What Is a DJ Intro and Outro?

A DJ intro is a section of plain drums placed before a song begins, and a DJ outro is a section of plain drums placed after the song's last musical phrase. They give a DJ room to beatmatch and blend without vocals or melodies fighting each other.

What the intro does

When a DJ brings in a new track, the old one is still playing. For a clean blend the new track needs to start with content that does not clash: drums, maybe a bass line, no vocals and no lead melody. The DJ matches the tempo, lines up the downbeats, and gradually swaps the levels. By the time the new track's vocal starts, the old track is gone.

A good intro therefore has:

• Only drums for the first half, so the outgoing track's bass and melody can carry the blend.
• Bass joining in the second half, so the energy rises into the song's first downbeat.
• A length in whole phrases: 8, 16 or 32 bars.
• A clear first downbeat at the end of the intro where the song proper begins.

What the outro does

The outro does the same job in reverse. After the last chorus, the vocals and melodic parts fade out and the drums continue for 16, 32 or 64 bars. The DJ brings in the next track's intro over this section. Because nothing melodic is left in the outgoing track, there is no key clash and no vocal overlap.

A longer outro is more forgiving than a long intro, which is why the common defaults are 16 bars in and 32 bars out.

How Club Ready Music creates them

For generated tracks in the Studio, the intro and outro lengths are settings on the arrangement. The track is split into stems after rendering, and the vocal stem is muted during the intro and outro windows so the edges are guaranteed vocal-free, even when the music model ignored the instruction.

For uploaded songs in the DJ Edit tool, the intro and outro are built from the song's own drums. Club Ready Music finds the loudest four-bar drum section, loops it for the requested number of bars, and crossfades it into the song's first downbeat over one beat. For the outro, the vocals and other melodic parts fade over the final window while drums and bass keep playing, and the loop is appended so the outro reaches full length.

Cue points

Club Ready Music marks the end of the intro and the start of the outro as cue points. On a generated track the cues are embedded for Serato and listed in the DJ pack; on a DJ edit the player has Intro, Drop in and Outro buttons and the times are written into the file's comment tag.