First off, please be easy on me… I’m a fifty year old who has no rhythm, but loves electronic music and just started DJing in my man cave 5 months ago for fun. My daughter bought me a Numark Party Mix for my 50th and it has escalated quickly since then… I upgraded to a Numark Mixtack Platinum FX shortly after, and just this past weekend I purchased a Prime 2.
Now to my question… With my first two Numark controllers I used Serato DJ Lite, and within Serato there were Phrase Meters/Markers (sorry if I got the terminology wrong) - bold beat grid markers every 8 bars indicating the start of a phrase, below circled in red:
These were very, very helpful for me when mixing (remember I don’t have rhythm). Now with Engine DJ on the P2, these are not present/displayed as they were with Serato. Same song, same drop as Serato, but in Engine DJ:
Regarding my library, all of my tracks were downloaded, analyzed through Mixed In Key 10, then put into my Serato Library. As of the weekend, that same Serato Library was imported from Serato to Engine DJ 3.0.
Are these Phrase Meters/Markers non-existent within Engine DJ, or did I miss something when importing the tracks from Serato into Engine DJ?
I would re-analyse everything in Engine after you imported from Serato personally. I have the same workflow but I have engine set to auto analyse new music so whenever I sync my Serato collection it analyses them in Engine.
If you look on the engine grid every 4 beats is marked red instead of white on the top and bottom. As far as a phrase goes, im not sure there is anything specific but you can learn which numbers amount to a phrase as they are multiples of 32.
Sorry, I did forget to mention that I did re-analyze all of my library when it was imported in Engine DJ.
The red 4-beat markers on the grid I understand, but I was hoping for the phrase markers in addition as I was hoping not to have to add math to my mixing equation, but if that is what it takes… I’ll give it a go!
Let me read the guide and see if there are any other tools to use for phrasing etc. It’s not something I actively use so im being honest I cant remember fully if there is or not.
One good practise I do is to get used to counting beats whenever im listening to music, regardless of where and when that is. It soon becomes 2nd nature and your brain starts automatically recognising breakdowns and drops. Ive been doing this for years and it’s arguably the best advice I could offer.
Back to your first response… I did try using the beat grid markers to aid in defining the phrases, but I ran into difficulties as the first beat starts on 1, and not 0. In turn, the phrase started on 9 or 17 which then threw me off for the remainder of the track.
I will definitely take your advice and start to count the beats. As I mentioned before, I have no rhythm, so adding counting will be a challenge.
It’ll come with time if you keep trying it… electronic music is easier to get into the habit of counting too as it tends to all follow the same format, one way or another.
I see what you mean about the numbers, I think there is an existing feature request for phrasing. try this link below to vote on it or bump the thread.
