Are there more beats inside a bar? DJ TUTORIAL

0:00 Dodgy hat day today

Right folks, Jonathan here. Dodgy hat day today. This video is all about not beat juggling really but more so counting bars, listening to music and editing in the beat, not just in timing with regards to the bass kick but in between. Now let me show you something. Right there you go, there's a bar. One, two, three, four. 1, 2, 3, 4 and start again. 1, 2, 3, 4. So if we're listening to actual music and we're listening to say house music and we're listening to the bass kicks it would be dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, like so. But guess what? Guess what? There is loads and loads of space and things going on in between there. Now then, you've got space and you've got more space. You've got even more space in that direction, you've got lots more space. So, what on earth am I on about? Right, what I'll do, I'm going to play you a track on that CDJ turntable and then I'm going to start editing one in on that one. First of all, I'm going to edit it in, in time with the actual bass kick. Then what I'm going to do, I'm going to edit the actual track in

1:54 We'll start it off again, have a listen

In between the bass kicks, and let's hear the difference. It's very subtle, but it makes it a lot more interesting. So what we'll do, we'll wang the camera over there, and hopefully you can see exactly what I'm doing. So if I pan it about there, the main area you want to look at is here. So let's start the music. So what we'll do now, we'll just introduce this track in time, in bars. I've got the crossfade at the centre, I've got both volume controls up. Exactly the same. So this is what we're doing, if you listen. We'll start it off again, have a listen. We'll cue that up ready. Now I'm going to move the crossfader over so you can hear it without that track over there. Let's start that one off. Now then, if we have a look here, we can see that we have got loads of space. We've got space in between there. Now in musical terms there's something called an accent.

Now what an accent is, I'm a drummer and any drummer will understand where I'm coming from. And that is that when you hit the cymbal, most of the time a drummer will hit it in time with a bar. Like so. But occasionally if you want to, you can hit the cymbal in between here. Now have a listen to the difference when I start messing around with that cue button. Here we go. We'll start the music off again. We'll have the crossfade set to the centre. We'll have the two volume controls in exactly the same position. And we'll start this one off, but this time I'm going to mess around with this one and I'm going to bring in some accents. I'm going to bring this track in, yes, in beat with the bars, but also in between those bars. Let's have a listen to the difference. What I'll do now is I'm going to do exactly the same thing, but I'm going to use the crossfade and bring that over. So really, in a sense, we're almost beat juggling, but we're not using vinyl turntables, we're using CDJs. Off we go again. Right, let's pause that again.

4:40 I don't know if you heard, but I did something like

Now, I don't know if you heard, but I did something like... which was, if you have a listen. Now, how would that look in relation to looking at a bar? If you imagine, bam, bam, and the camera's going down like so, so we'll hold that up. Now, that sound I was making, I'll show you what it looks like. Have a listen first. How it looks is this. If you imagine there's the bass beat there. I was hitting it... So in other words, I was hitting it here, but bum, bum, like that. Where's that blasted pen? There it is. Right, dum, dum, dum. So you've got that one, two, so if you imagine, one, two, three, well actually we'd start over here wouldn't we? One, two, three, da-dum, dum, dum. Now that's what I was actually doing.

The bass kicks, making it sound a little bit more different, a little bit more interesting, which is the main aspect here. So we'll do that again. Set it up like that so you can have a look. Start it off again. I hope that's been a help. Give it a go. Again, it's about experimenting. Check it out, see what you think. Practice and enjoy.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.