It may come naturally to some, but the art of DJing (and it is an art) can be bloody difficult at times.

Ask any DJ, when you’re still fresh on the decks and things go bad, it is terrifying. Everyone on the dance floor will stare at you and demand an answer as to why Usher’s ‘Yeah!‘ just stopped mid-chorus.

Luckily, A-Tonez – a veteran Sydney based selector – has some answers for potential challenges. One such challenge, and the focus of the first ‘Tonez Tips‘ instalment is mixing with just one deck.

This is his step-by-step guide

1: Select the “Roll” effect and pick which channel the current working deck is on. I personally set the Beat Length to either 8 or 16 beats, any less and the loop sounds a bit rushed. It is up to you though. (If you have Quantized effects set up (DJM900/2000 Nexus) it works even better and easier (I’ll explain that in a future tip)

2: Engage the effect, once the roll has recorded the 8-16 beats you will hear it loop over itself.

3: At this point grab the channel selector in the effects strip and change it from the current channel to another available channel on the mixer, you should notice the audio is now in the new channel you selected.

4: You can now cue this in your headphones just like normal and make sure it matches the track playing, You can then fade out the current track.

5: Select your new track and start beat matching to the loop and when you are ready cross it over.

Once you turn the effect off, the loop you had recorded is now gone and ready for you to do all over again.Just remember to set the channel selector back to the working deck to start.

Please note, this is for DJing on Pioneer products. Do you think this is handy knowledge? Would you do it differently? Let us know your method.