Deck controls
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.
In practice
Use memory cues as the map of a record and hot cues as the controls you press.
A useful convention is a memory cue on every structural boundary — intro end, breakdown, drop, outro start — and hot cues only on the two or three points you actually launch from. The memory cues then do the job the waveform cannot: they tell you what a section is, not merely that the level changed. On most players you can promote a memory cue to a hot cue in one press when a record turns out to need it.
Navigation
What memory cues do
Performance
What hot cues do
Boundaries
Where to place them
Where these come from: A preparation convention rather than a catalog figure. Our analysis reads whole tracks, so the boundaries themselves are yours to mark. We can tell you a record’s tempo, key and how it compares to its genre, but not where its breakdown starts — that is a section-level reading and we do not do one. For what we can measure, see the performance half of the pair.
Why it matters
The distinction from a hot cue is what each one is for. A hot cue is a performance control; a memory cue is a map of the record — where the breakdown starts, where the vocal enters, where the last usable mix-out point is.
Which matters most on tracks you play rarely. Coming back to a record six months later, the memory cues are the notes you left yourself about its structure, and they are visible on the waveform before you have played a beat of it.
Frequently asked
What is the difference between a memory cue and a hot cue?+
A memory cue is a marker you navigate to; the player jumps there and waits. A hot cue plays instantly from its position the moment you press its pad.
How many memory cues should a track have?+
As many as it has structural boundaries worth remembering — typically intro end, breakdown, drop and outro start. They cost nothing to read, unlike hot cues, which you have to choose between under pressure.
Do memory cues show on the waveform?+
Yes, as marks along the track overview, which is what makes them useful on a record you have not played in months. You can see the shape before you hear it.
Related terms
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.
Waveform
The waveform is the picture of a track’s level over time, usually coloured by frequency content. It is how DJs read a record’s shape without listening to it — where it thins out, where it lands, where it ends.
Cue sheet
A cue sheet is a small text file listing what plays when inside one long audio recording — track titles, artists and start times. It is how a recorded mix is split into a tracklist without being cut into separate files.
Intro
The intro is the stretch at the start of a track built for mixing — usually drums and little else, running a fixed number of bars so an incoming record can be beatmatched and blended before anything melodic arrives.
Explore: Hot cue · Waveform · Mixing guides · All DJ terms