I know, I know. I know what you’re going to say. Hang on for a moment before you say it, and let’s talk it over. We’re talking about the button that dare not speak its name. But I’m going to come right out and ask:

Is it okay for a DJ to use the sync feature on his DJ software of choice?

I can think of many reasons to let Serato, or any other DJ software, sync the songs for you. First and foremost, it’s going to sound better, and your ultimate goal as a DJ is to please your audience. No matter how masterfully you mix, a computer is going to do better, and keep those beats in lockstep for as long as need be. This is especially true for older songs, with live drummers, which require constant adjustments to stay in sync.

Of course, a skilled DJ can make those adjustments, and it’s great if you can do it, but is it necessary to be able to do it in order to call yourself a DJ? And what about a DJ who can do it, but chooses to let sync do it for him? Is he a little more real, but still not real enough? When I started DJ’ing, vinyl was the only option, and I learned to mix tracks entirely by ear, with no visual aids whatsoever. I can match rhythm tracks played by the most coked-out disco drummers who ever drifted off a beat, in an era of drug-induced drifting off of the beat, with aplomb. If I decide to let Serato take over, am I now a fraud?

Letting Serato sync the beats for you also allows you time to do other things that you couldn’t do if you were spending time matching beats, and/or spending time keeping them matched during the mix. You can do far more with your EQs or effects, you can interact with your audience, or you can spend more time selecting the next track.

Sync also allows for far more creativity. Instead of spending time adjusting two drifting tracks to keep them in time, you can let sync do it for you while you layer in a third track, or scratch, or sing, or play a harmonica over the music. The sky is the limit for you, while your unfortunate sync-eschewing counterpart can only play two songs at once.

Ultimately, it comes down to a question of where one draws the line. If using the sync feature is not allowed, what else isn’t allowed? I touched on this briefly in a recent post about quantizing tracks, but to reiterate, most modern dance music is made on a computer, which means that it has a locked in, quantized beat, and is easy to mix. When you drop a song into Serato, it will instantly tell you the BPM of the song, to a fraction of a percent. It’s a simple matter to adjust the pitch until it matches the BPM of the track you are playing, at which point you have synced the songs. Is that really any more difficult, or “real,” than letting Serato adjust the BPMs for you?

Perhaps you think it is “cheating” to simply slide the tracks into alignment based on the BPM readout, and you must instead ignore those numbers and match by ear. Are you allowed to look at the waveforms, and see if they are aligned, or is that fakery as well?

And if you do mix the songs without looking to see if the numbers match or the waveforms align, well, maybe you’re still cheating, because even knowing the BPMs ahead of time gives you an advantage, so not only must you ignore the BPM readout and match by ear, to truly call yourself a DJ you aren’t even allowed to know the BPMs of the songs. You have to listen and decide which is faster or slower, and adjust accordingly.

Once you have the tracks aligned, you still may need to make small adjustments to account for subtle drifts in tempo. Are you allowed to use the pitch+ and pitch- buttons, or must you only use pushes and pulls to the side of the jog wheel to adjust the BPM? Or is even that forbidden, as a real DJ does it all by sliding the pitch adjustment up and down?

Next of course, you have to decide if a “real” DJ is even allowed to use digital media, for don’t the real “real” DJs only use vinyl? And honestly, if you want to truly be a DJ, how dare you use pitch control at all? The original disco DJs didn’t have pitch control, and had to do it all with pushes and pulls on the vinyl. Even at that point, you’re still faking it, because the true old school DJs, the real, real, “real” DJs, had to do it all on shellac, not vinyl, and honestly, can you call yourself a DJ if you aren’t using shellac on a windup system?