Maaaan I learned to count bars the hard way. Had no idea this was even possible in TP2. Great tip!

This could be really useful with tracks with intros that aren’t divisible by 8 bars

That’s a very nice tip. Thank you DJTT (and peedot) for pointing it out. Please have more articles like that. That’s what in the early days made DJTT what it is today.

Thanx DJTT and peedot! Nice Trick :)

This might be the best tip I’ve seen in months. excited to use this.

don’t want to sound arrogant, but if you really can’t distinguish phrases and need to use this, then why are you mixing? it’s like having no connection at all with the music you’re playing. I’m all for the digital helps, sync and shit, but not this tendency to “I want to dj without having to hear the music”

that helps ! Appreciated !

Thank’s DJTT! cool feature! As an old DJ we used to do it intuitively! it getting easer and easer to be a DJ! LOL ……good for you guys! Ciao!

I kind of get what you’re saying. I thought distinguishing phrases and counting bars of musical time was a general DJ skill. I won’t use this, but it’s cool if it’s helpful for some.

Totally agree. I would rather give the tip to listen and listen to music again and again counting out loud in your head, it eventually becomes natural after a while, without having to look at no number.

agree completely. There comes a point when you either know how to play music or not… .all the handicaps in the world can’t help you, might as well program an AI at that point lol

Agreed. At this point I’ve looked at the waveform stripe so many times I can eyeball it pretty accurately for phrasing (really more as a visual reminder of the song’s structure than a mix-by-numbers system) but this a useful tip for those who didn’t know about it and for those just getting into phrasing.

If nothing else, it can help even experienced DJs learn the structure of their new songs faster. Just because the tool is there it doesn’t mean you have to use it as a crutch.

Oh my lord Thank you! I was trying to figure out all kinds of ridiculous ways to accomplish this and it was under my nose the whole time.

An example why this could be useful; Mixing in a track you’ve never heard before because the club owners new 14 year old girlfriend wants to hear it.

This article helps me realize I need to get back into Traktor. Bought an SL1 a couple months ago and haven’t touched T2 since. Lots of fun using new kit but 2.6 is out now.

For those who need help with phrase mixing and cue’ing up properly. here’s a free e-book by Mixed In Key to help you out

http://www.mixedinkey.com/Book/

I play the occasional wedding (usually as a favor to a friend) and this happens all the time.

nice tip, good to know, i has already in my min, you have explained it

as everyone says learn to do it by ear. the point is as a working dj you are being distracted. little things like this help keep your focus

I do something similar. I didn’t see the point in displaying both the length of a song and the time remaining so I changed the total time for beats and changed the bars to phrase to 16 because this is more in keeping with the style of music I play. It doesn’t count down like the above method but it’s far more useful than displaying the total time imo.

This is a cool feature for drum and bass DJs when double dropping tracks

Am I the only one that thinks this method is just completely useless? come on people, if you don’t know what a phrase is, stop djing, just stop.

When this feature was added I tried it for a good 5 minutes but thought it was way to distracting to be useful. I like to mix by ear and gut feeling, even if I don’t know the song very well. Focussing on a counter didn’t add anything to that, quite the opposite. But if it helps for your workflow, good for you. Nice of pointing it out DJTT!

This same feature is on the CDJ2000 Nexus, it’s obviously useful to someone other than new DJ’s.

So how do you expect that to work? Option one would be that you actually have this track that the 14 y.o. wants to hear on your laptop, but since you have never listened to it, which cue points do you expect that this feature would be counting off to? The other option would be that this 14 y.o. provides you this track and just happens to have sets cue points before she handed the track to you?

Thats right make it even easier for any fool to mix …love traktor but I hate to say it but this industry’s ruined .. !

The whole point of this is that you DON’T have to “focus” on the counter. You just take a quick glance, and make the normal calculations in your head. Someone has said it before – this is a tip that appeals to experienced DJ’s because it’s something that we’ve learned to do over time WITHOUT visual indicators.

Great article!

Probably.

Just because you’ve learned what a phrase doesn’t qualify you to tell others to stop DJ’ing.

Bingo.

The

If your style is mostly to mix deck A into deck b, then yes you probably don’t even need to use this. I’d say that once I throw a third deck into the mix and I doing a lot more live remixing or creating new vocal phrases with a Capellas, something like this would be very useful.

This is meh I think using war display and minute markers are far more predictable if you have a basic idea of music structure. If you can’t grab an unheard track an get it even 90% correct by just the wave display you need some help.. Not to sound condescending but come on remaining time minute marker see when war form changes loop 32 bar see what your working with and go for it

I don’t mean to sound arrogant either but this has got to stop. Come on, it’s 4/4 dance. After practicing on your decks, the idea of phrasing should start to come to you.
After learning to beatmatch tons of records and listening(key word here) to tons of dj mixes,
I got it. I did not have a software to rely on.
There is just too much of this let traktor do this and traktor do that . Listening, phrasing and mixing go hand and hand.
It’s musical and you need to listen to what is going on in order to make good transitions between tracks or good builds. Not rely on traktor.
If you want to dj this stuff is basic.

hahaha

Or just…listen to the song like regular?

I’m normally careful about not being negative in comments but yes. You should stop dj’ing, unless you’re using this as a beginner. In which case I still think this system is a bad idea. My god. It’s dj’ing, not watch the clock computer aided mixing. Feel something!

Sometimes in electronic music there is a long run or bridge that isn’t always 32 or 64 beats long and you want to bring in a new track so that the bass drops for both tracks on exactly the same beat. For my style of djing (deep/underground) I like to always have tracks layered and slowly mix them in. This is a great tool so you never drop bass of one track while the other is still building, especially if you are 3 decks deep.

Sometimes on the fly phrases can differ at different points of track.

what a really good tool, would take forever marking all my tracks but still good

exactly! i will turn that on and even if i don’t look at it, it will be there. i’m sure the one time i’m in a hurry doing a double drop, it will save me from screwing up. no need to hate on it.

Thank you for this tip!

great tip.thx

If you’re going to DJ you HAVE to know what a phrase is, so I learned what a phrase is.

Yes, this does qualify me to tell others to shut up if they’re trying to find gimmicks to excuse learning what a fucking phrase is

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