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introduction : types of CDJ : functions : CDJ Functions We're all pretty much familiar with Turntables and such but when it comes to the Digital side of things some of us vinyl purists need a little overview of what all those new fancy, fandangled buttons do. Also for any newbies I hope you find this useful especially comparing cheaper models, you may realise what could be viewed as critical when you choose one and I hope this may aid your purchasing success even if you don't get one of these, which you should really. Honestly. Its fab. Expensive yes but fab. Apologies if this written in its most basic form. I'm not trying to patronise you in any way. I simply had no idea about it when I first used one and had no idea how to use the "cue" button for example. This is aimed purely at the noobie-never-seen-a-CDJ-before-type reader but goes more in-depth as it progresses so here we go......deep breath........its a biggie........
This is a smaller pic to keep download times on this page to a minimum - just click on the image to open the larger version if your peepers can't cope with it. It just saves on download times for the main page, ya see. Once blown up it all looks pretty clear. Anyway, a Pioneer CDJ1000MkII looks like this:
The Main Central Console Platter and Jog-wheel This replaces the record and you load CDs in from the front. The maroon coloured centre of the CDJ illuminates a display when powered up. The brake is applied by pressing down onto the large grey circular area. The Jog wheel is the section on the outside of the central circle and is moulded plastic. Its like an external ring that you can adjust which will make small alterations exactly the same as pressing on the side of a platter on a turntable to a playing record to slow it down. "Poke" can be applied by winding the jog wheel clockwise. Functions found down the left edge from top Hot Cueing (3 lettered buttons plus one "Rec Mode") Hot cueing is a more advanced technique and will be handled in the DJ Tutorials section which can be found here Direction Switch This switch will determine which direction the cd plays; forwards as normal or in reverse. The difference and a warning here on the CDJ800 is a button and there are reports by users that there is a slight drag and delay on the change of direction. I can vouch that the Pioneer CDJ1000MK2 does not suffer from this.
Search allows you to fast forward through the tune that's playing. Track skip allows you to search through the CD by ermmmmm track both functions being exactly as a normal CD behaves. Cue Found above with an orange ring is the Cue button. When you have found where you want to start mixing from, this is pressed and acts like a marker on the CD. When preparing to mix a record this is pressed at the point you wish the cd to start playing from. When you press the cue button after its set (we'll see how to do that later) and hold it pressed the tune will play until you let go. It will then rewind exactly back to the cue point. When the cue button is pressed, even if you press on the platter and apply the brake it is impossible to stop the cd. It will just slow down a lot. The minute you release the cue button, and play it live in the mix, pressing down will stop the cd as it would with a record.
This is the button bottom left with the green illuminated ring around it. Fairly self explanatory. When you've cued and prepared your mix, to let it go into the mix press Play.
Time / Autocue Button This can be found at the top left just to the left of the display as a circular black button. Press it once to show the time remaining on a tune. Press and hold it again to deactivate Autocue. Disabling autocue will mean when the CDJ gets to the end of the selected track it will continue on playing the next track on the CD as a normal standalone CD player would. It also won't find the start of the tune when you select a track so you'd need to do that manually with the jog wheel. NOTE: Be careful with Autocue though. It may sometimes pick up from the very moment the CD recognises a recording has started on the disc itself, which may not necessarily be where the first sound of the tune you've selected. It may pick up a bit of silence at the start of a track for example. This is especially notable for any tunes you may burn to CD yourself. You will need to adjust it if it incorrectly picks up what should be the first noise or beat on the selected tune. You would need to adjust using the jogwheel and Cue buttons.
Probably a good time to insert a little piccy. It'll save a thousand words very shortly!
Press this once to activate the "CD Text" function. This will scroll the name of the CD itself. This is a criteria that can be inputted when using Nero for example when you burn a CD. If you want to change it to the track name rather than showing you the name of the entire CD, you can use the Wave Zoom left and right direction buttons to toggle this. Press the Display button again to toggle from the "CD text" to the "Wave" function. You will notice under the display area (where the time is showing 02:30 on the picture above) a series of graphic equalizer looking bars showing the whole track as peaks and troughs. This is the same as looking at a piece of vinyl and its grooves. The darker lines on vinyl mean less "music" is held on the vinyl so you know a breakdown is coming. Exactly the same as this. A dip in the height of the bars means less music is there to play so its a breakdown most likely. To help keep position so you know where you are (if the big time counter isn't a big hint in itself!) the yellow coloured blocks are fully filled across the display at the start of a tune. As the tune progresses each part from left to right goes out so you can easily at a glance see where you are on the track you are playing. You can then spot a breakdown coming up very easily. This is key as generally speaking you don't want to be mixing over this bit. The whole track in this mode is currently showing so the beginning of the track is the far left of the display and the end is at the far right. It does show peaks and troughs in the tune but its not very accurate. You may wish to have a closer look so only part of the track shows across the whole display. To return to normal view press the Display button again.
This will be looked at in more detail in the DJ Tutorial section for CDJs
Functions found down the right edge from top Eject Button and Lock Feature Fairly obvious. If you want to eject the CD, you guessed it, press the button. The lock feature is quite clever. It prevents you fumbling in the dark at a club or whatever, and accidentally ejecting the CD playing to the dancefloor as you grab the nearest ash tray. Not a crowd pleaser that one. Those clever men at Pioneer have thought about this and installed the Lock Feature When the lock is activated and a CD is playing it won't eject the disc even if you beg and plead. However this doesn't mean you have to unlock it each time you want to swap CDs in the player. Oh no, not here mate. Simply stop the CD, press eject and it will be returned to you without question. Pop the next one in and off you go again. Why you'd ever want to turn this function off I have no idea. Unless of course you like 500 people who three seconds before hand were dancing merrily away to suddenly be staring at you in silence that is. I don't know, might flick your switch I guess. OK bad pun.....moving on then......
This allows you to manually adjust the speed at which the CD starts when Play is pressed and how long it takes to come to a stand-still when Stop is pressed. The top dial is "touch/brake" and the bottom dial is "release and start" brake essentially. Turned all the way to the right (at 5 o'clock) will mean it will take half the record (not quite but hey) to get up to speed then you'd need to press it straight away again to get it to stop at the end of track you're playing. OK I'm exaggerating but you get the idea. A sensible option is to have the pick up all the way to the left so start is immediate and the brake set all the way to the right so it acts like a turntable as if you were doing a Power down. Personal preference here, mind you. Why you'd want the pick up to lag behind and be slow I have no idea. Get a belt drive Turntable instead.
This is a toggle between two modes and will change how the CDJ jog wheel and central console will behave. The settings available are either "Vinyl" or "CD" and are toggled by the "select" button surprisingly enough. It is highlighted in the central right area of the CDJ where the blue light is shown on the main picture above. Vinyl Setting You would cue the record using the edge of the jog wheel and when you've found the point you require, rub it back and forth the same as a record. CD Setting Tempo Select Button The CDJ has the added advantage over a turntable of an adjustable pitch setting. On the CDJ100mkII there are three separate user defined settings. Pitch range setting 1: +/-6 A standard turntable has +/-8% which means you can adjust the increase or decrease the pitch of the original record by 6, 8 or +/-100 depending on the setting selected. For more information on the pitch range and a more defined description please see the beatmatching tutorial. It should be noted that the physical size of the pitch slider doesn't change obviously However the severity of a movement on the record will be different for each setting. In effect you are cramming more and more speed adjust into the same space on the same slider the higher the setting you select. For example increasing a tune by one increment (e.g. +1) when put on Setting 1 will only make a minor speed increase. Put the pitch to setting three and increase it by +1 from its original point (exactly as before) will see a much, much larger speed increase. +1 on the wide setting will increase it in actuality by about 10% not 1% as it would have done the first time. This means when you use it you have to be ultra-accurate on the highest setting or your mix will fall apart quicker than a pair of Asda trousers. (Walmart equivalent for any USA readers - see multi-cultural this site; caters for all! ) The lower the setting the more you have to move it to get the change you want. In most cases Setting 2 +/10% should be adequate. If you are looking at buying the CDJ800 this has only two settings either +/-10% or WIDE setting.
This surprisingly has nothing to do with the actual speed of the tune as you might expect but has everything to do with the pitch. If you've DJ'd at all you'll notice that when you pitch up any vocals the frequency and musical note of the vocals increases with the pitch. Alternatively if you pitch it right down the musical tone is lowered. In effect you get either someone singing like they've swallowed a balloon full of helium or at the other end of the scale Barry White and Jabba the Hut's love child. In steps this function. No matter what pitch you put the slider to, the tone of the tune (not just the vocals, this applies to any instruments or anything on the tune playing musical notes) remains exactly as the original. A great feature as when you are using accapellas you can mix varying BPM styled tunes (e.g. house vocals over dnb) which would never mix on Turntables. The standard pitch range wouldn't be enough to make up the difference between the two and if they did it would sound ridiculous. Again more on that in the beatmatching tutorial. The Master Tempo would keep the house vocals at the same musical tone so if you matched that with a dnb tune written in the same musical key they would still layer and sound musically good together. Its only an example and may well still sound rubbish. Exceeding fast singing over hectic breakbeats might be a bit much for most listeners but you get the point. Quite simply this is a real-time time stretching if you are familiar with basic music production techniques. Tempo Reset Button This is a great waste of space found on the left of the pitch slider. If you press it, the light comes on Very attractive though it is does mean you now can't use the pitch slider. It locks the entire thing to 0 whether its on -100 or +100 as an extreme example, it would play at normal speed. I'm still at a loss as to why they bothered with this at all.
Hardly worth mentioning as it is explained above and pretty much everywhere when it comes to beat mixing.
Finally there is also a memory card which can store all you pre-planned loops and hot cues that slits into the front of the CDJ at the bottom left. This means when playing at a club you can just turn up with a wallet full of CDs, your memory card, plug it in and all your loops will be ready at your finger tips. Its no different to you playing at home. If that's not great I don't know what is.
The DJ Tutorials For anyone wanting to know what you can do with a CDJ the creative limits are almost endless. TTs are great and I don't dispute that. Its my roots but embracing this bit of kit is certainly no bad thing. With the looping and hot cueing functions available to you as well these can be pre-programmed or even done live and unprepared if you are good enough. Risky, yes but definitely possible. Click here for your digital wake up call.
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