Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Dj Tools & Tips - BPM

So you decide become a Dj. You bought all equipments, a lot of awesome tunes and a crazy will to play all night long. But when you starts to mix the tunes, it never works. Welcome to our world my friend! You listen all famous Djs and think that is so easy.

Today we will talk about the BPM (Beats Per Minute). This is the secret to match perfectly your tunes like an Armin Van Buuren for example. For you have a idea a  Progressive tune has between 126 to 132 beats per minute. A Trance tune has something like 128 to 140 and it is very hard to identify the real BPM.

Some equipments (CDJ and Mixers) has a BPM counter to help you and you can mark this number on your CD for example.


Now you know how many BPM has your tune, but how you will mix tunes with different BPM?You need to adjust the speed of both tunes. So you need to use the TEMPO adjuster to find the BPM of the tune that is playing. This adjuster works with percentual. But how many percentual will be enough to find the perfect beat?


I use a spreadsheet to plan my set and to calculate the BPM. First I decided the standard BPM. On my last Set I used a speed of 135 beats per minute. So all tunes must to be adjusted to 135 BPM during my Dj set.


The formula to calculate the adjust is the difference between the BPM of the tune and BPM Standard. The result will be splitted by BPM of the tune (129-135/129 = 4,65%). So you have the adjust to do on the TEMPO adjuster.

I hope that works for you! If you have any doubts, please let me know!

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