Few people realize that in order to become a capable dance DJ it is imperative to either know or learn certain basics of how dance music works. Now this does not mean writing and reading notes or playing an instrument. All that is needed is a clear understanding of 2 things.

Tempo
Structure

When I write about tempo I'm referring to the appreciation of tempo and the ability to guess the tempo of particular tracks without the use of timing techniques. This is something however that is really hard to master unless you understand timing techniques, but it is not as much a catch 22 as it would appear. I'm going to teach you here how to time and organize your records.

The reason it helps to time your records is that it give you the ability to organize you records in sequence from the slowest to the fastest track. Now you don't have to figure out if the next record you want to play will be pitchable enough to mix with the current record without worrying about whether the vocals or sounds in the song will sound like chipmunks.

When writing modern music, musician commonly use beats per minute (BPM) as a reference point to figure out to how fast the song they are going to write should be. For example, original Chicago styled house ranges from 120 t0 125 BPMs. At 120 this of course means that the song goes through 120 beats in one minute. You figure this out by starting a stopwatch and counting regular kicks for one minute. At one minute you stop the stopwatch and whatever you have counted so far is your BPMs. Unfortunately if you end up between two beats when your minute is up you have to guess where you are and you end up with something like 120 and 3rd or 135and a smidgen. This is accurate enough for some DJs but not for most. So a better system is needed for accurate timing. Why? Read on.

In the late seventies disco DJs discovered that they needed a quick and accurate alternative to BPM timing in order to be able to bring a bunch of new records to a club and have them properly organized by the time they started spinning. Something else was a problem too. Most of the disco stuff coming out was recorded with human players and the tempo of the songs sometimes changed dramatically. So if you tried timing using the bpm method you rarely got an accurate time. Even worse sometimes the tempo didn't change enough for you to notice but enough to ruin your mix. To give you an example the Patrick Cowley remix of Donna Summer's "I feel love" changes tempo 4 times and it's full of inaccurate edits, but because the production is brilliant the changes are very hard to perceive unless you are mixing the record with another. This is something that DJs spinning on Technics 1200s and Thorens turntables could sort of deal with but DJs who preferred the quartz accuracy of Technics 1500s were in trouble.

Although 1500s were technically superior they did not have a pitch slider. Instead they had plus and minus push buttons and a digital readout. If you mix went haywire you would frantically push the little buttons like a video game fire button to skate yourself back in the mix. The other problem was that with a 1200 you use the slider to find your approximate pitch intuitively. With 1500s it helps to know ahead of time what percentage of pitch to enter. So someone devised a system that was more musical, more accurate and gave you the ability to mix on 1500s using simple math or a calculator. Even though it may seem more complicated it is actually quicker and easier. This is called the 16 bar system.

This system is simple. Start your stopwatch, count sixty four (8x8) beats then stop the stopwatch. Considering that a "bar" is four beats, you now have the time it took to count through 16 bars of music displayed on your stopwatch. Let's say you have 31.5 seconds. Well this actually means 120 BPMs. If you got 29.1 that means 130 BPMs. The reason this system is more accurate is because it is not time dependant, and it takes you half the time to time your records. Now you may have noticed your tables that the pitch control actually works in percentages. For example the little 4 symbol means 4% faster than normal pitch.

Since the 16 bar system is as accurate as you can be, It's up to you to get good at stopping stopwatch on time. Then you take the larger time divide it by the smaller time and multiply the result by a 100. The two digits on either side of decimal point are you difference percentage. Here is an example.

Record one is 30.0 (126)
Record two is 29.0 (126.5)

30/29.9=1.003344
1.003344x100=100.3344

Therefore the percent difference is 0.3

So if you had the 30.0 record at pitch and the other at -.3 you would be perfectly beat matched ( you might have to still make slight adjustments however). I mixed for many years on 1500s and this little system really helped me make smooth looooong mixes. Of course 1500s are no longer in production so it is not necessary to use this system as is, but the timing part of it is still in use and far better than BPMs.

But what if you don't have any point in the song that is steady for at least 16 bars? Or what if you just don't feel like waiting 30 seconds to get a time? Or what if someone brings you a record in the middle of the night and you need to figure out its time while you are live? Could happen....You could always slap the record on and go for it, that works too, but timing the record won't hurt either.

The seventeen beat system is not as accurate as the 16 bar system but as its name implies you get a bar time in less than 10 seconds. This system however requires the use of a little chart to figure out what the equivalent bar or bpm time is. Directions are simple start the stopwatch count seventeen beats then stop the stopwatch. Lets say you got 9.01 that's 31.5 in 16 bar or 120 BPMs.

Some of you are probably thinking, " what the hell is all this shit, I use feel and my ears when I mix" well good for you and so do I but you are missing the point. I don't expect you to religiously live by these methods. What these methods are good for is organizing your records in some kind helpful fashion for playing live and most of all to teach you how to better understand and feel rhythm variations and estimate tempo. The more you experiment and practice 16bar and 17beat the better you will become and the less you will need them. By using these techniques you will greatly reduce the time it will take you to "guesstimate" tempos on the fly and choose your mixes. knowing ahead of time the relative tempos of your tracks will also help you adjust your pitches as you put the record on the platter therefore reducing the time it takes to align your mixes. But shhhhhh! That's a secret many old schoolers don't want you to know.