Creative ways to use hotcues?

oghersi · October 2023

Interesting topic. As a beginner, I'm sometimes at a loss as to how to properly use them. At this moment, I use them mainly to identify the exact drop points (I find the waveform is not always the best guide). I only use 1 for grid and the rest as regular cues and loop cues. I always have one or two loop cues I can either use as a background groove I can copy into a remix deck or simply as a default outro I can leave while mixing in another track.

I also wish one could color-code them. I think If there were memory points available on Traktor I might find a more creative use of cue points.

djisang · October 2023

I mainly use hotcues to shorten extended versions of songs. Depending on the crowd, they may or may not be interested into listening to the whole song, so if they’re not, I automatically jump to a later section to “shorten” it

roweg · October 2023

I don’t allow software to automatically select hot cues for me. Instead I use them to mark mix in and mix out points, verse, chorus, bridge, breakdowns etc. Any part of a track that might be interesting to jump to is marked with a cue point.

Kayya · October 2023

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/98098#Comment_98098

There is someone more meticulous among us than me. It takes a lot of time to try so much. I didn't get into this because I was scared and waited for it to be automatic one day :)

Thales de Paula · October 2023

I use it to cut a few minutes from some tracks. famous jump.

This came from 2011, today the songs are shorter by default.

George Espinosa · October 2023

This is how I set my hot cues:

Cue 1-4 are standard in all my songs.

Cue 1 = Beat grid (auto by Traktor analysis)

Cue 2 = Load (if diff from Cue 1)

Cue 3 = Verse/Chorus (first vocals in song)

Cue 4 = Outro (only if I need to mark when to get out of a song, otherwise not used)

Cue 5-8 are interest parts of the songs that I might want to use.

FParadiso · October 2023

Hey y'all

I think cue points become much more valuable if you use "beats to cue" in your display settings to help with phrasing. Basically it counts down the beats until your next cue point.

Using this feature helps line up drops and builds ups/break downs in electronic music and hooks/choruses/intros in pop music.

With all that said, I try to do most cue points before gigs and I do some on the fly while playing. I will definitely look into the new version of mixed in key for the auto cue feature.

solsta · October 2023

cue points for me are points of interest int he song, a loop I like or section that has a cool melody or vocal line or effect, it allows me to see the special parts of a song so that even if I don't know exactly what I want to do, I know that in this particular song I can probably loop at this cue point or if I hit it, I can skip to there without having to worry about what it would sound like. I like that you can save a cue point or whole loop.

I think I would use them a lot more if I was planning a set where I would be doing a lot of mashups and stuff like that

Tunaiters · October 2023

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/98153#Comment_98153

That's a spot on question :)

From Traktor itself, effectively, you can't see the comments without triggering the hot cue.

BUT... if you are using an S5/S8/D2 controller and have Aleix' Supreme Mod, you can actually set it up to see all the names of each cue point on the display, which is extremely handy ^_^

Andy Lemaire · October 2023

Loop cue's in general, or cueing at a great drop.

6xes · October 2023

i use a single Page of the maschine Jam with Traktor... & i will position the Cue points that act as virtual cue points, so by pressing the Cue + a -32 or -16 or -8 -4 0 +4 + 8 +16 +32 etc beatjump it will jump to the actual cue-point...

effectively giving me more cue-points albeit virtual beatjump points... it does make one need to make comments to recall mentally where actual cue's are positioned LOL

Sparty · November 2023

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/16896/creative-ways-to-use-hotcues

Hotties are great, I use them as mental markers for drops, que in, Vocal Loops and to count back 16 or 32 beats from an absolute BANGER!!!!! drop. Get into a system of what works for you Example 1-que Point,2 -first chorus,3-first drop, 4-Mix out etc.

Kayya · February 8

Dear friends,

After a short break, we saw that the automatic hotcue feature was introduced on the recordbox side. It can also be colored according to the point location you want.

There were those who advocated naturalness and preparation by feeling. There were those who didn't care at all or like me, those who wanted everything to be automatic and focus on art.

We see that there is no escape from the logical one. And I think there are so many things that need to be automatic that I'm always surprised.

Automatic loop analysis

Automatic sampler analysis

Automatic rhythm scale analysis

Automatic instrument analysis

Automatic professional genre analysis

On the tractor side, I wanted to share with you the life that continues on the other sides, while the stems feature has not even come yet.

My usual motto, let's leave sound engineering and computer engineering. Let's focus on art.

mots · February 8

I use hotcues like anybody else, but one thing i find useful is that you can display the number beats/bar on the display (next time etc). you have to select it in the options.

once it's done, you can set cue points and the display will remind you how much time you have before them.

Kayya · May 20

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/131750#Comment_131750

Hello friends, I would like to bring this article up again after some time has passed. Nowadays, Rekordbox's automatic hot cue feature is used by everyone. He was already analyzing and displaying the parts of the music. I frequently express the analyzes I foresee in the future.

What do you think about this? Don't you care at all?

Creative ways to use hotcues?

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