Great video! As a legally blind DJ, I can’t see the waveforms. So, I am always beat matching by ear. This skill is extremely crucial when I’m playing on CDJs with unanalyzed files because Rekordbox, unfortunately, lacks screen reader support. So, I believe that every DJ should learn how to beat match by ear just in case if technology decides to not work properly at an event.

Holy shit... i've been learnig to mix for almost two years now, never found a tutorial as simple as that going into the absolute essentials of "old school djing", it feels like what i'm supposed to do finally clicked! Thanks for no skipping the obvious. Precious

Epic!. I have been mixing since the 1980s & I still love practicing beat matching without the sync. I usually only use sync when I am recording a set for my radio show. It's all fun for me. Nothing wrong with using sync, nothing wrong with mixing manually. I just have fun & I keep on learning new things. It's all gravy. Love ya. Luke! You are one of the good guys out here. Be safe & be kind!

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO MAKE THIS VIDEO. THESE ARE GREAT TIPS I WILL DEFINITELY BE PRACTICING. 🎧😎🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

I know that I'll probably never need it but I'm really curious to find out how all of this works. Just to know what DJs are doing and what they're actually capable of when I'm watching their live sets. This video was extremely helpful.

Brilliant, short and sweet tutorial. It's all about loving music, practice and of course loving what you do too.

Unrelated to djing but he seems like such a nice, wholesome guy

Brilliant Video. I love that your pushing releases from your record label!

This is great for wrapping my head around beatmatching by understanding it in different ways. Thank you!

Thanks for the great tutorial, Luke. Both the Manual and ‘Sync’ beat-matching methods have their place. For me, using Sync frees us up to be more creative in other areas when the rally car is cruising along nicely, but when you hit the rough terrain of, say, a tricky track that didn’t get analysed well by the software, then we can quickly switch back to manual to take control and get safely around those bends.

It took me a full year to be able to beat match by ear using just the fader in that last example you gave. Worth the patience, coolest feeling ever! I DJ just for myself, I like doing it but I dread playing in front of people lol

I have always been a big fan Luke I do have your course but iv been busy with producing but cant wait to watch it .

Laidback luke you are my inspiration you inspired me to become a dj i am a huge fan of you and i respect your dedication to your work..

Thank you so much for dropping so much of valuable information!! ❤️🙏🏻

Been djing for almost 40 years and the pich mixing,yes i still got it. Hade to try it after de video😊. Havent done that for years.

Luke this a huge milestone for me, I was spinning vinyl at clubs in the 90s and early 00 but got out of it twenty years ago. I believe we did a gig in leiden together many many years ago at InCasa, so great to see where your career brought you. I made some different life choices i guess. My interest in djing suddenly got back, and now I see they even have bpm counters and sync buttons. Omg I feel old. I remember driving around with my case full of illegal cd's that was the innovation then. Got some catching up to do with the tech hehehehe

Do you remember those electric pens that used to hurt when pressed, well I stripped one down for a laugh and wired it to my controller sync buttons.. So one night during a party we were having I let a couple of friends take over for a bit, you should of seen their faces when there pressed the sync button what a laugh, best night ever.

Loved the matching with the lights as a preview! audibly, it was sooo hard to determine if the track i was mixing in was ahead or behind to determine push or drag.

Keep doing it learned a lot from you

Love the vibes selector Luke.

Glad you are back to your tutorial videos. I wouldn't have started playing my gigs when I did, if it wasn't for your tutorials.

Thanks for sharing, super awesome lesson. Mixing way better, now i learned it the old school way!!

Great stuff! I've used that exact looping technique to practice beatmatching; I'm a huge fan of learning how to do things yourself even if there's a button to automate it, because it never hurts to have a deeper understanding. But it turns out that beatmatching is also really fun, so I just don't really do sync DJing.

Thank you I loved this!

I'm a beginner and I can tell for sure tha's one of the best video on youtube to explain beatsmaching, the explanation a clear and what I like is that even for basic things that seems obvious you explain them

Absolutely delightful thanks 👌💯

Thank you for this Mr. Luke ❤️ we love you ❤️

I have always wondered how the old guys did it using vinyl and thanks to you mr Luke I have an idea. I wil start practising this so much and I cannot wait to see myself fumble over my controller and the neighbours complain... This is one of the techniques that can make me unique.. Thank you so much. Stay safe!! I always get impressive results with LAidback Luke. From Lesotho!

Real Djing amazing man!

Thank you 🙏

Love it man it helps alot

Awesome lesson and thank you for sharing your tips 👍 👍

it's exactly like that. Very good lesson for all the beginners outhere

Love it

Excellent

Man, would've loved to have seen something like this tutorial video when I was first learning how to beatmatch on a pair of Denon DN-S1000s 15 years ago (and no sync button then)! Thanks for sharing this!

Love you Luke.

Thank you so much for sharing ♥️♥️♥️

This helped me so much !! Thanks !!🥳

Cool I'm gonna try this when I get home. Thank you sir!

THANKS A LOT LUKE FOR THIS HELPFUL VIDEO 🙏

You make it look so easy bro, this was really helpful, thank you!

Thank's Luke, I like the way you teach us, that's awesome

I love the rough mixing, and adjusting the pitch on the fly. It sucks me into the mix as someone in the crowd. I love the comparison to a rally driver. It really is just about going for it, and figuring it out as you go.

Thank you

Thanks For The Video Mr. L.L.

man, the tutorial that i'm looking for!

Hi Luke. Thanks for all of your tutorials! I used to dj back in the days of vinyl and I recently picked up a Denon Prime 4. The sync button is OK but I run into a ton of problems with psy trance and drum and bass tracks, particularly when there are triplet beats. The BPM's are wrong 80% of the time and because of how the tracks are structured the grid is usually way off so the only choice I have is to use old school methods. I remember riding the fader back in the day and pushing/dragging the platter! Brings back memories! DJ's today have it EASY! lol. We had no data to work with other than our ears. While the sync button is great to have for say, Big Room Bangers and structured tracks like house, techno, etc, I think in order to be a great DJ, you have to be able to mix anything at any time with your ears! I just did an off the cuff set of Big Room (which easy easy) and then I got into psy trance and had to get really creative in mixing / beat matching because I was spinning random tracks I was grabbing from beatport and didn't know the BPM's or even the sound of the tracks until I loaded them into the Prime 4. Tracks that are 144bpm were marked as 108 and tracks marked as 155 were 142. It was an interesting challenge! I say: take it to the next level and learn to mix by ear. It's the only way to be limitless in your track selection and get all "pockets" of the crowd hyped up (a reference to one of your other videos lol). Cheers!

thanks for teaching beat matching

The vinyl nudge sound effect you made was great 😂. I love your tutorials! Please keep making them, because they have helped me improve so much and I love learning from you.

Nice tips bro! Very useful

Great video

I liked your demonstration it was very nice. I am doing dj course now i was struggling for beat match, thanks for teaching easiest technics

great vlog luke :)

Soo good 🔥👏

This was a great tutorial! 👍🏾

I learned it without touching the platter, only using the pitch as he taught in this video. Great tutorial for everyone at any level.

Awesome tips

When the sync button doesnt work then you need to beat match by ear and also like you say its a rollercoaster ride... 😍😍.... Love it...

very helpful

Master of the decks!

Going to practice it this weekend. Got on to mixing during quarantine, trying not to lean on tech instead train my ears. Thanks for this tutorial, Luke!

This guy is 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Thanks for the lesson

Greetings from México! 🇲🇽 You are the BEST ♥️🔥🔥🔥

Great video. The other reason why we used to ride the pitch is because we had belt driven turntables and they used to skip if you breathed too heavily let alone put our hands on the platter lol

Great tutorial as ever Luke. Looking forward to the day we can all play out properly again

This is wat I'm after thank U heaps kind sir legend

It's never to late to learn more skills day by day I truly enjoy the video

Thanks for the video Luke, I liked the part when you beat matched by ear. I’m going to try the tape thing.

Don't want to start that endless sync discussion but nowadays for the sake of creativity and losing less time, when using more than two decks, I would definitely give SYNC a go even if I can easily master all the expert tehniques. To conclude, I consider that the most fair way of using sync 🙏

Nice video with great explanation ✌️

Great stuff, thanks refreshing these basics we all ought to master oh so perfectly, but unfortunately often renounce in favor of the notorious sync button...

It’s like , driving a manual car . You are driving the car ,changing gears , pushing clatch pedal, so this feeling is kind of tasty for you , plus you look like more professional and it’s good . Luke , really happy to see your video ! Fight 👹

thank youuu laidback

learning & mastering the hard manual ways is to train our hearing & brain processing better after that auto sync is for creative mixing transition. All pros have to begin with manual ways just like Rally & F1 drivers to feel & control the equipment.

great video

AMazing tutorial !!!!

Ayos! Ang galing!

I love spinning on vinyl because beat matching by ear is so much fun.

A few seconds in, I love u dawg ❤️🙌 I will learn this all, I love learning hard stuff and fine tuning stuff 😎😍

Nice!!!! Great video!

Simply stop looking at the music and start listening instead... Amazing content! Thank you🙏

After watching ❤️❤️❤️❤️ so much love 🙌 I've been making DJ mixes for a while but with best sync, been needing that push to learn for real 🤝 my philosophy is if someone else can do it so can I, and i may not be the best, but I definitely won't be the worst 🧐😆

Wow those Denon decks are SLICK! Nice to see something besides Pioneer. Love the logo in the centre of the jog wheels.

Pitchriding is absolutly necessary if you want to be confident to play vinyl in any club, because some still use technics 1210 mk2. The mk2 have a quartz lock which makes it super hard to nudge and drag. i remember visiting a friend after i just learned to beatmatch on my stantons 150´s and was loosing my mind on his technics hahaha.

Easy way I found to explain how beat matching works to begginers,is with 2 cars on the high way,gotta put them side by side,so they must have the same speed,and one will need a push to get next to the other or vice versa. Master Tempo,Quantize,Key Lock,help a lot to mix in key and to change the tempo of a music with vocals without making the singer to sound like Mickey Mouse or Darth Vader if we increase or decrease the tempo. Sync can be handy,but it isnt always accurate,tracks that can have different tempos also have different compass,time signature or beat grid!If a guy doesnt know to beat match by ear,wont notice if the tracks have different beat grids. Love to see your videos and your technic under a microscope ;) Cheers from Portugal.

Thanks luke🔥🔥🥺: Learnef A lot

Wow, what a sound tooooooo

what a technique ! its so dope & so excitin' thank you so much ......... God _Bless

Awesome tutorial once again! When I started off mixing 5 years ago, the sync button was handy for a beginner, but now I don't touch them at all because it's much more satisfying to beat match by ear. I'm curious Luke, what's your opinion of key lock? So that the slider only adjusts tempo and doesn't also bend the pitch. I find it useful when mixing tracks with prominent vocals so it feels more cohesive and people hear the vocal they're expecting, in the right key, even if it's played at a faster or slower BPM.

Good video, I like the range of styles. Sync is a good tool for keeping short loops in time but other than that i ignore it. You need to be able to beat match by ear.

Been waiting for something like this Luke, missed you uploading videos to teach us stuff. Keep it up

Great demonstration! I think that if you don't do match with the pitch slider alone, you might as well use the auto-sync + match features - you're just selecting songs at that point and letting the computer do the rest.

when i used to teach my mates i would get them to have the 2 channels open and i would get them to use records like alison limerick where love lives and landlord i like it. because those records have to come in straight away so its great practice for timing and release on turntable or cdj

Cheers Luke. This is going to come in handy sometime!

I used just the pitch mixing vinyl. But with digital i definitely lightly push and drag the platters.

Wow, really like your teachings:-) can you dj palmas too bpms time key off technology skills too laudback loft luke?????

Wow man. As well as being a fantastic instructor... You really are "Laid Back"! I guess that's why you're you the GOAT. :-D

Great video. As someone who started on vinyl back in the day I appreciate what you've done here. Not only demonstrating techniques of how to beatmatch. Including the toughest way, the old skool, strictly by ear with almost zero visual cues way. AND you also touched on WHY it is important to have these skills in your skillset. Not only will it make you appreciate how much easier technology makes beatmatching. Which when combined with (I know some people frown upon it) SYNC and used properly, it frees up A LOT of time to add flair/personality to your mix. But it's important to have these fundamentals in your repertoire, because as we all know, sometimes technology can crash/fail. Excellent job on this video man. Keep doing what ya do. Respect! 👊🏼

Both beatmatching by ear and sync have their place. Some songs weren't written or performed by a computer, or don't have any beat correction applied in post- Sync will never handle those properly, not without extensive preparation work with Ableton or other modifying software. Developing the brain skill to ride the tracks (especially when the drummer goes loopy or the composition beats change) is an incredibly valuable skill, and opens entirely new arenas of songs to play during sets. That being said, if you *are* using computerized tracks, freeing up extra time or brainpower to work FX, samples, or more creative mixouts can be a benefit of using Sync where possible. Use sync to free up your hands to the limits of your creative mixout ambitions.