Deck controls
Hot cue
A hot cue is a saved position in a track that plays from that point the instant you press its pad. Most players store eight per track, and they are stored with the file rather than with the session.
In practice
Three cues cover most records: the first beat of the intro, the drop, and the bar the outro starts.
Set them on downbeats and with quantize on, so a press that is slightly early still lands musically. Colour them consistently across your library — one colour for entry points, one for drops, one for exits — because in a dark booth you are reading colour, not text. Beyond about four, cues stop being navigation and start being a puzzle you have to solve mid-mix, which is the opposite of what they are for.
8
Slots on most players
3
Enough for most records
Downbeat
Where each one belongs
Where these come from: Player capabilities and a preparation convention, not catalog figures — eight pads is the CDJ and DDJ standard. For what we can measure, see the other kind of cue point.
Why it matters
Hot cues are how a record stops being a linear object. With a cue on the first beat of the intro, one on the drop and one on the outro, any part of the track is one press away, and a five-minute record becomes three usable entry points.
They are also the part of your preparation that survives. Grids and cues written into the file travel with it to every deck you plug into, which is why an hour spent setting them once is worth more than an hour of anything else you can do at home.
Frequently asked
How many hot cues should you set?+
Three is enough for most records: the intro’s first beat, the drop, and the start of the outro. Eight slots exist, but a cue you have to think about is slower than scrolling.
What is the difference between a hot cue and a memory cue?+
A hot cue plays instantly from its position when you press its pad. A memory cue is a bookmark you call up and cue to — navigation rather than performance.
Do hot cues transfer between DJ players?+
They are written into your library export, so they travel on a prepared USB and appear on any compatible player. Moving between different software ecosystems is where they get lost.
Related terms
Memory cue
A memory cue is a saved marker you navigate to rather than trigger. It appears on the waveform and the player jumps to it when you call it up, without playing until you tell it to.
Performance pads
Performance pads are the grid of rubber buttons on a controller or player. Each pad mode reassigns the whole grid to a different job — hot cues, loop rolls, slicing, samples or beat jumps.
Quantize
Quantize snaps your actions to the beatgrid: a cue point, a loop or a hot cue fires on the next grid line rather than the instant your finger lands. The setting decides how coarse that grid line is.
USB prep
USB prep is exporting the tracks, grids, cue points and playlists you need onto a drive a club player can read. What is not exported does not exist once you are behind the decks.
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