How to Set the First Beat So Your DJ Edit Lands on the Grid

Set the first beat of a Club Ready Music DJ edit in the Detected grid step with the First beat (ms) field, which moves in 10 ms steps, and check it with the ▶ 4 bars button, which plays four bars from that point so you can hear whether the kick lands on the count. The first beat anchors everything: Club Ready Music searches the drum stem for the intro loop on bar boundaries from it, crossfades the intro into the first downbeat it defines, and counts the outro bars back from the end against the same grid. A first beat that is 20 ms late puts a flam at Drop in; one that is a whole beat off puts the intro end on the wrong beat.

Steps

1. Confirm the BPM before touching the first beat

The ▶ 4 bars test plays at the BPM in the field, so a wrong tempo makes every first-beat test misleading. Fix half and double readings with ½ and ×2, or TAP and type a value, and only then work on First beat (ms). On steady electronic and pop tracks the detected first beat is usually right and only needs a check.

2. Listen to ▶ 4 bars and count

Press ▶ 4 bars and count one, two, three, four across each bar. You are listening for two things: whether the kick lands exactly where you count, and whether the bar starts on what you would call the one. A kick slightly after each count means the first beat is early; a kick slightly before means it is late. A kick that lands on the count but with the bar starting on beat 3 means the first beat is on the wrong beat.

3. Nudge in 10 ms steps for small errors

For a kick that is a touch early or late, change First beat (ms) by 10 or 20 ms and press ▶ 4 bars again. Increasing the value moves the grid later into the song; decreasing moves it earlier. Most songs with a hard start need between 0 and 60 ms of adjustment, because the transient of the first kick is a few tens of milliseconds after the file begins.

4. Move by whole beats when the one is wrong

If the grid is tight but the bar starts on the wrong beat, move by whole beats. One beat is 60000 divided by the BPM in milliseconds: about 469 ms at 128, 484 ms at 124, 600 ms at 100. To shift the grid from beat 3 to beat 1, add or subtract two beats. The field steps in 10 ms, so round to the nearest 10 and then listen; at 128 BPM two beats is 938 ms, which you enter as 940.

5. Handle songs with a late first downbeat

Songs that open with ambience, a vocal pickup or a reversed cymbal often have their first real downbeat several seconds in. Club Ready Music may detect a first beat in the quiet opening. Move First beat (ms) forward to the first clear kick, in whole-beat or whole-bar jumps, then fine tune with 10 ms steps. The intro loop will be searched from there, and with Intro bars 16 or 32 the loop covers the soft opening in a way that mixes cleanly.

6. Build and listen at Drop in

Press Build the DJ edit. When the status is Ready, press Drop in, which starts 2 seconds before the one-beat crossfade from the intro into the song. A correct first beat gives a single clean kick on the join. A doubled kick or a stutter means the first beat is off by tens of milliseconds; a crossfade that lands between kicks means it is off by a fraction of a beat.

7. Rebuild with the corrected value

Press Change settings & rebuild, adjust First beat (ms), confirm again with ▶ 4 bars and build. The song stays on the server, so iterating takes a couple of minutes per try.

Tips

• Trust your ears over the number. The ▶ 4 bars button exists so you never have to guess from a waveform.
• The intro end and outro start are exact bar counts from the first beat, so once the first beat is right, cue 1 and cue 2 fall on the grid in any DJ software.
• A song with a quiet count-in or pickup note before the first kick often reads 100 to 400 ms too early. Move forward until the kick is on the one.
• The chosen first beat is where bar one of the song's grid begins, so DAW users can set 1.1.1 at the intro end cue time and the whole edit lines up.
• If a song's drums swing heavily, aim the first beat at the kick, not the snare or hat, since the kick carries the downbeat.

Common problems

• The kick is doubled at Drop in. First beat (ms) is off by 20 to 60 ms. Nudge in 10 ms steps, test with ▶ 4 bars, and rebuild.
• The intro ends on beat 3 of the song. The first beat sits on the wrong beat. Move it by two beats, about 940 ms at 128 BPM, and recheck.
• ▶ 4 bars plays silence or a quiet pad. The detected first beat is in an ambient opening. Move forward to the first clear kick in whole-bar jumps.
• Every adjustment seems to make it worse. The BPM is wrong, not the first beat. Fix the BPM field first and start the first beat check again.