Pioneer CDJ-1000 pitch bend feature, What's it for?

0:00 We need the pitch bend feature

Alright folks, in this video we're going to be looking at this guy here. It's the CDJ-1000 Mark III. More importantly, we're going to be looking at the pitch bend feature on this guy. What we're going to do is talk about why we need the pitch bend feature and also more importantly how we can use the pitch bend feature when we're in the mix. First of all, what is the pitch bend feature? What does it do? Alright, let's say for example a track is playing on this guy at 120 BPM and it's playing at 120 BPM with reference to where the pitch control is set. Now let's say for example track's playing and I start to move this guy here the outside of the jog wheel anti-clockwise. Have a listen. What happened there is I was able to slow the track down but have a listen again.

1:01 The track will go back to the original speed

My fingers on the pitch bend, I'll take my finger off the pitch bend and have a listen. The track will go back to the original speed. In other words, if the pitch is there, press play, that's how fast the track will go. If I start moving the jog wheel anti-clockwise, I can slow the track down. As soon as I stop moving the jog wheel, the track will go back to its original speed. Exactly the opposite applies if I start to move the jog wheel clockwise. Let's have a listen. Not touching it at all, now I'm going to put my finger on the side and move it clockwise. Starts to speed up, take my finger off and it's gone back to its original speed. Alright, so why do we need pitch bend? Now let's say for example we've got a track playing over there and through the headphones you're mixing this one in, you're getting the pitch.

2:22 Wheel tiny, touch pitch, control move

Perfect, and it's perfectly in beatmatch on your headphones. Then at a point where you know you want to bring this one in, volume down on this one, volume up on that one let's say, you press play. And all of a sudden you find that this particular track could be very, very slightly behind the beat of that one over there. On your headphones, without having to touch the pitch control, all you need to do is move the jog wheel a tiny amount clockwise. What that will do, it'll almost shunt the beat forward very slightly but because prior to doing that you got them perfectly beatmatched what you will be doing is shunting the beat a little bit forward almost Matching those beats perfectly in time. And as soon as they are in time, then the beats will stay together because you got them beatmatched prior to bringing this one in. Now also the opposite applies. If this guy is slightly too fast, then what you need to do is not touch the pitch control, just move the jog wheel a tiny bit Hope that's been a help, practice and enjoy.

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