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DJoe wrote:

dubunked wrote:

DJoe wrote:what do you do if there's live drums or they aren't quantised or whatever its called

????

if you were trying to mix in this for example

uhhh i wouldn't try to mix that song??? i typically don't play music from 1975 lol.

i feel like you're stretching your argument so far it's getting a bit ridiculous.

loool broaden your horizons bruv. discos bare cool atm
i see what your saying but im not really. if you play funk, soul or disco or anything before 87 or something then you can't do what your saying with the screen. but if your doing dubstep then yeah.

don't ever read a theo parrish interview

yeah but if a song has an "ungriddable" beat, then you will not be able to beatmatch it regardless of what you're using. you won't be able to beatmatch it on traktor, on CDJs, on vinyl with headphones, on anything. so the question is meaningless. you would have to mix it in during a part of the previous song that had no drums or something and do the same with the mix out.

but in all honesty i listened to that song and it sounds fine tbh, i don't think you're gonna run into many songs that cannot be gridded, and if you do, then shit just don't play them i suppose?

thats not true. it may not be perfect but unless your the one djing noone will notice. listen to a theo parrish or norman jay mix or to some extent one of mine

but anyway doesn't really matter. as long as ppl are dancing keep doing ur thing

dubunked wrote:

baddis98 wrote:how do you even find the first beat without headphones (without opening the line fader of course)? or are we talking serato?

because you can see it right on the CDJ???

how do you know which one's the right beat though? i mean it's not always the first beat that you have to start from mixing.

i usually start from the first beat of the song if the intro is 16 or 32 bars long. you can set the first beat of the song in rekordbox. if the intro is like 24 bars long for example, i would start 8 bars in so that i've got a 16 bar intro to work with. not sure if that's what you were asking.

if i wanna start later in the song so i skip like the first verse, then i'll probably put a memory cue in at the end of the first verse (ie 16/32 bars before the second drop), and start from there. i usually put a memory cue at the end of the first verse, cause that's usually where i want to start the song or where i want the song after it to start or drop.

so that basically works only on your own cdjs. once you use other equipment and don't have your cue data base, you're lost. also that part about aligning the squares on the display sounds (kind of) like auto sync. not hating or trying to start another digital vs vinyl debate, but once your equipment practically does all that stuff for you, you obviously won't need headphones, if you don't have all these gimmick options you'll need them. also you might wanna check if the two tunes sound good together before you do the real mix in some cases.

well it would work fine on other 2000 nexus's. i've never used other types of CDJs so I wouldn't know. If I couldn't see the waveform/grid, then I'd probably have to change the way I DJ'd. Not a big deal. I could still DJ without cues, I know my music well enough. I don't put cues in every song I DJ and I can still do it just fine without them.

also the squares are not like auto sync. it's no different from looking at two grids next to each other and trying to line them up. the CDJs do have a beat sync function though, but I don't use that. also syncing on something like traktor is different from sync on CDJs. CDJ beat sync does not line up the beats for you, you still have to do that, it only syncs the bpm. in traktor, it syncs the bpm for you, but it also lines up the beats. in other words, when you click play, it will wait a fraction of a second before actually playing the song so that it plays directly at the perfect time on the grid. CDJs will not do that no matter what. you have to do that manually.

there's not really a big difference between pressing the auto sync button or fiddling with a knob or jog wheel until two squares are aligned. i'm just wonderinh how many of the guys staring at beat grids and stuff could actually mix by ear.

baddis98 wrote:there's not really a big difference between pressing the auto sync button or fiddling with a knob or jog wheel until two squares are aligned.

This. When I think beatmatching Im thinking headphones, ears and pitch slider :/

well i still use my ears obviously lol and change the tempo myself. i could do it without looking at the thing but if it's sitting right there then why not i'm not a Luddite.

Lol fair play to each his own. I dont go spare over people using sync but if you cant do it by ear if it came to it then its a bit weak imo

Lol, and here we have an example of DJ'ing in 2014 in this thread.

Debunked, you would be so lost if you got behind a set of older CDJ's or turntables.

good for you m8

i bet at least 75% of the ppl in this thread use CDJs with a grid or a controller and software, which has a grid.

I also like to mix with my ears and not my eyes because I am playing this thing called music.

This is the classic debate of whether skill plays a part in the value of a performer. If they're just pushing buttons but the music sounds good to the audience does that diminish their merit vs someone who's doing a lot of work to keep things stitched up tight? Depends on your perspective. If you're just there to get drunk and dance with ur gurlz, what the DJ's doing doesn't really matter, as long as the music keeps playing and he shouts out your girlfriend for her birthday when you ask. If you're there to eagle eye the decks and see something impressive, the skill of the DJ relates directly to how entertained you'll be.

If you've got skill but the audience doesn't care/appreciate it, why waste the effort? Just hit sync and point at things like a guido. But, there's always the chance that while you're Jesus posing, some guy's gonna snipe that you're not actually doing shit and tell all his friends that you suck. Being able to beatmatch but choosing not to is a grey area. If you're using sync so you can trigger a lot of different clips and divert your attention elsewhere, then fair play. If you're just being lazy and/or the audience doesn't care anyway, you're straddling the edge. If you're doing it simply because of sheer incompetence, then you're in bona fide phony land.

SunkLo wrote:Being able to beatmatch but choosing not to is a grey area. If you're using sync so you can trigger a lot of different clips and divert your attention elsewhere, then fair play. If you're just being lazy and/or the audience doesn't care anyway, you're straddling the edge. If you're doing it simply because of sheer incompetence, then you're in bona fide phony land.

Not sure if this is a reference to my case, but with CDJ 2000nxs you are definitely beatmatching, assuming you don't use the sync button. I mean I have basically no control over what kind of CDJs I use. They cost thousands of dollars and I have the opportunity to use them for free. I'm not gonna be picky in that situation lol. I'm grateful that I even have the chance to use them and aren't using a shitty controller. If a 2000nxs user were to close their eyes, then would that be considered acceptable? Seems a bit ridiculous to expect a DJ to close their eyes or look away while they're DJing just to prove they've got "skill". Like if the technology is sitting right there in front of you, you're obviously going to look at it...

And I don't mean just me. Say you're going to see your favorite, most highly regarded DJ at a club that happens to have 2000nxs's (or another pair of CDJs - i'm pretty sure almost all of them have a digital grid nowadays). Would you expect or want him/her to close their eyes or look away to prove to you their skill?

EDIT - just checked the Pioneer website and it looks like 2/3s of their models show a beat grid.

It's not really beatmatching if you're lining them up visually. By beatmatching, I mean getting them playing at the same bpm and the beats lined up. If all your tracks are the same bpm and you're relying on the grid on the screen to show you where to cue, it's not exactly beatmatching is it? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to hit play on the downbeat. But like I said, I don't have a problem with using technology to your advantage as long as you use that platform to do something else. If 98% of your time is spent just standing behind the decks waiting, you're not really that entertaining of a DJ. Then again, fundamentally, DJing is just playing other people's tunes in sequence so it's silly to be so hipstery about it. It comes down to knowing your audience to determine what you can get away with.


Actually, I'm curious. If your CDJs have a sync button, why not use it? The audience probably won't be able to tell. If you don't care about making DJing into some difficult task for the purposes of showing off, you might as well go all the way. You're only one step away from full automation anyway.

Like somewhere out there, there's a guy in a crowd calling an all-vinyl DJ a noob for nudging the platters instead of using purely pitch faders to make adjustments. And then when that guy plays out, there'll be another guy in the crowd calling him a noob for using warped tracks cut to dubplates instead of mixing live band records. There's always another layer of hipsterism. If, to you, DJing is track selection and effects manipulation for instance, then fuck everything else. However if you or the audience is under the pretext of DJing being a display of turntablism skill, then syncing or visual cueing or prewarped tracks or anything but the bare necessities in terms of technology is considered phoning it in.

SunkLo wrote:It's not really beatmatching if you're lining them up visually. By beatmatching, I mean getting them playing at the same bpm and the beats lined up. If all your tracks are the same bpm and you're relying on the grid on the screen to show you where to cue, it's not exactly beatmatching is it? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to hit play on the downbeat.

Again, I don't think you fully see how 2000nxs work. They will not beatmatch for you. You have to move the tempo slider yourself to get the songs to play at the same bpm. And then you have to hit it as you said on the downbeat, but you're not gonna get it perfectly, so you move the jogwheels to beatmatch. The tempo part is not done for you. Many of my dubstep tracks are 140, but I'd say about half of them are another bpm - 142, 143, 144, 138, 136, I even have some tracks at 146. 2000nxs does not change the song's bpm to automatically sync up with the other song (unless you use the sync button, of course).

SunkLo wrote:But like I said, I don't have a problem with using technology to your advantage as long as you use that platform to do something else. If 98% of your time is spent just standing behind the decks waiting, you're not really that entertaining of a DJ. Then again, fundamentally, DJing is just playing other people's tunes in sequence so it's silly to be so hipstery about it.

This tbh. I don't see DJing as a skillful thing to begin with. Imo DJing is just for ppl who can't produce or for producers who want to make some money because everyone just pirates their tunes anyway. DJing for me is about entertainment, not skill. If I wanted to impress people I would show them my productions. Not saying my productions are impressive but if you wanna impress ppl when it comes to music, being a "DJ" is pretty phony tbh to begin with. All the girls may think you're so cool and so talented but you're just playing other ppls tunes as far as I'm concerned. Like, I really like and respect plenty of DJs such as Youngsta, but not because he "doesn't use the sync button" or some bullshit like that, but because he plays great tunes that no one else has and does really nice blends. I'm not saying he's not a talented person because he's a DJ, I just rate production talent waaay higher than DJ talent.

SunkLo wrote:Actually, I'm curious. If your CDJs have a sync button, why not use it? The audience probably won't be able to tell. If you don't care about making DJing into some difficult task for the purposes of showing off, you might as well go all the way. You're only one step away from full automation anyway.

Few reasons. One, when I learned CDJs, everyone told me "never use the sync button blah blah blah" like many of the ppl in this thread, so I just never did it. It's really not that helpful anyways. Changing the tempo yourself is fun and sometimes I like to play tunes at different tempos than their original tempo. Like sometimes with house I like to jam out and play everything really fast. Or if I'm making a tempo leap transition I like to meet somewhere in the middle. When I DJ on traktor I use sync cause that's how I always did it and that's what I'm comfortable with. I can DJ without sync of course and I often do if I'm doing something weird with the tempo, but if you're gonna fuck up the beatmatch 1-2% of the time, why not put sync on just as a safeguard to protect yourself for that 1-2% of transitions? Also if I use sync then I can focus more on doing blends or bringing in a 3rd track and shit, doing double drops, fx, etc.

DJoe wrote:don't ever read a theo parrish interview