Hip-Hop Beat Matching

Video Transcript

" What's up? This is DJ Colione with expertvillage.com and in this clip I am going to show you the fundamentals of beat matching. Now first beat matching is the hardest thing you guys are going to have to learn how to do when you are learning how to DJ. It basically takes the training of your ears to try to understand what is going on when you are hearing to records at once. You just really have to practice and practice, really try to train your ears to understand the different sounds that you are hearing and where they are coming from. It is tricky but with practice you will get the hand of it. So I am going to show you kind of the basics so you understand what is going to go on and what you are going to try to do when you beat match. So essentially what beat matching is just matching up the tempos of two different songs. So if you listen to two songs of course they are going to be all over the place. You got kicks and snares in one place and high hats in another; you know they are totally different. So what you are going to use is use pitch control on your turn table so this is going to either speed it up real fast or slow it down nice and good for you. So with this tool, your pitch control is going to help you adjust almost exactly to the other songs you are listening to. Now the technique you are going to want to use is you want to play the song that you are going to mix into and you are going to cue up the song that you are listening to in your headphones. What you want to do is the easiest way is to pull the first sound of the record so the down beat the one. You want to get that on whatever record you are going to go into and you are going to play the record that you are going to mix. What you want to do essentially is you want to start this record on the 1 on a 1 on this record and then listen to see how it turns out. You could be dead on, you might need to do some adjusting. Right. So we listen to this record and we have the one right here, we are going to start this right on the 1 right. You go 5, 6, 7, 8, 1. Sounds good for a sec but now it falls off. So now who knows what is going on. Right. So essentially what the training is going to do for you and the practice you are going to be able to hear which song is ahead of the other ones. Right. So after a while you are going to notice that this Jay Z song is like a little bit ahead of this song here. What you want to do when you realize that is you want to tap the record either on the top or the bottom to kind of slow it down simultaneously while moving the pitch lower to match it up to this song. So basically we are going to try right, is it going to play? If you are going to listen to this song and drop it on the 1. Right. So 5, 6, 7, 8. So its a little ahead. Now it's on, right? It's good for a second, got to slow it down a little more. So as I'm slowing it down with my finger, I am sort of touching the pilot here just to slow down the record for a bit and I am moving the pitch down just a little bit. You basically have to fine tune yourself until you get it right on. That sounds okay. Now from that what you want to do to mix into this song, you need to know how long this intro is until the music starts or until the lyrics come in. Right. You don't want people talking or people singing lyrics over each other. It is just confusing. You want to switch the song right as the lyrics come in on the new song. I believe this is a two 8 count intro so what we are going to do is just play this record, start this on the 1 and after two 8 counts, we are going to switch it over to just to the Jay Z, right. So this is playing. We have it on the 1 right 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 . One eight count 2,3,4 and there you go. So what you got to do every time you mix a record, you have to beat match it and you have to know how long the intro is. "