First of all you need to know time signature of the tracks you are planning to mix together. Typically dance music is 4/4 and is recommended. 4/4 means 4 beats per bar and 4 bars to a measure.

Usually after every 16/32/64 "beats" you will hear something come into/go from the song. So you are aiming to mix your second track in at a new"measure" ideally otherwise things can sound messy.

Beatmatching is mixing two tracks together in time. It's all about adjusting pitch levels so that the BPM's are equal (or close).

All you need to do to start this process is release/play your second track on the first beat of a bar.

Then it's a case of practising getting the 2 tunes in time with each other which can be achieved by pushing the record to speed up and pressing down on the record slightly to slow it down. You can also use the pitch slider to fine tune the speed.

Just like it says on the tin, the purpose of beat matching is to get your two tracks moving to the same beat - you need to match the beat of the record you're about to cue up with the record that's already playing. Having a decent set of decks is vital to your beatmatching success.

In musical terms, the speed of a track is called the tempo - basically it's a measure of how fast the track is played.

The tempo of any musical composition can be described in beats per minute - that is, the number of primary rhythmic elements that occur within one minute. I will cover more information about musical structure, beats and tempo later on..It's important to remember that tracks with an almost identical BPM count will sound in sync for a while, but then as time goes on they will stray further and further out of sync. If you are doing a quick crossfade, you might get away with a rough beat match between a 120 and a 125 BPM track, but remember that unless your tracks are matched exactly then they will start to drift. As your beat matching expertise grows, you'll learn to identify when you don't quite have the tempos locked and be able to rectify or compensate for this.