Knowing the BPM of all your choones

Floating Hunter

Floating Hunter

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May 23, 2009
A mate of mine knows all of the bpms of his tunes when he's mixing, but surely it would be better to just listen and beatmatch as quickly as than studying the bpms?

Does anyone know if any established djs have been said to 'know all the bpms' if ya get me?
 
This is quite irrelevant when using vinyl on turntables as the pitch on 2 turntables won't be identical. You can get a rough idea but you still need to listen to the cue in your headphones to get it spot on.
 
Yea I've never really seen the point, not like your going to get out your calculator when your mixing and start working out the percentage difference of your next tune. As soon as youve mixed a tune a few times, you'd know if its much slower/faster than average, and thats all you need surely?
 
As said it's completely irrelevant on vinyl, and as for CDJs...even with 2000s and other top ones, the BPM readouts they give you are all over the place. Sometimes they'll start 87, then change to 172, then 86, 87, 176 etc. etc. in the space of a minute (from my experience anyway). And even if you have the readout there and it's bang on, it's so much easier to just do it by ear rather than just chasing numbers on a screen.

On the other hand, it's good to at least have a rough idea so you can look at what's playing now BPM-wise, then you'll at least know which direction the pitch control's gotta go in before you even load the tune up (vinyl or cdj). But yeah I'd never ever beatmatch exclusively using my knowledge of BPMs...
 
Its good to have a rough idea of what tunes are what speed.
Especially if you're mixing tunes like Minimal Funk which only have a 16 bar intro.

However it is best to do it mainly by ear.
I do see people who mix very quickly then will try and mix a 170 BPM tune and they cant figure out why they cant get it locked lol.
So some BPM knowledge is important.
 
a friend has 2000s and he kinda uses the bpm readouts to give him a good idea of where bouts to go but i play vinyl but know my tunes well enough to have pretty much the same idea, it aint that hard to judge, and fuck ever learnig the bpm or keys imo, its easy to know what works.
 
commix/logistics/nu:tone al usually around the same, then chase and status/subfocus/bladerunner/ed rush are a bit faster, noisia/spor/tech itch usually all a bit slower, is that what you mean?

once you've mixed a tune once you know if its quick or slow or whateva anyway
 
I agree with the general sentiment here. Its good to have a rough idea of bpms but its more important to be able to just listen and figure it out. Sometimes a DJ will always use the same tempo which is handy to know like for example 90% of the time High Contrast uses 173, London Elektricity uses 172. Those kinda stats are always handy, but yeah, don't treat that info as gospel.
 
Not a lot of sense in here really.

Its a perfectly acceptable thing to do, if you're on cd decks and you know what bpm it is, you can also know what speed to pitch it up or down, its all % work. So you can effectively have everything (within a small margin) already beat matched before you start.

As for "do any established djs" use it? Yes.
 
Saint said:
Not a lot of sense in here really.

Its a perfectly acceptable thing to do, if you're on cd decks and you know what bpm it is, you can also know what speed to pitch it up or down, its all % work. So you can effectively have everything (within a small margin) already beat matched before you start.

As for "do any established djs" use it? Yes.
Click to expand...


:word:

How can some people say that doing this is "not proper djing"? WHATEVER!

Makes it so much easier and tighter
 
Saint said:
Not a lot of sense in here really.

Its a perfectly acceptable thing to do, if you're on cd decks and you know what bpm it is, you can also know what speed to pitch it up or down, its all % work. So you can effectively have everything (within a small margin) already beat matched before you start.

As for "do any established djs" use it? Yes.
Click to expand...

precisely. if you can use technology then use it. yes its harder on vinyl but cdjs screw up too, there are many instances were i have to correct quickly because the pitch goes off or the cd skips... swings and roundabouts
 
^^ Oh you brush the fader on a CDJ1000 all the way up to +10% and have to quickly reload and hope know one noticed the clash :teeth: That didnt happen to me last saturday - Honest! haha
 
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ive had people knock my arm when its on the pitch, all the way to -10, luckily it wernt playing.
 
I never used to know the exact BPM's but i'd sort group tunes together from playing them previously- Like I'd know that an Original Sin tune would almost always be faster than Sub Focus tune (seeing as most Dj's use the same bpm most of the time), but Id also know that Original Sin tune would be the same as a Taxman tune or something similar.

I wouldnt say it was nessersary, but it definately helps when mixing quickly- because you'll always have a better idea of where abouts to pitch the track thats being mixed in, which is better than not having any idea at all.

Knowing your tracks inside out is always worth doing IMO.
 
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