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Why you set a low % on the pitch control
On YouTube this video is called Complete Beginner DJ Lessons Video 10 WHY You Set a Low % on the DJ Pitch Speed Controller
What this lesson teaches
A setting most beginners never touch, and the one that decides whether beatmatching feels possible.
What the percentage means
The pitch fader has a range, and on most equipment you can change it: 6%, 8%, 16%, 50%, or wide.
His worked example is the clearest way to see it. Take a hip-hop track at 100 BPM and set the range to 8%:
- Fader at the centre: 100 BPM, the track's own tempo.
- Fader to the slow extreme: 8% slower, so 92 BPM.
- Fader to the fast extreme: 8% faster, so 108 BPM.
That is the whole of what the number does. It sets how far the fader can take you.
Why low is better
His reason is control, and it is worth spelling out the mechanism, because it is pure geometry.
The fader's physical travel does not change. It is the same few centimetres whichever range you pick. What changes is how much tempo is spread across that distance.
At 8%, those centimetres cover sixteen BPM, so a millimetre of movement is a small adjustment. At 50%, the same centimetres cover a hundred BPM - and that same millimetre is now six times bigger a jump. You are trying to make an adjustment finer than your hand can reliably produce.
So a wide range does not give you more control over a bigger span. It gives you less control over everything.
What to set
6% or 8% for mixing within a style, which is almost all the time. Two house records are rarely more than a few BPM apart, and 8% of 125 is ten BPM in either direction - far more headroom than you will need.
The wide ranges exist for deliberately large tempo changes, which is a specific technique rather than everyday mixing. Leave them until you need them, and set the fader narrow now.
Contents of the video
Alright guys, another video for the complete and utter beginner. In this video I'm going to be explaining why it's really important for a new DJ to set your pitch control to a very low percentage. So let's just imagine now you have a hip-hop track loaded up and the track is 100 BPM. Now you may find using your software or on the controller, you can change the parameter of your pitch control percentage. So for example, you could change maybe from 6%, 8%, 16%, maybe even 50% or wide, which is 100%. So first of all, what do those percentages mean? I'll explain. Let's go back to our hip-hop track. Imagine we have a track of 100%. By now you should understand what BPM means, beats per minute. So if we set our pitch control to say, for example, 8%, what that will mean is if you move the pitch all the way down away from you as far as it will go.
So you'll slow the track down. You will decrease that 100 BPM track by 8%. So. it will no longer be 100 BPM, it will be 92 BPM. Bring it back to the centre, it's back to 100 BPM. If you bring it towards you as fast as it can go, you will increase it by 8%. So it will no longer be 100 BPM, it will be 108 BPM. Now why is it really important for a beginner DJ or for that matter any DJ to set their pitch at a low percentage? Basically what that means, you have more control over the overall speed of the track. The higher the percentage, the less control you have of the speed of the track. So for example, if you go to 16% or even above, it's actually more difficult to beat match the track by ear than if you're at a lower percentage. I hope that helps. This is video
Number nine. Thank you, practice and enjoy.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
