Manchester City Forums

Question that I'm sure someone on here will be able to (see what I did there?) answer.

Say I'm doing a set, and I'm doing a set live, but my decks don't have a bpm counter and they also shift pitch rather than tempo, if I've got stuff with different bpms it's gonna make it tricksier right (if not impossible)? I was thinking a possibly good way round this would be to have a think about the tunes on my set beforehand, then import them into ableton to equalise the bpms. I think I could then convert them back to wav files easy enough (iTunes, audacity, wmp, prolly ableton too). (This may be bad form and cheating also, I dunno).

Questions:

Would this work?
Would I be able to do several tracks on one cd and also mark them as individual tracks?

All help appreciated.

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Good question. I for one would be interested to know the answer to this too. Not because I'm doing a set, but because I just like to know stuff.

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getting a bit ahead of yourself:D
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1. you don't need a bpm counter.

2. they do shift tempo. tempo is bpm. that slider does that doesn't it?

3. the whole idea of DJing is to mix tunes with different bpms so that the beat matches seamlessly. What you're proposing is. Well, what exactly are you proposing? Just make a compilation CD and play that?

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I raped myself once. My mind was telling me no but my body, my body was telling me yes.

Benny, will you be playing any Quo?

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And put on that wig I bought you. No, no, no, no. The reddish-brown one.

Sorry mate, not got any Quo. I've got "Legions of the Betrayed" by Quo Vadis if that's any good?

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I raped myself once. My mind was telling me no but my body, my body was telling me yes.

The slider is pitch rather than tempo, my worry was using that could be squeaky or deep, hence trying to smooth it first. Does that make sense?

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Its pretty much what bastardo said..

Mixing is all about matching the beats, using the pitch, which like he said is the tempo, or speed in a way..

The difference being is that your using mp3 as opposed to vinyl..

It maybe a whole different ball game, as thats what i was raised on, the principal of mixing is to take 2 completely different tunes, and...Well i always got the pitch even, by matching the kick of the bass drum..

Im sure ive said this before ,so forgive me if i have.
A great example of this is getting two records the same, and matching the beat and the pitch, as if in a mix, and it creates 'phase cancellation' You end up with a weird echo like effect..
But even with two tunes the same you still have to get them matched perfectly, and its not just using the pitch, its little dabs from your finger on the decks, to push or slow the record with real acute fine touches..

This clip of my mate jonny, you can see him on the spindle that holds the 12", just twisting it or holding it, to get the beat aligned , and then he like feathers it at the edge, to get it bang on...
Its a art really..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTRODZ74rHw&feature=channel_page

Mixing with cd's is basically the same philosophy, just a different technique in principle..
A lot of its done in the headphones, and just by knowing the right place to start and finish the mix, theres always a point in a tune that allows for this..

I guess getting the tracks and matching all the bpms would work, but i always thought it was part of the battle getting the bpms the same, working the mix in mid flow and so on..
And tel ben honest mate with only really slinging vinyl, anything i say would be guessing with cd's..

But it must be pretty much the same principle as mixing vinyl...

(was this a load of waffle or did it make any friggin sense) .?:confused:
Im almost talking aloud here on the fly...

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BJWB.1920-31/12/2010.

The difference I'm thinking, is if I try and shift the pitch too much it'll sound wrong, whereas the ones I was using today change the tempo but keep the pitch the same. As does ableton iirc. I need to experiment no doubt.

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Pitch isn't tempo. Well, not my definition of it anyway. Altering the pitch doesn't change the tempo. Does it?

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Well yes and no ...
Tempo is the speed of the actual piece of music..
And you mesure this by the beat per minute..

Pitch is the frequency, and in mixing using pitch control on a set of 1200's your fundamentally altering the the speed of the record + or - so the frequency changes. lower or higher..

But its basically speed...

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BJWB.1920-31/12/2010.

This^^

Myself /jonny mudskipper and my best mate darren used to sit in daz bedroom,at 14 /15 years old and just mess about on his decks with peter piper and breaking bells /run-dmc..
It was basic hiphop mixing..
Just jonny was the one who took that into doing for real...
We all could mix, but he stuck with it..
As you know well he already is, last month 40, were all the same age, so thats 25+ years he's been on the 1&2...

How much of my life was sat in his flat, after getting in at daft o'clock, off our little cherrys, just looking at the back of his head in his front room, a constant supply of budda, to keep the decks spinning..

i collected vinyl like a nerd, and just left the decks to him because he was just obsessed with mixing..

And he still is pretty much..

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BJWB.1920-31/12/2010.

Right, ok. I was thinking of keyboards I used to have. It had a pitch wheel on it. It worked like a tremolo arm on a guatar. Didn't alter the tempo though.

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No your right jeebs, its just with a set of decks the pitch control is fundamentally altering the speed at which it spins..

From 33 or 45 rpm its +8 or -8 and its a speed control really but speeding it up alters the pitch...

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BJWB.1920-31/12/2010.

Gotcha! I'm with ya now.

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Kimbo's spot on in all the above posts.

The control for tempo on decks is called "Pitch". It's a bit misleading, but pitch is a function of tempo so it's kind of right. Just a bit daft.

In answer to Benny's question about things going really high pitched or really low when you speed them up or slow them down, that's where the art of matching tunes together comes in. You need tunes that are either fairly close together bpm-wise, or aren't going to be affected too much by cranking the bpm right up. If you've got tunes with a slower bpm, group them together with other slower tunes and play them early doors in your set, then gradually ramp the tempo up until you finish your set with Moby's classic "1000 BPM".

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I raped myself once. My mind was telling me no but my body, my body was telling me yes.

Cheers guys, I think that answers all my questions. I'm fairly sure the tempo slider on the pioneer works differently to my pitch slider, but I could well be mistaken.

Experimentation and practice being the key I'm sure.

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The higher end Pioneer CDJ's have a "Master Tempo" button, which when pressed stops the pitch slider changing pitch, so it only changes tempo. In it's natural state it's a pitch slider the same as yours and the same as a vinyl deck.

Practice, as always, is the key.

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I raped myself once. My mind was telling me no but my body, my body was telling me yes.

Nice. I remember seeing MT.

Deffo practice.

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