How to Make an Extended Edit of a Song for DJing

An extended edit in Club Ready Music is a DJ edit built with the longest intro and outro settings: upload the song, set Intro bars to 32 and Outro bars to 64, leave Bass joins in the second half of the intro on, and press Build the DJ edit. Club Ready Music loops the song's own drum stem into a 32-bar intro and rebuilds the ending as a 64-bar outro, which at 128 BPM means a full minute of mixable drums before the song and two minutes of outro at the end. The song's arrangement stays as it is; Club Ready Music extends the edges rather than repeating sections.

Steps

1. Upload the full-length original

Drag the best copy you have onto the DJ Edit drop zone, up to 60 MB in MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC, AAC or OGG. A WAV or 320 kbps MP3 gives the stem split the cleanest drum and bass stems, and the extended intro is nothing but those stems looped, so source quality shows. Fill in Title and Artist / DJ, then press Upload & analyse.

2. Confirm the grid carefully

A 32-bar intro and a 64-bar outro are 96 bars built on the detected grid, so any BPM or first beat error is multiplied. Press ▶ 4 bars and count. Correct the BPM with ½, ×2, TAP or a typed value, and nudge First beat (ms) until the loop starts on the one. Leave Volume level at −8 for a club file.

3. Set Intro bars to 32

In the Intro & outro box choose Intro bars 32. At 124 BPM this is about 62 seconds, at 128 it is 60 seconds and at 100 BPM it is 96 seconds. Club Ready Music picks the loudest 4-bar window of the drum stem, searched on bar boundaries from the first beat, and loops it to that length. The intro then crossfades into the song's first downbeat over one beat.

4. Keep the bass toggle on

With Bass joins in the second half of the intro on, the bass stem fades in over one bar at bar 16, so the long intro grows from drums into drums and bass instead of staying flat. For a 32-bar intro this split is what stops the loop from feeling like a metronome. Switch it off only if you want a drums-only run for a bass swap.

5. Set Outro bars to 64

Choose Outro bars 64. Over the last outro bars of the song, Club Ready Music fades the vocals and melodic parts over 2 bars while the drums and bass keep going, then appends the drum loop until the outro reaches 64 bars, with a 2-bar fade at the very end. The outro start cue in the comment tag sits exactly 64 bars before the end of the file.

6. Consider Redrum for the edges

If the song's drums are soft, set Redrum to Intro & outro only and leave Strength at 50. A synthesized kick, clap and hat then run under the 32-bar intro and 64-bar outro, which gives the long edges a club pulse while the body of the song keeps its original drums. Leave Redrum Off for songs that already hit hard.

7. Build, check the length and download

Leave Also export 24-bit WAV on and press Build the DJ edit. When it is Ready, read the length chip to see the new running time, and use Intro, Drop in and Outro to listen through the joins. Download MP3 320 and WAV. If the result is longer than you want on the floor, press Change settings & rebuild and drop to Intro bars 16 or Outro bars 32.

Tips

• Extended edits work best on songs with a steady beat all the way through. A song that stops for a breakdown ending still gets a drum tail, but the fade into it is more noticeable.
• The intro loop comes from the loudest 4-bar drum window, usually a chorus, so the extended intro carries the song's biggest groove.
• Use the comment tag times to place cue 1 at the intro end and cue 2 at the outro start. With 32 and 64 bars these sit on clean phrase boundaries.
• If you also want the song at your set tempo, add Shift tempo to in the same build. Bar lengths follow the target tempo.
• An extended edit of a long WAV produces a large file, so keep the WAV toggle on only when you need the lossless copy.

Common problems

• The intro feels repetitive. A 32-bar loop of one 4-bar window is a minute of the same drums. Keep the bass toggle on, add Redrum Intro & outro only, or use Intro bars 16.
• The outro begins before the last chorus has finished. A 64-bar outro at a slow tempo covers a lot of the song. Choose Outro bars 32.
• The file is much longer than expected. Check the BPM. A half-tempo detection doubles every bar length. Press ×2 and rebuild.
• The end tail sounds different from the body. The tail is the drum loop without the other stems. This is by design so the hand-over to the next track is clean.