In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to make your own custom screen
layouts in Traktor.
Layouts are a great way to customize your Traktor interface
so you can see only the features that you need to use at any given time.
If I go to the upper right hand side of the screen,
I can see my layout selector dropdown menu.
If I click the dropdown menu, I have four different layouts to choose from.
Each layout will show or hide different parts of the interface.
Now, I can actually create my own layouts
by going to the preferences, which is the gear icon here
and then clicking on Layout Manager.
When I'm in the Layout Manager, I can click Add to add a new layout.
And then I'm going to choose what kind of lay out I want to use.
I'm going to choose Extended- 2Deck.
Now, if I click on the name "Copy of one Extended," I can rename the layout.
I'm just going to clear that field and call it,
"Berklee DJ Jedi," and then click Rename to rename the layout.
I can reorder the order of these layouts by clicking Move Up or Move Down.
I'll put this at the top.
Now, there's a few different sections that I can customize
this layout inside of the preferences.
They are Decks Layout, Track Decks, Mixer, Global Settings,
and Browser Details.
If I go to Browser Details, I can customize my browser.
If I click on Show Preview Player, it will show this little preview deck
here.
This will let me pre-listen to songs before loading them into a deck.
I'm actually going to turn this off.
Show Cover Art will show the tracks album artwork
at the bottom of the browser tree, let's leave that on.
Show Playlist Favorites will show the 12 shortcuts to our favorite playlists.
Show Track Info will show or hide the Track Info window at the bottom, which
we don't really need.
We'll Keep Show Status Bar Error Messages on,
since we definitely want to see those if there's any errors.
If I go to the Global Settings section, I can show or hide the Global Section.
We probably want to show the Global Section,
since we want to see the main volume and the effects.
I can also choose in the Global Section which
panels are shown such as the master clock or the effects.
And on the right side, you can choose to show the recorder or the effect 2.
Let's show the effects.
If I go to my Decks layout, I can choose what kind of deck
I want the deck to be, such as a track deck or remix deck.
Let's leave them both at track decks.
I can then choose what size the deck is.
So for example, if I chose "micro," we'll
get a very small, narrow waveform.
Whereas, if I chose "advanced," it will show a full size deck
with all of the deck functions, including
this Advanced Panel down here.
Now the advance panel contains our Move, Queue, and Grid functions.
Additionally, if you wanted to show or hide that
you can just click this little arrow underneath the active button
and it will save that to the layout.
Down here in the Tempo Fader section, you
can choose whether or not you want to show the tempo of the deck, which
we definitely want to see.
The Platter Scope section is if you're using timecode vinyl.
If I chose "scope," for example, I can actually see the incoming vinyl signal.
Since we're not using timecode, I'll turn that off.
Then down here, we have the Miscellaneous section
which you can customize the deck.
So I'm going to load a track into a deck by dragging and dropping it.
And you can see how we have this blue wave form here.
I can actually change the color.
So by default, the color mode is set to ultraviolet, which is blue.
But if I change it to infrared, we have this orange wave form which
is like the original Traktor waveforms.
X-ray is black and white waveforms.
And spectrum is a colored waveform.
This is what we want to use for the most part is spectrum.
Spectrum will give us a colorful wave form that
shows us the frequencies of our track.
So for example, red waveform means there's lots of bass,
green waveform means there's vocals or synthesizers,
and blue means it's mostly high frequencies like snares, hi-hats,
and percussion.
You can additionally change the grid mode
to full, which will give you a brighter representation of every beat.
Or you can change the beat markers to ticks or even turn them off.
I like to use dim.
In the Deck Header section, you can choose
if you want to show the cover art which is the album artwork or the phase
meter.
Now, we probably want to show the phase meter,
since that's tractor's visual way of beat matching.
The Track Deck section will let us customize the deck header in Traktor.
So at the top of my deck here, you can see that I
have the artist, title, and comment.
I also have the elapsed time, remaining time, and label as well as
BPM and original BPM and tempo.
So you can customize what you see in the deck header here.
So for example, you might want to show the title
at the top, the artist in the middle, the release at the bottom.
And then you could show track BPM at the top or you can show tempo--
any of these fields you can show inside of the deck.
Then there's other things in the Miscellaneous section like track end
warning.
I like to set this at 60 seconds.
This will make it so when you get to 60 seconds left in the song,
it will start blinking red here at the bottom
to tell you the tracks about to end.
You can also change the default zoom if you want.
I like 0.75, but you could zoom in if you want by default here.
Then you can change the stripe view to either fit the record, which
is for timecode users, or track.
Let's just leave it at track.
So all of those settings will be applied to the layout that you've saved.
And you can access this layout at any time
just by clicking on the layout selector and choosing your custom layout.