Essential DJing Transitions (Made Simple!)

Just like language learners start with the alphabet and newbie cooks start with basic cutting techniques, so do DJing novices. Without knowing the alphabet, you won’t be able to read and make up sentences in the new language. Without mastering chopping, slicing, dicing, and mincing, you won’t be able to cook delectable restaurant-quality dishes. The same rule applies to DJing and DJing transitions.

While learning to DJ seems like a child’s play, at first sight, it’s not so. You have to start with the alphabet and the right way of holding the knife. In DJing language, it means mastering the basic techniques that are crucial for every newbie DJ.

If you decide to skip them and jump straight into complex sentences, daunting tenses, and confusing conditionals, you will experience a big failure. Start with the alphabet and grammar basics instead. Once you have mastered these essential DJing techniques, you will get a solid foundation that will help you learn more mixing variations and develop your unique style over time. This post is all about these DJing skills that every novice must master. You will get to know the role of each in a mix and the right way of doing it.

Keep in mind that a soft and feeble foundation can’t support a heavy load. The load in this case is the ton of knowledge and skills you can acquire after mastering these techniques. You should give your best and dedicate hundreds of hours of practice to mastering them. Only when you are sure that you can do them with your eyes closed, you can move on to more difficult techniques.

Technique 1. Beatmatching

The first, and essentially most important, of our Djing transitions, is Beatmatching tracks together. Beatmatching is harder than other techniques mentioned below. But if you want to mix tracks like a pro and make the crowd stay on the dancefloor all night, you have to learn it. Beat mixing refers to matching the tempo of the current song to the incoming one’s so that they start to flow together like one. While in fading, end-to-end, and cutting the audience can pretty well recognize the two tracks as separate units (sometimes it’s really hard due to perfect sync timing), beatmatching makes the tracks blend into a single composition. So when you are in the club and hear a never-ending track, that’s most probably beatmatching. In this post, we’re going to discuss a simple form of beatmatching called single phrase beat match where you synchronize the tracks based on one musical phrase.

How to do it

1. Get the upcoming tune ready to beat match. You are best off working with the start section where there are only drums. Choose the musical phrase that you want to be audible to the crowd. Now go one phrase back. Here is the place where you should line your tune-up.
2. Synchronize the upcoming tune to the current one. To do it, let the incoming track play in your headphones while the current song is playing in the speaker. Remember they must be on the same musical phrase of 4 or 8 bars. While you are listening to the song in your headphones, try to adjust its tempo to the tempo of the current track using the beat mix panel of the mixer.
3. Let the upcoming track play through the monitor speaker. Now that you have matched the tempos of the tracks, you can make the incoming tune audible to the crowd. You can do it via either the crossfader or the line fader. If you have a crossfader, put the slider in the middle position. This will make the songs play together at equal volume. In the case of line fader, move the slider of the first channel slightly down and that of the second channel slightly up to get them to play equally loud.
4. Let the tracks play together for a while. Do not remove the old track right away. Let the crowd enjoy the two tunes ideally aligned for a time equal to one musical phrase.
5. Remove the outgoing song. After one musical phrase, start to fade the old track out. You can do it by moving the fader either slowly or instantly down. Anyways, as long as the tunes are perfectly lined up, the fading method doesn’t really matter.

Technique 2. Cutting

The second of our core Djing transitions is cutting. Handling the cut technique allows you to create a lot of variations while mixing tracks. What makes cutting a great technique, though, is that it focuses on mixing the tracks rather than having them play successively. So the cut can intervene in the middle of the first song, after the bridge, or anywhere else within the song.

While end-to-end mixing makes it clear to the audience that a transition between two tracks takes place (by letting the first song reach its end), and hence the connection is understandably a bit abrupt, in cutting, you have to make the transition as smooth as possible. Ninja!

You have to do your best to make sure the crowd perceives the combo of two tracks as one single tune. It takes quite a while of practising with timing and beat synchronizing, but it’s not impossible to master.

How to do it

1. Set the next track on one beat. Since cutting is all about lightning-fast transition, you have to keep your incoming track at the ready. Line it on one beat and leave it on standby. When you hit the switch button, it will start right with the musical phrase you have chosen.
2. Count the beats and bars of the outgoing track. There is a bit more work with the current song. You want to choose a beat from where a transition to the next song would sound natural and pleasing to the ear. To put it otherwise, you have to find a beat that’s identical or almost identical to the next song’s beat. This will ensure a smooth and seamless takeover by the latter. While you can search through the entire song for this magic beat, the best place is near the end of the song. The last part is usually cleaner, lacking verses, choruses, and drops so it’s a more propitious ground for stealthily incorporating a foreign tune.
3. Introduce the next track on downbeat. Count the beats and bars of the current song and once it reaches the chosen beat, quickly switch to the next song while completely fading out the old song. Since you control both channels manually, you want to synchronize your hands very precisely so that the tracks blend into one. Make sure to hit the stop button of the outgoing song and the start button of the incoming song concomitantly. This will prevent silence gaps and overlaps which will betray the existence of two separate compositions, although if the tempos of the songs differ, the audience will understand that there are two tracks even if you get the beats perfectly synchronized.

Technique 3. Fade

The third of our Djing transitions is the fade. Fading is one of the most important skills you gotta handle if you want to become a world-class DJ. It helps you do the transition from one song to another in a smooth and natural way. Having such a valuable skill in your arsenal means there won’t be awkward pauses between two tracks which will actually tell about your low qualification. Also, your audience won’t have to hear an abrupt transition between two songs. It especially hurts the ear when the songs belong to clashing music genres. That being said, the fading technique is a building block for becoming proficient at track mixing and making crowds fall in love with your music.

How to do it

1. Choose the right opportunity to fade. The need for fading usually appears when a track plays for too long and doesn’t seem to end. To prevent it from getting boring and annoying, you want to smoothly move to another song. Keep in mind that fading done at the wrong time will make the audience question your DJing skills (even if you have done it smoothly). You got to choose the right timing for performing the fading transition to make sure it sounds natural and pleases the crowd’s ear. A chorus is a perfect place for fading. It refers to both compositions with a single chorus and those with two successive choruses at the end.
2. Fade quickly, then slowly. There are two wrong ways of fading. One is when you remove all volume from the first song and immediately introduce the second song. It’s actually called muting and it is considered anything but fading. It’s also wrong to fade at a really slow pace up to the point when the two tracks are equally loud and overlap, creating an awkward noise. The right way of fading is to discard a big chunk of volume at first, then fade the remaining piece slowly over the next 10-15 seconds. This will allow for a smooth and pleasant transition.
3. Make sure the incoming track’s downbeat lines up with the outgoing track’s downbeat. Start fading a song at the beginning of a musical phrase. As it slowly reaches the end of the phrase, turn on the next song on the downbeat and let it smoothly take the leading position. In this way, the tracks will flow perfectly together.

It’s worth noting that fading is a highly versatile technique. It isn’t picky in terms of BPM rates and music genres. It can be applied to songs of clashing genres and still provide a nice and smooth transition.

Technique 4. Bass Swap

The fourth of our DJing transitions is the Bass Swap. If you go clubbing pretty often, you might have caught the DJ in such a situation where he/she is holding his/ her hands tight on two knobs close to each other then turning them abruptly at the same time. While nothing much seemed to change in the playing tune, the DJ was most likely to have performed a Bass Swap. And the reason the track kept flowing naturally was the DJ’s advanced skill and professionalism.

So what exactly is a Bass Swap mix

For starters, we would like to explain what makes this technique so indispensable in DJing. If you are a clubber or just a melophile, you might have noticed that modern dance, techno, and house music follow an algorithm. That is, the tracks of these genres usually start with a drum section, followed by a drum and bass combo, followed by other elements like vocals, build-ups, drops, and breakdowns. Such tracks typically end with this algorithm going in reverse order. The elements gradually disappear until there is nothing left but drums and bass.

When beatmatching two such tunes, it might come to a point where the bass of the incoming song overlaps the bass of the outgoing song. Two basses playing at the same time isn’t a pleasant experience for the listeners, given that bass is the strongest and most impactful element of a tune. This combination sounds even worse if the basses have different tempos. As a DJ who cares for his audience, you want to have only one bass playing at a time even if you have both tracks playing. Here is where the bassline swap beat mix steps in. It gives you better control of the two channels and their bass outputs, allowing you to turn down the bass of one song so that it doesn’t interfere with and amplifies the other track’s bass.

How to do it

15. Let the mix stretch over more than one musical phrase. One of the main issues than might stop you from mixing two tracks for more than one phrase is the bass clashing. Since you want to avoid it, you will let the tunes play together for just a couple of seconds. Learning the bassline swap technique allows you to remove a bass, leaving the other one playing. With this skill in your arsenal, you can mix the tunes for longer, having no fear of ugly clashes. If the outgoing tune is 5-minute long, start the incoming track about 90 seconds before its end.
16. Turn the incoming tune’s bass down. Once you bring in the incoming track, switch its bass off using the EQ knob. This will make the tune sound thin and be obscurely heard in the background of the first song. Apart from disabling the bass, the EQ control quiets down the drum and other musical elements making sure the incoming tune will not interfere with the outgoing one.
17. Swap the basslines. When a clash of basses is going to occur, swap the basslines so the outgoing tune’s bass smoothly flows into the incoming track’s bass. To swap, turn the Bass knob of the first tune off and the similar knob of the second tune on simultaneously. In this way, you switch from one track to another very subtly and naturally. People on the dancefloor will definitely appreciate your skillful move. However, if the songs have pretty much the same beat and tempo, the transition will be fairly difficult to notice.

This technique is used by DJs not only to mitigate the excessive bass output but also for preventing the clash of two drums. So if both tracks have drum as the dominant element and bass is insignificant, you can use this technique to quiet down one of the drums to the benefit of the other. Also, some DJs use the bass clash transition just to introduce a new track to the audience. As soon as the incoming song takes the dominating position, the old song is removed. Of course, if you handle the bassline swap beat match technique like a pro, you can try a lot of mixing variations with the tunes.

DJing Transitions: Experiment Freely

These five basic techniques mentioned above represent a solid foundation that you can use to jump to the next level of DJing proficiency. Once you master them, a whole world of opportunities will open up to you. You will be able to experiment with the tunes, create different variations on the go and pull off stunning sets on purpose or by accident. Don’t be afraid to experiment as it will allow you to discover new mixing tricks and develop your style which will help you stand out from the pack.

When we say experimenting we also mean using the provided techniques in a slightly different way, deviating from the “how to do it” algorithms we have given to you. For example, after a while of practicing and accumulating experience, you will be able to match the tempos of two tracks without having to run the incoming tune in your headphones.

Moreover, in Bass Swap it’s not necessary to have at least one of the basslines running. You can turn both off for a while to calm down the waters, then slam the bass of the incoming track to generate an explosion of energy that will rock the crowd. Don’t be afraid of tunes that start with a beatless section, having just some strings and vocals. You can liven them up by laying a drum tune over them, making sure to adjust the tempo and phrase beats of course.

Now that you have these techniques at hand, arm yourself with a pile of good music and start practicing them. Mastering them is not a matter of five minutes. So you have to put much effort and dedicate a good deal of time to this task. But we have to say that it’s totally worth it if you aim for a DJing career.

Happy blending!