3:39
A tune inside a tune
On YouTube this video is called DJ Demonstration, Use a toon In a Toon - Pioneer CDJ-1000 mk3
What this lesson teaches
Short, honest about being a mess-around, and it contains one piece of judgement worth copying.
The judgement
He listens through the incoming track and says it plainly: we cannot really do much with the rest of the track, but we can do quite a bit with that beginning.
That is a real skill and nobody teaches it. Most records have one section that is genuinely useful to a DJ - an intro, a break, a hook, eight bars of something distinctive - and the rest is the record doing its job. Recognising which part is the useful part, and being willing to use only that part, is most of what separates a set that moves from one that plays things through.
What he does with it
Hot cues on the opening of the incoming record, triggered over the top of the track that is already playing.
So the second record never really plays. It gets used - a fragment at a time, on the beat, over a running groove - which is the "tune in a tune" of the title.
Why this is different from a mix
In a mix, the incoming record takes over. Here it does not: there is one track playing throughout and another being used as a sample source.
That changes what you can use. A record with a great four-bar intro and nothing else is useless for mixing and perfect for this - and those records are cheap, abundant and sitting in everybody's collection being skipped.
How to set it up
Nothing elaborate. Find the fragment, set a hot cue at its start, and make sure the tempos match so the fragment lands in time.
Then it is a matter of taste and counting: fire it at the top of a bar, let it speak, and get out before the room notices it is a loop of somebody else's intro.
Contents of the video
Alright folks, now this is mainly a bit of a mess around here. What I'm going to do is use the hot cues on the right hand deck. Two tracks is this one here, it's Minini and Vianti, I think that's how you pronounce it, featuring Christine Key, La La Land. That's that one. Now on this side, what we've got is we've got Little Boots, New In Tone. That's that one.
Just have a listen to the other one. Now that's all it is, what I'm going to do is just put the camera down very slightly because the whole idea of this, bit of a demonstration in other words, well mainly, and I'm going to be using the hot cues and we've got just the beginning. Let's have a listen to the beginning of this track plus the rest of it and we'll see, well hopefully you'll see where I'm coming from. Just press play, let it play for a second.
Right, we can't really do much at the moment with the rest of the track but we can do quite a bit with that beginning. That's pretty cool. We're still playing this one here. Turn the volume up slightly.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
