In this article, I will look at the steps I take with every individual track I purchase, setting cue points and loops in a way that lets me be much more creative when playing live. By changing mixing points to suit the mood, your dancefloor will stay energised and you’ll enjoy yourself even more.

Now, I’m not claiming to be an authority on mixing – for many talented DJs, these methods are already second nature – but I do work hard on preparing my music to create better performances for my clients. If, like me, you aren’t blessed with an instinctive ability to mix seamlessly, I hope this article helps.

Preparation is key
There are certain factors in my process that sets me up for success. I covered this in my previous article, but I’ll do a quick recap, simply to explain how I process my music before I play live. I'll assume that your music is high-quality, accessible and properly tagged, and that you have analysed it and corrected any errors your software has made – the setting of your beat grids is essential!

Quick tip: don't rely on the auto grid in the software; if the BPM of any track is wrong, beat matching will be much harder. A visual inspection of the waveforms or simply listening to the track may give you better results. (At the very least, confirm if the analysis is accurate.) It’s really worth taking time here, as getting creative in the mix will feel like your hands are tied behind your back if your music is gridded incorrectly.

Problems which occur when this happen include loops cutting off halfway through short transients in your waveform, such as snares and kick drums, sometimes creating a pop or just sounding awkward, whilst setting cues and hot cues will be even more challenging.

Quick Mixing
Why is quick mixing a good skill to learn? Well, it’s noticeable that club DJs have been doing this for a while – it really helps to keep energy levels high and hold the dancefloor’s attention.

I have found that audiences, even at weddings, are increasingly looking for quick mixing. It certainly isn’t a new concept – hip hop is a great example of a genre where quick mixing has been done for a long time. This is also where DJ edits, slams, ramps and blends are designed to give you several easy-to-mix options for any tune – these can be your friend.

As someone who has subscribed to Mastermix for many years (and is now a brand ambassador), I’ve found I use their DJ edits most often (they’re currently on volume 27). With 15 tracks to an album, the series already has 405 tracks available in shorter, punchier versions than the original songs. I will use these specific edits in the following examples.

Cue Points
When preparing a song for live play, I first set my cue points and loops.

It’s worth saying here that if your software lets you enable quantize – and most do – it can really help. If you’re not familiar with quantize, it's a feature that allows you to lock your input to the beat grid of the track already playing. This helps ensure that actions such as play, loops and hot cues take place perfectly in time.

(Some prior knowledge of common song structures, beats, bars and phrasing is invaluable here. But if you don’t understand these concepts, there is plenty of content available. This includes hands-on training from talented trainers like Terry Ryan from On The Rise DJ Academy as well as online resources from Phil Morse, Digital DJ, among others.)

When it comes to cue points, a good tip is to colour code them – this is something I learnt from a course with DJ Angelo (through Digital DJ) during lockdown. My first cue point is the beginning of the track and is always coloured red. It's essential to keep to the same colours because having a visual point of reference that you instantly understand will help your performance.

Occasionally, I may have more than one start point. For instance, a DJ edit will often have have a 32 beat intro and outro, and I can choose to have one red cue at the first beat and another at the 16th and/or 32nd beats, giving me choices as to when I can start a mix.

The next cue point is for the verse or vocal, which I colour yellow. The first yellow cue doesn’t have to be a vocal, it could be any recognisable hook in the track. A great example is Mastermix’s DJ Beats version of ‘Ride On Time’ by Black Box – at the 32nd beat, the 9th bar right at the beginning is where the radio version starts and is a very identifiable hook.

The next cue point is also yellow, but this time it's the first vocal, which appears at the 17th bar with "Gotta get up…" That cue starts right on the bar, though this is not always the case with vocals.

You can read the rest of this article with a subscription. Here are a couple of helpful links if you’d like to brush up on your mixing skills:

ontheriseacademy.com
training.digitaldjtips.com