What beatmatching is
Beatmatching is getting two tracks to play at the same tempo with their beats landing together, so you can blend from one to the other without the drums falling apart. It has two parts: matching the speed (the BPM) and matching the phase (where each beat falls). Two tracks at exactly 128 BPM still sound like a train crash if one is half a beat behind.
Most DJ software and modern players have a sync button that does both from the track’s analysed beatgrid. It is worth learning to do it by ear anyway. Beatgrids are sometimes wrong, live-drummed records drift, vinyl has no grid at all, and knowing what drift sounds like lets you fix a mix that sync has got wrong.
The technique goes back to club DJs of the late 1960s. Francis Grasso, taught by Bob Lewis, is usually named as one of the first to do it. Turntables with a smooth sliding pitch control, above all the Technics SL-1200 series, made it the standard way to mix.
What you need
Two decks with a tempo (pitch) fader, a mixer with a cue button for each channel and a pair of closed-back headphones. The cue sends the track you are preparing to your headphones only, so you can line it up while the crowd hears the other deck. DJ software with a controller works exactly the same way.
For practice, pick two tracks with a steady kick on every beat, such as house or dance-pop between 120 and 128 BPM, with intros that are mostly drums. The 128 BPM list on this site is a good place to find pairs. Avoid live recordings, swing-heavy funk and anything with tempo changes until the basics feel easy.
Step 1: set the tempo
Read the BPM of both tracks from your software, or tap them with our tap BPM tool. Then move the tempo fader of the incoming track until its BPM matches the one playing.
If you only have a percentage on the fader, work it out: the change you need is the target BPM divided by the original BPM, minus one. To bring a 124 BPM track up to 128, that is 128 ÷ 124 − 1 = 3.2%. On a fader with a ±8% range, a 128 BPM track can go from about 117.8 to 138.2 BPM, and each 1% is 1.28 BPM.
Treat the number as a starting point. Analysed tempos can be off by a fraction of a BPM, and a difference of only 0.1 BPM drifts by a whole beat in about five minutes at 128 BPM. That is why the next steps are done by ear.
Step 2: start on the downbeat
In your headphones, find the first beat of a bar on the incoming track, ideally the start of a phrase, and set a cue point there. Most dance music is built in phrases of 8, 16 or 32 bars, and a mix sounds natural when the new track starts where a phrase starts on the old one.
Count along with the track that is playing: “one, two, three, four”, with the “one” on the first beat of each bar. Release the incoming track exactly on a “one”, either by pressing play or by letting go of the platter. Listen in your headphones with the cue mix set so you hear both tracks, or one in each ear.
Step 3: hear the drift and fix it
If the tempos match and you started on time, the two kicks land as one. If they don’t, you will hear a flam, like a gallop: “ba-dum” instead of “dum”. The question is which track is ahead.
Nudge the incoming track briefly forward with the jog wheel, or the pitch-bend button. If the gallop gets worse, it was already ahead, so nudge it back instead. Once the kicks line up, fix the cause rather than the symptom: if you keep having to slow the track down, its tempo fader is slightly too fast, so pull it down a touch.
Small corrections work better than big ones. Make a nudge, listen for a bar or two, then make another. Keep the two tracks playing together in your headphones for 16 to 32 bars. If they hold that long without help, they are matched.
Step 4: blend it in
Bring the incoming track into the room at the start of a phrase. Begin with its bass turned down on the EQ, raise the volume, then swap the basses over on a phrase change so only one kick and bassline play at a time. Two basslines together quickly sound muddy, even when the beats are perfectly matched.
Keep listening during the blend. Tracks can drift during a long mix, especially if one has a slightly uneven tempo, so be ready to nudge again. Our harmonic mixing guide covers the other half of a smooth blend: choosing tracks whose keys don’t clash.
Common problems
The tempos look matched but still drift: the analysed BPM is probably slightly wrong, or one track was recorded without a click track. Trust your ears, correct with the fader and keep nudging during the blend.
One track sounds twice as fast: one may be counted at half or double time. A 70 BPM hip-hop track counts as 140 at double time. Our half time vs double time guide explains how to tell. Snare on beats two and four is the usual clue.
The music sounds out of tune after a tempo change: without key lock, a change of about 6% moves the pitch by a semitone. Turn on key lock (master tempo), or choose tracks that need a smaller change.
A practice routine
Load two copies of the same track. Start one, then try to drop the second exactly in time and hold it there. Because the tempos are identical, any gallop comes from your timing, so you learn to hear phase on its own.
Next, move one copy’s tempo fader a little without looking and match it back by ear. Then move on to two different tracks a few BPM apart, and finally to tracks with less obvious drums. Ten minutes a day is enough. Most people find the gallop easy to hear within a week, and the fixes become automatic soon after.
Beatmatching for mashups
A mashup needs the same alignment, held for the whole track rather than one blend. In a DAW you do it by stretching one track to the other’s tempo (called warping or time-stretching) and lining up the first downbeats, then checking that the grid still matches at the end. Our beginner’s mashup guide walks through it.