Looping problem with cdj 350's

Cianh · 24-11-2011 10:22pm #1

I posted this in the sticky for beginner mixing and got no response, hence the fresh thread.

The problem is with the beat looping function.

I press the beatloop/loopdivide button and it gives me the four beat loop as it should.

When i'm mixing I get the beats matched perfectly first and when i'm ready to mix I hit loop (to give me a longer intro on the incoming tune) the problem is when the loop gets going its bpm changes slightly... enough to cause a trainwreck pretty quickly though.

The tunes in question have been anaylised by rekordbox, so the bpm readings should be accurate enough.

At first it would seem an easy way out would be to get the beats aligned using just the four beat loop, but it means I can't exit the loop mid mix.

Cheers for any help

Cian

VinylJunkie · 24-11-2011 10:26pm

I would have thought that a loop is never going to be 100% accurate. Can you not just pitch bend the track you're bringing in?

Cianh · 24-11-2011 11:03pm

Cheers for the quick reply. You'll have to forgive my ignorance here, i've only ever used 1210's before so all these features are new to me.

Yeah I could do that, I'm just wondering is it the same with all cdjs? it just seems to go off beat very quickly, I would have thought the loops would have been more accurate than that time wise.

Executive Steve · 25-11-2011 12:25am

I never really got the idea behind looping; how long does an intro have to be anyway? 32 bars is more than enough to beatmatch a record; and surely if the producer didn't make it any longer it's because it doesn't need to be?

I buy a record because I think it's deadly and because I reckon that at some stage I'll get some serious use out of it, sometimes it takes years of having it lying around the back of a shelf before i find something really cool to do with it, and in the meantime it just sits there waiting for me to figure that something out.

Some lad spent years trying to perfect writing tunes, arranging them and structuring them, then spent ages making a tune he reckons is exactly what he wants a tune to sound like, on decent studio monitors in an acoustically neutral space, and you're going to stand there in busy a club with with ****ty monitors and CDJs that have seen better days with a few pits in you and no dinner because you too were nervous to eat and now you're going to try and second guess him completely and change the way his piece of art sounds because you can't mix something unless it has a 128 bar intro with a kick, clap and a hi-hat???

Just mix the tunes man, if you can't mix the tunes just wait until you're good enough to figure out how to mix them. In the meantime just mix other tunes.

Problem solved.

Same goes for "effects".

brianc27 · 25-11-2011 3:43am

from what i know (from my limited use on a cycloop sampler) it pretty hard to loop perfectly, as in press the loop button exactly on the beat, you'll prob get better at it the more you use it but dont think it will never be 100% accurate, certainly not as tight as say looping in traktor which is pretty much 100% spot on.

i used to use cdj800's year ago and do seem to remember never being able to get the loop function to loop well, never really used it mind.

seannash · 25-11-2011 1:28pm

Might be hard to follow but try and stay with me.
As soon as the first beat of the part you wanna loop kicks in,pause the track and move the jogwheel to the very first part of the sound(helps if its a clean kick)
Hit the loop in button,this will set the track playing,count the bar and just before it kicks into a new bar pause it again and drag it forward to the very begining of the beat again.when you have the very begining pull it back right before you cant hear the begining on the beat and hit the loop out button

You'll have a perfect loop then,Its hard to explain but its pretty easy to do

DubDJ · 25-11-2011 4:58pm

+1 to the two posts above. Best way to do it is pause it and bring it right to the start of the beat. More than likely the reason the bpm has changed is because you didn't catch the loop at precisely the start of the 1st beat.

Cianh · 25-11-2011 6:28pm

Thanks lads i'll get practicing that, I was taking the easy way out using the auto loop, presuming it would be more accurate than me trying to get loop in/out points.

I didn't realise I was breaking the rules steve, i'll be sure to apologise to every producer involved in this looping scandal for messing with their art pieces.

I'm not looping to make beatmatching easier, as I said in the first post, the beats are already matched I just want to extend the intro. Its not as though i'm looping every single track on the intro and outro, for example if the outgoing track has a vocal close to the end and the incoming track has a vocal early on, a SHORT loop is a perfect way to mix and avoid a vocal clash. I've only ever mixed vinyl before this and i'm just trying to suss out the features on the cdjs.

And you'll be happy to know steve i'll be standing in the box room not a club so no one will be subjected to it.

electrogrimey · 29-11-2011 11:28pm

+1 one manual looping, autoloops never work perfectly. You're much better off ignoring any kind of bpm counter completely, your ears are much better machines.

I generally don't loop dance music that much though, hip-hop and older stuff with live drummers needs to be looped sometimes, because it's not made to be played in that context, but dance music is made with simple intros to be mixed, and the length of the intro indicates how the producer wants the track to be mixed.

If there's a short enough intro, the producer doesn't want an epic 2 minute mix, and if there's a long intro, the producer doesn't want a quick hip-hop style cut. You shouldn't really need to fuck with it that much.

Looping problem with cdj 350's

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