nudging

[SolDios]

^ Im not to sure if thats what its called.

Anyways ive been practising mixing the past few days, you know, just speeding up/slowing down the music with the pitch control, and nudging it into place.

Im having a really hard time though, mainly because I suck, but also in all my music there's way too much going on.

does anyone have any tips/basic tracks so I can practise syncing?

[ongsta]

What equipment are you using and what kind of music are you mixing?

Majority of songs have intros/hooks/verse/chorus of 32 beats which you can easily break down into 4x8. i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and again 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

and twice more

[ongsta]

To elaborate, you can use that break up to choose when to drop the next song. Of course, you'll most likely need to listen to these songs and count the beats first to determine when to start mixing in and out of each song.

[eggssell]

hey sol.

use as your second track anything with a minimum intro and a definitive beat. so you can hear it clearly in your headphone ear while trying to beatmatch.

grab this ep, and try going from something unexpected to cheese & crackheads. or even using just use one of the tracks on both decks and try mixing it in. both have good lead in intros.

http://www.ausdjforums.com/modules.php? ... ight=aztek

[eggssell]

and mann sucking is only from lack of experience. you shouldve heard my first mix i posted up!

ill put it up at the end of the year in the funny but doesnt deserve its own thread thread so we can all laff

[Jaz]

get the same song on each deck with a heavy kick drum eg call on me by eric prydz, close your eye's and move the left decks pitch somewhere random then press play and dont look at the deck at all

then get your right deck press play and sync up with the platter and the pitch...once you've got it, stop, and start it all again

[lloydc]

go here and download the "beat matching genius"

http://blog.djmastercourse.com/beatmatching-genius/

it's a basic sounding loop that might help you...

burn two copies and practice betting them in time

[Skank]

with nudgeing make sure you have cued the first beat in the bar. dnt try and nudge for the whole song, its more to speed up or slow down the song so that you can adjust the pitch control to minimise the nudge untill you have beat matched.

Everytime you have to move the pitch control (while monitoring through the headphones) go back to the cue you set on the first beat

this will allow you to beat mix smpoothly and also create a phased mix between tracks

[Ravni]

the way i learnt is two identical songs on two cds, cover your bpm counters if u have them

play the first one with the pitch out, put the pitch out on the other one in the other direction or random and try not to pay attention to where the pitch is positioned.

play the first song and drop the next one then adjust the platter till the beats line up and nudge to keep in time and adjust the pitch as necessary.

the result will be, you will learn to focus on the song rather than looking at the beat counters and do it with ur eyes closed hope this helps

[SolDios]

my mixer only has tap to read bpm

[dim]

with nudgeing make sure you have cued the first beat in the bar. dnt try and nudge for the whole song, its more to speed up or slow down the song so that you can adjust the pitch control to minimise the nudge untill you have beat matched.

Everytime you have to move the pitch control (while monitoring through the headphones) go back to the cue you set on the first beat

this will allow you to beat mix smpoothly and also create a phased mix between tracks

thats the ticket: especially: "Everytime you have to move the pitch control (while monitoring through the headphones) go back to the cue you set on the first beat "

once you get better at it you wont need to go back everytime you adjust the pitch, but when learning it is by far the best way to see how much effect your change in pitch has made to the beatmatching.

that cue on the 1st beat is your point of reference. always set it for every beat match, even if you wont actually start the song from there in your mix.

and when you want things to get more musical set that cue on the first beat of a phrase (which will be the first beat of a bar in most cases too)

[JonnyB]

Satisfaction - benny bennasi is a good track to learn on. very strong kick drum and not much else going on!

[LabRat]

Just a tip on counting. This is what I was taught back when I started playing piano. Works VERY well for djing. You do your typical 1,2,3,4 count but try counting this way

1,2,3,4 - 2,2,3,4 - 3,2,3,4 - 4,2,3,4

If you're counting in your head, this will teach you to count "twice" over the 8 bars. This may help out when counting in hooks, breakdowns etc

Good beginners practice I think lol

[eggssell]

actually when i was taught with dance music count to 8. but yeah same meth as spitfire

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8; 2-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.......4-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 and then start again. so each bit is 4 x 8

anything slower than 100 BPM and then its better to go in 4's

[street]

If you try Jaz's idea, take the right speaker cable out of channel A so music is only coming out of the left speaker, and opposite with channel B (i.e. so sound is only coming out the right speaker of channel . Makes everything sound a lot less busy and will help you beatmatch easier.

[SourceRaver]

One thing you can try is to always over pitch the the incomming track.

That way you already know it is going to be too fast and you wont have to spend so much time trying to decide if its faster or slower than the live track. This speeds up the process a bit and in time you will learn which track is faster or slower than the other.

If I were learning again for the first time, I would aim to not touch the platter at all and 'ride the pitch'. Its all about using the pitch slider to 'over correct' until you hit the right speed. You can find plenty of vids on youtube showing you how its done.

In reality, I nudge the platter until I get the pich correct pitch and its usually only when i'm in the middle of the mix that I might ride the pitch if it starts to drift. If done correctly, its hardly detectable by the audience.