How much energy jump between two tracks is too much? A DJ's guide

On a 1-to-10 energy scale, a jump of more than two points upward is audible and more than three feels like a cut. Downward the margin is smaller still, because dropping a floor is easy and lifting it again is not. Tempo has its own limit — past 6 to 8 percent you start to hear the pitchThe control that adjusts a track's playback speed, as a percentage. — but tempo is usually not the jump that ruined the transition.

The most repeated rule in DJing is "do not change BPMBeats per minute: a track's tempo, and the first number any DJ looks at. by more than 6 or 8 percent between two tracks". It is a useful rule and it is also incomplete.

Two tracks at exactly 150 BPM can still sound like a collision if one is a minimal roller and the other arrives with the kick up front and the whole spectrum full. The pulse matches; the feeling does not.

The three jumps that matter

Tempo. The best known and the easiest to measure. Pitch fixes it up to a point; past 6–8 percent it starts to be heard.

Energy. How much more intense a track feels than the one before. There is no standard unit here, which is exactly why it is worth imposing one — 1 to 10, and the thresholds at the top of this page.

Harmony. Incompatible keysThe note and mode a track is written in — what decides whether two tracks sit well together. sound wrong even when everything else fits. Be suspicious of the short rule repeated everywhere — stay in the same key, go to its relative, or move one position — because it leaves out a lot of mixes that work. What actually goes with a given key is what the Camelot wheelA 24-position circle that turns every key into a short code like 8A or 9B. tells you, and it works from a considerably wider transition table than that rule: open it with your key and see what it really offers.

What each jump size feels like

The row that gets ignored is the first one. Too many flat transitions in a row is a defect too — a set that never moves more than a point is not restrained, it is a set going nowhere, and it is much harder to notice than a jolt because nothing ever sounds wrong.

Why general rules are not enough

The trouble with "never exceed 8 percent" is that it is a rule about transitionsThe passage from one track to the next — what the room hears as continuity. in the abstract, and you do not have transitions in the abstract: you have twenty-five tracks in a specific order, and probably two or three specific transitions that are the ones that are wrong. The other twenty-two are fine and do not need reviewing.

What is missing is not the rule. It is somebody pointing at which of your transitions break it.

How to check it by hand

If you want to do this without tools: build a table with three columns — track, BPM, energy from 1 to 10. Work out the difference between each row and the next. Flag anything that jumps more than two points of energy or more than 8 percent of BPM.

You will end up with two or three flagged rows. Those are the ones to look at. They can almost always be fixed by moving a single track.

Does the 8 percent BPM rule actually hold?

As a ceiling, roughly. What it hides is that the same 8 percent is much more noticeable on a vocal than on a drum tool, because the pitch shift lands on something your ear knows the pitch of. If the outgoing track has a recognisable vocal, treat 4 percent as the practical limit and use the full range on instrumentals.

Is a big drop ever correct?

Yes, and it is one of the strongest moves available — but only when what follows earns it. A −3 into a track that rebuilds over the next two minutes reads as deliberate. The same −3 into something that also sits at 5 reads as a mistake, and the floor treats it as one.

What if my tracks have no energy value at all?

Then you assign them, and your own numbers are the best input available. Failing that, energy can be estimated from BPM and from properties of the audio, but it is an estimate — see what to do when your tags are empty for what is recoverable and how much to trust each source.

What we automate

EnergyCurve does that arithmetic for you and marks the jumps on the curve, with the specific move for each one: "send track 7 to position 3", and how much the score rises if you do. It also flags the opposite, which is much less visible: too many flat transitions in a row.

If you are not sure your software writes an energy value at all, energy tags covers how Rekordbox, Serato and Traktor each store one.

See the jumps in your set