Hello there – I’m new to this forum, although I’ve had a bit of a look, and also new to the world of CD decks. I’m afraid my first post is a long one but if anyone’s up for a challenge – here goes.

Really what I’m after is a CD deck which can have the pitch altered so that I can practice the guitar along with CDs without having to constantly re-tune, due to CDs being recorded at odd pitches! I can live with an associated change in tempo as I wouldn’t be changing the pitch by all that much and therefore the tempo wouldn’t be a lot different either.

There seems to be a chance that something like the CDJ units might do the job – up to a point. One concern I had was about the master tempo – which does just what I DON’T want, by preventing the pitch from changing. I t seems that the master tempo can be turned off though, so that should be alright – have I got that right? (I downloaded the manual for the CDJ-200 and that’s what it said in there, but it wouldn’t by the first time a manual got something wrong, would it.)

A more serious problem is that of how long a pitch / tempo can be maintained away from it’s “natural” state. In an ideal world I’d like to be able to tune a CD down or up and play the whole thing in it’s re-tuned state, as you might do with a record – set the pitch control and play your records with that altered pitch for ever, should you so wish. Now obviously with a CD deck there’s some software trickery going on to change the pitch and tempo and, therefore, a requirement for sufficient memory and processor grunt. It seemed unlikely to me that a deck for DJ-ing would be designed to play an entire CD at an altered pitch – even with a relatively small degree of pitch alteration. I gave Pioneer a call and they confirmed that. I asked the bloke how long I could expect to be able to hold the altered pitch for and he said about ten or twelve minutes, but he didn’t seem very sure which is fair enough as it’s a bit of an odd request.

So, at this point my thinking was

a) is this fellow right – would it be ten or twelve minutes or was he just guessing?
b) assuming that he’s got it about right, then I could, theoretically, adjust the pitch down for a track or two, play along until I got some sort of “memory full” message and then put the thing back to normal pitch then adjust it back and do a bit more. That’s not such a bad scenario but it seems to depend on the CDJ not just crashing when the memory was full – i.e. it needs to give me some sort of message and allow me to got backk to normal pitch – and also it needs to return the memory and processing power as soon as one job has finished in order for another one to be done. To try and clarify a bit:- suppose I adjust the pitch down by 10 cents for ten minutes. That might use all the memory and processing power available so then I’d return to normal pitch. Then I’d want to go back to my 10 cents adjustment for another ten minutes, so I’d need to same amount of memory and processing power again. Therefore it’s important that the memory and processing power has been returned to the “resource pool” in it’s entirety. As I understand it that’s the sort of thing that sometimes doesn’t happen if an operating system is not very well written. I would have thought that Pioneer would be good in that respect but it would be good to hear it from people who use their products regularly.

Another thing that occurred to me was that perhaps the more expensive decks have more memory and better processors. Even if they DID I suppose that it doesn’t necessarily follow that all those extra rsources could be used in the unusual way that I want to use them. But it’s a possibility, I suppose.

So – if anyone’s still here, what do you reckon? I don’t want to adjust the pitch by more than a quarter of a tone either way. (I’m not sure quite how directly that translates into cents by I would think that plus or minus 5 would cover it nicely).
All I need is to be able to do that for one long period of time or do it in several chunks but without much of a wait in between those chunks.

Thanks a lot for getting this far – I’d really appreciate the benefit of experience here.

‘bye.

Well, that's quite a question...

Pitch control on a CD deck is designed to work exactly the same as the pitch control on a turntable and has exactly the same effect - it adjusts the pitch and the whole song/cd will then play at that new pitch (and the resultant new speed). As DJ's, obviously the reason we use it is less to adjust the actual pitch of the track and more to change the speed because we'd like the tracks we're working with to mix perfectly in time (which is why Master Tempo is there, because sometimes we want to change the speed and not affect the pitch).

So the guy at Pioneer would be incorrect - the second you alter the pitch, it'll stay there the whole track or CD. It's not using up a finite amount of processor and memory, it's all done real-time - it's a whole different class of "operating system" than the computers you're used to dealing with which usually process things in "offline" mode; meaning that it has to process everything before it can play anything back. DJ CD decks are designed to be completely dynamic - one millisecond of audio can be played back at a completely different pitch than the next and it'll all be in perfect time, just like a turntable. That's why they cost so much

It NEVER runs out of memory when it comes to pitch changes or standard playback - what it WILL run out of memory on is something called buffer, which you'll never need because you're not using the CDJ to scratch (like a turntable) - and even that is EXCEPTIONALLY rare and never affects normal playback (because scratching is not "normal" playback, or unless you're trying to play back the CD while it's being used in a paint can shaker - buffer is also what prevents CD skipping). It would make even LESS sense for a deck designed to emulate turntables to suddenly run out of memory - if you're in the middle of a show and you're some big-name DJ (many of whom request Pioneer CD players in their equipment riders) and your CD player runs out of memory and readjusts the pitch, COMPLETELY hosing your mix (and probably causing quite a negative reaction from the crowd) - Pioneer would likely not be in business.

One thing to clarify is that in case you didn't notice, the CDJ's pitch control operates in percent relative to "normal" or "recorded" pitch. And there's no way to convert that (on the player) into cents; it's something you'd have to figure out using math.

So while I'm sure you'd perhaps be more inclined to believe the guy from Pioneer, I've been using Pioneer products in various ways for probably 7 years now, and I've played whole CD's off pitch before (not necessarily on purpose) and they play through at the adjusted pitch, just like a turntable. No memory errors, ever.

-r-

You can adjust it as long as needed. I use 200s and 1000s and DVJs, and I keep adjustinmg the pitch through out my events to fine tune tracks. Whether the MT is engaged or not, I haven't seen an issue with this so you should be fine as Ryan states....

Using the Master Tempo function to work out tricky guitar parts is something I've done for years. You'll have absolutely no problems at all.

What are you trying to figure out?

Btw, the Mixed In Key wheel...



...that's been designed to help DJ's mix more smoothly, also helps with guitar solos. By extending the mixing principal from; Tune one is in E Major, so tune two can be in A Major, B Major or D-Flat Minor, you can say; The backing track is in E Major, so I can solo in A Major, B Major and/or D-Flat minor. It works a treat!

Also (given the example above), a lot of tutors will show you the scales in Emj, Amj, Bmj and D-f mn and tell you those are the only notes you can use to solo over Emj. Wrong. Learn all the chords in these keys and every note within them can be used. For most keys, over six strings and a two-octave fretboard, there's only about 8 positions you can't use. Some of them might sound a weird, but they're definitely in tune.

Sorry if you know all this already, but I only stumbled across this method a couple of years ago and it's transformed my playing. I've subsequently become quite an acolyte about it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Cheebatone,

'Scuze me, that's the "DJ Pulse Camelot Wheel". Yes, I'm credited with the redesign.

Hello again - thanks for those extremely generous responses. Much appreciated and very helpful.

I was pretty unsure about the Pioneer bloke to be honest. He didn't sound very interested and I'd always go for someone who knows the equipment from personal experience over someone paid to answer the most obvious questions to new users over...and over..and over again.

I haven't got a specific piece I'm trying to master - it's more that I just like to stick some music on and then jam along with it! Loud and tedious, but it's only me hearing it these days. I don't mind if it's in a weird key but sometimes it's part way between two keys and then something does need tuning. I don't like constantly re-tuning the guitar so I want to be able to just quickly tune the CD until it's back in tune with the guitar. By ear, really, although I do like to have the numbers at the ready - whatever helps, you know. I'm sure it will get used for more caerful mastering of particular passages and phrases as well though.

I like the Camelot wheel a lot - I shall certainly be studying that later. Many thanks for drawing it to my attention and congratulatons to DJ Pulse for a noble endeavour.

So I think it'll be a 200 for me unless anyone can see any benefit in going for something more costly - it seems unlikely from what's been said.

So - thanks again. I thought that message would either get some good, helpful answers or be completely ignored. It's very nice that it was the former.

Goodnight.