How I DJ With Stems Part 4: Prepping Your Stem Loop For DJing

In part one of this series I introduced you to my concept of the Stem Loop, which is a short production that you can put together quickly and then perform live while you DJ. In part two, I showed you the Stem Loop Map and explained how it can be a blueprint for all your Stem Loops. In part three, we created your first Stem Loop and exported it as a Stem file.

In part four, the final instalment in this series, we’ll prep your Stem Loop production in Traktor Pro 2 to get it ready for you to drop. We’ll be placing Loop points throughout chunks of the Stem Loop: Loop points are like cue points in Traktor, but this time whenever you press the hot cue button, it automatically engages a loop as well.

The loop length should be set to 32 beats, which is the equivalent of eight bars or measures – that’s the same length of each chunk in our Stem Loop. That way, you can easily jump from one chunk to another just by pressing the hot cue pads on your DJ controller, or within Traktor itself.

Check out the tutorial video below to see how I prep a Stem Loop, and then I’ll give you a quick demo of how to perform the song on the fly while you DJ. I use a Traktor Kontrol S8 in the video, but you can use any Stems-enabled controller or even your own custom-mapped controller if you’ve got one.

Tutorial Video

Have you made your Stem Loop yet? What are your thoughts on DJing with Stems? Do you use software apart from Traktor for DJing with Stems? Let us know below.