How to beatmatch on the DDJ-FLX4

Before you start

Pick two tracks with a steady kick drum, a few BPM apart. House and techno are easiest to learn on because the kick lands on every beat.

Plug your headphones into the front of the FLX4. You'll do all the work in them while the room hears the other deck.

1. Match the tempo

1. Play the left deck out loud with its channel fader up.
2. Keep the right channel fader down, press the right channel's headphone CUE button, and play the right deck. Now only you can hear it.
3. Move the right deck's TEMPO fader slowly until its BPM matches the left deck's. Near the end, go gently: a tiny move is a big change.

With the tempos matched, the two kicks stop drifting further apart each bar. They probably still aren't landing together. That's the next step.

2. Line up the beats

Listen to both kicks in your headphones. If you hear a gallop, two kicks close together, the beats are out.

1. Turn the right jog wheel by its outer edge, not the top. Clockwise pushes the track on, anticlockwise holds it back, only while you're turning.
2. Use small, gentle turns. When the two kicks thump as one, let go.
3. Start the incoming track on the 1 of a bar, not just any beat, so its phrases and drops land where the other track's do.

3. Keep them there

If the tempos are a hair apart, the kicks slowly drift. A nudge on the jog edge puts them back, and a tiny move of the TEMPO fader stops the drift. Hold them together for 16 bars and you've beatmatched.

Hear it as well as see it

The waveforms in rekordbox or Serato show you when beats line up, but in a loud room it's your ears that catch a drift. Practise listening first and checking the screen second.

No Sync Club runs these steps as lessons in your browser on your own FLX4. It reads the jog wheel and TEMPO fader as you move them and tells you, bar by bar, how many milliseconds early or late you are.