Loop length and fine tuning loops

Questions
1

Hello, I’m using a Mixtrack Pro with Djay for iPad and have two questions I’m struggling to find the answer for.

  1. If I’m a bit trigger happy on the Mixtrack Pro, I can end up with a 3-beat loop. Or, if I’m delayed, a 5-beat loop. Is there any way of preserving 4/4 timing?

  2. Often on songs, the vocalist will come in on the last beat of a phrase. If I have a straight loop over a section, is there a way of moving that loop back by a few frames while preserving its point in the song? I’ve found an option to rewind the loop by a beat - but it also moves that deck one beat out of sync.

Thank you!

3

Hi @djandrewmarston,

  1. Instead of using manual loops where you press the In and the Out points, you could use and Auto Loop set to a size of 4.
    IMG_9283
    IMG_92831290×2603 312 KB
  2. If you set your Skip / Beat-Jump size to 1 beat, you can use this to move your loop forward or backward by 1 beat at a time.
    IMG_9284
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4

Thank you. Just tried that - the same issue occurs - it rewinds the song by a beat, rather than moving the loop by a beat.

If you have two 4 beat loops - instead of having
1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4

You end up with

1 2 3 4
4 1 2 3

5

You’re welcome @djandrewmarston. Can you please make a short screen recording and share it here? It seems to be working as expected for me so perhaps I’m missing something. Thanks!

6

Hey, hopefully this works!

7

Hi @djandrewmarston, it looks like everything is functioning as expected to me. Maybe I’m missing something here. Maybe try it again with Sync turned OFF or by turning Sync OFF before you exit the loop.

8

Sadly, that doesn’t do anything. Maybe a design request there - keep the track playing but a mappable knob which pulls both the start and end of the loop back for fine tuning.

9

Honestly @djandrewmarston, I’m still not 100% sure what you are trying to achieve here. Do you want to move the entire 4 beat loop or do you want to move the end of the loop? So for example, do you want to move the end of the 4 beat loop so it becomes a 3 beat loop?

10

Trying to finesse the loop so that instances, like in the video, where you want a clean loop and there may be a vocal/instrument/distinctive drop before the end of a phrase - just to get a rewind so 4 beats/8 beats/etc start and end points are moved.

At the moment, the shift back by a beat is pulling the entire track back by a beat. So your beatmixes instead of going kick - snare - kick - snare - end up being snare - snare - snare - snare.

In VirtualDJ, this was a rotary button called “Loop Shift”.

11

Perhaps you can record an example of how VDJ handles this with the same songs and compare it with how djay does it. Please use Pro Mode instead of Video Mode so I can see the full waveforms. Thanks.

12

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