Beat Matching for beginners

According to Wikipedia, beat matching is as follows:

Beatmatching is a disc jockey technique of pitch shifting or timestretching a track to match its tempo to that of the currently playing track. This allows beatmixing, smooth mixing between the tracks without stopping the beat or changing the tempo.

The technique was developed to keep the people from leaving the dancefloor at the end of the song. These days it's considered basic among DJs in electronic dance music genres, and it's standard practice in clubs to keep the constant beat through the night, even if DJs change in the middle.

So how do I do it?

Here is the theory behind how it works.

You have two sources of audio (for example two turn tables, we will call them TTL [turn table left] and TTR [turn table right]).

You play the first track on TTL (and this plays through the speakers). Then you start playing the second track on TTR but you cue it so it is only heard through your headphones (you do this by selecting what channel to hear through your mixer).

So you now have two tunes playing. Now, on the cued track (on TTR) you alter the pitch (that sliding thing on your deck), until the tempo is the same as the track on TTL. You then adjust it so it is also in the right "place" as well as right tempo - so the beats are at the exact same time for both tracks

So now the songs are both "beat matched"! You then simply wait for a suitable time to switch the songs over, and use the cross fader on your mixer to change between TTL and TTR.

Of course there is much more to it. For example it is important that you don't fade them over when one has vocals (well, thats not true in all cases). And for another example you'd often kill the bass on one of them and gradually bring it back up once its faded over. But again this isn't always true.

There are no set rules on how to DJ. Do what you like and what you think sounds best. Thats all there is to DJing. What you want.