Beatmatching

Question 1

Who was arguably the first pioneer of beatmatching and why?

Answer 1

Francis Grasso, who was one of the first DJs to create sets that were seamlessly woven together by slip cueing (drop mixing) tracks and also matching duplicate vinyls

Question 2

What is the purpose of Beatmaching?

Answer 2

So two tracks can be played together because the beats stay in synch and all of the changes in both pieces of music happen at the same time

Question 3

At a typical House tempo, roughly how many seconds would an 8-bar phrase last?

Answer 3

15 seconds

Question 4

At a typical House tempo, how many 8-bar phrases would there be in one minute of the music ?

Answer 4

four

Question 5

What method/calculation can be used to roughly match the tempo of two tracks in the 120-130 bpm range when using analogue tuntables with no bpm indicators?

Answer 5

When mixing in a second record you can take the difference between its BPM and the BPM of the current track and multiply that number by 0.8 to find the rough percentage of difference that the tempo slider needs to be set to

Question 6

What is the most basic way to find a track’s BPM when using a vinyl record?

Answer 6

Count the number of beats in both track’s tempos over 60s, or over 30seconds and double it - write the rough BPM on the Vinyl sleeve/label

Question 7

Which beatmatching method can be used if there is no jogwheel or a faulty one, or when using very sensitive needles on an analogue turntable

Answer 7

‘riding the pitch’ aka using the tempo slider to bring the track into sync temporarily and then quickly shifting the slider down or up to the position you think is the correct speed