For club DJs, making edits are the key to having a unique performance and track collection. Lots of DJs find themselves making edits in their DAW before a gig. When Serato finally released Serato DJ with Quantize and the Flip feature, this allowed DJs to make edits even faster, and improved the time and number of edits DJs could create. Today DJ Kue is going to show how you can create your own edits using Flip in Serato DJ.
Quantize and Cue Points
Before getting into Flip there are 2 important features to cover that will make working with flip easier: quantize and cue points. When beatgrids are set correctly in Serato and with quantize turned on (learn how to set beatgrids in Serato DJ), DJs can drop cue points and they will snap perfectly to beatgrid on the Serato waveform, even if playhead isn’t on the beatgrid. This allows DJs to trigger the cue points based on the Quantize value in the settings. The default is 1 Beat but there are a number of values that it can be changed to (as low as 1/16 for rapid quantized triggering).
To turn on Quantize, click the “Q” button on the top left hand portion of your Serato screen. It will turn blue when activated.
Cue Point Edit
When mixing live, I can do a cue point edit by hitting the Cue Points to jump to various parts of the track to make a new arrangement. To create a Cue Point Edit in Serato, set cue points on the relative breaks and drops in the track. On my remix of “This Could Be Love” I set cue points at different points of the track that I’d like to jump to such as the beginning of a breakdown/buildup or the start of a new phrase. Having quantize turned on can also help make the cue point jumps seamless and in time.
Building on the concept above, Serato Flip allows you to record these same cue point actions so that they are done automatically for you. DJs can have up to six different “flips” or edits per track. The best part about Flip is that it’s non destructive and saves DJs from having separate tracks for edits. Serato Flip isn’t included by default in Serato DJ, it needs to be purchased through Serato’s in app purchasing if you’d like to use it.
To ensure that the edit is accurate, make sure Quantize is turned on. This ensures all the cue points are triggered in time. For more complex flips or finger drumming routines it’s best to have quantize turned off. To turn on Flip, click the “Flip” button on the top left hand portion of your Serato screen. It will turn blue when activated.
To Read the full article on how to create your own edits in Serato Flip, follow this link.
