13 Rekordbox Hacks You’ll Be Embarrassed You Didn’t Know

if you use a controller there's no avoiding record box and it can be painful the interface is cramped and hard to navigate track management is fiddly and timec consuming and basic tasks can be really confusing but there are a ton of performance mode tricks I've only just discovered and all you need is one of these amount a keyboard in this video I'm going to show you keyboard shortcuts that help you completely personalize how record box looks and works to help you perform without distraction make tedious music management effortless and fast and create playlists in entirely new ways I'll be demoing on a Mac but if you're on Windows you can substitute command for control and option for all in all the shortcuts that I show it might not seem like it but there are actually quite a few ways to personalize how record box looks you can hide information you don't need and make the information you do need easier and clearer to find this makes finding tracks way faster and helps you focus on your performance recordbox has a Mode called browse mode which posts the focus on your music library it will shrink down the decks at the top and make the browse area larger so you can see more of your music you can quickly toggle this mode on and off by pressing space bar getting fat is fun and fonts absolutely love it if you find the interface in record box a little hard to read you can quickly make everything bold by pressing command and B to change it back just press the same shortcut again staying focused while you're mixing is hard to make it even worse record box froze per performance functions and browsing functions in your face at the same time and it can be a bit overwhelming I don't know what this thing is actually called but I'm going with drunk apostrophe by pressing it you can split the performance area from the browsing area into two separate Windows this then allows you to arrange them however you want for instance by swapping around the track and performance areas or putting them side by side if you're using a widescreen monitor you can also resize the browse section like any any other window but the performance window you can only resize horizontally because reasons another way I like to use this is when I want to completely focus on performance after enabling the split screen mode I make the performance display full screen this means there are no other distractions when I'm ready to start thinking about the next track I press space bar this pops up the browse mode right on top after choosing and loading the next track I just press space bar to hide it again this next one is useful for both performing and preparing your tracks you may be aware you can zoom in and out of your waveforms by clicking the small arrow on the left then using the magnifying glasses to zoom in and zoom out but a faster way to do this is to just use your keyboard this can be really handy when you're trying to nail a qo or you want more accuracy during a tricky transition press minus to zoom out or equals to zoom in the zoom will apply to all decks at once now all the shortcuts we're going to talk about in the rest of the video aren't set by default so to use them you'll need to assign your own keyboard shortcuts to do that click on the Cog icon click on keyboard find the function you want to map press the little plus icon and then press the key combination you want to use and click okay I'll be assigning my own shortcuts as we go through and I'll tell you where you can find each one in the preferences but if you can't be bothered I'll show you an even quicker way to do it a bit later in the video waveforms BPM displays Q points these are all things that make our lives easier as DJs but one of the downsides of controller dejing is it can lead us to rely more on our eyes than our ears and this makes it harder to play on cdjs where things like stacked waveforms or performance pads aren't always available to get a more CDJ like experience we can use the browse mode we looked at earlier to strip back most of this information but if you want something a little less extreme you can actually hide just the platter display area below the waveforms you can find this under view show hide pad and platter I'm going to set this to shift command and P then okay when you press this key combination it will remove everything except the waveforms and it also gives you more room to browse your tracks this is a good first stepping stone for ripping yourself from the te of ibase DJing because I live in the UK most of my life is spent in dark mode but for one day a year which happens to be today the Sun comes out the problem is record box is almost impossible to see in broad daylight under view you'll find dark and light these are different visual modes you can set record box to which make it more appropriate for viewing in a light or dark environment I'm going to set dark mode to command shift d and light mode to command shift C Li mode is great for fans of Windows 3.1 the shortcuts menu is a really handy record box feature you can normally find it by clicking this little arrow here on the left then you can drag any of these top level items playlist folders or actual playlists into it you can then click directly on it to go straight to that item this is a big time sa if you're regularly accessing things that are several levels deep in the tree view but you don't need access to it all the time and it takes up valuable screen space on your tiny tiny little laptop to be able to open and close the shortcuts menu with a keyboard shortcut instead go to browse open and close shortcuts I'm going to set this to command shift s now I can quickly open and close the menu as I please downloading tracks adding them to folders accidentally deleting them trying to find them again before we even get to the fun stuff like adding hot cues or grids we need to sort out the actual files on our computer this is usually loads of dragging and dropping thousands of Windows and getting distracted by YouTube videos but there are a few really handy shortcuts we can add so we can manage all of this from directly within record box one of the first things you probably learn about using record box was how to add a track to the collection the way I learned this and the way I still did it until recently was to open my File Manager find the music file and then drag it into record box fine it works but it's three separate steps and when you multiply that over many hundreds of tracks it get tedious there's a way we can reduce this down to one step and one window under file you'll find import trap I'm going to set this to command shift I now all we need to do is fire up our shortcut browse to our folder and import the file annoyingly you can't add a file directly into a playlist you're viewing everything will just go into the collection maybe we'll get that advanced functionality in Recco Box 41 keyboard shortcuts are just one way to get the most out of record box incredibly powerful but stupidly hard to find features the other way is to sign up to the hotu DJ newsletter where I share loads of record box tips that sometimes Pioneer doesn't even bother writing down and check out for free with the link in the description to take importing files to the next level we can even import entire folders this lives under file import folder I'm going to set this to command shift shift f one way I like to use this is when I have a folder with a particular subj that I regularly drag new tracks into record box will pull any new tracks in and ignore anything that was already there I mentioned at the start of the video there's a way to speed up setting all these unassigned keyboard shortcuts if you go into preferences keyboard you'll see this little edit button here this allows you to export your keyboard mappings if you want to import for some reason it's in this drop down here I put all the shortcuts I've assigned into a special file that you can download and then import straight into record box I also put together a quick start PDF you can use to learn all the shortcuts and what they do you can grab both in the description I don't have a PC to test this on so good luck and I mean that in a very general sense if your music is stored all over the place it can be hard to remember where you actually put a track on your computer one way would be to right click on the column headings choose location drag that out remember the path and browse to it in your file manager but there's a much faster way under track show in finder I'm going to map this to command shift square bracket click on the track you want to find hit your shortcut and Reco box will pop it right up in your finder with it selected then all you need to do is drag it to its new home one of the most frustrating SES in Reco box is seeing the little explanation mark icon next to a track it means record box can't find the file anymore usually this is because you've accidentally renamed it or moved some folders around you could go through these one by one trying to fix them but instead you could go to file display all missing files I'm going to set this to shift command M and then trigger record Box's missing file manager this lets you deal with all your missing files in one go you can then choose to Auto relocate relocate or delete them we've now got our music files into record box and it's time for the fun part creating playlists but even this simple task can take way longer than it needs to I found a shortcut for a function that I'm amazed is not enabled by default sometimes when I'm pulling together a playlist I think of a track I want to add this normally means switching back to the collection view scolling filtering or searching to find the track I want to add trying to remember what playlist I wanted to add it to again then dragging it in this can be a night know when I've got a load of playlist open at once wouldn't it be better if you could just browse your collection at the same time you were creating the playlist well you can and it's called the sub browser you can set it up under browse sub browser window I'm going to set this to shift command B when you trigger this it'll open a secondary panel in your browser view that lets you search your whole collection from anywhere you can then find tracks from your collection other playlists or even your devices you can resize this to be as big as you want and you can also change the column titles to help you find tracks easier I never use artwork to find a track so I'm going to get rid of that and it's useful to have a waveform preview so I can see if I've set any Q points when you're done you can hide it again with the same shortcut do you ever get the feeling you're playing the same tracks over and over when I create new playlists I've started checking not only how often but how recently I've played certain Tunes I've covered record Box's history playlist in a previous video you can find them on the left hand side and they keep track of every set you've ever played it's like a permanent record of shame but it can also help us make sure we're keeping our selections fresh by going to browse then display the list including the selected track which I'm going to set as command shift H we can activate a really cool feature when you found the track you're considering adding to your playlist activate this keyboard shortcut you'll see this little list appear at the top of record box this shows you every playlist that track appears in I'm particularly interested in anything that starts with histories too many recent entries in here means I might be overplaying it and need to swap it out the keyboard shortcuts we covered today are great for getting record box to work how you want and helping to manage your files but actually preparing your tracks to play in a set can be monotonous and boring check out this video next where I show you free ways to create playlists faster fix your tags and Outsource file management for good

Channel: Chris M

Views: 21,718

Keywords: dj, pioneerdj, rekordbox

Id: zP_BG6RyrAI

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024