Welcome to my page about my Traktor tutorial. This page will take a while to load.

the basics

All music has a beat, and it is not difficult to tap this beat for anyone (but it is difficult for a computer). Nearly all dance music has four beats in a bar (with very few exceptions). In general these 8/16/32 bars are grouped in a phrase. The begining of a new phrase is usually obvious to the listener. There might be a new instrument, or drum beat etc. The speed of dance music is measured in beats per minute, with hip-hip being around 110 bpm, house 130-140 bpm, uk garage 125-140 bpm and drum n bass about 150-170 bpm. The idea of mixing is to have an uninterupted set of music, by crossfading tracks into one another. To do this, you need to make sure the beats are perfectly in sync, and both tracks are at the same BPM. You will need to change the speed of one or both records to do this. Very rarely can you mix to records without changing their speed.

Load up Tractor. I've put labels on the diagram, so you'll know what I'm referring to. Before you start press setup to enable the appropriate outputs. Click on the audio tab. If you have one soundcard, press "Master & Mono 2 x Mono". This will output your master signal to one channel and your monitor signal to one channel. Unfortunately, this means your mix with be in mono. The monitor output is what you wil hear on your headphones, basically it will sound out of sync at first, but as you move the pitch sliders etc. it should eventually sound in sync. Your audience will hear the master output, which should be totally sync. If you have two soundcards click "Master & Monitor 2 x stereo" under two sounddevices, then assign one soundcard as the monitor and one the master output. Generally try to make your best soundcard the master. If you have a 3D soundcard with front and rear outputs click "Master & Monitor 2 x stereo under Quad speaker. It will output the monitor to the rear output and the master to the front output.

loading up your music

Firstly you need a few dance MP3s. You can rip these on to your computer with a program like RealJukebox or MusicMatch. Now using the load button in the playlist section, load up all the dance MP3s you have. Make sure you edit all the ID MP3 tags, so you can sort out the MP3s by artist name and track title. Click on "Artist" to sort them by artist name alphabetically. You should save you playlist now. Drag all the MP3s to the top of the list that you'd like to play in your set. Drag your first track from the playlist to deck A, and drag your second track to deck B. When choosing your set try to choose tracks with similar BPMs. If they are very far apart and beat matching them sounds stupid, try doing a rewind crossfade (explained later).

your first mix

Press play in deck A and the sound will start. The crossfader, this way your audience does not hear your mix. Click A to hear deck A through the monitor headphones, just above the crossfader output. Traktor will find the BPM of the song and display it in the box next to the "sync lights" label. Now drag the crossfader all the way to the left. Now you need to cue up deck B. At the beginning most songs there might be a sound effect, or drum fill which is not part of the song's beat, the graphical waveform will help alot here. You can save the cue in pointFind the first strong beat in song by dragging playing it and stopping it at the right time. Traktor should find the BPM of the song in deck B, if it doesn't just play it for five seconds, and it should do so. It is best to find the BPM of your songs before you begin your set. To find the BPM more accurately you can loop

Then drag the pitch slider in deck B till the BPM is about the same as Deck A. Now listen to deck A and at the beginning of a phrase, start deck B, this will take a lot of practice! Deck B will probably not be in sync. Do not crossfade to deck B till they are in sync. Do not touch the controls on Deck A, since the audience will notice if you muck about with them. Try to get deck B in sync by moving about the pitch slider slightly and slightly rewinding or forwarding the track, by clicking the forward or backward arrow on the position slider. Be careful not get the deck B track in sync with the wrong beat (ie. forwarding it two much so the first beat of a bar on deck A coincides with the second on Deck B). Also to help you are the sync lights. These will light up, when Traktor notices a beat. However, it does not always works, especially with UK Garage (where it only picks up the second and fourth beat accurately). You can press the sync button, and Traktor will try to sync the two decks, but be warned, it will probably use pitch bend, which results in a sudden change of pitch noticeable to your audience. Anyway proper DJs rarely have BPM counters!

This will take time to get right. If both decks are in sync, move across the crossfader. The great thing about Traktor is that by clicking on the graphical waveform you can move about the track like vinyl DJs, doing scratches. Alternatively you can try a rewind transition. By quickly moving dragging the mouse on Deck A, you will get a rewind effect. Then quickly move the crossfader to the right and simultaneously start deck B. Also you may do a rewind if you just can't cue two song together! You can also do other record scratching moves. However, they are quite difficult with a mouse, but have a go!

effects

once you've mastered mixing two tracks together, you should be able to do a whole set of many tracks. But Traktor also comes with effects, to make your mix sound more interesting, like the EQ. It's essentially like an equalizer on Winamp or your hifi. It can be used to isolate certainly frequencies or increase them. You can for example try to blend the bass line from song into another. The best thing about the EQ is the width button, which can be used to make filter sweeps, used often on dance records. Used in combination with the loop function it sounds awesome. By clicking on "1", "2", or "3" in the cue section you can get Traktor to loop 1, 2 or 3 bars respectively, something you can't do on vinyl.

recording your mix

There are two ways you can record your mix, either click the record button right at the top of the window, or the one just below. The one at the top will record your mix to a WAV file which can burnt to CD. The one below will record all the button and slider movements you make (which can later be editted if you make a mistake) rather than the audio itself. Consequently these files are very small, and it means you can record every set you do without worrying about hard disk space.

auto mixing

Traktor can do auto mixes (provided you specify the fade in cue and fade out cue of all your tracks) and it does work, but you must have a relatively accurate BPM for each track. Also house records work best (UK Garage not so good!). By all means try it, but don't rely on auto mixing, since with a bit of practice you will mix far better than computer.