Noob DJ questions here

Rock* said:
Touch the platter as little as you can, its a very bad habit because when both tunes are playing out loud and you need to alter pitch but can only confidently do it by touching the platter you're gonna have to make one track skip, and it sounds pretty poor.

Use the pitch-adjuster always. Its all about feeling, when a tunes too slow you speed up the pitch fader to a speed above what you know the locked speed would be, then when it catches up with the other tune, drop the pitch-adjuster back down to the level you think it needs to be. It will be somewhere in between its position when the track was too slow, and the position when you sped it up. Chances are this new position will be much closer to the right speed but still not quite right. So when you feel it start to move out of time you repeat the process, but this time your movement of the pitch adjuster will be much smaller. At this stage you're just tweaking.

When you get the feel for this its like second nature and you hardly have to think about how much to drag the adjuster. The beats lock smoothly and you'll DJ like Andy C and Friction!
Click to expand...

I touch the platter and pin all the time but make my pitch adjustments at the same time. If your gentle and only slow a bit with touching I think it can work better than the pitch alone. Whatever works for you.

For the original poster; it may help to try understand beatmatching using something 4/4 if you are struggling. Once you have a strong understanding of it you should be able to mix any genre no problem. Eventually learningg how to deal with offbeats and stuff that has extra bars and beats that take it out of time. Start with your most simple tunes and work from there.

A bit of advice I give to my friends younger bro was to get 2 tunes and mix them in and out of each other again and again till he can do it everytime easy. Then get a 3rd tune. Use them 3 till you can mix them all with each other. Then get a 4th and so on. You'll notice that each subsequent tune will be easier and easier till you can just pick up and mix anything.

If you screw a mix up don't do another, pull the records back and keep trying till you get it.

Record and listen to your own mixes too, it will help you understand and hear whas going on/wrong.
 
I never touch the platter, it just feels unnatural to me. I find it much easier to just use the pitch control only. And I never use the crossfader, feels unnatural and a bit confusing, I find it much easier to only use the channel faders.

One piece of advice, Get a good slipmat. It makes it much easier to cue the tracks without slowing down the platter at all, therefore there is no delay when you let the track go. I use the plastic sheet that came with my technics under the slipmat, this helps so much.

As for beatmatching. All you can do is practice. A LOT of practice. Its like riding a bicycle, one day you will get it and be able to recognise what track is slowing down or speeding up. I can't stress this enough - PRACTICE. Make sure you watch the videos on how to ride the pitch first.

Also lean the structure of a dnb song. learn to count the beats, and bars. Remember its 4 beets per bar. Everything is always in blocks of 16 bars. Therefore I think of everything in block of 16 bars eg, intros to jump up tunes are mostly 2 or 3 blocks. The drop is usually around 4-5 blocks and the breakdown is 1-2 blocks (this is just for jump up tunes) But of course it can be completely different depending on the tune. LEAN YOUR TUNES.

Take a break if you're getting frustrated and not enjoying yourself, but don't give up! Come back with a fresh mind and HAVE FUN, or as ellaskins (Jonathan) on youtube says "practice and enjoy" :)
 
If ya got a shitty belt drive deck then in the beginning you may have to give it a boost with touching the platter.

My guess though
 
Back
Top Bottom