DJ Basic(S) - Beatmatching With Pitch Slider "Pitch Bending"

Hi all, yesterday i posted the in-depth of how to beatmatch. I did mention about "pitch Bending", beatmatching using the pitch slider. This post will give you more knowledge of how to beatmatch with the pitch slider only. This method involves and requires the ability to identify whether a track is too fast, or too slow, and then making fluid adjustments of the track. By that statement, i encourage you all to understand and able to do beatmatch in general, like what i posted before. It will be hard to understand this post before you understand the general beatmatching.

First thing you need is to have the records playing. I heard so many people that told me use simple and identical songs (or even same songs on both decks) to learn beatmatching, and it is true, i recommend this method, while gradually moving to more complex songs. Put one song on, set the pitch slider at 0%. when you are ready to play the other record, monitor the beats with your headphone. (if you are using the same record as the first one, just put the slider other than 0%, faster or slower does not matter.)

Next, use your ears, does the other record you about to drop is too fast or too slow. Track too fast, decrease the pitch settings (-1, -2, -3, -4, etc), and if the track is too slow, increase the pitch settings (+1, +2, +3, +4, etc).

After you adjust the pitch slider, identify if it begins to play on or moving the correct tempo. Now the part that you won't like, you have to wait until the beats play in the same time, rather than trying to correct it immediately. Now you zip that pitch-adjust 3/4 of the way back up towards where you started out. Generally speaking, this will be too fast, but not AS fast as it was before, and you’ll hear the beats go from being too slow to being matched to being too fast. Again, push the fader down 3/4 of the way from where you were at LAST time you adjusted, and listen to see if it’s too slow or too fast. If it’s too fast, just repeat the process as listed above. If it’s too slow, go ahead and slow it down further, but remember that there’s no need to go as slow as you did the previous time, since we know that’s too slow to be properly matched (Sweet! you will be happy at this point).

Now, just keep adjusting in small intervals until it really beatmached/harmonized/whatever the word is (you know what i mean), to maintain the beats, because sometimes, there is a very little gap like 0.04% between the BPM. You won't notice it at the first place, but later it will start to make this weird, disastrous beats, as it gradually unmatched (i dont know if it's a correct word). Just simply move the slider back and forth very - very tiny (imagine a ping-pong game, badminton game, tennis, just see the movement of the ball), to prevent the disaster.

This is the image of what i am talking above:

-8%……………………|……………………+8% FAST (forward +6)
-8%……|……………………………………+8% SLOW (Back -6)
-8%…………………|………………………+8% FAST (Keep reducing the gaps +4)
-8%………|…………………………………+8% SLOW (-4)
-8%………………|…………………………+8% FAST (And it keeps going on and on until it matched)
-8%…………|………………………………+8% SLOW
-8%……………..|………………………….+8% FAST
-8%…………..|…………………………….+8% SLOW
-8%…………….|…………………………..+8% FAST
-8%……………|……………………………+8% MATCHED

Notice how the adjustments being made get smaller and smaller as you approach the point of having it perfectly beatmatched. Now your tracks are beatmatched. Woo! Once you get the hang of this method, and what you need to be listening for to use it successfully, you’ll find that this process gets faster and faster until you get to where you can have a new track beatmatched in 32 beats (or less!) with very little effort. From this point on, it’s just a matter of KEEPING the tracks beatmatched, but you should have an accurate enough match to start out with, now, that you can do very minor (1mm) corrections and never really need to do them more than a couple of times during a nice, long mix. I hope this helps, any comment will be very appreciated, Enjoy:)

Related Posts