So you wanna be a DJ in the traditional way, it is sure that you have the turntable, a mixer and a large pack. Surely you want to hook a song with the other, but it turns out that these do not always coincide. What you need to do this is to find out what the BPM (beats per minute) of each song and then move the throttle or pitch to put two songs at the same speed
Steps
- Listen to the song on your headphones and pay attention to the beats of drums. Try to isolate the sound of other instruments and voice. If you’re new to this, try first with instrumental versions of the song if available. This usually makes things easier.
- Note that most of the drum beats in modern music (hip hop, house, funk, etc..) Come in bar of 4 by 4. This means that each measure has four times. This means that each turn has 4 times marked by two low and two shots of hi hat, bass, cymbal, bass, cymbal, etc..
- Take a stopwatch in one hand and press the play button (play) with the other. Press the two buttons at the same time and start counting, but instead of counting the beats of four, still has every drum beat or bass you hear: one, two, three, four, five … You must know when to tell time. Every time marks time with his head up and down counts as one.
- Stop the count when the timer dial 15 seconds. Now that you know that in those seconds were, say, 24 strokes, multiply this number by four and you get the number pulses per minute or BPM. For our example would be 24 x 4 = 96. Which means that our song is 96 BPM.
Tips
- Be sure to make this process two or three times for each song, this because you may find some differences in the results. Sometimes get 96, then 95 or 97 also. Be sure to check twice for each measure.
- Most of the songs on the hip hop genre are between 88 and 112. The house usually comes between 112 and 136.
- Some machines can calculate the BPM mechanically and are much more accurate. In addition, some mixers come with this device installed.
- A great help for any DJ is to write the BPM of each song in its respective label and sort from lowest to highest. That way you will know in what order to put them.
- Keep in mind that the mixture is not the only way to combine two songs, you can cut one and go aa follows with a space in between, that way the songs do not necessarily have to match the BPM.
- Do not mix songs that have more than 5BPMs apart and always mix up down, I mean, always raising the BPM (unless you are starting a new group of songs).
- If you’re mixing music was recorded before the eighties, find that BPM is not constant during the same song. These songs fluctuate because the drums were recorded live in the studio.