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Lesson Info

Beatmatching Practice Part 2

And again for people at home you know, one of the biggest things is practicing those good habits making sure that your headphones air in um you know, fighting through the frustration like it can get taken get frustrating especially if you're just on your own and you're trying to do this like at some point you're like, well, do I spend another hour like struggling through this or you know, do I just go on looking down the music you know and like you're going to want it, you're gonna want to go on just like download music or scratch or do whatever you like it's really important that you exercise this type of discipline because this's the only way to break through that wall is by doing it um and hearing it back because here live in the studio I'm able to like give my like real time like speed up, speed it up, speed it up but obviously like if you're there on your own in those moments you might get a little bit lost and not sure where it is so because as long as you go back and then like l...

isten back to like what it was that you did like that that would be helpful cool let's do it um yep the media that this crash up not that one that one on notice what I did was I put the screen down um just so yeah, well so because what ends up happening hears what? Okay, I think we've all been there were like you're on the express or you're on the freeway right? And there's not an accident on your side of the road the accidents on the other side of the road but you're in congested traffic what? Why is that? Because everybody's looking so but guess what? Your body is pretty smart your body is making sure that if you're doing this that the rest of your functions slow down so that because if you were stepping on the accelerator and still like looking like this, that would be very, very dangerous, right? But your body like not you naturally no like okay, my eyes are fixated here so some of these other functions just kind of need to stop unfortunate that's what's happening to when you're staring at scream when you're staring at the screen, it becomes very difficult to move and lock this in and stare at the screen. I mean, literally if I were to write a sentence on a piece of paper, put it up to you right now have you bob your head and like really like moved to it and try and read this piece of paper it be almost impossible because your eyes with the bouncing with your body and you wouldn't be able to focus so what your body is doing is it your when your eyes are fixated the rest your body stops moving well this is an even bigger issue because you are this like vessel of energy and you are the life of this party you're the one who's controlling this energy so you stop moving you're not sending energy back out there in fact this is what's really interesting so like if I were to do this you start not in why why? Because it's an energy thing it's an energy it's a natural thing like if I start nodding you start not used our naughty which that's huge to understand for your dance for actually went teo to school today and studied sociology just because I thought it was interesting not because I thought it would be helpful to my career any which way ironically it's probably the best major for like a deejay is like the study of people and groups of people and how like people interact with one another and it's so interesting that like you then become this like leader of this energy by you move into this they'll feed off your energy they will feed off of what you're doing so super important to not get to lock in the screen all right here we go you ready enough talking more doing yet here we go it's my fault oh here we go ready right there and anywhere in here you're gonna drop this. Okay, you want to make sure that that comes in on out one wait go three, two, three, four forward like that there we go now we have two, three four forward forward forward yeah, let it go you got it? Three, two, three, four forward over okay, so what's happening is you're pressing down a little hard which is why the needles two, three, four one, two, three, four nice good. Okay, so it's on now started falling out so I don't want your stop yet so this exercise we're letting this run and we're gonna speed this up with their hand sure let me do it real quick watching you tell me what needs to happen tonto that snare on fall off take over when my hands see if you can keep it on ready no more no more no more good there it is a little bit more there you go, let it let off for a second it's gonna fall back in ok, so now we're kind of lost let's go back to that was good though you're able to catch that good. Can you keep that going to three four one two for good it's a little confusing with that is there any way to muse that that speaker yeah, there you go yeah let's get back to begin afresh okay hold on let's start again but I don't want to go back to that you guys were in the middle of that withdrew three to four good no more no more no more no more no more you hear good now there you go try keep it right there there you go. There you go you hear nice good fine that should be beginning their way wait, go forward forward forward should get a clean drop I think it skipped out you get any one of those three forward forward forward forward truck yep back to being a is a good point too if if you happen to like notice that you have a tendency to not drop on the one right yet then pull it back to make sure that it's dropped on the one it makes no sense to keep trying to then get this on if you got the one lined up to the to know grabbing the, uh spindle spindle it doesn't really do much super liner yeah for a minor beginning three, two, three, four one, two, three, four yeah, there you go home and keep it speed up a little bit more more yeah, they go a little more there you go nice you hear it I don't know if they can hear this at home can hear this at home yeah but you keep going keep it up nice alright, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet sweet all right let me have you guys stop for a second um cool nice nice nice very nice guy give yourselves a round of applause I say you can grab a seat if you want I'm just going to show you the opposite of this and I'll just do it up here and I'll show you how this all fits together eso that exercise is very, very difficult it's a very difficult exercise there's the opposite of that which is slowing down. Okay, so let me show I'll show you slowing down first. Um this cue that back up. Okay, so on this one I'm gonna speed this up do the opposite hey, so I sped this up about an inch actually on let me do it on this one because this is the one that everybody at home can hear I mean now it's too fast. I'm using my finger against those speed dots if this falls off, my body falls off so I stopped moving through it. Oh, you got you guys can hear to hear, huh? Sure. Turn that one right back on. You know, I do it's just a switch, probably on the back, thanks, dude, I can go back to the beginning of that you'll actually be able to see even without hearing me, you'll be able to see when it's not on because I'll stop moving tio tio, I'm going down by putting friction against the platter. Some guys touch the record that's like the tapping part like tapping and pushing I use like this brushing of the platter I find it's more efficient, but guys do this, but I'm gonna slow it down and when I'm slowing it down, then I'm s o ultimately, when you're doing this is going to be a combination of the, uh, minor adjustment of speeding up and maybe was slowing that maybe you're doing a couple of these like you sped up up's too fast slow down now where this all comes together is in using the pitch and using the tempo so here's the idea, the idea is this you are trying to like guests uh, faster, slower, higher or lower right? So it's, almost like this temple is ninety five technically the one that you have in that you've been done like let's say you don't know that it is ninety five that the magic numbers ninety five and let's say it's ninety five point five, seven two or whatever that's the magic number so the whole time you're doing this, so the magic number is ninety five point five seven into your dropping this in and when you drop it in you realize oh it's too slow I need to speed this up you're like oh, I dropped this in and now you know it's starting to fall off so I'm guessing it's like wow maybe itt's too slow here so let me speed this up once you speed it up and you let your hand off because you're like oh, maybe I dropped it in off so maybe that's why I'm having to speed this up if I take my hand off and everything lines up and stays lined up that was the right thing right? That was one of those where it just needed to be shifted couldn't drop it in it's the right number it's actually ninety five point five seven two it's already lined up it's already there you drop it in and it's it's off a bit you made the adjustment you sped it up now it's lined up you take your hand off the whole thing rides nicely okay that's all that was had nothing to do with the tempo and doesn't do with this thing now other scenario would be you drop this in it's off it's a little slow you speed this up you take your hand off slows down again ah, this isn't just my hand then this is it this issue s oh maybe this is too slow I'm gonna speed this up as soon as I speed this up how much you move this? I should really be connected that's also in that graph of like, if I had to speed up my hand this much, then it's that far on the pitch about so we speed up the pitch a little bit more, okay, now I'm going to go back to the top back to the first starting point again, dropping this in again on the one and seen if that works so it's very much like trial and error it's like, did that work up? No it's still too slow? Speed it up with my hand, let it off? Nope still too slow, okay need to make another adjustment to the pitch made the adjustment back to the top. This is what you're constantly doing, you're constantly doing this because you're trying to find out what that magic number is now, obviously, I'm fully aware that, like in a lot of this software that's detecting bpm and stuff like that, it will basically give you that magic number like that magic number is ninety five point five that's the magic number you're trying to get so ok, if I move my pitch and get my pitch to set to ninety five point five, then technically I'm good, I'm all good there this again gets back to that whole thing of, like sink versus, like, manually doing that. Sure, you could do that, but there would also be a part of you than that does never thatyou then never learned how to manually beat match, you know? And for I'm not saying that that's a bad thing at all, like every d j is gonna have a different sort of take on that me personally though, like I would want to know how to manually do it that's just kind of the way that I am I would just want to know how to do that, you know, and no like that I could make an adjustment. I'm gonna give you one more scenario that happens with sink, which is this? What is happening with a lot of the software's it's detecting a grid so it's locking in a grid that saying that here is the grid based on the tempo that we've detected. So we detected that the tempo is ninety five let's say just for argument's sake that the way that they detected the tempo is not ninety five point five, but in fact was ninety five point to well, so it's set the grid as ninety five point two, depending on where they set the one of the grid also, that will also determine how that greg gets laid out s so maybe if there was some sort of like interesting thing in the beginning and a hit and they took that as the one when it's not really the one now that grid is going to be off so instead of the grid being set toe like exactly on these marks now the grid that you've got set up in the software is like there was this little thing that happened before that so it now set the one is this so now everything is off like this so when you hit that sync button and it's sinking to the grid we hit that sync button it's gonna line up everything to them that grid and now there's no way to manually fix it so technically like the beats are like it is technically beat matched in the sense of the tempo is locked in the same way but that the grid is slightly off or when you hit sink on something even it like not with this scenario but when you see it sink with something and let's say it's a little bit off and then you hit sink what might happen is it will then lock to the next beat so that the one now is on the two the two is on the three the three is on the four the four is on the one so now everything is technically beat matched but is now structured wrong does that make sense because this is what then like sink is actually doing because that's all it knows how to do it's it's a computer it's not you so you have to then if you want to avoid this, the best way to do that is then by, like really nailing this manual beat matching so that you can then be in control of this um the other thing that I find is, um I would be incredibly bored like if if if all I was doing was like loading up a song and hitting sik and granted there's other things that you could do like, you know, for the guys that are, like blaring like five different layers of tracks on top of one and that sink becomes super important because there's no way you're going to be able to manually beat match six things at the same time, but you know, if you weren't doing that and you were literally just playing song to song and mixing two songs together if you were using sink or it was just kind of like always lined up like, uh, ninety five okay, nine, five, one five and okay, cool, I'm just gonna wait right? Because, like, what do you woody they're going to do, like during this time you've got then yeah, oh yeah, I almost feel like that is harder that is harder to do that like takes more work that takes more effort it's like the guy at your job who really isn't doing his job right like it's got to be harder for this guy to get by doing nothing it's like what do you do all day with your day it's got it like time has to like suck it's like you know we've all had those days where it's like so busy that because it's so busy like man that eight hours flew by like that same thing with d j and like I can't imagine like d j in four hours like that words like on then that track cool and then uh makes cool next song okay good like I would be so bored in between so what I'm constantly doing and like for people that are manually beat matching in this way it's just like so much work it's so much like busy working so much moving around and adjusting this and like you're constantly busy you're constantly doing things I mean there's so many things to keep tabs of but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I'm going to match this I'm gonna mash this up into this one that's plain so I'm gonna just match up uh uh I'll use that same view low record um and match this track to that okay so you'll see me manually beat matches you'll hear me manually be matching this this track you see if I'm gonna I'm just going toe actually want one of you jump up here really quick and just move that pitch somewhere just put it wherever you want and I'm going to try and match up to it just so I don't know what the magic number is you just move just move that pitch to something just move it and said it cool don't don't tell me you're showing me where that's it and then when you're ready just hit the hit the green button okay, so you're good now that'll be on autopilot way too fast right touch this I need to go back to the top because I'm going to change the whole thing I stretched it compressed the whole thing move that revenge wait got it works that way no leaving the board to try to match it up no wonder he's moving it the whole time wait so like trying to match it up now notice what I was doing is even when it's live you see me making some adjustments you seem making some subtle adjustments that's because I'm trying to I'm trying to make this fairly quickly if I was like waiting to the second course or something like that I could take a little bit more time to like do all that in the headphones and get it a little bit tighter but I want to get that in sooner so like I'm then coming live with it the whole time I have control of what you are hearing like what the audience is hearing so for some reason it's not quite there yet and it's two off teo even fix out loud I can bring the volume down fix what I need to fix then bring the volume up remember as a deejay you are always in control there really is no reason why I like there should be this like audible train wreck coming out of the speakers like you have stability control that and if for some reason for the life of you you just can't get these to beat match right what's another way I could then just change songs how could I then do this any ideas wine has a free wine and dropped down close what what could I do when one song ends right on the downbeat where it would continue start right on remember when we were like looking at the structure of that record and I was marking with little arrows like where this new song should change right right after the course on that one on the downbeat of the verse that that's where the switch would be if for some reason I can't get this right what I could always do is yet at the end of that and drop on the one you know the timing would have to be there and it would feel a little bit abrupt you know, but it would also like structurally that's, right? You know, that would be the best place to change that over what we're talking about here is this really concept of blending having this song under it? Because, well, why is that? Why do you want tohave the song coming in audibly under the one that's plain before it comes and they switch? Why makes one solid groove so people roll? So doesn't just two people dancing out there every adjust to the beats bingo, bingo, bingo. So especially when you're managing a dance for it's important that, like this happened seamlessly so that people don't have to stop dancing so they can stay in that group and they can keep dancing. No, which is why, then what ends up happening? Especially with the dance for you must be much more conscious about bpm, um, and and the tempo we're trying to keep tempo somewhat similar so that you know, you're not jumping all over the place like you're going from ninety five and the next one you're bringing in his one twenty and the next song after that, then is ninety eight and the next one after that is one hundred fifteen, you know, I'm doing this. The people have a hell of a time trying to follow you a cz you're doing that with the dance for you know if you were to do that and this is on like a mixtape that you're doing or this is on like in another in other context like let's say there's no dance for is just like a bar people hanging out having drinks that's a little bit more than doable you know of of like because no, you're not going to lose anybody who's dancing there still might be some kind of like awkwardness with like this doesn't really go with that but like you know things could still sound similar but have different tempos so in those scenarios you're not as concerned with trying to keep everything consistent no um uh any questions about this how we doing in the chat of people doing good? There was one question about somebody was wondering all your meters on the on your mix mixer wasn't there in red so can you talk about output? I don't know if that was just because you were busy thinking about other things or if there's a level yeah make sure let me let me see where this so this is touching red but it's not blaring red it's not like stuck in red so you actually want to levels are a big deal of like making sure that your level is even so they're absolutely right in that in that you don't want to, like, be cranking, so I'm going to turn it up a little bit. So watch your years here. I mean, it's good. You hear what it starts to sound like that? That crushing noise that is your your sending too much signaling like that is that's not a good sound. Uh huh. And so you can see that with the cue this top this top knob we didn't actually talk about this top nob. This top knob is often referred to as the gain or trim on this mixture it says level what is it? It's a volume boost so that knob is meant for sort of like a fine tune volume adjustment between two records that maybe have differing volumes. So instead of matching volume here, you're gonna have both of them all the way up and you're going to adjust here s o that is actually a really, really good point that was brought up is that? And then you know what? My cue straight up and down is sort of like the constant that's what it really should be and I shouldn't be pushing gain like this uh, again on the deck you, um you should never really be if you can avoid it, you should never be more than three o'clock um now the other side of this is on my mains. And this is just the way they were set up here in the studio all my mai mai mai now it is all the way up to ten, which is also probably a reason why I like the main meter is reading the way it's reading but it's not reading too hot where it's like it's not blowing out or distorting. Um, so you just kind of have to be conscious of these things and ultimately trust your ears. If you ever had a gig in your playing a gig, take a second. I mean, this has happened. I believe this happened that all of us and this certainly happen to me where? Like, it sounds fine to me back here, but out there somewhere like the the sound feels like it's being crushed like that, like it's distorting somewhere so, like, you know, take a second to like, go and listen to like what is happening I put a song on or whatever take a quick like lap to hear what's going on oftentimes to like, especially in like a club environment it's so funny you'll see at the end of the night the knobs look like this, like the knobs are are all the way this way and I think that like in a lot in a lot of cases like in clubs like that's, what just generally ends up happening is like people are drinking like energy is flowing at the end of the night now everybody's like cranked up louder and louder and louder and this is wrong and a lot of sound guys I hate djs for this reason because deejays don't you know in general most djs don't have as much knowledge about like how to keep balance sound ideally, what I should do is if I need more room for any more head roof anymore like volume, I should ask the sound guy to turn this up as opposed to me turning these knobs up um so just, you know, a couple things toe kind of keep in mind so do you ever build dynamics into your set like over the course? Like you said, a lot of deejays are doing that there ramping so by the end of the night there actually louder, yeah, yeah, you do that I do if I'm if I'm playing like a full night like full full night and I'm starting at a certain volume and people were coming in and it's a little bit more like casual in the beginning, I'm taking like I'm sound checking my master love lot where it should be middle of the night so I have an idea where then the master volume should be so the master volume will be at let's say like one o'clock come one o'clock and so as people were coming in then I then have like, the sound guy keep me down where it's supposed to be, I control them the audio of like, how to them bring it up then I'll come down and I'll start my master at, like ten at ten and then start to kind of like, crank up, you know? And so I'll do that that's one way of kind of like keeping tabs on ultimately, though like it's all about like, how it sounds and like, you know, have people around you two that are like, hey, man like that doesn't sound so good like turn this down, let me turn you up, um and that that ultimately could be a huge day because you could play the best music, but if the levels aren't right, it doesn't matter you could have the greatest blend between these two songs and it mixed oh man, the mix was so great, but the way it came in either came in too soft or too loud and you like, lost them, you missed it, you know eso level can be a huge, huge thing just be very, very conscious of it