Reply to How To Mix Like Armin Van Buure.....?

Hello everyone and Happy New Year !



This year I am focusing on a new style of mixing and since I'm a Trance DJ I wanted to break down and analyze exactly how Armin mixes and does his ASOT shows. I have done a lot of research yesterday and can now confirm that Armin uses Hot Cues for tracks. But... What's interesting is you don't see him going crazy pressing Hot Cue buttons on the CDJs. Which means all the tracks that he uses are predited in some way or another. Even then I am very curious how he does this. To mix 30 tracks just about every week in 2 hours is no easy task. So I wanted to ask people where exactly do you set your Hot Cue points? Many have commented and sated 3 points are key

1. Intro
2. Right before breakdown
3. Outro

So I took few tracks and used Rekordbox to set this up. But, mixing on the fly manually with Hot Cue points is well... close to impossible. Even with everything being in quantized, in key, and same beat you have to time your cue jumps like a robot in order not to hear any difference in the mix.


I was hoping people can help me with this and help me understand how this is done? How can hot cue points be set so precisely that it sounds fluid? If this is indeed set ahead of time then what parts of the track can be cut so that it sounds perfect?


Thank you all in advance !