One technique used systematically by DJs when mixing records for a club night or for recording purposes, is beat matching. The main objective is to allow seamless transitions between tracks by synching the tempo of both tracks: the record playing on the dance floor and the cued track being played on the headphones.
Now seen as a basic skill to be learned by DJs right at the beginning of their career, beat matching was developed using a metronome in the late sixties and early seventies. It was intended to keep the public dancing between records, rather than leaving the dance floor in the gap between songs as they used to do.
The invention of beat matching soon led to the development of specifically designed DJ equipment: the DJ mixer. This machine allows a DJ to link two or more turntables and then to direct the audio sources to either headphones or speakers. Various controls provide other effects, like the ability to fade certain aspects of the music, such as bass, in order to make matching the tempo easier.
The process basically involves playing one record which is sent to the speaker system and another, which is cued to the headphones for monitoring purposes. The second record must start on the same beat as the first, which means using the DJ mixer to control the pitch and speed of the cued record to synch with the first.
Using the DJ mixer to send one input to each earpiece of the headphones allows more accurate monitoring of the beats, as using the monitoring speakers can create a delay. Once the tempo is perfectly matched, certain parts of the cued record are faded into the master mix, and the first record is faded out. The process is then repeated with each record change.
Digital DJing now dominates the electronic music scene, requiring new skills and new machines for beat matching with different audio sources. A USB key storing MP3 files can be plugged into to a CDJ and then mixed using the beat matching functions offered by a DJ CD player.
Now seen as a basic skill to be learned by DJs right at the beginning of their career, beat matching was developed using a metronome in the late sixties and early seventies. It was intended to keep the public dancing between records, rather than leaving the dance floor in the gap between songs as they used to do.
The invention of beat matching soon led to the development of specifically designed DJ equipment: the DJ mixer. This machine allows a DJ to link two or more turntables and then to direct the audio sources to either headphones or speakers. Various controls provide other effects, like the ability to fade certain aspects of the music, such as bass, in order to make matching the tempo easier.
The process basically involves playing one record which is sent to the speaker system and another, which is cued to the headphones for monitoring purposes. The second record must start on the same beat as the first, which means using the DJ mixer to control the pitch and speed of the cued record to synch with the first.
Using the DJ mixer to send one input to each earpiece of the headphones allows more accurate monitoring of the beats, as using the monitoring speakers can create a delay. Once the tempo is perfectly matched, certain parts of the cued record are faded into the master mix, and the first record is faded out. The process is then repeated with each record change.
Digital DJing now dominates the electronic music scene, requiring new skills and new machines for beat matching with different audio sources. A USB key storing MP3 files can be plugged into to a CDJ and then mixed using the beat matching functions offered by a DJ CD player.
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