What I am learning in real time. Very fresh at DJing.
Please let me know if I am off. To me it sounds good, but very open to constructive critisism and any related tips.
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I’ll offer advice as a 25yr experienced DJ who learnt on records before incorporating digital.
Focus less on the screen and the colours etc and teach yourself to count the beats.
Most dance music follows the 4/4 signature, with 4 beats being a bar, and 8 bars being a phrase (32 beats)
You can train yourself to start following this anywhere and anytime, as long as you’re listening to music. Once you start doing this beat counting it’ll become subconscious. After that you’ll start noticing that the start of each phrase is usually accompanied by some kind of signature sound like a crash symbol or double kick. There are also likely to be changes in the structure of the track, a breakdown, drop, chorus, piano riff, bassline etc.
Try and use something like a vocal house track to learn with too, as they will tend to be more obvious.
Once you’re accomplished at this, those on screen markers and cue points will start to mean a lot more, but you’ll find you probably don’t even need to use them as you’re just naturally hitting the play button at the right time.
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Just to add, whilst I can quite easily follow the drum pattern of jungle, it’s one of the more difficult genres to learn with, so maybe leave that alone for the time being. Although if you listen carefully to your video you can hear the small beat cut at the end of the phrase before the next one starts.
I hear you, but my aim is to love the process rather than reach some kind of end professional goal.
So although I will try follow what you suggest with some House, I won’t be leaving Jungle alone!
I would rather be a little rough but playing the music I love. Progress does not need to be fast for me, as I have a day job and this is a side hobby.
Thanks so much for the feedback though. I will try and upload a follow up with some House, and start integrating some counting into my day to day.
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That was kinda my point though, during your day job when the radio is on, or in the car etc, any time you hear music, start getting used to counting in the beats. Doesn’t matter if it’s Katy Perry or David Guetta, you can still count it.
I was merely offering the advice for practising to save you time in learning… once you’ve nailed it with an easier genre, you’ll start hearing it on the more difficult ones, but the drums of jungle will just make it sound like a mess for a beginner. You could maybe compromise and use some more electronic drum n bass like high contrast or cyantific, where the patterns are more defined.
I happen to be sitting with a friend and put the counting into action with this song:
So much easier!
Although the phrasing of 32 beats, not so much, its a bit subtle.
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No, I totally hear and receive your advice. I will just do a compromise of 50/50. So that I don’t fall into the trap of needing to graduate from learning before I earn the right to play what I love.
Slower progress probably, but thats ok for me.
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You’ll be able to set the grids more accurately too once you have it locked in.
Break beats in their various forms are notorious for software to analyse correctly so you have to get used to manually editing your grids to the right place.
The beatgrid was off in the video because I have been aiming to follow what I hear. And fixing every beatgrid is too time consuming. To me, the two tracks landed in beat.
Was the beatgrid actually correct?
Yeah the mix sounds ok to me, it was difficult to really tell if they are phrased/not phrased but the output sounded good which is the main thing.
I agree on editing beat grids, my remedy is to do them whilst I’m mixing by holding the shift button to enter grid edit, quickly line them up then carry on with mixing. Most of mine are done at gigs.
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Yeah, I also do that often, when it is part of a playlist of my favourites.
But most of the time I am exploring new sounds, and freestyling.
I kind of use the act of DJing (secondary goal) to guide my navigation through music (primary goal), and listen to it differently. Haven’t really settled on the music that resonates with me just yet. Still in a brainstorming phase.
My number one priority is to stay in love with the process. I feel that when I tried to learn guitar. The reason I am not still doing it today is because I put theory in front of actually experimenting and just allowing myself to sound bad, make mistakes and learn from them.
So I tend not to follow advice that, for example, calls me to repeat the same 10 tracks over and over until I learn something profound from them. The advice is good, it just doesn’t apply to my personality and motovations.
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IMO you don’t need to actually count, and that’s possibly a bad thing to do. Just listen to the structure of the tracks. The repetition of the bass line, the drum pattern, chord patterns, the various riffs. You should notice how they repeat, with maybe small variations every X bars.
After a while, even with completely unknown tracks, you should be able to sense what’s going to happen and when.
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I always tell new DJs to start by counting, then they build the intuition to just listen and follow along over time.
What i love is when producers use 1 or 2 bar phrases as bridges. It throws new DJs for a loop. Or, when you have to mix a track in with 16 beat phrases into one that has 32 and so forth.
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I cover phrasing a number of times on TikTok because this is such an important topic for DJs to master. There is an entire collection of phrasing tips on that platform.
Beware of anyone telling you how you should mix tracks and genres. Be creative, experiment and make your own blends.
Here are some simple ones i posted.
This one mixes House with hiphop - “Tootsee Roll”, a track that uses 16 beat and 32 beat phrasing.
Some other random vids.
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Wow, cannot wait to give these a watch
Other tips:
- Without mixing, listen to your tracks and first count the beats to learn the phrasing. Eventually this will become intuition. You’ll hear the “rise and fall” of the phrases and even begin to predict based on how the music is made. Close your eyes while you listen and don’t look at the screen at all.
- Music structure is super important here also. Learn to count between beats of bars.
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. When you get comfortable with that, subdivide with:1 e and a, 2 e and a, 3 e and a, 4 e and a, 1 e and a, 2 e and a, 3 e and a, 4 e and a. - Work to not become reliant on cue points on when to mix in and out. If you have to stare at the screen to tell you what to do and when, you limit your freedom of expression and ability to truly learn.
- Jungle / Drum and Bass has really complicated percussion patterns that can make people extremely confused when DJing. This is because the percussion “breaks” away from patterns (break beat!) and the thing I’ve learned to listen for is the 2 & 4 snare. Most of the time, the 2nd and 4th beat snare are the most constant and can be used to help find your rhythm.
- Not all tracks start “on the 1” (1st beat).
Here are some clips with dnb phrasing. Listen to the music - 2 and 4 snares are constant.
This one has a “phrase meter” – an animated count down that allows you to SEE what i am hearing and timing in my head.
Other vids that may be helpful.
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Top work as always man 
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Concentrate on the snare until you get to a Mampi Swift track 
As you probably well know most D&B is your 4 8 12 16 count, but jungle can be a different ball game altogether, I’ve got tunes with 5s & 7s intros, beat changing on 3s or 6s, sometimes it’s all over the place.
Here’s one to name that’ll really throw you off (it did me while trying to manually beat grid it) 6 Million Ways Remix 2 by Zinc actually has a half beat in it around the 3 minute mark, I thought it was a jump in my needle recording so I went online to listen & it’s in every version I hear.
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Or songs that have a 2/4 fill. Or some pop songs which have a few 7/4 measures (actually one 4/4 + one 3/4). Also, a lot of people talk about cueing the first beat, but some tracks start with an upbeat measure at let’s say “3&”. It’s an art to hit play off-beat so the upbeat intro is heard fully while still having the “1” beat line up…
Counting 4/4 isn’t that difficult. But regarding funny 2/4 fills or upbeat measures, starting to play guitar helped me a lot.
And for the real nerds, if you then think you know something about counting and time signatures, start playing in a concert band. By request of my daughter (clarinet), I did on bass. Well, who knew you can encounter 6/4, 5/4, 4/4 and 3/4 all in 5 measures, complete with the necessary ritardando’s, just to encounter 7/8 and 5/8 some measures ahead, etc etc. Tool is for sissies 
But seriously, those are pieces where the difficulty is not playing the notes on your instrument, but rather keeping up with counting and where you are in the score. Following along with counting without playing an instrument is good practice sometimes.
Anyway, all music nerdiness aside, counting is important. It’s one of the few common thing between musicians and DJs, but I know some blazingly fast guitarists who aren’t even able to count properly to 4, and it shows. It’s worth investing some time in this
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One track that stands out for me that is still a 4/4 house track but you have to cue it on beat 2 is the Moodymann mix of Norma Jean Bell - Im the baddest bitch.
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