Pitch bend speed

[dechnician]

Just want a few ideas about what percentage to set my pitch bend? I have stanton st150's, im switching back from 8 to 25% trying to get a feel for it, and both have pros and cons, input?

Cheers

[imadje]

PItch bend normally relates to the amount of bend or nudge a nudge button will apply but i dont think st150s have pitch bend buttons. If you mean the range over which your pitch control works:

Cons to 25%:

The larger the range the less precision you get with each movement so the harder it is to get two tunes exactly matched.

If you have to speed up or slow down massively your songs will be very far from the tempo that the producer intended them to be played at.

Pros to 25%:

You can get tunes to match that otherwise wouldn't.

From your avatar I guess you are a DnB DJ. As DnB is such as a specific tempo range (160-190) it can be useful to have a wider range so you can get House/hiphop/other tracks to sit for the purpose of live remixing/adding accapellas.

Personally I stick to the narrowest range as much as possible to respect the promoters original tempo and give myself precision over range. On your deck you can always use the larger range as and when you need it anyway.

hope that helps

[Mitch]

Foolish said it all.

Even though i only have Cdj's, I set them on the lower ranges (6 or 10%) , and I've never really needed to change it out to 16% or 100% as I try to keep songs close to their original tempo. IMO it doesn't sound very good when using a song too far from its original pitch.

But at the end of the day it's what your comfortable with. Personally I'd leave them on 8% and adjust out to 25% if you need to for that track.

[SourceRaver]

Something else to consider...

st150's have a key lock button so that songs that have been increased in tempo dont change in pitch (ie vocals dont start to sound sound like chipmunks). Key lock also helps when you nudge or slow the record as the sudden change in speed isnt as noticable to the audience particularly during vocals or synths.

The problem is, you may one day end up playing on the other decks like Technics that dont have a key lock button. If you try to mix records with a wide difference in tempo...the chipmunks will come out to play. Nudging a record will also sound really obvious...think of someone singing and then suddenly being punched in the guts momentarily. On Technics, the best thing to do is to mix tracks with similar BPM's and keep your pitch range as low as possible. If you want to mix in a track with a large difference in BPM, maybe try some other some other technique.

Imadje is spot on about better accuracy at a low pitch range. A small adjustment to the slider with result in a small adjust to BPM. At a higher range, a small adjustment will result in a larger change to BPM so in some cases you will neeed to move the slider a tiny amount to beat match two tracks. Its a lot harder to move the slider and find the correct pitch.

[imadje]

Oh yeah key lock. This is a digital effect and at extreme pitch if keylock is on the processor may be working so hard that you can hear a digital "tinny" sound at high speed or a deep "wobble" at low speed. It sounds kind of like abletons warp and if you are using vinyl to stay as close to the original as possible then again: extreme pitch should be avoided.

Hope that makes sense, am on phone/ cant chk.

[imadje]

Obv there is no harm experimenting with extreme ranges to see if you like or can use the effects produced. The above comments are relating to respecting the original promotion as much as poss.

[dechnician]

Cheers for all the help, i've got comfortable with 8%.

[mattus123]

if you dont NEED to use the wider ranges, id recommend using the smallest range possible (for me thats 6%)

the smaller the range, the more accurate u can be with your beatmatching