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Traktor Basics

Lesson 12 from: Scratch DJ Academy presents: Intermediate/Advanced DJ Strategy

DJ Hapa

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Lesson Info

12. Traktor Basics

Next Lesson: Setting Goals

Lesson Info

Traktor Basics

Well, I've got tractor upon mom and show you a little bit of tractor since we didn't get a chance to look at it earlier this morning when we talked about was beaker it and you have the same sort of thing here inside a tractor which is the secret you can see it here you also have different modes and tractor and different browser views so I can change this to be more of an extended view that you can see tractor has this really cool thing called remix decks where it's essentially working like a, um like a clip launching type of uh uh performance tool um as you wouldn't like let's enable to live or what not where you can stack clips and launch clips and it all be in real time so really cool thing with that um and then you could have up to four decks notice also that I'm not connected tio any sort of audio in her face right now and both and all four decks are popping up so technically I could be d jane off of my laptop with tractor and be plugged into an audio interface that then is running...

to the speakers it could be doing all that off the tractor so that's one big plus here I also have so I've got my two points which you can see these are my two points here have up to eight years tractor also does this thing where allows you to make different types of cues so you can't change the color of the q points in tractor like you can in cerrado but you can set up different types of q points so I'm create like a fade in q point or fade out two point um I can set up a loop q point or load q point so what a lo que point will do is then when you load the track it'll load straight to that q point which everyone you select that isthe um you also set up just a regular old q point two and they're all they're different colors so um and they use a um zo stuff here ok cool. So same sort of thing that you've got like the ability to um to change our toe loop all right, second loop different sections let me actually grabbing on the track so aiken play with this uh this is actually pretty cool too, of youth if you jump between different programs you can do stuff like this where I can take like a crate and this was where was my creative life create creative, live create I can take this, select the whole thing come down here, make a new playlist, make a new playlist, create playlist creative live and then be able to take all of that same music uh, yeah and drop it right into there. You also noticed one of things that tractor does have in their browser down here. And I can also select a different mode. Aiken seymour of the problem. Because obviously, this is a lot that's on the screen, so I can only see six tracks here that might not be optimal for me trying to find what's coming up. So there is a a way of changing the view so I can change the view to see more of the browser. And all I did was hit the space bar to do that. That was a short key for that, which is the standard default now aiken seymour the browser. Aiken seymour of my play this tree. Um, see more of that. So ah, let me take, uh, let's take another track. This is another track that we want to shout out the good folks at our parliament for this track flame that ah, we're able to use today. Me, um pulls back up here. Cool. So what is going to do is as I threw it in this the first time that tractors seen this so it's going to run analysis and set the beak rid like the other one did, it also is going to shoot out the b p m so you can see it calculated that the bpm is one thirty five point o two. All right, so that's what? The analysis was on it and again, making sure that that's, right making sure the beat great is right is really important. As like, you're sort of first step so let's, find the one here. I'm not plugged into the audio. Let me let me actually do that really quick. Um, all right, so let me connect this up too. Come to my tractor's e two mixer, which is actually serving as a sound card and a mixer. So it has a has the sound card built into the actual physical mixer, and it also this is ah, made by native instruments. You'll see as soon as I through this up, you'll see that the mixer channel is currently in through mode, meaning that that's, because that's, because I was playing my my vinyl record here s o if I want to enable that, I can and I should then just click here, and then I'll enable it. Ok, so now here's, my track, you can see where the greatest city you might need it that's where it should be. Now look at where the transients are, like the transits are those little lines, but you can see that there that the the grid is on temple wise and this was that whole rubber band thing I did yesterday which I think I've lost my rubber bands now but I've got some other rubber bands here you know when you're moving tempo when you're changing tempo it's expanding and contracting the way form essentially and so that's what's happening now if you just need to nudge this over, you just need to move it instead so you don't need to expand or contract that that's what's happening here is that the grid is actually set that one thirty five b p m tempo oh is actually probably right here and the only problem is that the grid is not on this becomes a real problem though when you're using sync because if you're using sync and we talked about this yesterday fusing sink and the grid is off it's just going toe align everything off and then it's could be stuck there so like the one will be on the two and the two will be on the three and three will be on the four and everything would just be off that way or in this case it's on it's on the in between beat that's even worse now everything is just going to be a half beat behind, eh? So what I can do though is I can change this grid and what I'll do is I'll just get rid of the grin get rid of the grid said a great instead from here and then now everything is lined up better you can see how it now looks a bit better on I can expect I can zoom in zoom out that looks about right right that's hitting right cool and so once you've got that lined up now you can use to save your grid and say that that's good to go and now like you know all of your points worked the same sort of way as they wouldn't and there's a ton of gear obviously that works with tractor that is like tractor specific that's built for that this being one of them and then there's you know, a ton of other like so many controllers and whatnot that like native instruments has released that will do really cool things like there's a piece of gear called the f one that will work really well with those remix dex and and you know there's guys doing really really cool stuff with like, you know, an f one an x one like and almost using really not even using deck and just being able to like use these different controllers to be able to like launch clips and getting really creative with that so you know, pick your poison and there's all sorts of all sorts of options out there you also see affects units appear like you would have in surat as well um you've got this whole sort of mixer section where you can control the gain the filter the tea and all of this is mapped now to this mixers you see is a moving my filter knob on the mixer it's moving the filter knob inside this software um and, uh same thing with the cue if I were to open this up a bit more and show the mixer you could see that my low knob right here I'm controlling their can see me control the volume fader it's all made him act so is the are the cues and filters on that mixer on lee only controllers or is there actually a no? This is this is a stand alone also so I've been weak disconnected tractor we could still use like the turntables and like the c d j without without using the software but when it's now reading the software that's now overtaking that oh, so now you're using it as a controller using the filters and a king in the computer? Yes, yes now using the software um that's in there so that's like overriding all of that? Um yeah and same with the feeders and that's actually what's happening on this mixture as well on the z two I mean on the s e when I'm using the uh when I'm doing everything that I'm doing its actually running in surat o as an internal deck. Because it's now using the controller, as opposed to, like when I'm using the turntable that's, using relative mode or absolute mode.

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

This was a great class. I am an up and coming DJ. I have been teaching myself for the most part. This was the first actual class that I have taken and it was very good to know and hear that I have been teaching myself properly. It was good to hear that I am on the right path. I was also able to pick up some tips on what I can improve and change about how I proceed in my journey. Would like to have more classes like these. Thanks.

user-d71345
 

This was a great class with a great teacher. I just started working for a DJ company and wanted to learn about the craft. It was a great class to learn the basics to really get started. I highly recommend to anyone that wants to learn about DJing.

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