DJ Academy
Your computer is powered on, you’ve started up the DJUCED® software, you’ve selected and loaded your music tracks. Your DJ controller is also powered on and connected to your computer. So let’s get started!
Step ONE
You’ve selected a track for deck A, and another track for deck B. Listen to both tracks carefully, one after the other, to immerse yourself in the rhythm and get a good understanding of it. Listen to the tracks over and over, as many times as necessary.
Step TWO
Next, for each track, you’ll start off by determining a cue point: that’s to say, the point at which playback of a given track will begin. In order to do this, we suggest that you set your cue point on the stressed beat of a bar (generally the first “kick” in a bar).
Step THREE
Now you’ll be using the pitch fader, the fader on each deck that lets you adjust the number of beats per minute. You’ll need to set both tracks at the same speed: this allows you to avoid making it sound strange to the audience when you switch between one track and another, and – most importantly – ensures that the two tracks don’t get out of phase with one another.
Step FOUR
When this is done, you’re going to start playing the first track, and then, when the first track gets to its outro, you’ll get ready to start playing the second track as well. You should always remember to start playing the second track on a stressed beat of the first track: this is the all-important “Dropping on the One” mentioned earlier.
Don’t worry if the results of your early mixing attempts don’t yet sound totally professional: you’re just getting started, and are still in the learning process. Be sure to give yourself some time to really discover how the art of DJing works, and master all of the different controls on your DJ controller, along with the techniques and features in our DJUCED® software.
Beatmatch your songs with the jogwheels
Make the user rhythmically interact with the music: press a button on your DJ controller (kind of like you’d do in the game Guitar Hero). Visually, do this with waveforms in DJUCED®.
Goal: get a good understanding of the concept of rhythm, and stressed/unstressed beats.
Assess the accuracy of tapping out the rhythm. You can use stressed and unstressed beats.
Change a track’s BPM value. Goal: understand Beats Per Minute.
Make two different BPM values match one another.
Start playback of a track on a stressed beat using the combination of CUE and Play.
Goal: align one stressed beat with another.
Assess the accuracy with a phase meter %. CUE on unstressed beat. Play on stressed beat.
Start playback of a track on a stressed beat using a jog wheel (emulating a vinyl record).
Goal: align one stressed beat with another, with a little scratch.
Assess the accuracy with a phase meter %.
Adjust a track that’s out of phase using the outer ring on a jog wheel, or the Pitch Bend buttons.
Goal: realign the stressed beats.
Assess the beat to adjust a track.
Make a simple transition using the crossfader.
Assess the timing of the transition by following an on-screen cursor.
Make a Crossfader + Baby Scratch transition.
Assess the timing of on-screen actions.
Make a seamless transition using the equalizer knobs.
Assess the timing of on-screen actions.
Select a track according to its BPM, musical key and genre. Goal: explain the genre, musical key and BPM difference.
Assess whether the genre corresponds, as well as the musical key and the BPM difference (<5%).