Learning to DJ (w/ the 3345 Team)

Starting to mix : finding cue points

Probably one of the greatest challenges of any new DJ, apart from beat-matching, is finding good quality cue points and matching these across two tracks. Remember, all you’ve done so far is prepared the tracks to play in sync, but defining a correct starting point across which you can cross-fade is just a little more challenging.

Firstly, before we can dive into cue finding, we should firstly define the structure of dance music.

Dance music structure:

	Beats
	Bars
	Periods

Back to cue points:

When in the middle of a mix, or even before starting the mix, you should understand that finding a cue point must be done before you start playback on the new track. See, if you start playback on a track on the live mix, but you have not listened to the ending of the track, you will have no way of knowing how to cue your new song. Clashing of vocals and tunes are usually the result, and even if in sync, it will simply sound bad and un-timed.

So, lets work through it. Take again our previous example with deck1 and deck2 and assume that you put record1 on deck1 and record2 on deck2. None of the decks are playing, and you have the room in total silence. If we want to start with record1, then turn your cross fade away from deck1 or mute the live output of deck1. Switch the head-phone cue to deck1 so that you can listen to it on your phones. Start deck1 and put the needle near the end of the track. Try to find the spot near the end of the track, where the vocals end and/or the tune dries out. It is usually very easy to tell because the sound starts to simplify. Complex strings and notes simply stop playing and what you are usually left with is just a combination of beats, pads and some bass.

After the initial drop out of the main chorus of the middle part of the track, the song will continue to simplify as it nears its end, at specific points, which almost always occur every 32 beats a ‘period’.

As a DJ that wants to excel others at the art of mixing, you have to train yourself to identify a number of things fairly quickly:

1. The number of ‘periods’ available for mixing. In other words the number of ‘periods’ between the end of the middle of the track and the actual end of the track. You find that on house tracks you usually get about 3-4, but some tracks can have as many as 8 ‘periods’ if not more.
   On vinyl there is no quick way to count these periods apart from listening to the track for a couple of periods and then estimating the rest by the remaining length of the groove.
   On CD-players you simply compare time marks. If the end of the middle section starts at 5:30, the track finishes at 6:40 and it runs at 120 BPM, then most likely you have 4 periods. 70 seconds with 0.5s per beat = 140 beats = 4.3 periods. Always come down to an integer, in this case 4.
2. The second thing, which is a little harder is to try and identify the different cue points during the end of the track. For example, 2 periods will pass and then the bass will cut out. 2 more periods will pass and then the beat will also cut out. Remember these cue points.

Next step:

Now you have found cue points for record1 on deck1, so you may turn the cross-fader on deck1 at full volume and start playing this record to the live mix. Switch the headphone cue button to deck2.

Now, lets have a look at deck2. We have to do two things:

1. Find cue points at the end of record 2 just like you did before on record 1 (remember what we said about needing to know end cue points before playing a record?)
2. Find cue points at the beginning of record 2. This is simply doing the reverse of what we explained earlier. When you find mix-in cues, you start with a very simple sound, usually the beat and find out how many periods pass till the song really gets going.

© 3345 Team

3345, the Vinyl Records Home.