DJ Starter Pack: An Introduction To DJing

1. DJ Starter Pack: An Introduction: Hi, my name is DJ house cat and welcome to my DJ starter pack class. In this class, I'm gonna show you how to become a DJ or even just how to be able to play for fun or your friends but your parties. What exactly does a DJ do? Sometimes you'll look at a DJ and they're just standing on top of a table there hyping up the crowd and you're like their hands on, even on board, what are they doing? Sometimes there's a performance effects for added up. I did height, but at the core of it, a DJ's job is curate the vibe of the night. Whatever you have to do to add to that. Sometimes we put doo-doo showing things. But at the heart of it, the number one foundational skill is beat matching. And that's where you take two sounds of different templates and you mash them together so that you can play them and mix them together and have the music continue uninterrupted. So in this class we're going to talk about just how to do that. We'll talk about the equipment and you might want to get to get started. We'll talk a little bit about setting where acupoints. We'll talk about counting your music, will talk about EQ thing with your EQ and how to mix them the music smoothly. And we're gonna talk as well about some of the effects you can play with and scratching. Would you like to do days way of talking to people like another way you can sort of solo and you musical with your craft. Talk a little bit about the settings. Since we're gonna be working with Serrano, we'll talk as well about troubleshooting some common issues you might find. And then talk about music selection and give you some tips on how to get your own style and find your own voice. So are you ready? I'll see you in the class. Let's go. 2. Module 2: Equipment Overview: Alright, so let's start with talking about the equipment that you're gonna need to get you started. As an overview, you're going to need a mixer with the crossfire action that you can mix two songs together. You're going to need two decks. You're going to need headphones. You're gonna need some sort of amplification speakers, your cables to connect from your mixer to your speakers. And if you're working with software like Serrano, a record box, you're going to need a laptop, your music library. So let's walk through each of those one by 1. First off, the mixer, you're going to need a mixer with a cross fader. As the whole point of DJ is that you're mixing two songs together. You need a way to be able to mix between the two. You're also going to need two decks so that you can play two songs at the same time. Now, this can be accomplished with vinyls, see DJs, or as we'll go into later, something called a controller, which you're looking at right now, which is the mixer and two decks all in one piece, controlling your laptop. We'll talk about the different options as soon as I introduce the rest of the equipment and then we'll talk about which options would be suitable for you. Next up, when we talk about the headphones, I want to go over the headphones real briefly because with deejaying, you're not gonna want just any old headphones. You're going to want something in addition to having great sound. Of course, you're going to want headphones that have swivel action. Because when you're monitoring a mix, you're going to want to hear what's going on in the room, as well as the queue. And you can do that easily if you're able to move the headphones on and off, I'll just leave one out. And I usually just leave this sometimes I even open this up if I really want to hear them. I'm clearly some people do this. I used to do this, but it kind of made my next door. You're really going to want something with that flexible action. I love these 18 fifties because the flexible, you can store them in your bag and they come in some great colors. Now, next up we have amplification. We need some sort of speaker so that you can actually play your music out for the world. If you plan on doing mobile games, you're going to want to invest in some powered speakers. Or there's different option I recommend, Let's say I recommend powered speakers. I especially recommend the QC, the QC series, like the K12. That's what I have. Or you can even get the 10-inch. Those have great sound as well. If you want to go bigger, you can go 15. I don't think it's necessary for small backyard parties or mobile gigs, but you can look into it, test them out and see what you think. You'll want speaker stands as well. You go that route. Now if you're just practicing at home or in the studio, I have the studio monitors. Now. I'm just using these because I use these for mixing. I will say that they don't give you great bass sound because they're a flat response. It's for if you're mixing sound and you're making music. However, they will do the trick if you're at home or if you already have a studio setup, you can plug straight into those, which brings us to the cables. You're going to want probably XLR connections. Some controllers like this. This is an older model. You need a TRS cable because this one in the back, you need to convert it to XLR and then you can write it out. You might also see RCA connection, so you can use that as well. Most mixers have a variety of options you can choose from. So just take a look at the back of yours and see what connects to the speakers. If you're just getting started. And again, you don't have money to invest in speakers. You can start by just playing off your headphones. And most mixers or the software and not on the mixer, has an option for split cue. And you can hear the mixed in one year and the q and the other. So that's something you could do to get you started if you just want to start practicing. I would also mention a laptop if you're playing off and allow you if you're playing off, fine, obviously you don't need one. If you play on CD j's, you could just use the USB sticks, but you're still going to want a laptop to prep your music and do all your key points. For our purposes, I'm probably going to focus a little more on laptop and software for this class just so you can understand how that works. All the same principles apply to analog as well. Just a little more simpler. If you understand the laptop, you'll understand analog. Of course you're going to want the software that goes with it. So I recommend Serrano DJ is very versatile. It's very standard record buck is really good as well. If you want to use CDKs, I have both softwares. I DJ Serrano, but I use reco bucks to tag my tracks if I'm using USB sticks. Alright, let's talk about the difference between vinyls, CDJ and controllers. Which one is right for you? Let's start with finals. Vitals were obviously the original. So if you're a purist, are you like scratching turntables? Obviously, you might want to look into that route. Vinyls also because it's analog, it doesn't age. Of course, you might have to serve as your equipment over the years, but you can have turntables from 25 years and it's still running very well. You might have to replace them parts, but unlike digital equipment, it will just keep running in money. Another pro of vinyls, the field. As you're scratching, you really feel it because the platter is turning, you get that heavy feel. People like it. Let's talk about the cons. There's a cheaper price point. You're going to have to buy two decks and then mixer. That can cost you a couple of thousand dollars. Another con, you gotta deal with needles and cartridge and you're going to need a control. It's not really a con, but just things to watch out for. Let's say this. You're gonna need control vinyls to control your software if you want to be deejaying with yourself, where if you're deejaying with actual vinyl is you're going to have to lug your vinyls everywhere. More moving parts. Now, options for vinyls. The standard techniques, SL 12 hundreds, those are great. They're kind of like the gold standard, but there's also other cheaper options you can look into geotechnical make some, there's a lot of things you can start with. There is something called a phase. You can look into that it's a Wireless Controllers, pretty cool. You don't need needles that we'll be able to talk to your serratus software. Now, moving on to CD Js, c, d, j's are the club standard. You'll find them all around the world at festivals and clubs. Pretty much. Everywhere you go. You can see Pioneer seed DJs and a mixer. A major probe getting CDJ is, is that if you practice on those, then you have those at home. You get really comfortable with that equipment when you start playing out these type of gigs. Another pro is you don't need to rely on your laptop. Cdj is we're actually built to DJ with CDs. Now, most people aren't doing that anymore. But they also have a slot for USB sticks. You can put all your music that you're playing for that on USB sticks, bring that with you and then you don't have to be staring at a laptop all night. Let's talk about cons. Again. The price tag, CDKs are going to run you a couple of thousand each. And you're going to need to get a mixer. That's a couple of thousand again. And it makes it that's compatible with your software. The total apply the something like $7 thousand. I don't know the time you're watching this, there might be inflation, but it's going to cost me a pretty pain. It's also going to be more things. You have to move around heavy. You got to carry around more things to decks and a mixture. When it comes to playing off USB sticks. You're also not going to be able to search your entire music library on Serrano. Now, there's an easy fix to that. There's something called a control CD, which is what we've used for a long time. I send that tone and you'll be able to access erato and your music library with that. But more recently there's the HID mode. You can plug in the USB and then you gain functionality of everything on the mixer. So I really liked that. Used to be you had to use three USBs, one for each deck and one for the mixer. But the new mixers coming out, you can just use one. So check that out as well. Now that brings us to controllers. These are my favorite option for beginners or just for people, not even beginners, just for people who want to get going, who don't want to have a lot of things to lug around. A controller pretty much mimics what we talked about the CDJ is, or even vitals are some that mimic finals. But it's all one piece. And it plugs directly through USB to your laptop. And then you have access to your entire music library. And it functions as if you're planning on TD Js, but you can use everything through your software. The obvious pros are, it's lightweight, it's easy to carry around. The price is generally going to cost you much less than if you invest in CJ's or vinyl. You have access to a lot more in your software. Let's talk about some of the cons of controller, obviously. Not going to feel as nice as the vinyl or doesn't have that showy effect of the CDKs. It doesn't have that heavy feel. But I think that's a small price to pay for the convenience when it comes to controllers, there's a couple I want to mention. Because if you do like that, vinyl field, but you don't want to invest in vinyls. Rain one ranges came out with one. Fascia is called the rain one and it has motorized platters. There are seven inch but they do spend, so it gives you the heavy fuel. New monarch has the NS seven, I think it's in the third-generation. I don't want to go too deep into brands as these things are constantly changing. There's always new things on the market. But those are some to look into if you'd like that vinyl field. Or if you want to kind of understand the pioneer layout, since that might be where you're playing in the clubs. Pioneer DD, JSR is really nice beginner. This is what I've got here. I would get the newer versions. This is the older generation. There's SR2, there's Sx, Sxx three, I think we're at now. See all these lines. It's a pioneer. Then a new Martha's are all great brands to look into. So I would do your research, see what's on the market and go play around with it. 3. Module 3: Equipment Walk Through: All right, let's do a quick equipment walk through. I'm gonna go over some of the basic features you're going to find on most DJ equipment, regardless of brand or if you're using CDJ is controllers, turntables. Let's go over some of the basic functions. First off, we have the mixer or on the controller, it's all one piece, but let's just imagine for a second on the mixer. You're going to find across later that's going to allow you to mix between two songs. You're going to have to up theaters. Sometimes there's four channels. But for this purpose we have to Union at least two. So there'll be at least two channels. Each channel will have its own separate updater. It will have a trim knob. And that will just allow you to control the gain a little more. Specifically, if you have two tracks that are different volume, you might want to adjust one before you bring up that fader. Then you're going to have EQs, high, mid, low. You're going to have some kind of color effects here on this particular mixer is set at filter. If you turn it to the left, is going to be a low-pass. Turn it to the right, it becomes a high-pass. So you can kind of do a sweep. Some mixers allow you to change that setting so it could do a sweep, could even do some of them have noise that you can sweep. There's different features. You're going to have a master level that will allow you to control the main mix output. You will have Q button, or sometimes it's a switch. They can switch between channel 12, but that will allow you to cue the track That's that you're queuing up that you haven't played yet, that will allow you to hear it in your ear if it's lit up. That means it's being cute. Or sometimes it might just be a manual switch. You're going to have a knob that was going to allow you to control the headphones mix. So if I turn it all the way to queue, it would just be to queue in my ear. But sometimes you might be at an event where you don't have a booth monitor or the speakers are kind of far away so that there's a little bit of a delay by the time it reaches your ears. You might want to hear it in your ear. So you can have both the master and the q in your ear. Some mixers allow you to do a split cue. So one ear is the master, one cube, one year is the q. Let's go to the decks. Each deck you're going to have a jog wheel. Or if you're working with turntables, there'll be a platter and it spins on a lot of mixtures. You're going to have a rack of B to fix. A lot of times you'll find it on the mixer. In this particular case, it's sort of on the virtual decks here. But they're gonna be also effect similar to how the color effects are. But they mostly play with the beat. It could be half a B and a quarter be things like delay echo. But you can also put sometimes there's the common ones, reverb, flame, GER course, all sorts of different effects you can add. If you're using CDE j's, you'll be using a mixture and it will be on the mixer, and then you would have to select which channel to put it through. So in this case, I just leave it on 12. But if you have it on the mixture, you might have to switch between the two. And you will also have a tempo adjust slider here. So I can make the temporal slower and I can make it faster. I have a key lock button that will just allow me to keep the song and the same key so that the pitch doesn't change as I change the tempo, you'll see some pads often. Again, this might be found on the mixer and not the decks, but in the case of a controller, since this is all one piece, you might find it on the side of the decks. So you might find different things here. It's varies from mixer, mixer, hot Q button somewhere. And that will just allow you to jump in between different viewpoints. You might have something like roles, values, YouTube, roll a little loop, things like that, sampler, perhaps all those extra features you'll find there. You might find an auto loop feature it automatically on CDJ is if you hit auto loop, it will just automatically default to four bars, or sorry, four beats. But you can change that. I can happen. I can make it more. That's really useful if you have a song that you want to mix in with a short intro and maybe you want to loop the intro so that you can have a longer time to mix it in. You want to have a Play and Stop button or pause on turntables, just keep in mind, if you stop, it stops the platter from spinning and it's gonna take a little time to get started. So sometimes if you want to mix an assignment, I want to hit play and keep your hand on the vinyl and allow that planner to start spending so that when you let go, obviously it's not the case here, but you can imagine, you can scratch it in so that when you drop it as in time. Some mixers have virtual decks. For example, this controller has technically for virtual channels, but there's only two channel strips on the mixer. You can activate the virtual decks like this and you can see the color change. Now you probably won't be using that too much. You're going to want to focus on just mixing two songs really well together. But before you start adding a third or fourth song, slip mode, that just means when you play a song. Let me show you an example. Let's say I'm playing a song. If I have slipped, not actually stopped it. Continue where it would have been claimed. Stopping there. I don't have it on. It will continue from where I just allows us on to slip. It might be useful if you want to do some scratching on some of the samples, but you don't want to lose your place in that song. Let's go over the Q button you real quickly. The Q button is something you'll find on CDJ is you won't find that on turntables, but you'll find that and CDJ is. And a lot of controllers. I haven't song. This song is loaded up. If I press the Q button, you see those two little white arrows that show up that says the hue there. And I can go open the cecum here. I would maybe do this in my ear. And it's kind of similar to how you might be scratching it and keeping the time. So if I had a song playing ball, ball and I wanted to drop it in time, I go. I'm ready. I hit the play button. Remember if you set the Q button, it won't play it. If you let go, you see this? Hold it down. When I let go, it goes back. It's really just meant for you to. But when you're ready, you got to remember this vinyl mode. If I haven't in vinyl mode, that's lit up now I can I can I can catch it and scratch. I don't have an environment. It doesn't stretch. It will just speed up. Doesn't allow me to express by Domo easy. Think of it as vinyls. There you have it. Those are some of the basic features on most DJ equipment. You might find them in slightly different places. If you're using some new equipment, something that you're not familiar with. My advice is to just take a minute and get a lay of the land and find out where everything is. It's just like driving a different car. All the basic features are still gonna be there. There you go. I'll see you in the next module. 4. Module 4: Counting Music: In this module, I'm going to show you how to count music. Before we can mix two songs together, we really have to understand the structure of the song. This way when we mix in a song, we can line it up so that one section is coming out as the next section is coming in. And your transitions will flow very smoothly. In order to understand counting music, I want to give you a little quick crash course on music theory. Most modern songs are in the time signature of 44. That just means there's four beats in every bar. You understand this intuitively. If you're ever at a party and you're bobbing your head, or you know, the classic instance. Instance. For, for each bar, each of the four beats is separated into strong, weak, weak, weak, strong, weak, weak, weak. Now, you might find the third beat sometimes is kind of strong as well. So it's kind of like a mid strong. So it would be something like this. Strong, weak, strong, weak. So the downbeat or beat one is the strongest beat. Oftentimes you'll hear a kick that beat. House music you might hear keep on every beat, but the first one will feel stronger because maybe you'll have a snare on the two and forces. Maybe a here the high hats are some of the other instruments might be helping to accentuate that downbeat. Just to illustrate my point, listen to this song. Strong, Strong. Here, how that first becomes stronger. So you can really feel where the bar divisions are apart from beats and bars. We also have something called a musical phrase, and that's just something like a sentence like when you're speaking. So if the beats where the letters and the bars were the words, then the phrase would be the sentence. Beyond that, the next thing up would be a section that would be something like a verse or pre-chorus or hook. This is what we really want to pay attention to because we want to count how many bars in each section so that we know in the next section is coming in and we know also how much to mix over. For example, if a hook that you mixing out of the 16 bars and the intro of the next song is 16 bars. You can line them up exactly and bring in the one, the next song on beat, one of the hook. How do we keep track of how many bars? Well, a good way to do this is to count the bars. And as you count each bar, to number them, for example, 12342234 and so on. But it might get easy to lose track if we just keep counting up and up and up. So it's good to think of things in groups of 48. A lot of sections might have multiples of eight bars. For example, eight bars, 16 bars, or 32 bars. When we get to eight, we can count all over again from one. But just keep in mind how many groups of eight there aren't. Let's try one together. When we get to the end of eight bars, pay attention to what happens. Okay, Let's count this to get it ready. And 1234563723, tangent there. What happens here? Let's talk for a second. Did you hear something happened at the end of eight bars? There was a little bit of transition. As we build up. It's still the intro. Let somebody happen at the end of those eight bars. Like I mentioned before, a lot of the phrasing is in groups of 48. And so that's why it's important to count and goose with eight. Even if you're not familiar with the song. If you're good at counting, you might be able to make a very smooth transition as you knew the song really well. Let's keep counting from where we left off at the end of those eight bars. So this is a second group of eight bars, ready n into 678. Listen, little transition into the next group of eight bars. So that was a group of 16. Now we have another section is the intro, but they bring in some of the vocal samples. Actually, you can hear that transition again, ready to go. Building up. The brick is gonna come in there. You here, if we are used to counting in groups of eight, we know exactly when it bring in the next song because we know something's going to happen at the end of those bars. That intro was 32 bars. And I'm going to show you just for demonstration sake, but we will talk about mixing in a later module. But just so you understand how this might work in practice, I will show you how we might count it to mix a section in. I'm gonna play the breakdown kind of climax part of the song. So that might be where you might want to mix in the next one. For example. That might be a practical use for counting your box because you know now at the end of eight bars, you can do a transition, you can switch out something like that. And we'll go a little more deeper into that later on when we talk about mixing music. Apart from using counting to line up in your sections, It's also really useful when you are bringing in the next song. You can count, for example, if you're mixing over the hook, then you might want to count when the pre-course is happening. So then you really know when the next section is coming. I'll show you, for example. There'll be nothing in every song is built differently and not every song is in groups of eight or four. Sometimes you have a little extra bar at the end. You really want to listen to your music as you play and as you get to know your music better, you might find though, that certain genres have certain conventions. Like house music tends to have longer intros, 16 bars, Thirty two bars even. You might find that a lot of modern hip hop songs have very short intro is maybe just four beats. The older ones maybe it's a, so these are just general guidelines. A lot of pop songs might not even have an intro at all. It might just come in straight with vocals. So you could mix that in a more creative way. But one thing you could do if you're just starting off and you're not comfortable mixing in acapella or mixing scratching. What you can do is look for songs with DJ intros. Lot of MP3 pools that you can sign up for online such as DJ Sadie, BPM supreme, DMS, club killers are so many that you can just do a quick Google search and fine. But they will have songs that have DJ interests at the beginning that allow you to mix in more smoothly and not have to worry about songs that don't have a beat at the beginning or that constraint in with the vocals. I would recommend learning your music and getting familiar with it ahead of time. What you want to do is kind of have a general idea of how long each section is really easy to use. And this is for those build-ups and transitions. There you go. That's the basics of counting your music. And in the next section we're gonna be talking about how to set your cue points so that you can know which part of the song to bring in. I will see you there. Great work. Everybody. 5. Module 5: Setting Cue Points: All right, So now we've learned to count a music. We're clear on the song structure. Next thing we want to do is set Q points. This will mark where in the song we want to come in. We can do this with software or vinyls. I'm going to show you how to do it in Sarajevo. But the same principles apply if you're using binomial, just going to have to rely only on your ear. You can't use the waveforms to help you find that sound, but I will show you how to do it both ways. First of all, what are Q points? Well, they're just points of interest in the song. And if you're using something digital, like a controller or CDKs, you can mark them on a hot Q here and you can jump from Q to acute. For example. Whatever, you know. As you can see, there's a lot you can play with. You can use the hotkeys to manipulate sound. You can even play other songs with points in some. But for now we're just gonna do the basics and we're gonna mark beat one where we want to bring in the song. I picked this particular song because it's not so straightforward. So I want to show you why it's important to mark your cheese. Oftentimes it's the first beat of the song, but in this case there's a pickup in the song. Listen. There's one bar. Here we go. It's over main, and then comes the beat. If I want to match this section and I want a full eight bars over another eight bars. Then I'm going to want to bring the song in. At the beginning of an eight-bar section. I won't bring in. Now Levi's these cases sort of. Now, I might want to mark that, let's mark that first beat anyway. Because it might be a point of interests. Maybe if you're manipulating or doing some scratch and you might want to play with that, but I'm gonna label it so I know that's not the start of phrase. The pickup. Okay. I'm gonna catch that beat. And if you have software, you have an advantage because you can see the waveform. So that started that be I'm just going to mark it. So let me show you how I did that once more. In hot cue. I'm gonna get rid of this so you can see me. I just press that pad button. And if I marked it wrong, I can always press Shift and tap it again and delete it. You can also press X in your software, like there you see? So I marked that beat. Now let's count the intro so we know how many bars there are already. 23423462347234. I'm gonna mark that next group of eight. This is so that if I want to mix the shorter intro, I can just start it there and I don't have to search and find it and I can just recall that much quicker, so let's keep going. So that was one Barb eight. This is the next group of, sorry, one group of eight bars. This is the second group of eight bars, ready to five. Now you hit a diverse company. I don't want to mark that as well. That way I can jump to it quickly is also a good visual cue, especially if you're a beginner and you want to make sure you're bringing the songs in at the right times, then you can look at the waveforms and make sure they're lining up. Let's label that. How many total bars was in the intro, we had two groups of eight. What's that? 16? That is correct. So the first one I went to label with how many bars? Just sometimes it helps me. On the slide, remember? So I'm gonna say 16 bars there. Now there's eight bars left to the intro. Sorry to the verse. This is the verse, so I'm going to label that verse. Cool thing about the hotkeys. Let us say I was mixing assignment. I brought it in 16 bars of the intro. But the song I'm mixing out-of only has an eight-bar section on messianic, let's say it's the chorus. So at the end of the eight bars, I don't want the intro to keep playing. I want to jump directly to the verse. So watch this. In 23425234623723482. I'm going to jump to the seamless whether your heart, cuz you can do that. If I'm marking the cues on vinyls, it's really the same principle. I just can't look at the waveform because everything is analog. But I would do something like this. Catch that back-and-forth. Find that started at song and I put a piece of tape and then mark it the same way. So you would go back and forth here, the edge of the sound and you just mark it. So it's all the same principles that setting acupoints. And it's pretty simple, isn't it? Remember to go through and set your acupoints before your gigs. It's worth taking the time to do so that you're not in a pinch trying to listen with loud music and trying to find your beak one. Alright, I'm gonna catch you in the next module where we're going to talk about beat matching. I'll see you there. 6. Module 6: Beatmatching: All right, So now we've learned to count on music. We set r cubed points. And now we really get to the good stuff. Beat matching. Like I mentioned before, this is the bread and butter of deejaying. This is how you're going to get this smooth makes all through the night without the music getting interrupted. How do you beat match? Well, first of all, we have to determine the BPM of the two songs we are playing. Or we have to determine, I should say, which one is faster, which one is slower. So we can and make adjustments to the second song that we're bringing in and make sure it matches to the song that we're playing. How do we do that? Well, if you have software, you'd have an advantage because you can see the BPM labeled. But I want to make a note. Don't just trust your eyes. You always want to use your ears first because sometimes the software, though it's smart and it can help you cut a lot of the workout. It's not always gonna be a 100% correct. So you always want to use your ears. Now, let me break it down just to talk about. So this can apply for people if they're on pure analog gear as well. The key would beat matching. You're gonna be listening for the sounds, the lineup. And it helps if you have a specific beat, the downbeat, maybe it's the kick or the snare on the two and you try to align those up. I sometimes find it easier to use the snare because it's the frequencies while higher, So it sounds like you more. So for example, let's try to match these two songs. First of all, pretending you can't see what the BPMs, or if we're just trying to figure out which one is faster, let's say this one was playing on the left. Bring in the next song. Let me make sure I'm bringing it on beat one, peak, one line. Then often see which ones subsequent to the next. Starting with that left. This was happening in your ear since this is both plans because it's kinda hard to separate the two. But if it was happening on your, you would be able to hear that the one in your ear was going a little slower, then you will make that adjustment. I'm listening here for the snare. It's not lining up to the other snare. Let me do that again. And this time we're going to start making adjustments. How we do that? You want to speed it up. You're gonna make a clockwise turn. And you're just going to make it a little bit faster. If you want to slow it down, counterclockwise. Little bit slower, you want to make tiny. That was probably too big of a jump, but I just did that so you could see it. You want to make tiny adjustments because if you jump too quickly is gonna be noticeable on the dance floor. Now if you're just doing it in your ear, It's okay. You can make a bigger jump, especially if you're just trying to get in the ballpark to start with. Sometimes it is helpful if you're not sure which record is faster or slower to make a big one and kind of overshoot it and then you can bring it back. I'm gonna play this again and I'm going to pretend this second track that we're bringing in is just in our ear. But I'll play it out so you can hear it. And you'll just make the adjustments as you go. One more time. Because I'm playing this rubber for bringing it in here. Just listen in a new year and let it play. If you think you've got it matched up, let it play a little longer and see if it stays meshed up. It starts to drift. Then you got to keep making those adjustments. Now, of course, if you have software, you can definitely look at the BPM. They'll help you get in the right ballpark. But above all else, you should still practice listening with your ears because sometimes it just doesn't analyze it correctly, or sometimes you will be having to play on vinyls and you won't be able to rely on the software. Let me run through that once more. I'm going to show you on both hands, since we want to make sure we're adept at both hands to speed it up. We're going to be clockwise turn. And you're going to make it a little faster. Down counterclockwise. Little slower. If you're on vinyls, I like to tap the vinyl. You don't want to push too hard though because then you're going to stop the record. That's to go faster. So I would just tap, tap, tap. And I would make that adjustment. If I want to slow down on turntables, I drag the platter because remember it's rotating right? So if you're dragging, it's going to slow it down and make it slower. You want to use a light touch because if you are too heavy, you are going to stop that flatter and it's going to stop the record. Some people like to turn the need of the nipple. Some people like to push the platter, but this is what I find works the best. A little tap on the vinyl or little drag on a platter. One quick note. You normally would not want to be slowing down the BPM as you go through the night. Because in general, we want to build the energy up as we go. You can always bring the BPM background later on. But it is more jarring to the ear as you're going through the night to hear the song that's currently being played. Slowed down. It tends to bring the energy abruptly down. We generally want to mix in the faster BPM as an exon. And we're going to bring the BVM of the song that's playing up. In that case, um, I wanted to do a little bit of a hybrid instead of speeding up the song of my ear and making that adjustment, I'm going to make the adjustments on the record that's playing. When I'm matching in my ear, I'll probably just slow down the one that they can't hear just until I get matched up. For example, I'm gonna play this song on the right deck first and pretend that's what's playing on the floor. And then we're going to bring in this faster record in our ear. But I'm going to, I'll put the Q button Nazi. You'd just say, you know what, I'm going to play it out so you can hear it. I'm playing this record. Ready. I'm going to slow down, but that's not in this second step. Remember the other one on the left, that's just naturally enough at this point for those snare. So I know I didn't do that on my ear right. Now. I know my represents. If I'm going to bring it in called how to adjust the VPN cloud. You know, what am I in that present? When the temperatures are lined up, It's such a smooth transition because you don't know where one song ends at. One song starts and it continues to flow seamlessly. So that's why beat matching is really important. A couple of notes regarding beat matching. It's helpful to make the adjustments on beat. That way it's less noticeable. I like to do it on the beat one. And even if you want to do at the beginning of phrases, so adjusted. Just tiny little bit. Let's see, I went too far. I want to go back for just a little bit, especially that's known as the board then if I were to do this all over the place. Another tip I wanted to add is it's generally a good idea to stay within the plus or minus for BPM range when you're beat matching. That way the songs don't start to sound really unnatural and the jump isn't too crazy all at once. That being said, you can always use your discretion and sometimes for artistic purposes, you can stretch beyond that if that's what you're going for, practice your VQ matching. Don't worry too much about all the other frills. For now. The matching is really the core of the deejay technique. You want to get that down first before you start adding all these crazy effects. A good way to practice is put little post-it notes and cover the BPM on your screen so you have to use your ear. Or you can have a record playing from something like an iPhone that you don't know the BPM to and try to match it in your ear. That's always a challenge I like to do if I'm at a gig and I'm mixing out from, let's say something else is playing and they're switching from the house sound. The DJ. I sometimes like to try to match the BPM. There is a good practice and it helps keep you sharp. That's it would be matching and keep practicing your BWT matching and you get it in no time. All right, I'll see you in the next module where we talk about mixing with EQ. 7. Module 7: Mixing with EQ: All right, So now we've matched up the music and we're ready to bring in our song and mix it in. How can we mix it in without it sounding super obtrusive when it comes in. Well, this is where the EQ comes into play. When I bring in a song. If I bring it in at full volume with all of the EQ unity, then it might just sound like too much because I'm basically doubling the game because I'm playing two songs. I was playing one song and now I'm playing another song at full volume. You're going to notice the difference. But if I bring in the second song with the base cut and I swap out the base as I go. Then I can sort of mix it in and weave it in together. Let me show you what I mean. All right, So this song on the right, I'm gonna have playing. And I'm going to bring in the left deck. I'm going to bring it in with the base cut to start. I'm going to use my counting. Let's say I'm gonna be mixing over a 16 bar section, 16 bar Hooke in the 16 bar intro. Well, I'm gonna swap out the basis, but I wanted it to sound like it's part of the song. Maybe it's like something's changing. I'm going to swap it out at one of the eight bar changes. In this case, if I have a 16 bar, 16 bars transition, I might do it at eight bar, so it has half the time. It's sort of builds it up. So how do we swap it? Let me show you. This one is cut and this one is up. You're just going to turn them. So they, they flip-flop. The new song. Let me share that again. We'll do one at a time. Left hand is going to, or whichever deck is playing. In this case, this is lifting. I'm going to bring it to one, but I'm gonna bring this down at the same time. So the kick replaces the other. Now, depending on what's happening in the song, you might not want to do it briefly. My slight change. In this case, they both have four on the floor. It takes it makes sense to swap it out quickly because then the ear maybe it doesn't even notice that there's a new beat going. A little switch right there. It'll be the same thing. If it was the other deck plane, then this would be starting off like this and I'm just fought them out like that. Now, one thing I like to do is switch the base in time. So for example, if I had 16 bar transition, I like to do it at eight bars. If it was an eight bar transition, I'll do it at four bars. So I kinda like to have the time of the transition just so it feels more cohesive. Sometimes it'll be really quick transitions. You just gotta do it quickly. I'm gonna show you this on a 16 bar transition, and then I'll show you an example with an eight bar transition. We've got this record playing same spot. So I made some adjustments to the highest and mid. And sometimes I like to bring in the other one with the highest admins turned down a little bit, just not all the way down, but just like maybe a little left of center, especially if that has really sharp vocals or something that's going on that's really high in obtrusive. This case, it's not really subscripted where it came in, so I just left them at center. But you really want to listen to your music and listen to what's going on. The whole point of this EQ is to help you be able to mix smoothly so that you can weave in the, the two songs seamlessly. That was an example of 16 bars and then pull up an example with eight. Same principle applies, but I'm going to switch the base out at four bars instead of eight, because eight we're going to swap out the song completely. Switched the decks just so you can see both hands. I'm gonna be playing this song first. And then I'm going to bring in the right deck. In the case of these two songs, I know the hook here on the left deck is a bar. None of the intro on the right deck is eight bars. We have half the time as we did in the last song to make the transition. So it's okay, we're just going to move fast. I'm gonna play this song on the left. When that hook hits on the one. I'm going to bring in the intro of the bright deck. This song comes into law hot, so I'm gonna keep the high-end mids just turn a little left to center. Let's go. She comes in. I didn't count that out loud with you. So let's do it one more time. We're going to count it out loud together. Same thing. We said this back. Let me turn this down. Just like that. Easy-peasy. I forgot to mention. If I'm switching out the highs, mids, I will do that typically on a one as well, but that one, I might just do a little bit more in the middle of the phrase because it's not as noticeable. So sometimes if it's a quick transition, I do those on the one, the two, and then I'll swap out the base halfway through. So there you go, two different examples of how you can use the EQ to mix in. Some, you can get creative with it. You might want to play around with the EQ a little bit and just hear how it sounds. The most important thing is to use your ears. Some songs, they don't have a base in the beginning. So in that case, you don't need to cut the base because there is no base. In the beginning might just be hi-hats or it might just be a vocal sample. As well as if you're mixing over a section where the base drops out, maybe you don't want to bring in the next section with no base because now there's no base. So really use your ears and use your judgment. The catch in the next section where we talk even more about some of the effects you can use. The Beta effects and the color effects that you can access through your software or through a mixer. I will catch you there. 8. Module 8: Effects and Pads: Alright, now you've got all your basic stem. Know how to beat match a song, and you know how to mix it in, and you even know how to play with the EQ. So it's transition is nice and smooth. I'm going to add some more tools. You are small. Let's talk about some of the effects. There's two types of effects. You might see. There's something called beat effects and color effects. They are pretty similar, but it just varies based on where you might find it, as well as what they effect. Beta effects, much like the name suggests. Manipulate the beat. For example, on this controller, the DD JSR, you'll find a rack up here and these give you a fix in this particular case, since I don't really have any options for my color effects, all the effects choice are up here. So there are some that don't necessarily rely on the beat. But as you can see where I see this record, also see a knob to control the beat. And if you look on my screen when I turn it, is changing the number of beats or the division of beats that it affects. If you're working with CBGs and you have a mixer and let's say the S9 are S11. You're gonna see a similar thing, but it's not a rack like this. It might be a screen here and you can change again the number of V divisions. And you might see a little knob here that you've turned that will let you choose between the different beats, sorry, the different effects. And another little switch where you can choose between which channel you want to affect. In this case, you'll find it here as we did do the walk-through I showed you. It doesn't really matter where you find it. You're going to find some kind of control on any controller. Let's look at what some of the effects do. In this case, I have these set to some of my favorite common effects, but I have a river which just gives you an echo feeling. I have delayed phase. Those are just some of the effects are so many other choices. Some of the other ones I really liked. There's echo oh, I have that on this side of the wreck, so I'm going to show you on there. I like using the echo a lot, transitioning out of a song. It's also a good lady, lazy man's effect. If you're doing a quick transition that you didn't match at the BPM to well, it kind of masks it for you. You know, we try not to do that, but it is a really useful effect too. If you have to turn off the music is still makes it feel less abrupt. One thing to remember, you might have to turn on the effect. There might be some something that you have to press to turn on or off. It could have turned up, but if it's not on, it's not going to affect your channel. And you also want to make sure you have it assigned to the red channel. Here, I just leave it on 12. So because it's visually easy to see that this is for here and this is for here. If you wanted to have access to all of your different effects, you could have them be assigning both and just turn it off or as you wish or as you, as you go. I just kinda leave it on 12. Those are effects. Let's look at the color effects on this controller. I don't really have any options. I only really had the filter, which is a low-pass filter on the left side and high-pass on the right side. That just means lowpass means everything as I turn it more, everything above the frequency, etc, that is filtered out and I can only hear what's below that. And as it turns to the right, everything below that frequency I said it too is filtered out and I can only hear what's above that. So let's take a listen. I have it here in the center. The left delta E are all higher frequencies. I'm only letting the low frequencies pass back to the center. To the right side of the high-pass. Filtering out all the low frequencies. Sometimes on some mixes you'll see a sweep. Also, you might see, I think there might be a gate. You might sometimes see a noise. Some mixers just have a noise that you can actually use without a record Play and it will give you a sound. That's, that's pretty cool. Now how do we use this in practice? Well, if I'm mixing out of a song, it might add a little color to the end of the phrase as I come out of it. So for example, let's mix this record. Once again. Another refresher. Maybe do two at once. Maybe I want to add. You think there's a lot of the things you can do with that. Now. Just a quick note. They are designed to probably be at their best somewhere around unity gain, which just means right at the center. But if you really playing anymore, maybe you want to distort the sound a little odd. For example, maybe I want to have it go deeper and back down, or I might want to have the rebirth. I don't know. You can play with it, but if you just want to have the kind of straight, you can just set it to the center. You can turn on and off. There's different ways you can use that. Those are effects pretty much you can play around with them with the software. There's so many options you can explore and you can even download different effects to upload into your mixer or into your software that you can then use your controller. Let me talk a little bit about some of the functions here on the pads as well because you might get something like a role here. I can hold them down with this role at same, kind of similar to automate. But when I let go, I can change. I can change how much I want to roll. I like to use this sometimes, especially with kind of EDM songs. This is tremendous. That's all that does. It just rolls this down. The slicer, just slices up your song into eight sections so you can jump to those without losing your spot in the song. So more interesting. That's a really fun one to do if you have some vocals that you can vocal chop it. Finally, the sampler here, it just, you can load south into your sampler. Maybe I want an air horn. I could put that air horn here. You can even make a little drumbeat here. So let's say the next bank. I have some here actually. Another cool thing you can do if you shift, I'm sorry, if you press pad plus on this controller, not every controller has it, but they might have some other kind of setting. I can, I can roll it so that you could play a song. I said I was playing this. There's a lot of really cool, fun stuff you can do with controllers because it's kind of like an all in one piece auto loop. I think we touched a little bit on that earlier, but let me just walk through the auto loop with you as well. When I hit auto loop is automatically going to loop whatever setting I have here. And I can change them right now is at a quarter of a beat. I'll put that on. It's going to loop that I can make it longer. I can look this 1D or I can look for these. This is useful again, remember if we're transitioning to different lengths Instructions, I can loop the beginning of one section so that they actually line up. If you want to loop a part of a song that is not in time, you could do a manual loop. This particular mixer, you have to press shift because it's a shift function, but other mixes we'll just have it in your press shift in. And then when you're ready to loop it out, you'll press out or shift out on this mixer in time, but it will allow me to move them. If you wanted to eat that word, I could be. Also another useful trick. If you're mixing sounds of different BPMs and you want to change it without feeling too abrupt, you can manipulate the BPM by looping something. I think that pretty much does it for all the extras. Keep in mind. You might not find all the same functions on every controller and there might be other functions on other controllers that aren't available on this one. But for the most part, they're not gonna be too different in terms of the types of things you'll find. You'll just find them in different places or maybe controlled in a slightly different way. So again, if you're working with different gear, just take the time to take a look at it and see where everything is. In the next section, I'm going to start talking about something really exciting and fun scratching. I know some of you all really want to learn that. Stay tuned and I'll see you there. 9. Module 9: Scratching (The Baby Scratch): Alright, so you're on your way to becoming a successful DJ. Now you've learned how to beat match. You can mix in the song using EQ. You can play around with some of your effects. I want to talk to you about scratching. This is the nano a lot of you have been waiting for to learn about. We're not going to go super deep into the technique of scratching. However, I will show you the baby scratch, and I'll show you a little bit about how to pick sounds for your scratching. And I'll show you how to use scratching in a practical way in your mix. So why do we scratch? Well, originally before we had all these buttons and digital technology, you have to really listen and keep time. And we had platters spinning. We didn't want to stop the platter and we want to bring the song in time. You would have got a sample going here. Let me show you what the song. For example, I would probably be like if something was going my ear and it was playing, I bring in a song. It just gives you a little bit of momentum, just like when we repressing the Q button, right? Same exact principle. What we're scratching. We use two things. We're scratching the platter and would also employ the cross fader. Now, the scratch I'm going to teach you today, you're not going to need to move the cross fader. It's just gonna be left at the open position. But oftentimes you will need to manipulate book. So just keep that in mind that it is part of Scratch and you're going to be using both hands. How do we scratch when you're scratching a record? You want to have your hand in the lower left corner of the platter. Sort of maybe like the Buddha's that six o'clock. No, six is drink. Well, I don't know. Math is nothing like the seven o'clock position. And keep in mind if you're using turntables, there's a needle here, right? Tone arm, so you won't be able to go past there. You really going to be implying this area of the record of the platter to be scratching same on your right hand, lower-left corner and you'll be scratching this way. If you have a scratch where you let go, for example, if you're always going to be following the records so that when you return back to the start of the sound, your hand is in the same position as if you were scratching with your hand on the record. Let's go over the baby scratch. Cache is really simple. It's just a forward and backwards motion. You're going to have the cross fader open. So you leave it right in the middle and you probably have a track play on this other side. You'll hear the track and you'll also hear all the forward and backward motion of your scratch. I'm gonna show you a really slowly. First of all, to scratch a record, you're going to want the platter to be playing. We want to make sure I already had this plane, but let's say I didn't have it. I would I would hold the platter so that it doesn't start playing. And I hit the play button. You see how that lit up notes. You can't hear it playing, right? You're gonna hit me. Do that again. Not playing right now. I'm going to hold it and then I'm gonna hit play. But it's not going to play it because I'm holding the deck. But this way when I let go, is going to play the baby scratch. You have your hand in the lower-left corner. You do a chord motion, backward motion, and you want to return it back to the start of that sound. Ideally, if you're working with vinyls or even CDJ is, you might be able to see a little virtual queue. In this situation, we had to look at the computer. It's not super ideal, but it doesn't jump. So we can look at the key point on the computer. You really want to return to the start of that sound. Let me show you. On the other hand, it is the same thing. That is the base cash. Now we're going to practice doing in time to a beat. Let me pull up nice and slow beat. Cao, Cao, Cao, Cao, Cao, Cao, Cao, Cao. Cao. Play around with that. And when you get comfortable, you can start introducing the cross fader and work in other types of scratches. For example, stack, really just like a baby scratch, but you're closing theta the way back. There's a lot of variation you can do. Now, let me show you one other practical way you might want to use scratching in mix. Let's say I have this song playing in my ear. I might want to bring it in stretch a little bit. I bring him to stop. It gives me a little bit of anticipation to the next part of the song. We're gonna do it on the last spar. That's a practical use for the baby scratch. And it can definitely impress a lot of your friends. People will love to hear that sound at the DJ scratching. Scratching is really like the DJs way of talking to the people. A quick note about samples that you might want to scratch on. So if you're bringing in a record and there's a kick there, that might give you that nice boom. And like for example, this one. But sometimes you get a record and it is just like one of those since that kind of has that sign TO those sounds might not scratch so well. So you want to listen to in your ear and see how it sounds before you scratch it in the sounds that might be good to scratch on our vocal samples. Parts of the verse that may be the B hasn't dropped yet, but there's a little leader and you could scratch that and then build anticipation into the beat backdrop, even drum samples. It can be good too, depending on what type of Trump's sample. If you're scratching it with a kick, you might just want to turn the bass down so it doesn't come in too loud. Like this one. As you missed it. Bringing the base in, you can download something such as this flower here in Scratch ammo. You can find these in DJ pools. You're probably find them online as well. Or you can make your own and you can take samples from songs you like. But something like this has a lot of samples that you can work with and you can just tag them on your hotkeys. There you go. That is the basics of scratching and that will get you started and play around with that. And then who knows what else he might come up with. You can mix different types of scratches. And I look forward to hearing what you come up with. Next. We're gonna be talking a little bit about the logistical side of deejaying, such as selecting your music and prepping your crates, and how to handle things like requests and keeping your library organized. I'll see you in that module. 10. Module 10: Music Selection: All right, Let's talk a little bit about selecting your music and preparation and organization of your library. How do you select music for a gig or a set? Well, depends on what type of format you are playing. If you were invited to play a gig at a venue, you might have a specific format. For example, maybe it's RMB night there on Thursday nights, or maybe it's a slinky hotel and they want some new disk IO or has five. So if you are booked, It's always good to ask. Don't feel embarrassed. People like when you can clarify with them, especially if they're hiring you for the job, you don't have to feel stuck by genre. You could be open format and I always say vibe over genre. I tried to use a vibe to hearing the night and keep the feeling in the mood consistent. But I, I moved between genres often. Don't feel like you're locked into one type of genre. In fact, if you play only house all night or only hip-hop, sometimes people's ears can get a little fatigued. So it can be nice to make something in. Now, you might not want to jump too abruptly from, let's say, wrapped rock. You might find a song that has a good segue, like a rock song or something. You know, it's all about divide. How do you go about organizing and preparing you music? I like to prep a virtual create, just like you would if you were using vinyls or CDs, you would prep the crate before you. Even though now you can bring your whole music library with you in a hard drive. It's still good to prep some songs you think will fit for the night and pull them and put them in your create. So let me show you on Servo For example. I have my library here organized by genre. But then I will have other crates down here. I use that some typical events that I might do, for example, some of them I residencies and then I split them up into maybe different times of the night or different vibes. It's up to you how you want to organize your music. I would say a couple of things to keep in mind is genre is good to tag your genres and you kind of have a general idea, especially if you're playing open format. It's really useful to know quickly what January song is. Bpm is, unless you've got to tag your BPMs and your software will analyze that for you. So just make sure you drop it in in time and make sure you get the all done ahead of time. I also like to sort my music by the energy levels. So sometimes I'll say a hashtag, upbeat or chill, might make a crate for lounge. And in Serrano there's something really cool called a smart grid. I can make. For example, I could add a rule. I can say all songs, all sounds with BPM greater than or equal to 100. And I want these all to be songs that are 2020 and newer. So I could say year after 2020. Then I have a smart guy here. And this is all the songs that are 100 or faster that are from 2020 on. As a great way quickly to pull your songs and organize. And then you can go through and prune them out yourself. You have to make a new credit for that because it's smart rate is based on the rule. One thing to keep in mind is sectioning out your night. So I tend to think of it in terms of three sections. Early night, peak and late night. There's no hard and fast rules. It obviously depends on how long your gig is and what type of event it is. But typically it is going to be the heavy hitting songs That's going to be all the top hits. If you claim those too early, it might feel anticlimactic. Maybe people are just getting warmed up or maybe you put it too early and no one's there to hear it. And then you want to hear an hour later, but you just played it. So it's good to pace your night. When you get to the heavy hitting section, you want to you want to keep that energy level up. You don't want to run out. If you start too high up, then you have nowhere to go. Also keep in mind, you don't always want people to stay at ten all the time because it's a journey. Remember, people are dancing and maybe they want a little break. If you can guide them through and give them those peaks and valleys. That's really the goal of your DJ career. You should play what you want to hear and not what you think people want to hear. Don't make the mistake of trying to follow and playing requests as they come in. Because then you're just going to be human jukebox and you're going to get all off track because if you're playing for a room of 150 people and they are different opinions, but not all going to mesh together. So your job is to take all the inputs and mix it together in a way that is seamless and makes everyone happy. Speaking of requests, how do you handle requests? While some people say no requests at all, I'm sort of a school of thought. That I take the input in because I'm there to make people dance. And if people have certain things they want to hear, I'll take the input and see how I can work it in. But again, you don't want to just play one request after another end. Just willy nilly, because chances are people are going to request things that are not a good fit together. You want to listen to that and see how you can work it in. And you also want to read the room. If you're playing. Assign people are really enjoying it. And maybe you had planned this set and you are going to switch into a different sign at that point, but people are really enjoying that part of the song. Maybe you can let it run a little longer. Maybe you can play another song in that same genre, that same five. Vice versa. If you put a song and it just didn't really seem to hit very well. You can pivot and you can switch it into a different genre or different mood. But you can, you don't want to be too abrupt with it. So you always want to read the room and adjust accordingly. Ideally, you're doing this. As you go. Let me show you a little bit how I organized my library. I have all the genres listed up top. And some of them I subdivided into smaller divisions. And I have sometimes pulled some smart grades just because within the genres I might have hashtags or things I want to access quickly. For example, I really like new R&B. I have my R&B songs divided into decades, but I have this of all the hashtag is just pulls automatically. That's another thing I forgot to mention. It could be useful to organize your library by ear as well. I just do a general decade by decade, but that helps me access quickly if I'm playing within a certain decade and you don't want to jump too quickly. And maybe people are feeling that throwback mood. It helps you find other songs that fit well quickly. But after my genres, I then have, sometimes I say that sets I played before so I can reference them later. And then I have some of the common gigs I play have creates port for that. Then every time I play a new game, I pull a whole new credit for that. And I'm constantly updating my quiz this way I make sure I always stay fresh. One other thing I want to show you is how I organized my library in my hard drive. Sometimes the software will suggest for you to put all your music all in one folder. However, I found that if something happens to your software and you lose that data, now you have to reorganize your entire library. Future proof my music library is I also sort them in my folders. Now you don't have to do this. I'm just showing you what's worked for me. But I basically have the genres sorted in folders, then the rest of the sub categories, like the hashtags and things. I don't sort that way. I leave that in Sarajevo, but if something were to happen, I at least don't have to go through and redo the entire library. The other good thing about that is that when I use Record box or a different platform, I can drag those folders in. I don't have to re-create my whole library. Everything's already sorted out. So it's really useful if you're working between two different platforms. That does it for our section on selecting music and keeping your library organized. So remember, at the end of the day, just go with your intuition, go with your gut and enjoy what you do because it's all about your style and what you love. If you can stay present and stay true to your tastes in music, then everyone else will be along for the ride. 11. Module 11: Settings and Troubleshooting: Alright, let's go over some of the settings and troubleshooting some common issues that you might run into. You can see there's a knob on the side, cross fader curve. And you see there's one side that has this diagram and then one side that has a line with two diagonals on one side, the side that's x is going to give you a cross fader curve that slowly ease out from one day to the other. For example, if I have an upset there as I moved to phase it out as we go, if I have another track plan, it will slowly ease and the other I didn't match the match. That's not really going to be useful for us if we're squashing because we don't want the sound to get louder or quieter as we're within cross fader. The other setting where it's two lines and one line on top. That means, no matter how little bit of a move that you make here. Just moving a slightly there is going to open the fader for the other side. If I have here, I just want a little bit and go all the way over and then that turns it off. That's the setting we're gonna want if we're doing any scratching. Honestly, that's what I leave it on all the time when I'm playing. Because even if you have the cross fader in the middle, it's really going to be hard for you to keep it exactly in the middle. You might move it a little bit. And that's gonna make gain slightly different on both sides. So I just leave it on that city. Now this x setting is useful if you're fading a song in really, such as if you're doing a wedding ceremony and the bridal party just walked down and now the goons gonna walk down and you can fade into a different song. But you're not beat matching. Lot. Really rough demonstration, but you get what I mean. I want to show you some of the settings within Sirona that you can change. There's something called Instant doubles. And if I check that now, if I play a song, just sampling this, now if I load the same song, the other deck is going to immediately place in the same place. That's really useful. If you only have one working deck would say, Are you playing with yet one CDJ? So you can do something like you're mixing. Now you instant switch it over to the virtual deck. Now you can mix in another song. It's also something really cool if you wanted to do, let's say, find the song. Instead double. And I'm gonna be something. It just pulls up the song row quickly. At the same point that you're already playing. You don't want to find it. It can really save you to if something's not working on the other deck that goes into troubleshooting. So this is kind of combine the two modules, troubleshooting and settings. But that's something you could do if something is not working, maybe one of your buttons, this has happened to me before, one of the pads maybe underneath some liquid garden or something and it's jammed up and it's looping something, you get instant double it quickly onto the other side so that it doesn't stay jammed up. And then you can buy yourself some time to figure that out. So let's take a look at the router again. Mixers, you might have this on the physical hardware, but this particular one doesn't have it. So you have to adjust in here, but you can adjust the stop and start time. So if I'm playing a song, I have the stop time. Let's turn it all the way left with the fast. If I start, stops right away, there's no slowdown period. We put it all the way. Well, I won't put it all the way because it's gonna be really slow. But let me move it to the middle. Now. Let me show you that one more time with the deck so it imitates real vinyl is the way it would slow down. You can adjust that to your liking there. Same thing with startTime. If you have it set all the way to the left at fest, I want to hit Play. It comes in right. Now. If I have it slow. It's turntables, but that's also your preference personally, I like to keep it at fast. So if you're doing anything like chewing, you want to leave that fast. Because when you hit Play, you want it to come in bright and beat. If you have it anywhere apart from 0, then you want to scratch in that already playing or it's not gonna come in time. There's also an upgrade or curve that sometimes you can adjust on the hardware. In this case, again, this is gonna be something we find in software. Let me see where it would be. Here we go. If you go to the mixer settings, you can set all those virtual settings that aren't available on your hardware. That is just the, so if I wanted to have a bit of a, it's kind of like a linear curve. It's sort of linear, but if I haven't fast, it's going to be a little more of a hockey stick. Hockey-stick, sorry, the other way, parabola. Just a little bit. It's going to give you a lot of games. Then around them. Let's go over some quick troubleshooting tips for some common issues you might run into on a gig if you're not getting sound out. What you want to do is first of all, don't panic. Because panic is always going to cloud your judgment. And sometimes most of the time it's something as simple as a switch that needs to be changed or something that needs to be plugged in. But you can check your signal flow and start from the source of the sound all the way out and just make sure everything's plugged in all the way. So you would start from your laptop, make sure that's plugged in via USB and then you go to the cables plugging into the sound, making sure everything is switched on. The sounds so silly, but oftentimes that's where you catch the mistake. Now, on CDJ is in a mixer, you also have another knob that you have to change based on what type of decks you have. If you're playing a mixer, you can plug in. Cdj is turntables or controller, or even an iPhone. So there's usually a setting where you can change it to USBE phono or line. If you're playing turntables, you want to make sure you have it set to Fano. You want to do line proceed DJs. But if you're going to be playing through a laptop that's connected to your CDKs and you want to make sure you set it to the USB sending. Another common thing you might run into is if you're playing with control CDs, you want to make sure that your key lock is not it turned on. Because the way a control CD works is that it sends a tone to your photo and that's going to tell it when it's being sped up or slowed down. So I can then translate that to the MP3 file and playing. But if you have an a key lock, it's going to keep that tone the same. It won't know when it speeds up. I think we mentioned this earlier, but just to reiterate because it might happen if you plan on unfamiliar equipment. You have vital mode off. You won't be able to scratch. Do you want to issue That's an equal distributor. Again, if you have slip mode, Let's say I have forgotten I had to slip mode on and I was trying to adjust what's happening. Well, it's not letting me jump because it's going to keep this place. Another common mistake for people for starting off is if you're switching between CDJ or controllers or turntable, when you plug it into your erato, you're going to see another option come up that shows something. This is ABS or REL or INT. Int. Abs stands for absolute. That's gonna treat your decks as absolute, basically like analog vinyl. Meaning if I have control vinyls and I plugged that to my Serrano, but I have it in absolute mode. I can't really show you on these because I don't have it plugged in. So it won't show up, but move the needle to a different part of the song, is going to jump to that same part in the MP3. However, I won't be able to use my hotkeys. When the song opens up, it will just run out. So generally, if you playing with control vinyls, it's probably good idea to have it on relative. That'll give you more access to some of the options you can use. Relative means that it will keep track of where you are. But when you switch, you press a hot cue. It won't be absolute to the spot and the violin just be relative forward and backward, but you can jump to different parts of the song. Int, INT. That just means you're playing directly through the computer. So if again, if you're in a pinch, one of your decks isn't working, that can save you. You can run song directly through throttle. And through that just means there's something passing through that channel. So maybe you have another DJ coming in. They're going to mix it on that deck and they plugged in their laptop. So that means you won't be able to use that deck on your cirrhotic. All right. That does it. I think your basis are pretty covered and I can't wait to see what you do next. Happy DJ. 12. Module 12: Closing Thoughts: All right, There you have it. Your intro to DJ, DJ starter pack. I'm so proud of you for sticking through the course and learning how to DJ. I think you have everything you need to get yourself started and play your first couple of gigs. And from there you can build an agile personality and style and creativity. Just to recap, we've gone over how to count your music, headset, acupoints, how to beat match, how to mix with EQ. We've talked about a little bit about scratching. We've talked about some of the effects you can use. We've walked through the equipment that you might need to get you started. We've talked about some of the different settings and controls. We even talked about troubleshooting and some of the common issues you might run into. So I think you're more than prepared. Now, all that's missing is for you to come up with your own DJ name. I can't wait to hear what you come up with. Please share mix and I would love to hear it. I'll see you out there. Ipv j.