The DJ Mixer and beat matching
The art of beat matching is a skill employed by DJs for mixing records during a performance or recording sessions. The goal is to create seamless switches between records by perfectly matching the tempo of the track playing to the audience and the cued track being sent to the DJ's headphones.
This technique is now thought to be a standard skill acquired by DJs at the start of their career. It was invented towards the end of the sixties and in the early seventies, originally by using a metronome. Beat matching was intended to encourage the audience to remain on the dance floor, instead of leaving during the gap between records.
Once the idea of beat matching had been introduced, the development of specific DJ equipment soon followed, with the invention of the DJ mixer. This equipment permits a DJ to connect two or more DJ decks and then to send the audio sources to the headphones or speakers. Different functions provide various effects, like the ability to fade certain elements of the music like bass, in order to facilitate matching the tempo.
Essentially, the process involves playing one record over the speaker system and another on the headphones for monitoring purposes. The record playing on the headphones must start on the same beat as the other, and so the DJ mixer is used to control both the pitch and the speed of the cued record as well as manual manipulation of the records on the decks.
The DJ mixer can send one channel to each earpiece on the headphones for accurate monitoring of the beats. Once this has been achieved, certain parts of the cued record can be faded into the mix, while the first record is gradually faded out.
The dance music scene is now dominated by digital music rather than vinyl, and new machines have been invented for beat matching using different audio formats. MP3 files can be transported on a USB device and connected to a CDJ in order to mix tracks using the beat matching controls of the DJ CD player.
This technique is now thought to be a standard skill acquired by DJs at the start of their career. It was invented towards the end of the sixties and in the early seventies, originally by using a metronome. Beat matching was intended to encourage the audience to remain on the dance floor, instead of leaving during the gap between records.
Once the idea of beat matching had been introduced, the development of specific DJ equipment soon followed, with the invention of the DJ mixer. This equipment permits a DJ to connect two or more DJ decks and then to send the audio sources to the headphones or speakers. Different functions provide various effects, like the ability to fade certain elements of the music like bass, in order to facilitate matching the tempo.
Essentially, the process involves playing one record over the speaker system and another on the headphones for monitoring purposes. The record playing on the headphones must start on the same beat as the other, and so the DJ mixer is used to control both the pitch and the speed of the cued record as well as manual manipulation of the records on the decks.
The DJ mixer can send one channel to each earpiece on the headphones for accurate monitoring of the beats. Once this has been achieved, certain parts of the cued record can be faded into the mix, while the first record is gradually faded out.
The dance music scene is now dominated by digital music rather than vinyl, and new machines have been invented for beat matching using different audio formats. MP3 files can be transported on a USB device and connected to a CDJ in order to mix tracks using the beat matching controls of the DJ CD player.
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