This lesson starts with an intro video that we recommend watching first, followed by a written outline of those concepts. We then move onto a set of videos showing exactly how to do this on all major DJ software platforms.
By the end of this, you’ll be able to successfully beatgrid disco, funk, soul, rock, and any other music your software doesn’t get right, opening up all kinds of new possibilities in your DJing.
Get the cheat sheet: Free printable “mindmap” PDF
This is actual training from Digital DJ Tips, the world’s leading DJ school. We have courses from names like DJ Jazzy Jeff, James Hype, Laidback Luke, DJ Angelo and more. Click here to learn more about our wide range of DJ courses, and how we can help you.
A beatgrid in DJing is a “grid” laid over the beats and bars of each track by your DJ software, to tell the software where the beats and bars occur in that track. It usually works fine automatically with modern music, especially modern electronic music, as the beats remain 100% constant – the BPM doesn’t shift at all, even by 1/100th of a beat, from start to end. You need do nothing to get the benefits of having it when DJing.
But when it comes to older music – disco, funk, soul, rock, 80s music, and really any music where the BPM may drift even a little bit – auto-beatgrid analysis by DJ software often comes unstuck. That’s when, as a DJ preparing music for your DJ sets, you need to get in there and utilise “flexible”, “elastic” or “variable” beatgridding features to fix things up for those tracks.
A “flexible” or “elastic” beatgrid is a grid that shows the software where it will need to slightly “stretch” (slow down) or “contract” (speed up) sections of any given track, in order to keep that track’s tempo or BPM constant when it is played by a DJ in a set.
The reason for beatgrids at all is that software doesn’t actually “listen” to your tracks as you play them – it instead follows the grid in order to know where the individual “thud, thud, thud” main beats and bars are. This info is used when you press sync to beatmix, and also for accurate auto-looping and rhythm-based effects – echo, delay etc. Accurately beatgridding your tracks enables many of the tricks of modern DJing.
Once we’ve fixed this on those hard-to-beatgrid tracks, we can mix with those tracks like any others in our collection. As long as your software can do this type of “elastic” or “flexible” beatgridding, it can magically make hard-to-beatmix tracks as easy to blend as the most uniform electronic music.
Firstly, we check whether our DJ software has got the beatgrid right by itself – often it has, and DJ software is getting better at working with tracks like this without our intervention, ie “auto applying” flexible beatgrids. Just look through the track, making sure the grid lines on the waveforms clearly line up with the beats.
If our software hasn’t got it right, we go in and edit the track manually, moving through the track and checking/altering the grid so it sits properly on the beats.
This can be a somewhat time-consuming process, and there is a knack to it, but once we’ve done this for a track, it’s done.
All we need to do now is be sure to keep a backup of our music and our DJ software’s database, because this is where the info is stored. If we lose these, we lose the work we’ve done on our grids (and anything else we’ve altered about our tracks within DJ software).
The same way it can lock the key as we speed a track up or slow it down, or alter the key of a track without affecting the tempo. Once the software “knows” where a track speeds up and slows down slightly (because we’ve edited its beatgrid to show it that), it applies digital processing to the track as it plays to slow down or speed up the track to compensate for this, therefore making the track play at a 100% constant tempo.
It does this without changing the pitch of the track – as long as the track doesn’t have any really big tempo changes in the first place (ie a deliberate change of speed), then this won’t be noticeable to us when we play it back. Now, though, the track will be easier to mix using sync, auto loops, effects, and so on.
Now you understand what beatgridding is, why flexible beatgridding is sometimes necessary, and how it works, it’s time to start doing it with your music.
Depending on the software you use, how you do this (and whether it’s possible) is going to vary. What follows are lessons for five big DJ platforms: Serato DJ Pro, Rekordbox (works for Rekordbox DJ and exporting to USB), Engine DJ (for Engine standalone gear), VirtualDJ, and Traktor.
If you’re a Djay Pro user, I’ve got great news for you. You can stop following this guide right now!
That’s because Algoriddim’s Djay Pro is the only software (at the time of writing this guide) that has made beatgridding completely unnecessary. It uses AI to accurately work out the beat of any song with practically zero errors (ever). It even has little BPM markers when the BPM changes, so you can see it in action.
Ultimately, you can just trust that it’s going to get it right every time, even if the BPM moves all over the place – think “Come On Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, for instance. It keeps it completely perfect. So feel free to stop reading the guide – you’ve got the best software in the world for beatgridding, and it is miles ahead of any of the other programs that we cover here.
Here are a few tips to help you as you start to “tame” those hard-to-beatgrid tunes:
This lesson is from Access All Areas, our complete DJ training library that includes all Digital DJ Tips courses plus hundreds of deep dive lessons, just like this one. It’s designed for hobby and semi-pro DJs who want to learn everything properly – mixing, scratching, music production, performing, and beyond.
As an Access All Areas member, you’ll get direct support from the team in our private community, plus lifetime access to everything we’ve created (and anything new we release). No more wondering which course to buy next – you own them all.
Curious about what’s included? Learn more about Access All Areas here. (Psst – if you’re serious about your DJing, this is the one to get!)