How to read a DJ waveform

A waveform is a picture of a record's sound over time. Once you can read one, you see a record's shape at a glance: where the kicks are, where the breakdown starts, how long until the outro. That's most of what DJs use it for.

What the shape tells you

Height is loudness. Tall, dense stretches are full sections with kick and bass. Low, thin stretches are intros, breakdowns and outros.
Kicks are spikes. A steady row of spikes is a steady kick. Where the spikes stop, the drums have dropped out.
A jump from thin to full is usually a drop. It tends to land at the start of a phrase, which makes it a natural place to bring a record in or swap the basslines.
A thinning at the end is the outro. On the waveform you can see it coming long before you hear it.

Color

Many DJ apps color a waveform by frequency, so you can tell the bass from the treble. In Mix//Sync the low end, the kick and the bass, is drawn in the deck's color: blue for deck A, purple for deck B. The middle of the sound is amber, and the sharp attack of each hit shows in cream, so the kicks stand out as bright marks.

Two views in Mix//Sync

The big waveforms across the top

These show the part of each record around where it's playing now.

Deck A's waveform runs above deck B's, so you can watch the two records one over the other.
Each one scrolls past a white line in the middle. That line is now.
Zoom with the minus and plus buttons in the top right corner. There are three widths, from about 24 seconds on screen down to 4.
Thin lines mark every beat and every bar, with a red tick every fourth bar. What is a beat grid? explains them.
Your hot cues show as small tabs carrying the pad's letter.
Drag a waveform to move through its record. The music keeps playing where it was until you let go, then jumps to where you dropped it.
An empty lane takes a track: drag one from your library onto it to load that deck.
With a friend in the session, their deck's waveform shows in its lane too.

The small waveform on each deck

This one shows the whole record at once, with a mark for each hot cue. Click anywhere on it to jump there. Beside the track name, the time shows how far in you are and how much is left.

Using it in a mix

Before you start the new record, move it to its first kick, so it comes in on the beat.
Count phrases with the red ticks, so the next record comes in where the playing one changes. Phrases and bars shows how.
Watch the time left and the shape of the outro to know when to have the next record ready.

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