Learn How To DJ With Just Your Laptop: No DJ Equipment Needed

1. Welcome To The Class: Hi and welcome to the node DJ equipment needed DJ course brought to you by to be a DJ. In this course, you will learn how to mix four tracks together in a short DJ routine by using just the keyboard on your laptop and using some free DJ software. You don't need any prior DJ knowledge or any DJ equipment at all to do this course, all you need is just a laptop and a keen interest in deejaying. This is possible because you only need to do three things to be able to do a basic DJ mix, you need to be able to start the truck, stop the track, and move the volume fader from one side to the other. That's it. The key to doing your first deejay mix is all about timing, knowing when to press play, knowing when to move the volume fader across, and knowing when to stop the track. And in this course, that is exactly what you're going to learn. How to time the perfect mix. By the end of this course, you will be able to mix four different tracks together in a short DJ routine or with perfectly timed mixes. All the tracks that are used in this course are also included for you to download for free in the course resources. This means that you can follow along with the course step-by-step in real time and do the exact same DJ mixes as I do in the course. And you get some free tracks to DJ with the DJ routine that you'll be learning will be demonstrated to you in the next video. Feel free to watch that video next and see the exact DJ routine that you will be learning in this course. You're not just going to learn how to mix these tracks together. And then that's it. This course is much more than that. You will also learn the key fundamentals and principles of deejaying. You will be able to fully understand at a basic level how DJ and works. And you'll be able to understand how to mix two tracks together and make it sound good to the audience. This is so that if you did want to continue to practice DJ and after this course, you'll have all the tools and knowledge to do so. You will learn all about how tracks are structured and you will learn at what point you should mix in and mix out of your tracks when deejaying, you'd get the perfectly timed mix every time. So if you are interested in learning how to DJ, but you're not yet sure if you want to buy some DJ equipment. This is the perfect class for you for this course. All the tracks are included for free. The DJ software we use is also a free. All you need is your laptop and an interest in wanting to learn how to DJ. That's all there is to it. All you need to do is follow the detailed instructions in this course. And by the end of it, you'll be putting together your very own professional sounding DJ routine. Either watching the next video and I'll demonstrate to you the exact DJ routine that you'll be learning with the exact same tracks. I hope you enjoy it and I'll see you on the course. Bye for now. 2. DJ Routine Demonstration: Hi there, welcome to the course. In this first video, I'm going to demonstrate to you the exact DJ mixers and DJ routine that you will be learning in this course. So by the end of this course, you will also be able to do the exact same DJ routine with the exact same tracks. By the end of the course, you will also understand why we are mixing these tracks in this way. And you will understand what makes them mixes sound good and also how to avoid them mixes sounding bad. We will break down the timing of each track, when to press Play, and how to make smoothly from one track to another. You can also watch how I use the keyboard and most on my laptop to do the mixes with. You can see how easy it can actually be to learn some basic deejaying with just your laptop. So let's dive straight into it. I hope you enjoyed the mix and I hope it gets you excited to learn. And let's do it. Hi. Yeah. Hi. Hello. 3. Download Rekordbox DJ Software: In this video, we're going to download the free DJ software called recall box DJ and get it setup ready for the costs for those that don't know. Reco box is the DJ software that all clubs standard DJ equipment uses. So when you see DJs in clubs are at festivals, most likely going to be using record box DJ software to DJ with. It is the software that I've used for most of my professional DJ career. I still believe it is the best DJ software to DJ with, and also the best DJ software to learn how to DJ with. So if after this course, you ever continued to pursue deejaying and make it to playing at events, you will most likely be using the record books DJ software to DJ with. So I believe that you are practicing and learning to DJ with the best software. I am no way affiliated with recall box in any way. This is just my honest opinion over my years of experience of deejaying. So that being said, firstly, we need to go to the link in the description and go to recall boxes website, which should be recalled box.com. The reason why I haven't given you the link directly for the download is because when you go to the record Box website, the language changes to whatever country and region that you are in. The download page is also different if you are a Windows or Mac. So as you can see here, it has changed for me to recall box.com forward slash e n because I'm currently in England. Then all you need to do is go to the tab at the top where it says plugins. And just click this tab. We can go to the download tab as well. Download the software from there. But I just wanted to show you first what we're going to be downloading. So I'm just going to click plans from here in the Plans and Pricing. It will offer you four different plants. But the one we want is the free option. If we scroll down here, pass these plans. In the bottom right hand corner, we can see the free plan. And as you can see here, it will give you access to the performance mode. And within that performance mode, the second one down is DJ control via PC slash mark. And this is exactly what we want. This free version of reco box allows you to use the DJ controls by using just your PC or Mac. So what we need to do now is just click the Download button just below this. As you can see, it automatically comes up for me as download for Mac, because I'm on a Mac, if you want to read any of the licensing agreements or system requirements, feel free to pause this video at anytime and give them a read. There's no rush. I may recommend you get the System Requirements. A quick read to see if the device you are using is compatible with reco box software. Generally, most modern PCs or Macs should be fine. But if you are unsure, you can give that section and read first. What we need to do from here is just go to agree and then click Download. And as you can see now that in the bottom left-hand side of my screen, the software to install record box D J is now downloading. Once that has downloaded, we can go ahead and open it up. If you don't have a tab at the bottom of the screen, you can just go to your Downloads section. And you should have a zip file like this. If you just open the zip file, you'll get the box for reco box here. What we're going to do is just double-click this box. Now you'll have the installation process. Oh, we've got to do is follow this step-by-step. So I'm going to click continue and then click Continue again. Now, if you do want to have a read of the licensing agreement, that's completely fine. That's up to you. But I've downloaded record box enough now to know this software is fine for me, so I'm going to click Agree. Then I want it to install onto my hard-drive, click Continue, and then install. So from here you may be prompted with your password for your computer or laptop. So if you just type that in and click Install software, and it should start installing to your PC or laptop. There you have it. It should now be installed to your PC or laptop. So I'm just going to click Close. And then from here move to trash. So I'm going to move the installer to the trash now it is already installed. So now it is installed. We need to find where it is on our laptop or PC. I'm a Mac, I'm just going to go to Applications. Scroll down and I should find one, say record box six. It's going to open up this. And then this icon here is the record box DJ software. So I'm just going to double-click this to open it up. Again. You might be prompted with your password, you just have to fill that in. Now from here you'll be prompted with filling your email address and password. If you already have a record Box account. If you don't, we're just going to go here and click create account. This will now take us to the record Box website. So from here you just need to fill in these details. And then click giant pioneer DJ. Dj is the company that make recall box D J. So to access record box, we just need to create an account with pioneer DJ. So I'm just going to fill these details in now and then click Join pioneer DJ myself. Once you've done that, it'll just ask you to validate your e-mail address. So I need to do is go into your email account and confirm the email from Pioneer DJ. And then from here we're just going to click back to cite. Not know. It should then take you back to the homepage of reco box. But what we're going to do is go back to our recall Box login. From here, we should be able to login with them details that we've just filled in. So I'm just going to fill them in now. Once we fill them details and we're just going to click Login. And it should say account setup has been completed. Click okay. So here's a pop-up from reco box. And it's just asking you to answer five quick questions about your DJ lifestyle. All we need to do here is click Skip in the bottom right-hand corner. Are you sure you want to skip? Yes. Next, it would have loaded the software up and we have another pop-up here from recall box saying to use reco box, you'll need to do the following. So it's either convert recall box library, which we don't have our choose one of the record box subscription plans, which is what we're going to do. So we'll click Next. Now it will ask us about converting our library. Now because we don't already have a library, what we need to do is go on the right-hand side here where it says Start Record box with an empty library. Just click this. Now the next part we'll ask us about new subscription plans. It's just letting us know that subscription plans has no change for reco box version six. So what we need to do is just click Next. And now it's just telling us about the free plan, which is what we want and hardware unlock device. So that just means that if we plug in a device like a DJ controller, it will unlock the device, but we're going to go with the free plan. So again, all we need to do is click next. And these are the plans that we spoke about before. We have three core, creative and professional. And we just want the free plan. So what we need to do is go to the bottom and click Choose your plan. Now I'll open up a website for us, a webpage. Then what I'll do is open up the page that I showed you earlier with the different plans up. Now we want the free plan, so we don't need to click anything here. All we need to do is go back again to record box where we've just been. And it should say the library conversion has finished. So on the webpage we don't have to click anything. Just go back to recall box and click. Okay. Now it's asking us to get started with Cloud Sync, which is a free trial, which we don't want. We're just going to click the arrow. Click the arrow again. Click the arrow again. Now he'll ask us to start, but we don't want this cloud feature. What we want to do just click the Close button on the right-hand side. I know the installation process should be complete. So it takes you to the library thing here, but there's nothing too. But we don't need to worry about this. If you go to information, this will give you the information of your recall box. And then if you click plan, should say here that you're on the free plan and that's perfect. So what we need to do now is click close. And we're in record box. So this is the screen you should be seeing now, once you've installed recall box successfully, what we need to do from here is going to the top left hand corner where it says Export. Now we don't want Export mode. What we want to do is click this arrow button and then change it to performance mode, because this is where we are going to be doing our DJ techniques from now once it's changed to performance mode, you should see the screen. And then just to be clear, we want to deck horizontal. So if it's not already on to that horizontal, we just need to click the arrow tab here and change it to two deck horizontal. And they have it. Now we've downloaded record box successfully and we're ready to do our deejaying in performance mode. Now I can appreciate that this may look very intimidating at first. Sometimes DJ equipment can look like a control panel of a spaceship. But don't worry, I'll explain everything you need to know about the software throughout this course. I'm not going to explain everything at once because it can be too much to take in and also won't hold as much meaning until we start using these features. I'll only explain the things we need to know as we go along and as we need them. To be honest, we don't need to use about 8% of the things on this DJ software. For this course, we'll only be using around 20% of the basic features we need to learn the key principles of deejaying and to give you an introduction to what deejaying is like. But I'll just give you a quick overview of what we're looking at right now. When you're deejaying, you generally have two decks. And what you can see here, the top half of the DJ software is representing two decks. This deck, one on the left-hand side here, and then deck to on the right-hand side. They don't have any information displayed just yet because we don't have any tracks loaded up into the decks. But when we do, these decks will display all the tracks information on wave forms, which we'll go through in a later video. Both decks are exactly the same and mirror each other. What you see on the left-hand side will be exactly the same, unmarried on the right-hand side. So that already has the information that you need to know about the decks. Once you learn it on one side, it applies to the other side too. Now, all the bottom half of the screen is your music library. This is where you will store all your tracks and put them into playlist, ready to DJ with. All your folders and platelets will be here on the left-hand side. And then this big space on the right-hand side is where all your tracks will be displayed individually. Which takes us to the next part of the course, which is downloading your music and putting them into playlist, ready for the course. Thank you for being patient and following along with the instructions and the step-by-step of installing, recall box DJ. We're now ready to move on and download the tracks. I'll see you in the next video. 4. Download Music Tracks: In this video, we're going to download the music for the course and put it into a playlist, ready to practice our mixing. First thing you need to do if you haven't done so already, it's downloading music files attached to this course. There'll be a tab called resources located somewhere around this video. It will either be below this video or to the side of this video, depending on which platform and device you are watching them. So if you haven't downloaded music files yet, make sure you just take a moment to pause the video and download them to your PC or laptop. One subtracts have downloaded, we need somewhere to put them on the DJ software. So we're going to create a playlist for them. Playlists are the best place to work from in your DJ software when deejaying with your tracks. So if we go over to the left-hand side here on the library, there's a tab here called playlist. And if we go to the right-hand side and click here, there should be a plus icon and this says create new playlist. So we're just going to click the plus icon. What I'll do is give us a drop-down here with a new playlist. So you can name this playlist whatever you like. But for me, I'm just going to name it the new equipment needed DJ costs. So now we have here a playlist called no equipment DJ cars. Now what we need to do is find where our music files have been downloaded two, and this would generally be in your downloads folder. So I'm going to do is go to my Downloads folder. And here are the tracks that we're going to need for the course. If you've downloaded the zip file, you just need to go ahead and unzip the file and open the folder so you can see all the individual tracks. And what we're simply going to do is highlight all the tracks and select them all, and then drag and drop the tracks over to the new equipment needed DJ costs playlist. So it's going to click these tracks and drag them across until it highlights the new equipment DJ cos, I'm just going to put them into that folder. When you load new tracks into a playlist on record box, the software analyzes the tracks for you. This is where the DJ software analyzes the music files to make them ready to DJ with it. We'll get things such as the speed of the track, the waveform of the track, and find where all the beats in the track and put what's called a beat grid on them. We will go over all these things and how to use them later in the course. But for now when it comes up with this prompt here, for anomalous settings, we don't need the key or the phrase for this course and the BPM range is fine. All we need to do is click, okay. What it'll do is it'll start analyzing our tracks just here on the left-hand side. As you can see now it's populating the library with the tracks, wave forms and other information. Now while the tracks have been analyzed, we should have all the information about the tracks ready to DJ with. Before we move on, we're just going to tidy our library up a little bit. There can often be too many columns in the library than is necessary. So if I just scroll across to the right-hand side here. Now under library, there's quite a few columns that we don't actually need for this course. So what we can do is secondary click one of the titles of the columns. So that's just like a right-click on your mouse. And what this will do is it will give you a list of options that you can choose from for what information you want to see about the tracks. And for this course we only need four columns selected. That is preview, track title, BPM, and comments. All the lists can be deselected. So I'm just going to quickly do that now. So as you can see now, we've got rid of quite a lot of the columns on our library. We only have preview, comments, track, title, and BPM, but we're just going to tidy up a little more. So what I want is the comments to be at the far right-hand side. So I'm just gonna drag and drop this column here. We can stretch out the track title a little bit more so we can see all the title of the tracks. Now this is looking more similar to what we want. We want the preview first, the track titles second, the BPM, and then the comments and everything else de-selected. Now reco box font can be quite small when you first install it as standard. So what we can do is you can make this font a little bit bigger. So we're going to go to the settings in the top right-hand corner of this settings cog just here. We went to click this. Then the first option we have is view. Then as you can see here, it says font size. So I can do is you can make this larger or smaller to suit your preference. So I'm just going to put it about a quarter of the way up just to make the text a little bit bigger in my library. Then we can exit settings. There we have it. The text is a little bit bigger in my library. Now that we have our music downloaded and in a playlist, we can move on to the next video and change the rest of the settings ready for the DJ course. We're going to set up the visuals on the DJ software to make what we're looking at easier to understand. And we're going to set up the keyboard shortcuts so we can use the keys on our laptop to control the decks and the music. See you in the next video. 5. DJ Software Settings: In this video, we're going to set up the visuals on the DJ software to make what we're looking at easier to understand. And we're going to set up the keyboard shortcuts so that we can use the keys on our laptop to control the text and music. Just a quick point that the DJ software might look slightly different than the last video. You may notice there are more playlist on the left-hand side. And the hock queue bank these squares here a slightly differently than yours. The only difference is my hot cues now go across from left to right, where yours will go down from top to bottom. This is just because to film this section of the course, I've had to jump into my teaching account on record box. Whereas in the previous videos, I created a brand new account to be able to walk you through step-by-step exactly how to set up a new account from scratch. Everything will still be the same going forward. None of this will affect the course any differently. But I just wanted to explain in case you may know, is the two differences on the screen, but there will be the only two differences. I've reset all the settings in this account back to default. So it'll be doing exactly the same thing as each other and the cost won't be affected. Now that's cleared up. Let's move on. Firstly, there should be two tracks in your playlist called practice tracks. If you can drag practice track one over to the left-hand side on deck one. And drag practice track two on the right-hand side on deck to so you just got to click the track and drag and drop it onto the right-hand side or left hand side. You should now see that the information of each track is populating each deck. The main thing we are going to be looking at is the tracks, wave forms. The waveform is a visual representation of the track using lines and waves. And as you can see, there are three different wave forms on your screen. The extended wave form at the top. This is so you can see the wave form close up in better detail when you are playing the track. And this waveform moves across the screen when you play the track so you can see what is being played at that time. The full waveform is on each deck. So this is the full wave form on deck one, and this is the fault way of farm on deck to this is where you can see the full tracks waveform and what will be coming up next in a track on a whole. And then we have the preview waveform at each track in the library. So just here in the library, you can see a preview of each tracks waveform. This is so you can preview each tracks way of farm before you select them to play. Now the default setting for reco box is to have the waveforms colored blue. But what we're going to do now, it changed the color of the way bonds to three different colors, red, green, and blue. This way, it will be easier to see the different sounds and sections of the tracks when they are represented by different colors. So what we need to do is go to the Settings cog on the top right-hand side. And then go over to view on the left-hand side. And then scroll down until we see wave form. Then from here, from waveform, we just need to change the color to RGB, which stands for red, green, and blue. And then just below that, we also need to change it from half-wave form to full waveform. That box needs to be selected for full waveform, The box needs to be selected for RGB. So now we can exit settings. As you can see now, the tracks are looking a little more colorful, rather than just having the tracks waveforms set as one color of blue. This will make it a lot easier for us to identify the different sounds and sections of the tracks as we go through the course. And I just find it's nicer to look at then a sea of endless blue. Just on the left of the extended wave form, there is a little arrow here. If you click this, it opens up a magnifying glass with a plus and minus in it. This is zoom in and zoom out. Now, if I click the Zoom Out button, it's going to zoom out of the extended wave form. And then if I click the plus button, it's going to zoom all the way in. On the extended waveform. It's time to each DJs preference how zoomed in you want your web form. But for this course, I would recommend zooming all the way out. This is because the extended waveform will them move slower across the screen and you can see more of what's coming up next in the track, making it easier to watch and get your timings right when D Jane, especially when first learning. So now we've discussed the waveforms. We're now going to move on and take a look at the two buttons we are going to be using the most throughout this course. These are the play and pause button and the q bottom, which is just here on deck one, and just here on deck to the play and pause button does exactly that. When you press play, it plays. So I'm going to do it here on deck one. And then when you press it again, it pauses and stops the track. At that point, when you press Play, you will see the waveform starts moving across the screen from right to left. When the waveform passes over the white line in the middle, that is the stone that you will hear from the track in real time. The white line in the middle of the extended waveform is called the play head. When you press Play, you can also see a marker move across the full wave form on deck one to let you know what part of the track is playing in relation to the fault track? So I'm just going to press play again. From here you can see the track moving from right to left. And when it passes over the playhead in the middle, that's the sound you hear in real time. Then over on the full waveform, you can see a white marker moving across the tracks. So you can see where you are in relation to the full track. The Q button just above it has a few more functions. If you press the Q button whilst the track is playing, it acts like a reset button and stops the track and takes it back to the Q point. So e.g. if I press Play now, then when I press the Q button is going to stop the track and take you back to the Q point. The Q point is represented on record box here with a small triangle underneath the wave form. The Q point is generally set on the start of the very first beats of the track, which is called the downbeat. And as you can see here, is not set to the very first bit of the track is slightly before. So what we can do is move the coupon and set it to a different position. We're going to move it to the various started the very first beat, which as we have said, is called the downbeat. We can use the cursor in the mouse to click and drag the extended waveform. So the very start of the first beat is right on the playhead and then press the Q button. I'm just going to click the first track and then drag it across. Then from here, when the playhead is near the first beat, I'm just going to press the Q button. And as you can see here, the Q point is no move to this position. There is no need to try and be too accurate with this because the Q point will always snap to the start of the class is beat. So just for this example, I'm going to zoom in a bit more on the waveform to show you if I was to move the extended waveform and the trucks slightly off from the first beat and then still press the Q button whilst the track is paused, it still snaps to that first beat. So e.g. I'll show you again. So I'm just going to move it and set the Q point before the first beat, and then move the playhead before the first beat of the track. So that's nowhere near the first beat of the track, but because it's closer to this beat than it is to the one before it. When I press the Q button, it's going to set the Q point on this first beat and snap it to that one. So now we can zoom all the way back out again. Neighborhoods press play on deck one, and now press the coupon as the track is playing, the track will stop and go back to the first beat of the track. So I'm going to press play on deck one, and then press the Q button as the track is playing. And it takes us straight back to that first beat of the track. So there are two ways that you can use the Q button. When the track is playing. And you press the Q button, it stops the track and takes it back to the start. If the track is paused and you press the Q button, it will reset the Q point. Now because we're going to be using these two buttons the most, there is an easier way to use them, then just clicking them with the mouse cursor. We're going to assign these buttons to keys on your keypad and use the keypad instead. To do this, we need to go to Settings up in the top right-hand corner. And then go to the keyboard tab at the top. And then from here we're going to go to deck one first and click the plus icon next to deck one. And this will open up all our keyboard shortcuts. So at the minute on deck one, the play and pause button is set to the keys. But what we're going to do is change this. I'm just going to secondary click or right-click and then click Change. Now I'll ask you to press a key combination to set to this function. So what I'm going to do now is press the letter a. And as you can see in the middle now it says key combination a, and that's what I want you guys to do as well. It does say that this is currently assigned to cube, but that's fine. All we're going to do now is click, okay. It will say change key mapping. And what we want to click here is reassign. It overwrites the previous key. And what you can see now, it's changed to the letter a. And we're going to do the same with the Q button just below. This time we're going to press the plus icon that's in line with the Q button. And from here we're going to press the letter Q. So again, it will say key combination cube, currently assigned to beat sync. And that's fine. We're going to click, Okay. Change key mapping. Yes, we want to re-assign that letter to this function. Now what you should see on deck one is the play and pause button is assigned to the letter a and the Q button is assigned to the letter Q. So I'm just going to click the Minus on deck OneNote, and then click the Plus on deck to, to open up deck two shortcut keys. I'm going to do something similar here now. So for playing, pause on deck to, we're going to right-click the letter n. Click Change. And this time we're going to set it to the letter L. So as you can see now, key combination is L currently assigned to loop out, which is fine. Click Okay, then re-assign. Same with the function q. We're going to right-click the key that it's set to hate. Click Change. Press a key combination now and we're going to press the letter 0. So key combination 0, currently assigned to call previous memory cue. That's fine. Click Okay, reassign. Now what we have for deck two is play and pause is assigned to letter L and Q is signed to letter 0. And that's brilliant. So now what we need to do is exit the settings. From here. What I'm going to do is just drag up the cam over my keyboard so you can see what I'm doing here now on the camera, you can see what I'm doing with my keypad as well. Now when I press the letter a on my keypad, deck one will start playing. Then when I press Q deck one will stop and go back to the Q point. Just like you access the Q button, I'm going to press Q. It takes deck one back to the start of the track. Same on deck to, if I press the letter L, D2 will start playing. Then when I press the letter 0, d2 will stop playing and go back to the Q point. But as you can see on deck to the Q point isn't right at the start of the first beat of the track. So let's move that by moving the extended waveform with the Mohsen cursor. So the first beat is on the playhead. Whilst the track is paused, we're going to press the letter 0, and that represents the Q button, and that's reset the Q point here on deck two. So let's try that again. On deck to, I'm going to press play it with the letter L. And then press the letter 0 to take it back to the start to the coupon. There we go. If there's any track where the Q point is not at the start of that first beat. When you load it up on the deck, you're going to have to reset the Q point of that track, just like we did them. So that the Q point is set to that started the very first beat. With these shortcut keys, you can assign any function on the decks to any keys you want to on your keyboard. So play pause and q doesn't have to be on these exact keys. But there are a couple of reasons why we are assigning play and pause and Q to these specific keys are for this course. One reason is because Q and a, at the two letters furthest to the left of the keyboard that are above and below each other. And 0 and l are the two letters furthest to the right on the keyboard. They're above and below each other. Now we're not using P because it has a colon and semicolon underneath it, and it's probably easier to keep them as all letters for now. Another reason why we are putting the Q button above the Play Pause button, because that is how the buttons lead ion most DJ controllers index. So as you can see on the software here, the Q button is above the play button. And this is what it's like on Mars. Dj controllers and DJ equipment and CD jazz. The Q button is always above the play and pause button. The shortcut keys that we'll be using in this course are also the shortcut keys that I use when I'm preparing my tracks and practicing mixes on my laptop and record bucks. I know that they're in good positions to have shortcut keys for practicing mixing with when you've got your laptop. So just a quick point before we move on, you may also notice that when you hold the mouse cursor over certain features in record box, it explains in detail what that feature does. So e.g. if I hold the mouse cursor over Q button, is going to explain to me all the different features that the Q button does. This is a great tool for beginners called tooltips, where if you hold your mouse cursor over a feature, explains what it does need. To be honest, we don't really need this feature in this course. This is because we're only going to be using very basic features at the moment. And I will be explaining how to use them as we go along. If you have Tooltips on and start putting your mouse cursor over all different types of features on the decks. It may get confusing and give you too much information at once Before you actually need it. So e.g. if I hold the mouse cursor over this queue, it'll explain what quantizes, but we don't need to know what quantize is just yet. Same with the slip function and same with the empty here for mass, the tempo. It can be a good tool for you to turn on in the future if you do want to be reminded of what features do. But for now, it's probably best if we turn it off. So what we're going to do is go up into the top right-hand corner on Settings again, then go to view. Then scroll down until we find tooltips. Then from here we can just take it off and exit settings. Now if I hold the most cursor over a feature, it doesn't come up with the distracting explanation. So that being said, let's get back to the play and pause button and Q button. The main ways in which we are going to be using the Play and Pause button and the Q button is to basically start the track and then stop the track and go back to the star. But the Q button does have some other uses which we are going to quickly cover. Note just so you know what they are. If you press and hold the Q button whilst the track is paused, at the Q point, the track will play for as long as you hold down the Q button until you let it go. So e.g. if I hold down the letter Q, now, it's going to play the tract and sample the tract for as long as I have the key press downfall. And as soon as I let go or the letter Q, the track will stop and go back to the Q point. And if you press and hold down the Q button, but want the track to keep playing and not go back to the start. When you let go, you can press the play button at the same time and then let go of the Q button and the track will continue playing. So e.g. if I hold down the Q button, it will sample the track and keep playing for as long as I hold onto the Cube button. Then if I press Play and press the letter a and then let go of the Q button. The track will continue playing. So now to get it back to the staff, I'm just going to press the Q button and the track is back at the start. We're not really going to be using the Q button for them last two reasons. They are more for when you're a DJ and live on actual DJ equipment. But I just thought I'd let you know what else to Cuba and does in case you start playing around with it and he wasn't sure why it was doing certain things. So now you know how to fully use it. So there we have it. Our settings in the DJ software should now be set up correctly. And we have our first couple of shortcut keys setup ready for the next lesson in the course, which we'll be learning how to be matched the tracks together and to get them sewn in good and in time with each other will also be keeping the camera here on the keyboard going forward whenever we can. So you can see what I'm doing on my keyboard in real time so you can copy along with me. I'll see you in the next video. 6. Beat Matching: In this video, we're going to cover water betas and how we can beat much two tracks together, so they are in time with each other and sound good together. The word beat gets thrown around a lot in DJ. And when people are talking about music in general, a common mistake is people think that a beat is a sound. Light when people say, listen to when the beat comes in, which is understandable because it sounds right. And it will be easy to assume that a beat is a sound, but a beat is not a sound. A beat is actually a measurement of time. So if you have a look at the extended waveform here at the top of the screen. You can see that each beat is represented by a white line. And the space between the white lines are the beats. The zone people can often mistake as a beat, is actually the sound of the kick drum. The reason why people can often assume a beat is the sound of the kick drum is because in dance music, there is often a kick drum or the start of every beat. Just like in these practice tracks. At the start of every white line, there is a kick drum. So I'm just going to press play on track one here. And as you can see, every time there's a white line, there's also a kick drum. So as you can see that it's quite understandable why people can think that a beat is the sound of the kick drum. Another way that I can show you that a beat is not the sound of the kick drum is if I drag an actual track up for a second. So I'm just going to drag the track Calibri or up on deck one. And I'm going to put this track to a part where it has no kick drums. And you can see that the track continues with the beats, even with no kick drum. So I have a listen to this section of the track. So as you can hear that there are no kick drums in that part of the track. The white lines still continue and the beat still carries on. Another example is if I just drag a hip pop and R&B track up. Here on this track, on the left-hand side, rockstar, you can just ignore the coupons for now. This is attract from another course. But you can still see the white lines and the beats that are in the track. But on this track, the kick drum is not every beat, it's at random times. So I have a listen to this track here. So this track, rockstar still has a beat, but it just shows that there's not a kick drum. At the start of every beat. A beat is a measurement of time. So now that we have established that a beat as a measurement of time and not the sound of the kick drum. We can move on. The beat is how you can measure the speed of a track. You measure the speed of the track by how many beats there are in 1 min. And this is called beats per minute or BPM far shot. The slower the track, the lower the BPM value, the faster they attract, the higher the BPM value. As we can see here on practice track one is 122 beats per minute. So the BPM of the tracks are shown in these circles here on deck one, on deck tomb. And also you can see that practice track two is at 124 beats per minute, which means that practice track one will be slower than practice track two. If we were to press play on both these tracks at the same time, they're eventually going to go at different speeds and they're not going to sound very good together. So let's have a listen to this. I'm going to press play on deck e1 and e2 at the same time and listen to what happens to the tracks. So as you can hear that the beats and the tracks slowly start to get further and further apart and they start sending worse and worse. When this happens, when the beats are not in time with each other, it is called double beating. Apart from the music going completely off, which has happened to me many times. But that's a different story. Double beating is a DJ's worst nightmare. Years ago when DJ's used to DJ, we've just finals. They had to do this beat matching manually, completely by ear with no technology to help them out. And this skill took years to perfect. But no thanks to technology, you can shortcut all them years of learning to beat match by pressing one little button, button called the Sync button. The Sync button will automatically snap the beats in time with each other and also keep them perfectly in time with each other whilst you are mixing. Now, there are still a lot of old-school DJs who still liked to beat match by ear and frown upon the Sync button being used. But in my opinion, those people are dinosaurs and need to move with the times. I can say this because I'm one of them dinosaurs. I went to DJ the hardware on vinyl decks and it took me years to perfect the beat matching skill by ear. And I believe that the Sync button is a great tool to use and it's one of the main reasons why learning to DJ today is much more fun and easier to do. The end result for the audience is still the same. If not better with the Sync button. So if you ever come across a DJ saying that using the Sync button is not real deejay, which will probably get at some point when learning to DJ. Don't listen to them, leave them stuck in their old ways and carry on using the Sync button. There is a lot more today Jane, than trying to beat much by year. Trust Mac, using the Sync button is still real deejaying. So anyway, that being said, let's move on and give it a go. Record books should be set to the correct setting for beat sync by default. But we're just going to check before we move on that we're both on the same setting. So we're going to go to settings in the top right-hand corner. Then we're going to go to controller. And then Deck. I'm from here, we're going to scroll down until we find beat sync slash BPM sink, which is just here. What we want is beat sync selected. Beat sync means that the beats will snap in time with each other when you press Play, which is what we want. But with BPM sink, the beats won't snap in time with each other when you press Play. So to be more effective, we want beat sync selected. Let's exit settings. Now, all we need to do is activate bulk beat sinks on each deck just by clicking it with the mouse cursor. So as you can see now, deck one is 122 beats per minute, and deck two is 124 beats per minute. So I'm going to press beat sync just here on deck one, and then beat sync just here on deck to. You can see now that they are both activated by being lit up white. Now you can see that both tracks are at the same BPM. So deck one is at 122 beats per minute and deck two is at 122 beats per minute. Also. You may also notice now that the beat grid and the white lines on the tracks are now in line with each other. Now if we were to press play on both tracks at the same time, they should stay in time with each other. There should be no but double beating and this shows sound good together. Let's have a listen. Another quick point that you may have noticed is that both decks are at 122 beats per minute and not 124 beats per minute. Why did they go to 120, 224? And this is because deck one at the moment is the master deck. So as you can see here in orange on deck one, it is lit up as the master. The master deck determines the BPM of both tracks, which means that the other track always follows the BPM of the master deck. So if deck two was the master deck, both tracks, we've got 224 beats per minute. So I'm just going to take beat sync off again. Reset the BPM of this track. Now that both at the original speeds, if I was to change that to to the master deck. So now it's lit up on the right-hand side. And I know Press beat sync on both tracks. You can see now that they both have gone to 124 beats per minute. So whichever track is the master deck determines the BPM and the other deck will follow the master decks BPM. Now whichever track is, the master deck isn't too important right now. But I just wanted to explain why this happened and how it works. Just in case you were wondering and in case during the call. So we have different BPMs as each other when we beat sent the tracks up. It doesn't really matter throughout the course if we have different BPMs as each other, as long as the two tracks you I'm mixing are the same BPM beats inked up. Now before we move on, just to have a bit of a practice, what I would like you to do is set one of the tracks off playing and get used to pressing Play and Q on the other deck. To get used to pressing play on stop on the track by using the keys on the keyboard. So e.g. I'm going to set deck one off and press play on track one. What I'm going to do is press play on deck to using that key. Then I'm going to reset the truck on the right-hand side. And then press play again. You get the idea. Sometimes it can be weird for people to have a pause button under Q button that both stop the track. What we need to do is just get into the habit of pressing the Q button to reset the track back to the star and to not pause the track. This is because if you took press the pause button to stop the track and then press the Q button to take it back to the start. It won't go back to the star. It will reset the Q point in that position. So e.g. if I press play on deck to then press pause and then go, Oh, I need to go back to the start of the track and press the Q button. It actually resets the coupon. Then we have to drag the trek through the playhead, press the Q button again, and reset. So I just want you to get into the habit of pressing Play to start the track, and then Q to restart the track. What you would have noticed as well is the beat snap in time with each other when I press play. And that is the effect of the beat sync. You didn't notice that not one point I was double beating when I had both tracks playing at the same time. This again is why beat sync is so good. So have a go at both sides on deck one, a deck to pressing play and the Q button. And then we can move on to the next video. We'll be learning about the all-important phrase and phrase matching. See you there. 7. Phrase Matching: In this video, I'm going to explain to you what phrases and show you how to do phrase managing. A phrase is 32 beats. Sometimes there can be exceptions where there may be phrases of 16 beats. But to keep this simple for now, a phrase is 32 beats. This is something you need to remember. I'm probably one of the most important things you need to remember when it comes to learning to DJ. That's a phrase is 32 beats. These 32 phrases are the building blocks that make up modern-day electronic music. The reason why these 32 phrases are so important when deejaying is because significant changes in attract happen at the start of these 32 beat phrases. Now there may not be a significant change every 30 to beat phrase. But when the tracks do change, it will happen at the start of a 32-bit phrase. This is important in DJ because if this is where the changes happen in a track, this is also where we want to be doing our changes when we're mixing as DJs, the audience expects the tracks to change in these 32 blocks. And if we as DJ's, don't do our mixes in time with these 32 beat blocks is going to sound off and out of time to the audience. So let me give you an example to make this a little clearer. I'm going to drag the track Calibri or up on deck one. Then I'm just going to reset the Q point. So I'm going to drag the play head to the first beat, press Q. And the Q point is set to the first beat. When I press play on the track Calabria, I want you to watch and listen out for the changes in the track at the start of these 32 phrases. I am also going to be pressing the hot cues as the track plays. And this is just a highlight the phrases in the track. So we can have a visual aid of where the phrases are. You don't need to do this yourself, and you don't need to know what the hot cues are just yet, as there'll be explained later in the course. For now, I just need you to watch and follow along with the 32 beats as I play the track. You can also count along in your head if you like. Okay. So you're ready for it. 3212, 3456, 7811, 1213, 1415, 1625, 2062, 7208. Perfect. So there you have it. You can see in that track the building blocks of the 32-bit phrases that make up the whole of the track. And as you may have noticed whilst listening and watching the truck, the truck doesn't always have a significant change every 32 beats. But the significant changes in the track do happen at the start of a new 32-bit phrase. It doesn't change. You can still generally hear a cymbal sound to represent the start of a 32-bit phrase, or a slight buildup and some extra noise at the start of a new 32 beat phrase. And as you can see in this track, Calabria is made up of nine different blocks of 32-bit phrases. And knowing this role of 32 beats and how phrases work and how to identify them in a track is going to be the key to our deejaying until when it comes to timing our mixes perfectly later in the course. So for now I'm just going to delete these hot cues and drag practice track one, backup onto deck one. Reset the Q point. So now looking at these two practice tracks, I've made it easy to see where the phrases are in the wave form. You should be able to visually see a 32-bit blocks on the tracks when looking at this full waveform here on deck one, on here on deck to sometimes on a track, they can remove the kick drum sound just before the next phrase to add a bit of anticipation, just before the start of the next phrase. And that is exactly what I've done here on these tracks and why it is so easy to see the phrases you should be able to hear just before the next phrase starts, the kick drum being removed. And you should also be able to hear when the new phrase starts the sound of a symbol to let you know that the start of a new phrase. So e.g. if I press play on track one, just before the start of the next phrase, should be able to see and hear that the kick drums go out and then as a symbol on the first beat just there. So what I want you to do now is a similar exercise to the last video, but this time I'm going to try and time pressing play at the start of a new 32 beat phrase. So instead of me pressing play randomly on the other track, I went to press play at the start of a new phrase so that the phrases match up together. And then you should be able to see the changes of the track happen at the same time. So answer press play on track 14321. Now I press play at the start of a 32-bit phrase. You can see the tracks will change at the same time. I'm just going to do that again one more time. 321. Good to try it the other way around 4321. So when you have both tracks, phrase is lined up and time together. This is called phrase matching. Beat matching is when you're timing the beats together. And phrase matching is when you're timing the phrases together. So as you can see now, this is also the reason why I like to have my wave forms zoom right the way out so I can see the phrase is coming up and I can tie in pressing play easier to get the phrases in time with each other. So before we move on to the next video, I just want you to have a few practices are pressing play at the right time and phrase match in these two tracks together. Have a go at trying it both ways. Tried timing track one, track two, and also tried trimming track to track one. I know this may seem very basic and not to entertaining at the moment. But bear with me. It is important that we do get used to pressing play at the start of a new phrase and get used to the Q button to reset the track back to the start and not using pause. If there is anything you take away from this course, one thing that you have to remember, please let it be this lesson. You always want to press play at the start of a 32 beat phrase and phrase match the tracks together when mixing. This is so that when the tracks change, they change at the same time. This is one of the biggest mistakes that I see all the time from beginning DJs. There by a DJ controller, find the Sync button that snaps of beats in time with each other. And then think that's all there is to deejaying. As we will find out throughout this course, that is not the case. There is more to DJ than just using beat sync, including the timing of 32-bit phrases and phrase matching as we have now just touched on. And that is what we're going to do from now on moving forward is work more on this foundation of our new knowledge of phrase matching. Start to understand when to time tracks together to do some actual mixing. So well done for getting this far in the course. You are creating a great foundation for DJing. And I hope that you are learning a lot and enjoying the course so far. We are now ready to ditch the practice tracks or move on to the next video and look at the structure of an actual damped struck. See you there. 8. Sections Of A Dance Track: In this video, we're going to cover the main sections of a dance track. There are five main sections that we're going to be looking at today that make up a dance track. These are the intro, the intro plus the break or break down, the chorus and the outro, as you may have guessed, the intro and outro makeup, the very start and the very end of the track. The breakdown and chorus make up the main middle section of the track. Depending on the track, there can be different amounts of breaks and choruses. The tracks that we will be using in this course, I have specifically made shorter for the purpose of this course. So they will only consist of one brick section in each track and one chorus section in each track. This is so that we can still learn the principles of basic deejaying. And we don't have to wait and sit around listening to 6 min of each track just to do the next mix, it will make learning the fundamentals of mixing the end of one track into the start of another track. A lot easier for us by cutting out some of the middle parts that are not necessary to learn to DJ. But it's worth knowing that generally, in dance tracks, there will consist of two breakdowns and two choruses in the middle of each track. Each of these sections have its own purpose within the track and we'll go over what these are now. We will also have a listen to what these sections generally sound like and also what they look like on the waveform. Where to load two tracks up now from the download in tracks for the course. On deck one, we need to track last night at DJs saved my life. And on deck to, we're going to load the track called lawless theme. And what we're going to do first is get that Q point at the very start of the first beat of each track. The intro of a track generally starts off with simple percussion sounds. Percussion sounds are sounds that could be found on a drum kit. E.g. the sounds of a kick drum, hi-hat collapse. All snares are all signs of a drum kit. So e.g. if I just zoom in on the extended waveform here, where the Q point is now is the sound of the kick drum. So let's have a listen to that. Then. In the middle of the B is generally a high hat. So I'm just going to set the Q point here for a second. That higher sound is a high hat. And on the second beat, There's generally a kick drum and a clap at the same time. Every second beat sounds different. So I have listened to the beats here. So you can kind of hear it go. So that is generally what this percussion sounds. So unlike the kick drum, the high hats, and the clubs, they are short hits of sound that come from a drum kit. You don't need to be able to isolate these different separate sounds at the moment. All you need to really remember is that percussion sounds are sounds that you can hear off a drum kit that a generally one hit sounds. At this point in the track, in the intro, where there are just percussion sounds, you generally cannot tell which track it is. There is nothing significant about the track at this point where you would be able to identify which track it is. So we have a listen to the start of track one. Then have a listen to the start of track two. Now, even though this sounds slightly different, you still cannot tell which track it is. The intro section with percussion sounds is very basic because it is used for mixing in the new track into the track that is already playing, because this part of the track is not very significant and he's just percussion sounds. You cannot tell when it's playing over the other track. And this is why it's used for mixing. So e.g. if I was to put the track one in the middle and then play the start of the track lowest theme over the top. You won't be able to tell much difference. So as you can see here that there we're out of time. But the point was that you cannot tell that the percussion sounds of lawless theme. We're over the top of the track last night, a DJ, I save my life. The intro starts off very simple with basic percussion sounds. And then after a phrase or to the track introduces more sense to it. And on this track, on the left-hand side, last night a DJ saved my life. You should then be able to hear a baseline come in under slight melody. So let's have a listen to this start at this track. I'm just going to pause it there. So the baseline is the law of frequency sounds that you can hear. The sound and the melody is the main kind of catchy part of the tune that stands out the most. So it's like it didn't, it didn't. Then it didn't. And I hope you liked my impressions there, but I hope it makes it a little more clearer for you. Let's have a listen. There you go. You can't even tell the difference. So now, even though you can identify what the track is and these sounds are more significant, it is still part of the intro of the track. This is because it's still building up and introducing the track and it has not yet got to the main parts of the track. So because it is no longer just basic percussion sounds anymore, and it now has a baseline. I'm melody added into it. But it's still part of the intro. I like to call this section in drop plus. I call it the intro plus, because it is still the intro, but it has some added significant sounds. Now, when I use the term significant sounds, generally referring to sounds that would stand out to an audience and keep their attention. The dictionary definition of significant is worthy of attention. So if I refer to significant sounds, what I mean is sounds that would keep the attention of the audience. I will be using this term quite a bit throughout the course because I believe is an important point when learning to DJ when discussing intros and outros of tracks, which are what we'll be using for most of our mixing. So in my opinion, the percussion sounds of the intro and not significant. They're quite flat and boring. But soon as the baseline and melody command, I will class these are significant sounds because they would get my attention. And you can also identify what tracker is. So let's have a quick listen to that little transition again. So it goes from percussion sounds to significant science. Let's have a listen. So as you can hear the percussion sounds that are not significant wouldn't really grab your attention, can get a bit boring after awhile. Then insignificant sounds that would grab your attention and that you could dance to. So what I'm going to do is highlight these sections of the track with hot cue markers. Again, just like I did when we were counting phrases. You don't need to do this yourself. Again, they are just a visual aid so we can see the different sections easier. We will cover hot cues in more detail later in the course. So just as insignificant science come in, I'm going to set a hot Q market just here. Okay, so moving on. After the intro and intro plus, there were generally become a break or break down in the track. Some people call it a break, and some people call it break down. It's the same thing. A break is when the track breaks down and has less energy, and then starts to build back-up the energy again towards the chorus. The break generally doesn't have any kick drums in it or beats, as some people like to call it, a break generally only consists of just the main melody of the track or any vocals. Again with no kick drums. So let's have a listen to this tracks break and you should be able to hear what I mean. So I'm just going to put it towards the end of the intro plus, and listened to the transition from the intro to the breakdown. As you can hear that there's no kick drums And it's just some slight melody and vocals. And this is the breakdown of the track. After the track is broken down the energy during the break and then starts to build back up the energy again, you'd think get the chorus. The chorus is the most energetic part of the track, where all the sounds come together and the kick drum comes back in. This is where everyone will dance and jump around to the track. Now it is worth noting that the first beat of the chorus is called the drop. You may hear people say, listen to the drop of this track. And that basically means listened to in the chorus comes in on this track. So let's have a listen to the break of this track and the breakdown, and then it will build back up to the chorus. So as you can here now we're into the chorus. So I'm quickly going to do is just set hockey marker at the start of the chorus and on the first beat, which is known as the drop. Now, as we have mentioned, in a normal dance track, there will generally be another break and another chorus in the track. But because I've made these tracks shorter for the purposes of this course, after this chorus, it goes straight into the outro. The outro of the track is very similar to the intro in the way that it will generally just consist of percussion sounds. And the main significant signs of the track will end. So I'm just going to move this track a bit closer to the end of the chorus and listened to the transition between the chorus into the outro. Now you can hear where in the outro, which is just percussion sounds. As you may know, start to notice the sections of a dance track are usually determined by the different sounds that are included in that part of the track. And because of this, you can often see the different sections of the track just by looking at the waveform. So e.g. let's have a look at the full waveform here on the track, just going to reset the track back to the Q point. So the intro of the track, you can see here with the blue waveform and it's a bit smaller. And then the intro plus adds more sounds, a more significant sounds, including the kick drum and the waveform goes slightly bigger under red color, and then it started to break. The tracks waveform changes color again and goes green and it goes smaller until it builds up. It starts going into a blue color. And then just at the start of the chorus, again, the waveform goes bigger and into a red color. And then for the whole of the chorus, it's red and the wave form is larger until it transitions into the outro. And the outro, the waveform is little shorter and of a blue color. So from here now, you can start to pick up on the different sections of the track just by looking at its waveform. This is one reason why I like to change the waveform color to red, green, and blue. And the waveform to a full waveform or not half. Because the sections of the track are a lot easier to see all the time. And with experience, you'll get used to seeing the waveform unknowing word. The sections of a dance track are just by looking at the full wave forms. You can even look down at the library at the different preview waveforms and pick out the different sections of the tracks and get a simple overview of the full structure of the track just by looking at it. So just here on track number two, you can see the intro, the intro plus break and break down the chorus and then the outro Again. It is important to note that not all tracks amid the same way and have the same structure. But most of them do follow a similar structure to this one. They'll have the intro, the star, followed by a breakdown, and then a chorus, and then maybe another breakdown, and then another chorus followed by the outro at the end. The key thing is to be able to identify these different sections and know where they are in your tracks and what they sound like. In the next few videos, we're going to start mixing these tracks together. And I'm going to show you how to time the different tracks together to get perfect mixes every time. I see you in the next video. 9. Basic Mix 1: In this video, we're going to do our first basic mix. We're going to learn how to mix the first two tracks together of our DJ routine. This is where everything we have learned up until this point comes together and becomes clear to why we have covered it earlier in the course. So we now know that each track has different sections. Intro, intro plus break, chorus and an outro. We also know that the intro and outro mainly consist of percussion sounds. Percussion sounds are sounds that are found on a drum kit. They're not really significant. The intros and outros are used for mixing because they can be played of other tracks or not be that noticeable. We also know that the intro plus break and chorus consists of significant sounds. Significant sounds are sounds that will hold the audience's attention, such as baselines, melodies, and vocals. When these significant sounds come in, you should be able to identify what track is. This may seem like a lot to take in, but don't worry, we will keep reinforcing these points as we continue throughout the course. As we start applying this knowledge and start mixing the tracks together, it will become a lot clearer and easier to understand. Now, the key to doing basic mixing is that when one track significant sounds and the next track significant sounds begin. And that is the key to basic mixing. You have to time the points in the track where you would lose the audience's attention. With the points in the next track where you gain the audience's attention and time these two points together. That way, when you are mixing and playing your tracks, you always keep the audience's attention and therefore, hopefully always keeping them entertained. We want to avoid any flat parts in our mixing. We're just percussion sounds will be playing by themselves. And we also want to avoid any clashes and our mixes were both tracks significant sounds will be playing at the same time over the top of each other. If we just have percussion sounds playing to the audience, there will not be enough going on to keep their attention. And if both truck significant signs were playing over the top of each other, they would clash and it wouldn't sound good to the audience. So the key to a perfect sounding mix is to find out where the significant sounds end on the track that you are playing. And then find it where there's significant sounds. Begin on the next trial you want to play next, and then time them in a way that the tracks switch a mix well together at them two points. And that is exactly what we're going to do now together with these two tracks here, with this mix, we are going to start with the truck last night. A DJ saved my life already playing and then mix out of it and into the track lawless theme. So the first thing we need to do is find out where the significant sounds end on the track. Last night, a DJ saved my life. And as we have already listened to it, we should note that it's at the end of the chorus when the outro beat star. So let's have a listen to that section of the track. So just here, as you can see, the red waveform ends and the blue waveform begins. That is when the significant sounds and on the track last night at DJ saved my life. It is at the end of the chorus and it starts at the outro. So it is just that this point here that we want the next track significant sounds to begin. So what we need to do now is find out where the significant sounds begin on the next track, lawless theme. We're going to have a listen to the start of the track Lola steam and listened to and insignificant sounds come in. So as we can here though is just percussion sounds at the start. And we can see the tracks waveform change color around here. So I can assume that the percussion sounds will last up until this point. And then insignificant sounds and the intro plus we'll start here. Let's have a listen to that. So as you can hear that at that point, the baseline and melody comes in on the track lawless theme. And this is the point where the significant sounds begin. Just here. So it's at these two points here that we want the tracks to switch over and mixed correctly for perfect sounding mix. Now you might be thinking that's great, but how do we time these tracks together so they switch over at this point, I'm mixed correctly. That's a great question. We now know that 32 beat phrases are the building blocks of tracks and whether significant changes happen in attract. So what we need to do now is work out how many phrases that are in the track before the significant sounds begin on the track lawless theme. We need to work out if there is one phrase, two phrases are three phrases, and so on, before the significant sounds begin. Now we don't really want to be pressing play at the start of the track and counting 32 beats in our heads every time we want to work this out. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you a good little shortcut on how you can quickly count phrases of a track on deck to here on the right-hand side, there's a couple of arrows and taxane hot. Q. What we're going to do is click this and you'll have a drop-down and we're going to select beat jump. What beat jumped does is allows you to jump forwards and backwards in the track by the amount of beats that you select. And the main one we're going to be using is the 32 beat beat jump, because that is the number of beats normally in a phrase. So e.g. these two arrows here on either side of the number 32. If I was to press the right arrow, it will jump forward in the track 32 beats. Then if I was to press the Arrow backwards, it would jump back in the truck, 32 bits back to the same point. So now we can use this to quickly count how many phrases there are before the significant sounds begin in this track lowest theme. So what I'm going to do is press backwards 32 beats until I get back to the start of the track. So I'm going to press it once and then again twice. There we have it. That is two phrases before the significant stones come in on the track lawless theme. And what we need to do now is work out when to press play on the track lawless theme. Whilst the track last night, a DJ say, my life is playing to time their mics, right? We can do this by working backwards from the start of the outro on the track last night a DJ saved my life. We can use the beat jump again to jump backwards two phrases from the point where the significant sounds end on the track on the left. So again, I'm going to go over to the arrows that say hot cue, get the drop-down, and go to beat jump. So I'm going to now jump backwards two phrases. One, to using the 32 beat, beat jump. I went to move backwards two phrases. So we are now at the point of the start of the chorus of last night at TJ saved my life. As we know, this is called the drop. So this tells us that to time this mix perfectly. So when the significant sound and on the track last night a DJ saved my life, the significant sounds begin on the track, lawless theme. We have to press play on the track lawless theme on the drop of last night, DJ saved my life. So let's give this a go and see how it sounds. We're going to start the truck on the left, in the middle of the break. We're going to make sure beat sync is on for both tracks. And we need to make sure the Q point is set on the very first beat on the track. We're going to mix in next. And let's do the mix. So what I'm going to do when the course of last night a DJ saved my life, starts on the drop. I'm going to press play on the track lawless theme on the right. Let's have a listen. There you have it. That's how you do the first deejay mix of this DJ routine. And as you can hear that both tracks with timed perfectly. When one track significant sounds ended, the next track, significant science began. Keeping the audience's attention and keeping them entertained with no flat parts of just percussion sounds and also no clashes of significant sounds playing over the top of each other. It is a perfectly timed mix. Have a go at time in that mix yourself on your own DJ software and haven't listened to how it sounds and how the significant sounds switchover at the right time. Then once you've had a go at that, Let's move on to the next video where we're going to be looking at how we can mix these two tracks a little bit better by using the cross fader to blend the tracks a little more smoothly. I see you in the next video. 10. Using The Crossfader: In the last video, we learned how to turn these two tracks together perfectly by finding out where the significant zone started and ended on each track. And then by counting the phrase is leading up to them points and timing when to press Play. So they mixed together at the right time. In this video, we're going to look at how to use the cross fader effectively to blend the tracks together a little more smoothly. Instead of just pressing play out load and hearing the other track command straightaway at full volume. So firstly, if you don't already have the mix of you on your DJ software, we want to go to the top bar at record box, just up here. And click the mixer button that looks like a picture of some volume Vedas. This will open up the mix of you. In the middle of the two decks. There are quite a few buttons and dials here, but the only one we need to focus on at the minute is the cross fader here at the bottom. What the cross fader does is it helps us mixed from one track to the other smoothly by using only one fader. When the cross fader is in the center, like it is now, you should be able to hear both tracks at full volume at the same time. When the cross fader is all the way over to the left-hand side. You should only be able to hear deck one by itself at full volume. And when the cross fader is all the way over to the right-hand side. You should only be able to hear deck two by itself at full volume. And when it is moving in-between, it blends the tracks volumes in and out gradually. So let me give you a quick example. Good to put the cross fader in the center. Press play on both decks. When the cross fader is all the way over to the left-hand side. You can only hear deck one. Then when the cross Veda is all the way over to the right-hand side. You can only hear deck to anywhere in between. It blends the two tracks gradually. So what we're going to do now is the same mix again, but start the mixed with the cross fader all the way over to the left-hand side. So you can only hear deck one. And what we're going to do is slowly and steadily move the cross fader to the center, slowly fading in deck to just as insignificant sounds are due to switch over. We want the cross fader in the center so that both tracks are at full volume for the switch. Then after the significant science have switched, we want to slowly start moving the cross fader to the right-hand side towards deck to and start painting out the track that is just played on deck one. Let's have a go at that and give it a listen. We're going to start the track last night. A DJ has saved my life in the middle of the break again. Beat sync is on for both tracks. The Q point is set on the first beat of the track lawless theme. The cross fader will be all the way over to the left-hand side. And for this mix, we're just going to use the mouse cursor to move the cross fader across from one side to the other. Now a good tip for this particular mix is that because the mixed takes four phrases in total, you can divide the cross fader up into four sections to represent the four different phrases. Over each phrase, you can move the cross fader one-quarter distance across. So during the first phrase, you can move it one quarter across the cross fader. And gerund phrase two will move it towards the center phrase free, three qualities across. Then of a phrase for it, we're going to move it all the way across to the right-hand side, splitting the movement up into four quarters across the four phrases. So let's do the mixed one more time, but this time using the cross fader. Hopefully as you can here, then that is a lot smoother mix and the tracks blend together really well, rather than just pressing play on the track lowest theme, and both volumes being constantly throughout the mix. Now I'm quickly going to show you another way in which can use this by assigning the crossfade. It's a shortcut keys on your keyboard. So now we're going to go to Settings cog in the top right-hand corner, and then go to keyboard. And then we're going to go to the mixer tab and click the plus here. And what we need to do is scroll down and find slide cross fader to the left and to the right. So let's scroll down. Just here we have slide crossfade it to the left and slide cross fader to the right. What we're going to do is change the small setting. So not the medium and large, but the small settings. While the small setting does, is it moves the cross fader across in smaller increments. So you can be more precise with your mixing. And the medium and large options, move the cross fader across in bigger increments. When you press the buttons, It's up to you which one you choose. You can have a play around with all three. But for this course, I'm just going to use the small increments. So on this one here where it says slide cross Veda to the left, small in brackets. I'm going to click the plus icon. And let me just move this out of the way a slightly. Then it says, press a key combination now. And the key we're going to use is the comma just here. The reason why we're going to use the comma is because it has the arrow on the key. Once I press that key, I'm going to press okay. And then reassign. Now I'm going to do the same with slight crossfade it to the right, small again, click the plus icon, and from here press the full stop key. Again, I'm using this one because it has a right arrow on it. Then I'm going to click Okay, and then reassign. Now you can assign these to the arrow keys on your keypad. But the reason why we don't, through my own experience, is that these arrow keys also move over parts of the software that cannot be changed. So for me personally, I like to say it to these arrow keys here. And then these arrow keys will only move the cross fader. So now they're setup. We can exit the settings. As you can see, when I press the arrow keys, the comma and the full stop, it moves the cross fader across in the center in small increments. Another quick tip is if you double-click the cross fader at any point with your mouse cursor, it will take the cross fader to the exact center. So if I double-click here, it takes the cross fader to the exact center. I wouldn't recommend doing this when actually mixing, but just a quick tip if you did want to get it back to the true center. So there you have it. Have a go at doing that mix once again, but this time using the cross fader to mix the tracks more gradually and smooth way. Have a go both ways of mixing and see which one you prefer to try using the most cursor to adjust the cross fader across. And also try and use the keys on the keyboard to move the cross fader across as well. But remember to do it nice and smooth and make sure the cross fader is in a sense of for the switch and then completely over to the other side before the start of the next break. Now we know how to time our tracks and use the cross fader. And the next video, we're going to learn how to do the second mix of our DJ routine. See you there. 11. Basic Mix 2: In this video, I'm going to show you how to do the second mix of the DJ routine. Now on deck one, we need to track Calabria. We just need to set that Q-point right on that first beat of the track. Now we know the theory and basics. We're going to jump straight into it and work out how to do the mix. First, we need to have a listen to the starts of Calabria and work out how many phrases it takes to get to a significant moment in the track, and then how many phrases it takes to get to the break. So let's have a listen to this dots of Calabria. So as you can hear there, it's just simple percussion at the start. It's a heavy kick drum, followed by some hi-hats and claps. So as you can hear that the baseline comes in, followed by some melody. Again, the low frequency of the baseline and the catchy tune from the melody. So I'm just going to continue listening. Though. You can hear the track go from intro to intro plus and then into the breakdown. So what we're going to do is just work out how many phrases that is for each section. So I went to wind the track back to the start of the break, which is just here. Then I'm going to use the beat jump function again. I'm going to jump backwards 32 beats wants. This is the point here where the significant sounds start with a baseline of melody comes in. I'm going to jump back again another 32 beats. And this takes us back to the downbeat, the very first bit of the track. So we can say here that the intro right at the very start of the track, which just has percussion, consists of one phrase, which takes us up to this point. This is when the significant signs first come in on the track, the baseline melodies. And that also last for one phrase until it gets to the break of the track. The key thing to remember here that it takes one phrase to get to the significant sounds of the track Calabria. Now what we need to do is work out where the significant sounds end on the track lawless theme, and work backwards from that 0.1 phrase to see where we need to press play on the track Calibri or for the mix to time, right? So I haven't looked at the waveform here on the track lawless theme, we can generally see the intro, intro plus the break, the chorus, and then the outro. So what I'm going to do is have a listen to the transition between the chorus and the outro just to double-check. Okay, so we can see that this point here is where the significant sounds end on this track. It goes from the high-energy chorus to the low-energy of just percussion sounds. So what we're going to do from here is used beat Trump again, jumped backwards 32 bits. That is, this point here is one phrase before the significant sounds end. This is the point here where we need to press play on the track Calibri to time them mixed correctly. So to time is mixed, right? We need to wait one phrase from the drop of the chorus on lawless theme. So one way in which we can turn this mixed right and wait 32 beats after the start of the course to press play is to basically just count 32 bits in our heads from when the chorus starts on the track lawless theme, and then press play on the Calabria. But instead of counting, what we can do instead is set a hot Q Marker at this point. So that when this point comes up on the track, we know we have to press play on the track Calabria, and there's not counted needed. So what we're going to do here on deck two is change it back from beat jump, too hot cue. Then at this point, which if we look at the extended waveform, we can see that it is 57.1 bar. Now, we don't really need to worry about what bars are at this point in this course. But just so you have a reference point of where you want to set this hot Q is at 57.1 bar on the track, lowest theme. And at this point here, we're just going to press the letter a in the bank of hot cues. As I click that, it's going to sell hot Q Marker at this point. And as you can see now, it has a green marker on the waveform. I'll just move that across slightly. Has a green market here on the extended wave form and on the full waveform down on deck to and also in the hot queue bank, it has the timestamp of where the hot cue is saved. Now what hot cues are actually designed to do is to recall that position in the track when you press that hot cue. So e.g. if I press play on the truck loads theme and then press hot QA, it will recall that position in the track and play the track from that point. Press play on low esteem. Then click, hey, it's gonna take me back to that point every time. Using hot cues in this way, where we recall the position of a tract is a more advanced technique. And the technique I do not actually teach until the advanced section of my main DJ costs. But as well as being able to jump to certain points in a track, hot cues are also double up as visual markers. When I DJ professionally, I actually use the hotkeys more as a visual markers than I do to recall the positions of a track. And that is how we're going to use them today. When lawless theme is playing and gets to this point where we have set hot QA. We know it's at this point we need to press play on the track Calibri to time them mixed correctly. And a nice added such that we can do is write and make notes on the hot cues as well to give us prompts, and to let us know what to do at this hot Q. So what I'm going to do is secondary click this hot Q here, and it'll give me some options. So if I click add comments, I can just type in here, press play. So now we know when it gets to this hot cue in the future, this is where we need to press play. Another thing we're going to cover just before we do the mix is that the last mix we did lasted over four phrases in total. This is because at the start of lawless theme, it had two phrases of intro to the significant sounds and then to phrases of intro to the break, totaling four phrases. But this time at the start of the track Calabria, it has one phrase or ventral to the significant sounds, and then one phrase of intro plus two, the break, which this time totals to phrases. So what we need to do with the crossfade at this time is to divide the cross beta into two parts. Fault the mix. We should use the first phrase of the mix to start all the way over on the right-hand side. And then slowly move the cross fader to the center, ready for the significant sites to switch. And then use the second phrase of the mix to move the cross fader all the way over to the left-hand side, ready for the break of the track. This way the mixed with a cross beta will be smooth and also time right, with the whole mix. So let's give it a go and have a listen to that mix. Now, we're going to start the track on the right-hand side, in the middle of the break. We need beat sync on both tracks and both tracks at the same BPM. The coupon on the track Calibri or is on the first beat. We need the crossfade it all the way over to the right-hand side. We're going to press play on the track Calabria, when we get to the hot cue marker that says press Play. And for this mix, we're going to use the arrow keys to move the cross fader across over the two phrases instead of the mouse and the cursor. Let's do the mix and see how that sounds. There you have it. That is how you do the second mix of the DJ routine. Have a go at that mixture ourself. And then we can move on to the next and final mix of the DJ routine in the next video. See you there. 12. Basic Mix 3: In this video, we're going to do the third and final mix of this DJ routine. Now on deck to we want to load the tracker. Music sounds better. And again, we want to set that Q-point right on the first beat of the track. We should now be getting more familiar with what we need to do to time these tracks together. So first we need to find where the significant sounds star on the track music sounds better. And then work out how many phrases it takes to get to that point from the start of the track. So let's have a quick listen to the very start of this truck. I'm just going to put the cross fader in the center. So as we can just hear there, It's simple percussion sounds. And having a look at the full waveform here, I'm quite confident that these precautions signs last until this blue point here on the waveform. So let's have a listen. Okay, so we can see at this point here is when the percussion sounds and the intro stops and the break of the truck starts. Let's wind this back slightly. So as you can here with this track is different to the others. This track doesn't have an intro plus. It just goes from the beats with the basic percussion straight into the break of the track where the melody slowly starts to build up. It is quite common for tracks nowadays to do this. There are quite a lot of tracks that just go from an intro of just basic percussion straight to the back of the truck. That is one reason why I wanted to include a track like this in this course. Now we would still time the track and the mix with the same principles of when one track significant sounds end, the next track significant sounds begin. But what we have to do is just mixed attracts in a slightly different way with the cross fader. So firstly, we need to count how many phrases there are before the significant sums come in at the start of the break of this track. So we're going to beat, jump back on, on deck to then jump back 32 beats, once and twice. So that tells me that this track is two phrases until the break. And then what we need to do is work out where the significant sounds end on the track Calibri. And then we need to work back to phrases from that point and set a hot Q Marker at that point to tell us when to press play on the track music sounds better. So having a look at the waveform here on Calibri, or if this is the breakdown and then the chorus starts just here. We're going to look at any differences in the wave form when the track changes. So all the way up until this point, the waveform looks quite similar for the chorus. And then it goes a little darker red here. So I'm just going to listen to the transition of this part and see if it goes from the chorus to the outro. So we can hear a distinct change that going from the chorus to the outro beats of just percussion. So I'm just going to wind this extended wave form back to that point. Then from here, we need to jump backwards two phrases using the beat jump function 12. So we know at this point here is when we need to press play on the track, music sounds better for this significant sounds to switch at the right time. So I'm going to change this setting from beat jump back to hot queue. Click the button a in the hot queue bank to set our hock here at this point, if you are looking at the bars, this is 49.1. So at the point in this track, we want to set a hot Q Marker at 49.1. Then also we can secondary click this hot queue bank. Click, add comments, and type in press play. So similar to the last mix. When the track Calibri, it gets to this point. We know we need to press play on the track music sounds better to time the mixed correctly. Now what we need to do with the cross fader whilst we are mixing is we still need to get the cross fader all the way over to the right-hand side. Before the break starts on the track music sounds better. But instead of doing an equally and even throughout the mix, what we're going to do this time bring the tracking music sounds better, a lot more slowly and steadily over a longer period of time. Then mix out of the track Calabria a little bit faster. This time because the mics will be all the two phrases. Instead of taking one phrase to get to the center and then one phrase to get over to the right-hand side and doing an even mix across the cross fader. We're going to take one-and-a-half phrase this time to get to the center of the cross fader. And then only half a phrase to move the cross rate from the center all the way over to the right-hand side. We're going to move the cross fader a lot slower for the first one-and-a-half phrases, then a little bit faster for the last half a phrase. The two phrase mix. This doesn't have to be done perfectly and it's not a strict rule. These are just guidelines for this mix to sound a little bit better. The reason why we want to do this is because Calibri is chorus will be playing throughout the mix and attract music sounds better. We'll only have percussion sounds to mix with. So we want the chorus of Calabria to play louder for longer. So it will be the more dominant sound throat the mix. If we mix it equally, the percussion sounds of music sounds better, will be the dominant sound for the second half of the mix. And it won't sound very good to just have percussion sounds as the dominant sounds. For the second half. It will start to sound a little flat. I'm going to give you an example now of it done wrong with an equal half and half split on the cross fader. And then after it, I'll do the same mix again, but bring the cross fader in slower at the start and then mix it out faster at the end. Just so you can compare the two mixes and hear the difference for yourself. So it's a little clearer what I mean. So for this example, I'm going to stop the track Calabria already in the chorus. But before the point where we have to press Play, I'm going to put the cross fader all the way over to the left-hand side and then move the cross fader to the center after one phrase, and then all the way over to the right for the second phrase and give it a 5050 split. And notice how it sounds flat towards the end of the mix. Let's have a listen to that. So as you can hear that it loses a lot of energy towards the end of the mix. Now going to do the mix again, but this time I'm going to bring the crossfade it to the center. All but one-and-a-half phrases. So the track music sounds better, is introduced into the mix a lot slower. And then I'm going to move the cross beta from the center to the right hand side over the last half a phrase. So it will mix out the track Calibri at later in the mix and faster. Let's have a listen to the mixed on that way. Crossfade is going to start all the way over to the left-hand side. Both tracks of beats inked up. I don't want it to start the track. Calibri are already in the chorus, but before that, we have to press play on the track. So let's have a listen to it done that way and watch our manipulate the cross fader in this mix? None. Hopefully you will agree that that makes any better than the first. It didn't lose as much energy towards the end of the mix. And it would still hopefully sound better to the audience and keep their attention better throughout that mix. So a key thing to note here is that if you have a track that it just has precaution intro beats and then go straight to a break. You want to keep the other tracks chorus in the mix loader bit longer and just move the cross fader fully across in the last few moments to keep the energy higher throat, the mix. But you still want the significant sounds to switch at the same time. So keep that makes a go yourself, a play around with how the mix sounds when you move the crossfire to fully across later in the mix, use your ears and trust your ears to see what the mix sounds like as you move in the cross fader. And this is now when you have to start thinking more like a DJ. And things are not so black and white as they were before. And you have to start using your ears and adjust to what you think will sound good and best to the audience. This obviously gets easier and better over time. But I have a practice now and have a play with the cross fader and try and get the optimal sound during your mix. Now before we move on and do the whole DJ routine together, I'm going to show you how we can add some extra sound effects to our mixes to add some extra energy to our tracks. See you in the next video. 13. Sampler: In this video, we're going to set some sound effects on our sample at bank so we can trigger them during our mix and add some extra energy to our tracks. When you download reco box, you get some sound effects free with the DJ software. If you go to the library on the left-hand side and click the collection tap. This shows you all the tracks you have ever uploaded into record box. And in here you will find the free sound effects. You might see on mine here that I have a few extra sound effects that I've added. These are for the other courses that I do. But you should have for free sound effects in your collection already. Have a listen to them. You can just simply drag and drop them onto one of the decks and press Play and see what they sound like. So from here I'm just going to drag and drop the siren sound effects on deck one. And then you can press Play and having listened to it. But to use these sound effects, we don't want to be loading them onto a deck every time we want to use them. What we can do is we can load them into what's called a sample bank. If you go to the top of the screen, just like we did when we opened up the mix of tab, you'll see an icon that looks like a grid full of small boxes. If we click that, that will open up the sample bank. What you can do here is drag and drop the sounds that you want into these boxes. And we can assign these boxes to shortcut keys on our keyboard. So when we press the key that it is assigned to it, we'll play that sound effects. So what we're going to do for this course, if you want to follow along, is we're going to put the siren sound effects in sample bank one, and then put the horn sound effects in sample bank two. Then what we need to do to be able to trigger these sound effects is go to Settings in the top right-hand corner, then to keyboard. And then two sampler. In here we have the different playback slots and the keys that trigger them. So for playback slot one, this is this one here for the siren. What we're going to do, it's already assigned to the letter x, but just for this, we're going to change it around. So secondary click, right-click it. Go and change. This time we're going to put the letter S. Now it says it's currently assigned to slip reverse, which is fine. We're just going to click Okay. And then reassign, then play it back slot for the horn sound effect currently set to see. But we're going to change this to hate. Click. Okay, then we're going to exit settings. Now some of you may have noticed that we have set it to S and H, just to remember that means S for Simon and H for Han. So now if I was to press the Esc key on the keyboard, it will trigger the siren some whole bank. And if we were to press letter H, it will trigger the whole ensemble bank. Now, as you may have heard though, it can be quite loud. So to change the volume of these two, what we can do is change the gain. We can move that up and down or use this fader on the right-hand side. Generally, the gain seems to be a little bit better when I use it. I'm just going to turn that down slightly and press the H. And you can adjust it accordingly to however large you want it. So I'm going to turn it down a little bit more on that one should be okay. You want your samples to be heard, but you don't want them to overpower the track itself. So we're going to have a listen to this with a track. So I'm going to go into my no DJ equipment needed DJ calls folder. And I'm also going to exit the siren sound on deck one. I'm going to drag up the track music sounds better. Now I personally like to press my sound effects either eight beats before the drop of four beats before the drop, or just as the drop happens. So this is just before the chorus or as the core of stars. The reason why I press it sometimes eight beats or four beats before the drop is because it gives the sample a chance to fully sound out just before the drop and add some extra anticipation. So let's have a listen to that. So around eight to four beats, I'm just going to press the S for the siren just before it drops. So as you can hear that the siren sound effect was the one I triggered, but it's a bit quieter. So this is where you may have to adjust your GAN levels or this volume fader on the right. So what we could do is turn the gain up slightly. And then when we trigger that Simon sample, keep it as it is. But then when we trigger the Han, we can turn this fader down to about halfway. Let's try that again. So that sounds a little bit better and a better level of volume. Then we're going to try the home side effects again just before it drops. But this time because I think the Hornstein effects a bit louder. We wanted to turn the fader down to halfway. Let's try that. So that sounded pretty good. I'm going to try it again just on the drops. So see what it sounds like when the track does drop. We'll try the siren again. So volume fader on the right-hand side for the sample bank all the way to the top. So that was pressing the siren sound effects right on the drop. Let's have a listen to it to a couple of beats after the drop. So let the drop take its effect in the Simon, just box it up slightly afterwards. Let's have a listen to that. I quite liked to the four beats after the drop. As you can here that you can have a play around with your sound effects and see what they sound like. Ovo tracks. And when you want to trigger them, you can go online and search in YouTube or any other DJ record pool for DJ sound effects or DJ samples. And you should be able to find some that. But I generally find the siren and in the home is plenty for whenever you're doing your sets. I wouldn't recommend overusing the samples and the sound effects. I wouldn't do as sound effects on every drop or every key point in the track or Joan, your set. Because that can get quite annoying for some people listening. I'll try and use them on the known again to avoid overdoing it. But also only use these samples when m d gen life, if I'm doing pre-recorded sets for online purposes, are generally try and avoid the horns or the sirens as much as possible. But during a live set, they can add a bit more energy to your tracks until you're set. So they have it. You can add some extra sound effects to your mix when we do it in the next video. In the next video, we're going to put it all together and mix all four tracks one after another. See you in the next video. 14. Final DJ Routine: In this video, what we're going to do is put all the mixes that we have learned together in one DJ routine. We should already have our tracks setup and ready to do the mixes. We should know when to press play on each track and how to move the cross fader across in each mix. What we're going to do first is put the tracks in order. So it'll help us when doing the mix. The start of the course, we arrange the columns in our library and we included the comments column as part of the library. I'm just going to move this across. Here we have it, the comments column in our library. The comments column helps me a lot when I DJ, as well as saying hot cues and putting comments on them to help me. You can also leave notes in the comments on the library to help you as well. We're going to use the comments today to our tracks in order that we're going to play them to make it easier for us when selecting our tracks. So the first track that we're going to play is last night a DJ saved my life. So in the comments here, I'm just going to double-click and then put 01. Then the second track we're going to play in the DJ routine is low this theme. So in-law lose theme comments. I'm just going to double-click and press zero or two. Then the third track, Calabria, is going to be 03. And then the fourth track, music sounds better, is going to be zero for. Now, if we click the comments title box just here at the top, it will arrange the comments in alphabetical or numerical order, in either ascending or descending order, we want the tracks to start at 01 or go down to 04. So if I click the comments title box, it's going to rearrange them. So now we can see the tracks are in order 010,203.0. For now, the practice tracks don't have anything in the comments, but they do go at the top. But that doesn't matter as long as these are in order for us to DJ through in a routine. So now we have our tracks in order. We're going to load the first track up on deck one and the second track up on deck to. So for the purpose of this DJ routine, instead of starting to track last night, DJ save my life at the very start and listening to the percussion science and the intro of the track, we're going to set a key 0.2 beats before the break. This way we don't have to listen to that full intro and it goes straight into the main part of the track. But you're going to do it two beats before the break so that we fit the full vocal of the track in the mix. So I'm going to let you have a listen to that part. If I was to put it right at the start frame, set the Q point here, miss out parts of the vocal. So what we're going to do is put the Q-point two beats earlier. So it should be at 16.3 bar. Now it should fit the full vocal in and still sound good to start the mix from here. So we should now be ready to do our full DJ routine. We know what order we are going to play our tracks. We know when to press play to time the mixes correctly, and we know how to move the cross fader across in each mix. Don't forget to set the coupon at the start of each track when you first load it up for the first time. So e.g. here, low this theme, I just need to get the Q-point right on that first beat. We also need to check that beat sync is activated on both decks before we start the whole mix. So from here, I need to activate beats in conduct one, beats and conduct too. And when we started out with debt one playing first, we want the cross fader all the way over to the left-hand side, starting to mix from there. Now we're going to do the full DJ routine via neck. So you can watch and see if you can pick up on what I'm doing. And then you can get the DJ routine a go yourself after. I hope you enjoyed the DJ routine and hope you enjoyed doing it yourself after two, good luck, and let's do it. Good morning. 15. Bonus: Track Preparation For Any Occasion: Hi there again. I hope you enjoyed doing the DJ routine. Now you might be thinking, Yeah, that was fun, but I only know how to DJ these tracks in this particular order. And that is very true. So what I'm going to do in this video is give you a few tips on how you can prepare your tracks so you can mix them in any order. So firstly, what we need to do is reset all the tracks. We need to delete all of the hot cues and also delete all the numbers in the comments. So there we have it. We've deleted all the hot cue sound. The tracks are deleted. The comments also attached to the tracks. What we're going to do now is prepared each track, so we should be able to mix them with any other track. So first we're just going to load up the track. Last night a DJ saved my life on the left-hand side. And the first thing we're going to do, just like we have done with previously, is find out what the significant sounds start in the track and work out how many phrases it takes to get there from the start. So with this track, we can already guess that the blue part of the wave form is the precaution, an intro. And then the red part is where the baseline of melody condemn. This is where the significant sounds come in. So let's have a quick listen and check. Okay, so just here where the red waveform stats is where the significant sounds start. We're going to use beat jump. Quickly, find out how many phrases this is two, this point. I've just jumped back one phrase. So this tells me it's one phrase until the significant sounds come in on this track. So what we're going to do now is set a hot cue at the point where the significant sounds star. And then put in the comments of the hot cue intro equals one. I'm going to go back to the start of the significant sounds. And this is at bar number 9.1. And then I'm going to go from beat jump back to hot cue. Set hoc. You'd just at this point here. And then secondary click it, add comments and put intro equals one. Now when we look at this track, we can see where the significant sounds start by seeing where the hot Q is. And we know how many phrase is to, is to get to that point from the start of the track by looking at the comment attached to the hot cue. We're now going to do something similar with the end of the track where we are going to be mixing out of it. We need to find out where the significant sounds end in the track. So as we know, the red part should be the chorus and where it goes blue on the waveform, that should be the outro. So at the point where the red transitions into the blue should be where the significant sounds end. Let's have a quick check. Okay, so it's at this point here at 49.1 bar where the significant sounds end on this track. Now because we don't know what we're going to be playing next. We don't know how many phrases we need to jump backwards. So instead, we need a reference point to work with. What we're going to do is work out how many phrases it is from the start, the chorus to this point. So we're going to go back to beat jump. Then we're going to work backwards and see how many phrases it is until the drop of the track 12. So now we know it's two phrases from the drop of the chorus until the significant sounds end and the outro begins. So now what we need to do is go back to the point where the significant sounds and go back to hot cue setting. Set a hot cue it just here. And then put in the comments, course equals two. Now when we look at this track, we can see where the significant sounds end And how many phrases it takes to get to that point from the start of the chorus. And what we can also do is we can change the color of the second heart Q, just to make it stand out a little more from the first heart care. So again, I went to secondary, click it. I'm going to change this one to a light blue. So now we can associate the green color with the intro and the blue color with the outro. So that's great. Night last night DJ say my life is all set up. What we're going to do now is look at the next track, low this theme and do exactly the same with this track. We're going to find it where the significant zone Stop, which should be here where the waveform goes dark red. I'm going to go through this a little quicker, but feel free to check this at home if you like. This should be at 0.17, 0.1. I'm going to go to beat jump on the right-hand side. And find out how many phrases is from the start of the track to this 0.12. So it's two phrases going to go back to the significant sounds. Stop. Change it back to hot cue mode and set hoc. You'd just here. I'm going to right-click add comments. Intro equals to. So now when I look at this track, I know where the significant sounds start by seeing where the hot Q market is. And then by looking in the comments, I know it's two phrases to get to this point. Now we need to do the same at the end of the track. So I need to find out where the significant zones. And so I'm assuming this is the chorus and this is the outro. Again, you can check this at home if you like. Sometimes is worth listening to because here it does go blue. But this is the end of the core is still, and the next phrase starts here. At this point, if you just have a quick listen, sometimes it is worth checking with the ears as well as your eyes. So at this point here, 65.1 is where the significant sounds and we're going to go back to beat, jump, jump back 32 beats, once, twice. So we know from the drop of the chorus to the significant sounds ending is two phrases. So we're going to go back to this point, change it to hot Q, hot, cute just here. And as you can see that the playhead is not directly on the beat, but the hot Q will set onto the beat line. So you've not to worry about getting it exactly on. It just has to be the closest beat to it. So I'm going to zoom back out. Right-click this hot cue, add comments. Chorus equals two. Now I know at this point the significant sounds end by looking at the hot Q. And I know it's two phrases from the start of the chorus. I'm also going to right-click and change that color to a light blue. Now we have done this. What we can do is work out when to press play from the notes we have made. We can take the number of cores phrases a minus the number of intro phrases, and that will give us the number of phrases. We have to wait from our reference point, which is the start of the chorus. So if we were to play it lawless theme first, so start it here in the middle of the track. I want to mix in last night, a DJ saved my life. I would take the number of phrases in the chorus, which is two, minus the number of phrases in the intro to the significant sounds, which is one, which two minus one would leave us with one another is simple. I'm not trying to insult your intelligence of maths. I'm just going over it for the purpose of the course. This means we'll have to wait for one phrase before we press Play. And that makes your time perfectly. So let's have a quick go of that. So I'm going to press play on the track lawless theme. Wait, 32 beats, and then press play on the track last night, DJ, say My life, Let's see if it mixes well, no, because this time we do not have a hot Q Marker telling us when to press play it in the chorus. Have to work out ourselves when we're DJ. The way to do this is generally we would just have to count 32 bits of a phrase in our heads as many times as we need to until we can press Play. So in this instance we would have to wait one phrase. We would need to count to 32 beats wants, and then press play on the track and it should time right? There are ways of getting around this counting, but they are more advanced techniques using loops that I do not teach until the advanced section of my main cause. Just for now, we're just going to have to count in our head with these simple mixes to 32 bits. And the more you get used to it and the more experience you get, you don't actually have to count the 32-bits. You just get used to the rhythms of the tracks. And you'll just know when to press Play by listening to the track e.g. now when I'm DJ and I don't need to actually count 32 beats in my head. I just know when the tracks are going to change just through to experience. So let's get that Mexico and see if it times right when the truck loaders theme drops and let's go 32 beats in my head. And then press play on the track last night to DJ saved my life. Let's give it a listen. There you have it. That makes time perfectly. We could do that from working out how many phrases are in the course of the trackway, mixing it up and using the number of phrases. It takes to get to the significant signs of the track that we're mixing in. Now what we can do is we can quickly set the other tracks up in the same way so that all the tracks are prepared and ready to mix into any track we want. I'm going to do this a little quicker, but you should be able to pause the video and follow along with the track preparations. If you do need to. The next track I'm going to load up is Calibri or on deck one. I'm going to find out where the significant sounds star in this track. Now it's not as easy to see on the wave form because it does look very consistent. But just in the middle here you can see that the left side is a bit darker, on the right side is a bit lighter. I'm just going to have a listen to this transition here to see if the significant sounds coming in at this point. So at this point here the significant sounds come in. I went to set hoc Q Marker. I'm going to set the hot Q market first, so I remember where it is because it's not as easy to see. And then I'm going to go to beat, jump, jump back 32 beats once. So I know it's one phrase to this point. So now I need to go back to hot cue and make a note of intro equals one. Brilliant. Now I need to find out where the significant sounds end. So it looks like this whole chorus is consistent. And then it goes darker red here. So I'm going to have listened to this transition. It's just that this point here where the track goes from the chorus into the outro with insignificant sounds end. And that is at bar number 65.1. So I'm going to set a hot Q here, change the color to light blue. And then use the beat jump function to jump backwards 32 beats and see how many phrases it is to this point from the start of the chorus. So 123.4. So this course is for phrases long. So what I'm going to do is change it back to the hot cue setting. Secondary click this hot queue bank, add comments and put chorus equals four. So that's the track Calibri assaulted, intro equals one and chorus equals four. Now for the last track, music sounds better. The start of the track looks quite consistent on the waveform until this point here at the blue part. So I'm going to have a listen to this track here and listened to the transition between this bit going into the blue waveform. So as you can hear, it goes from percussion sounds that are not significant into the breakdown. And it slowly starts introducing the significant signs of the melody. So we say this point here where the significant zone stop. So I'm going to set the hot cue. Then I'm going to go to beat jump and work out how many phrases is until this 0.12. So it's two phrases. Go back to hot cue, secondary click, add comments. Intro equals two. And then we're going to do the same for the outro. It looks like the chorus is here, the thick red waveform, and then goes into a lighter blue and another multicolored waveform here, I'm going to have a listen to this transition where the big waveform goes into a smaller wave form. Okay, so is that this point here where the significant sounds end at 49.1. I'm going to set a hot Q Marker here, change it to light blue, and then use the beat jump function to jump backwards and see how many phrases it is until this point from the start of the chorus. 12. So back to the hot cue setting. And then in here on the comments, I'm going to put chorus equals two. We have it. We should have all our tracks setup in the same way, giving us the option to mix any track into any other track. We can now use the same formula that we talked about before to mix any of their tracks together. We can take the number of phrases of the chorus minus the number of phrases in the intro. And that will give you how many phrases you have to wait from the start of the chorus before pressing play. This is a very similar way in which I prefer all my tracks in my library when I'm deejaying so that when I go to my life sets or no, I can mix any track into any other track at any point. And I am confident it's going to time right? And same goods to the audience. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to do for random mixes to show you how this works. And then you can give it a go yourself after. Want to try with starting with one random track and then picking any of the track to mix into it. And then I'm going to try and go through all four tracks to see if I'm able to mix these altogether in any order. So let's give this a go. I'm going to exit these tracks. And on the first day, congruent to load this one up Calibri. And on the second deck, I'm going to load. This one, which is lawless theme. Then after these two tracks, I'm just going to pick the one of the other two that are random and work out how to mix the phrases to time perfect way to start this first track on the left-hand side at the start of the brake. Set the Q point just here. Set the Q point and the start of the next track. Now we're going to mix all four tracks. Have a watch of this and then do it yourself after and see how it sounds. Let's do it next. No. Hi. 16. Class Project: Hi there again. As part of the Skillshare community, you may already know that class projects are a big part of the platform and what makes Scotia unique. So in this video, I'm going to quickly outline this class project for you. For the class project on Skillshare gives you an option to add a cover image, a project title, a project description, and any extra images, videos, or files that you may have and want to share. All you need to do is go to the Projects and Resources tab under this video and click Create Project. For the cover photo, you can either take a screenshot of your DJ software as you were doing the course, or you can just take a picture of your laptop and DJ software with your phone and upload that. For the class project. You can title it whatever you like, e.g. you could title it my first DJ project on my first deejay mix, or even I am now wicked sick DJ. In the project description, you can feel free to put whatever you like, emulation to the course. You can share your experience with the course in any way you want. There is no right or wrong answer here. Any information on how your experience was with the course and you're deejaying in general will be perfect. But if you are struggling for things to write and you want to keep things simple, as I know, it can be hard to think of things on the spot sometimes. And also because I want as many as you guys as possible to participate in the class project. I'm going to give you an optional structure to follow, which is you can finish these three sentences. I started this DJ cost because three things I have learned from this DJ costs are after this DJ course. I'm going to, so for your project description, feel free to finish them three sentences. The more that you guys share, the more we can all interact with each other and connect and discuss the topic of deejaying. It's always great to hear how people have got on with the course and the positive impacts it has had on the deejaying journey. Record box does not allow you to record your mics when only using your laptop in performance mode. So for this reason, I'm not expecting anyone to recall there are mics and applauded, just sharing an image and your experience with the course would be great if you have any questions about the class project, feel free to create discussion in the class, and I'll get back to you from that. I hope you enjoy the course. I look forward to hearing how it goes in your projects. See you in the next video. 17. Congratulations!: Congratulations for completing the node. Dj equipment needed DJ cars. I hope you've really enjoyed this course and that you have learned a lot about deejaying. I have tried to include as much value as I possibly could for you in this course with only the use of a laptop and we have no actual DJ equipment to work with. You should now have the knowledge and tools to be able to go and get your own tracks and have a play around with them and have a go at some basic deejaying. Even if you're just using your laptop, you should be able to prepare a mixed a plan DJ routine, and also prepare a mix your tracks in any order you like. When preparing for my own DJ sets, I'll always prepare my tracks using my laptop. And just the way as we've done in this course, it is a great way to plan and practice your mixes beforehand without having to use actual DJ equipment. If you've done this course, because you are interested in starting deejaying, but didn't yet want to commit to buying some DJ equipment. I hope this course has helped you decide. And baby no, because you've done this amazing course, you are now thinking about buying some DJ equipment. Make sure you check out my other videos where I discuss my recommendations for beginner DJ setup. I will put the details of where you can find this information in the description below for you, so you know where to find it. And if you do decide to take the plunge and buy some DJ equipment, don't forget that I also have another amazing cause called the complete DJ calls for beginners that will teach you everything you need to know about deejaying on a DJ controller. So make sure you check that out. Once again, I hope you've really enjoyed this course and I hope you've learned a lot from it. I hope to see you again in the future. Bye for now. See you again soon.