DJ Looping Lesson the Hard Way Without a Laptop

0:00 I will be putting information on this track in the description of the

Alright guys, got a tuner here, Lenny Fontana, Chris Willis, Junior Sanchez, club mix, track and title, Top of the World from Karmic Power Records. I will be putting information on this track in the description of the video. Right, now let me give you an analogy here. Let's imagine you're in your house, you've got your garage outside, a couple of cars there, you're on a farm, you've got horses, cows, sheep, ducks, antelopes, reindeer, Tyrannosaurus rex. Sorry about the reindeer, just joking. Anyway, all of a sudden you realise that after many fantastic years of using your cars, all of a sudden they go wrong and you have to revert back to horse and cart. But you don't really know how to fix things together. Well, I'm going to show you now the horse and cart. Alright, so I have gone on the web, I've downloaded these tracks, unzipped them, put them onto the thumb drive over there and that's it.

1:44 Play the right side over the loop

They've gone through no software, nothing at all, I'm not using any form of software, period. Alright, admittedly I've got the screen there so I can sort of see the BPM and so on. But what I'm going to do is form a line. I'm going to make a loop at the beginning of this track and let's have a listen to how clever I am at making a loop. So, let's go to the beginning, sorry, ok so here we go, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 and out. So what I did there, the beginning of the track, just start it off anyway, I then pressed the out on the loop in and out and by the sound of it that sounds like a pretty good loop to me. I'm going to put that in the hot cue, the hot cue is now using the XDJ-RX2. It's now amber, that's not too bad actually.

It's not brilliant but it's not too bad. Alright so let's see how good that loop is by playing the same track on the right hand side. So both pitches are at the same position, same track, everything is a mirror image right and left. Let's press play on both of them bearing in mind now what I want is I want the left side in the loop and I want to play the right side. Play the right side over the loop. So I've got the loop going on the left, I'm now going to press play on the right. 4, 3, 2 and. Ok we can hear that's off. Yep, that's definitely off. So that loop I made is definitely not a correct loop. It's either too long or too short so we can change that to make sure it's a perfect loop by firstly pressing the out just.

Ok. Let's listen. I think it's too short so I'm just going to move the jog wheel clockwise. No, too far. Ok let's try that. Now that's really close. That is very, very, very close but this is how you train your ears. Now when I was playing the original track over the loop to begin with it was slightly off beat. It was but then I corrected it by moving the jog wheel. I didn't touch the top just the sides because I'm in vinyl mode on the right hand side. But what I did hear is that phasing sound. Now the phasing sound had a certain key to it but after that loop went through one cycle, that key of the phasing sound all of a sudden changed to another phasing sound. Now that tells me that we're very close to that loop being an exact loop but we're not bang on the money.

4:49 It's almost like it went down slightly

Now I'll do it again and once I've got it in time I will say now and I want you to then hear or I'll click like that instead of me saying now because I want you to listen to the difference in the sound from the one loop to the next one as the loop starts its next rotation. Here we go. There. It's almost like it went down slightly. Now let's see if we can get this even better, alright? Because this is about training your ears. What I'm teaching you here now is the bloody hard way, alright? This is the hard way not the easy way. You've got to learn the hard way so let's get back to this loop. Now I moved that jog wheel just very slightly. Still not there. I need to press the out. Sorry. Now it'll work. Oh dear.

7:37 Shift, press that, let's start it again

Too much. Yeah, what happened just then, sorry, is the loop was still doing its same loop and I was trying to adjust it when of course I didn't realise that I needed to press the out to change it. The out button wasn't flashing by itself. Try this again. Too much. Oh my god. Yeah. Oh my god. Alright. Do you know what? I'm not going to redo this video because this is proving a point here. How difficult it can be if you do it the hard way. So let's just try this again. Go back to my hot cue. No, because the hot cue is now as it was when I finished it. Shift, press that, let's start it again. Slightly better. Still not right. Do you know what? I reckon we're bang on the money there now. See? So let's start it from the beginning.

Yes! Listen to the tone. It's staying the same and I can change that. To prove a point, I can change the tone of that by moving the jog wheel on the right hand side. See? I'm now in control of that facing sound. You see we did it in the end. Alright. Now this is great practice. This is great practice for training your ears. This is the hard work. Alright? You get the hard work sorted. Laptop. Laptop. Controllers. Easy. Practice and enjoy. By the way, big shout out to Mr Lenny Fontana, Chris Willis in the house. Oh! Loving his tunes. Let's have a little bit more of this. Okay? Let's get out of that now. Thank you.

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