How it works, in plain terms.
Start here
What is DJ Brain?
DJ Brain is the stepping stone from bedroom DJ to pro. Pros spend years learning how to prepare for a room, read it, hand over and get rebooked; DJ Brain teaches that on your own gigs. It builds the pack for the room, proves it in practice, backs you in the booth, and learns from what you actually played. Your library knows your tracks; DJ Brain knows your rooms. It sits beside rekordbox rather than replacing it: rekordbox keeps your files, cues and decks, and DJ Brain reads your exports and play history. Today the studio builds one scored set from your library; the gig pack, Review and venue memory arrive phase by phase.
What do LIVE, IN CODE, OPERATOR and PLANNED mean?
Every feature answer in this guide carries one or more of these labels. LIVE means it is on djbrain.ai or app.djbrain.ai today. IN CODE means the engine exists and is tested in DJ Brain's code, but no screen offers it yet. OPERATOR means it is done today in an operator session on the DJ's own Mac, by an AI assistant plus scripts with the DJ there, not by the app and not self-serve. PLANNED Rn means it is on the roadmap in phase R0 to R6. A guide that blurred these would be selling you a feature you cannot open.
What can I do in my first hour?
Five steps, in order. First, fill in Profile → How you play: your records an hour sizes every set. Second, export your collection from rekordbox (File → Export Collection in xml format) and import it on Library for the X-ray. Third, describe the gig in one sentence on Home or Gig. Fourth, build the set and read its scorecard and the list of what it could not establish. Fifth, export the one-playlist XML, import it into rekordbox, and cue 12 records on pads A, D and E, not all 80.
How does a gig run through DJ Brain?
As a loop: Prepare, Practise, Perform, Review, and the review seeds the next pack. Prepare builds the menus for the room and freezes them the night before. Practise proves them on your own decks. Perform is the booth, with the Booth screen as an optional helper. Review turns what you actually played into a GigRecord and updates the venue's rules. Today the studio covers Prepare (one set), Practise (drills on that set) and a Booth preview; Review arrives in R1 and the pack by role in R2.
Where do I find help inside the app?
The ? Help button in the studio's top bar opens the help hub from any screen: one search box over the tutorial chapters and this FAQ, plus an "On this screen" block matched to the screen you are on. Help & FAQ is also in the account menu and in ⌘K. The answers are the same ones djbrain.ai/help carries, from one source file, and they ship inside the app, so reading them needs no extra download. A ? on every feature screen that opens Help already filtered to that screen is planned.
Who is DJ Brain for?
DJs climbing to pro: bedroom and early-career DJs recording mixes, chasing a first booking and earning the rebook, and working DJs with recurring rooms, residents and openers on rekordbox and CDJs. Every gig produces data, so the next rung gets clearer each time. Today the proof is one DJ, the founder DJ Scott Allan: a paid pool party at the venue's best turnout in two years, then a monthly Sunbar residency offer starting November 2026, then opening for a headliner. Open-format and mobile DJs come next on the same engine; Serato and Traktor DJs after that, through history readers that are already written.
What is the Pro Ladder?
The milestones between bedroom and pro: recorded practice with scored transitions, a first booking, a first paid gig, a rebook, a residency, opening for headliners, then headlining. They look like small numbers, a modest fee or a residency at a small club, but each one is a booker saying yes again. DJ Brain tracks every rung from your own gigs: Review records the outcome, Career becomes the ladder, and Home shows your next rung and what your data says gets you there. Until R1 ships, the founder's climb is tracked in operator reviews.
Getting started
What do I need?
rekordbox (6 or 7) and its XML export (File → Export Collection in xml format): that is what Library imports. Until you import, the studio uses a labelled demo collection. Optionally a Beatport account for streaming or purchases. The canon was verified first on a DDJ-FLX4 at home and a CDJ-3000 with a DJM-A9 in the club; other Pioneer gear works through the same rekordbox pipeline. Serato and Traktor libraries are not supported. Reading what you played from a CDJ stick or a rekordbox, Traktor, Serato or VirtualDJ history file is IN CODE with no screen yet.
Is the studio open to everyone?
Not yet. The studio at app.djbrain.ai/studio is invite-only while it is in build. Reserve a place at djbrain.ai/reserve: Pro and the Booth add-on have a founding price that is set at launch and locks for life. Nothing in the studio is gated by a plan today, and the site states every price before any paid feature is switched on. A pilot with three outside DJs (a resident, an open-format DJ and a Serato DJ) is planned for R6.
What is the profile and why does it matter?
It's the product. One fact, "I play 2–3 minutes a record, ~20 an hour", changed every set: 40 tracks = exactly 2:00:00 with a clock column; tutorial pace rejected. Weak at hip-hop transitions → rap injected one record at a time, "one chorus, then it's gone", cut on the 1. "Kaskade twice, for my friends" → positions 28 and 30, in the peak. Captured once in Profile → How you play, applied everywhere: your records an hour sizes every set, and your gear, strengths and what you are working on shape every answer.
What happens to my library files?
Read-only. The studio never writes to rekordbox's master.db: it reads your XML export and writes one playlist XML that you import yourself, and rekordbox mounts an imported XML as a read-only tree, so there is nothing in the studio to back up. The operator scripts are different: some of them write master.db on the founder's Mac, and since DJB-85 every one must run through a single wrapper that refuses while rekordbox is open, takes a verified backup and restores on failure. That path is opt-in and the wrapper has not yet been run against a real library.
Will it touch a playlist I'm using?
No. The studio never edits a rekordbox playlist: its only output is a new playlist XML you import, which rekordbox mounts read-only. The rule behind it is older than the app: never edit a playlist the DJ is using, duplicate first. It came from one real "STOP!" incident in the 9/7 workspace. The operator scripts follow it too: they refuse to run while rekordbox is open and never edit an existing gig folder.
There is a lot on screen. Can I turn some of it off?
Yes, and you should. Open the account menu at the top right and pick how much you want to see. "Just the set" is where you are playing, the finished set, the Brain's read of it and the gig report, nothing else. "Everything" adds the phases, the scorecard, every seam, the decision log, the clock and the desk. It is one app at two densities, not two apps — the choice follows you to every screen and to your phone, and you can change it whenever you like.
What happens the first time I open it?
You start on "Just the set", because a first night is not the moment to meet forty numbers. Nothing is hidden permanently — everything the deeper rungs show is still being computed, it is simply not on your screen until you ask for it. Two things are never hidden at any level: what the set could NOT establish, and which library it was built from.
How DJs build a mix
How do professional DJs prepare for a gig?
They prepare hard, but they prepare options, not a script. The research behind DJ Brain converges on eight stages: dig for music, organise and tag it, prep and cue it, build playlists by role, practise and record, perform and read the room, hand over cleanly, and review what happened. Pros keep a smaller library they know well, small role-named playlists for the CDJ, and a recording of every practice. The sections that follow take those stages in order, and each says which parts DJ Brain does today and which are planned.
How does the founder build a mix?
DJ Scott Allan digs on Beatport and Traxsource charts, Shazam Phoenix, record pools and his own crates, then builds on Beatport Streaming inside rekordbox. He tags four fields (colour for where the file lives, stars for energy, My Tag for function, comments for mix notes) and cues pads A, D and E. Every pack is a gig folder of lanes with that venue's rules. He buys every record for the stick, moves its cues from the streaming copy, practises on a DDJ-FLX4, exports to two sticks, freezes the night before and reviews the next day.
Which stages does DJ Brain cover today?
LIVE: one scored set from your XML, editable and exported as one playlist; drills on that set; the Booth with Rescue and the Set Pilot; the Library X-ray; Career counts. IN CODE: the gig-pack engine, play-history readers for five formats, the gig-or-practice classifier, plan vs played and the venue-history bridge. OPERATOR: buying, cue migration, writing the gig folder, export and stick checks, AS PLAYED and the written review. PLANNED: Review and venue memory (R1), the pack by role (R2), Practice Review (R3), buying and a desktop agent (R4), Booth v2 (R5).
What will DJ Brain never try to replace?
Your decks and your library manager. DJ Brain does not build decks, stems, key detection, library conversion or a streaming catalogue: rekordbox, Lexicon, Mixed In Key and OneLibrary do those well. It integrates through rekordbox XML, play-history files and, later, OneLibrary if that format opens to third parties. What it owns is the part none of the tools surveyed covers: packs built by role with venue rules, venue memory, outcome tracking, measured practice, handover planning and the record of what you actually played.
What is the roadmap?
Seven phases from the 15 October 2026 plan; the windows are estimates, not promises. R0, capture (week of 19 October): re-read the 10/4 stick and import 10/18. R1, Review and venue memory (20 October to early November). R2, the gig pack by role, the handover planner and Signature Blends (November). R3, Practice Review, in parallel (late October to late November). R4, the buy plan, cue migration and a read-only desktop agent (December). R5, Booth v2 and Shazam intel (January). R6, a three-DJ pilot and the pricing decision (January to February).
Dig
Where should new music come from?
From several sources that agree, filtered by the room. Working DJs dig deep on charts and pools; DJ Blakey picks 10 to 20 candidates for a 5-to-6-track mix and cuts while building transitions. The founder digs Beatport and Traxsource charts, Shazam Phoenix, Music Worx, DJcity and other pools, his Spotify crates, and Shazams of other DJs after his slot. DJ Brain turns that into a trend score per record. Today the research runs as an operator pass; a weekly "what's hot for this room" service waits on licensed data.
What is the trend layer?
A 0 to 1 "what's hot now" score per record, for one genre and one situation, measured across independent sources: store charts, DJ plays, local crowd demand (Shazam city charts), streaming charts, curation and your own pool downloads. Agreement across three or more families adds a bonus; long chart runs lose points. Originals and reworks stay linked, so "parent song trending, rework charting" surfaces. The engine accepts the score, but no screen sets it and no live data feeds it yet. It was first used for the Sunbar 10/4 brunch build.
What is the room gate?
A hard BPM window per situation, so records outside it are never offered: brunch 117–127, pool party 120–126, club peak 124–130 and up, sunset 105–120. The founder's rule is "his crate is not the room": his Spotify "Sunbar 2026" crate is mostly 126–132 tech house, so only the 118–127 part qualifies for a brunch opener. The engine supports the gate and reports how many records it held back; the studio's Gig screen does not pass a gate yet, so today it is applied in operator builds.
What is the currency test?
A record older than last year loses points for each year unless it is proven at this venue, and the build reports what the test cut. It exists because of a real miss: at Sunbar on 10/4, Young Hearts Run Free (a 2016 Breakbot remix of a 1976 record) at #3 was "too hot and too classic" for a late-20s room. Sunbar's rule now: #3 must be a current record, a 2022-or-later release or edit, with a hook, and classic singalongs move to BACKUP marked "room skews older".
Can DJ Brain read my record pools?
No, and it will not scrape them. DJcity, BPM Supreme, ZIPDJ, Club Killers, Crate Connect and the rest are login-only with no API, so DJ Brain reads them from your side: your downloads folder, file tags and rekordbox. A pool copy counts only if it is the exact version you cued, because extended and radio edits put the cues in different places. The source order for a missing record is your own file, then the same version on DJcity, then Beatport. Never Soulseek, and never an unlicensed pool mirror.
Can I play streaming tracks at a gig?
Stream to discover, own to play. Beatport Streaming inside rekordbox is a good digging bench, but streamed tracks cannot be exported to a USB, cannot be recorded in most DJ software, and stop the moment the wifi does unless they are in the offline locker (a hard 1,000-track cap). SoundCloud DJ is licensed for private use only, not club performance. Spotify inside rekordbox is not gig-safe either: rekordbox 7.2.19 threw "exceeded the track streaming limit" on bursts of loads. Everything on the stick is an owned file.
Library & tagging
How do I bring my library in?
In rekordbox, File → Export Collection in xml format, then Library → Choose a file. The XML lists your records, their analysed tempo and key, cue counts and the playlist tree; it holds no audio, so it is small. It is stored in this browser (IndexedDB) and never uploaded, which also means it does not follow you to another machine. Records rekordbox has not analysed carry no tempo or key; they are skipped, counted and named rather than dropped. Analyse them in rekordbox and export again to pick them up.
What does the X-ray tell me?
Own vs stream, gaps by tempo zone, and "your real problem is…". Real example: 609 of 692 purchases sit at 120–129 BPM (hip-hop: 0); 7 tracks under 104 BPM ("going in too hot" at pool parties — the library gave no other option); 598 of 692 bought in 2022–23 and 0 in 2026 → a 20-minute weekly discovery habit. 33 of 36 open-format records were already house-tempo edits — the real problem was vocal collision, not tempo.
What's the "sample library" on the site?
Scott's real 692-purchase library, used as the demo so nothing on the site is invented. Inside the studio it is different: the demo collection there is generated, not Scott's library, and the studio labels it as a demo until you import your own XML. A set built on the demo collection cannot be exported, because rekordbox could not resolve its entries.
Where does energy come from?
From your files when they carry it, otherwise from tempo, and the X-ray keeps the two apart. Energy read from a Mixed In Key comment is a measurement; energy estimated from BPM is a documented band, not a measurement. Mixed In Key's own 1–10 scale leans on bright high frequencies and, by its own account, can miss a sing-along anthem. That is why energy by feel matters: a DJ-set energy tag that wins over both is planned for R2. Until then, no lane label claims an energy range it cannot count.
How should I organise and tag my collection?
Curate first, then file every download as it lands. Crossfader recommends a smaller library you know well, filed by genre, vibe, energy, event or function, with colour coding and tags such as "No intro", "Loopable" or "Crowdpleaser"; rekordbox My Tag allows four columns of fifty options. The founder uses four fields: colour for where the file lives, stars for energy, My Tag for function and comments for mix notes, plus dated venue folders. DJ Brain does not tag your library; it reads what you set.
Which colour legend does a gig pack use?
The energy legend, the same on the CDJ, the gig sheet and the app: Pink SINGALONG, Red E5, Orange E4, Yellow CLASSIC, Green E3, Aqua E2, Blue E1 OPENER, Purple TOOL. It conflicts with the founder's library scheme, where colour marks where a file lives, so the recommended default is that exported gig lists use the energy legend and ownership shows as a state glyph instead; that decision is awaiting sign-off. Today the operator scripts write the colours; R2's multi-list export will carry the legend.
Do my rekordbox playlists come across?
Yes. The playlist tree is read along with the records, so the crates and dated venue folders you already organise by are available instead of being flattened into one pile. Which lists a record belongs to is kept, and that is what later lets a review say which list a played record came from. Nothing is ever written back to your tree; a change you make in rekordbox shows up after you export the collection again.
Prep & cue
Where should my hot cues go?
On a fixed scheme you never have to think about. The one DJ Brain uses, from DJ Blakey: pad A on the first downbeat, pad D 32 beats before the drop, pad E on the drop, each named and coloured. rekordbox 7 can apply your usual placements to new tracks (Intelligent Cue Creation) and auto-cue on analysis; practise and correct them by hand afterwards. A pack counts as ready only when every record in A and HANDOVER has its cues, and the planned readiness score counts records with at least three hot cues.
Why phrasing first?
Because dance music is built in 32-beat phrases, and a mix that respects them sounds intentional. Start the incoming track on a phrase boundary, mix breakdown into breakdown, and beat-jump 32 to fix a misaligned blend. A study of 1,557 real DJ mixes (20,765 transitions, ISMIR 2020) found 86.1% of tempo changes under 5%, only 2.5% of tracks transposed, and cue-out points peaking every 32 beats. In practice: small tempo moves, rare key shifts, and phrase as the structure. Practice Review (R3) will measure your phrase alignment.
Why re-check keys after importing?
Because store keys lie. For the Sunbar 10/4 set, 5 of the 40 records analysed to a different key in rekordbox than Beatport listed (Body Frequencies 3B to 1A, Love And Happiness 4B to 1A, Love Sensation 8B to 7A). The studio reads the keys rekordbox analysed, from your XML, never the store's. For the 10/18 pack, two records where rekordbox and the file tag disagreed (Living Dream and Love Shy) were flagged to check by ear rather than silently picked.
Which version of a record should I buy?
The Extended, Original or club-length version, every time. The long intro is where your cues live and where a blend has room. Flag anything under 4:30, mashups, pitched or sped-up edits, and remixes that don't match the named version. If a pool carries the record, only the exact same version counts, because a radio edit moves every cue. When rekordbox's Beatport search shows several mixes with the same name, the gig sheet says which one was picked. A record no store sells is left out of the plan.
How do cues move from a streaming track to the file I bought?
Through an operator migration on your Mac, until R4 makes it safe for everyone. Before buying, a snapshot records every streaming cue (155 tracks and 1,498 cues on 10/3). After the purchase is imported and analysed and rekordbox is closed, a script shifts each cue by the first-beat difference between the two analyses (about −21 ms on Beatport MP3s, ±5 ms on DJcity files) and relinks your playlists. On 10/3–4 that moved about 900 cues on 88 tracks. R4 first tests an XML-only route that never writes master.db.
Is the operator lane safe for my library?
It is built to refuse rather than risk it, and it stays opt-in. Since DJB-85 every script that writes master.db must go through one wrapper: a dry run by default, a refusal while rekordbox is open, a verified backup, an asserted check after the write, and an automatic restore if anything fails. That wrapper is in review and has not yet been run on the real library. The product itself never writes master.db for anyone; that is a standing principle, not a missing feature.
Set & scorecard
Why does the studio build one set when I play lanes?
Because the studio was built before the two reviewed gigs showed how the founder actually plays. It builds one ordered, scored set from your library. In the booth you play A for about an hour, then choose from lanes. Until R2 replaces the Set screen with the pack, treat the studio's set as your A list: its first hour is the part a plan really carries. The lanes after it (HANDOVER, DEEPER, WARMER, BACKUP) are built in the operator lane today.
Why are the sets the way they are?
Built at real pace with a clock: 40 tracks is exactly 2:00:00. One arc with no accidental sag (zero for Set B; 3 and 4, all deliberate, for the others). Every seam key-compatible, with the count published (37/37, 39/39, 42/42). A transition for every seam, with a budget: 13 long blends, 15 bass swaps, 4 drop mixes, 4 echo outs, 3 cuts. Vocal collisions designed out, one vocal at a time. Named moments, ownership tiers, cue priority and a bail version for every risk. The studio's builder follows the same rules where your library supports them.
What does the scorecard check?
In the studio, four dimensions: Harmonic flow · Tempo flow · Energy arc · Crowd fit, each 0–100 with one sentence, or "—" with the reason when your library cannot support a score; plus the seam table and a list of everything the build could not establish. The 9/7 workspace's gig checklist went further by hand (every track stored offline and analysed, five bad beatgrids named "do not press SYNC", originals untouched, rig settings "as left"); the studio cannot see beatgrids or rig settings.
How long is a set?
Your pace, not a formula: about 20 records an hour by default, so a 3-hour gig is 60 records. Set yours in Profile → How you play. Measured pace varies by room: at Sunbar on 10/4 the founder averaged about 3:45 a record, roughly 16 an hour, because brunch blends run long (that figure is pending the R0 re-read). The total running time you see is the set length, not the sum of the record lengths, because you overlap every one of them.
What is sag?
A place where the tempo DROPS while the arc is still climbing. A drop during a deliberate descent — a pool party landing, a wedding send-off — is the shape working, not sag, and is not counted. On the set's desk, the seams worth watching are listed with their time and BPM change, so you can see a dip coming before you reach it.
Why did it refuse a record?
A streaming track that is not in your Offline Locker cannot be analysed or hot-cued, so it is unplayable if the wifi dies. It is excluded rather than left in as a risk you would find on the night. If you do not trust the venue's wifi at all, turn on owned-only on Gig: it removes every streamed record, including ones in your locker, and the build tells you how much that shrank the pool.
My genre is not in the list.
Type it in. The picker has 30 genres in five families, and underneath it there is a field for anything it does not carry — a subgenre, a label, whatever your library actually calls it. It is matched against the genre text on your own records, so a crate DJ Brain cannot classify is still reachable by the name you gave it, and it is remembered for next time.
Camelot or Open Key?
Camelot. An Open Key toggle is not built; your own key notation from rekordbox is kept and written back untouched on export. Keys show as a colour-coded Camelot pill. Each seam shows its BPM change and Camelot move as text. (The BPM-delta colour pill, ≤3% / 3–6% / >6%, and the 10-dot energy strip in the first version of this guide were not found in the studio code on 2026-10-05.)
Can I change the set the Brain built?
Yes. Swap a record out with ↻ or drag the order with ⋮⋮: the Brain fills the slot, remembers the exclusion, and re-checks every seam and score on the order you will actually play. "Undo my edits" restores the build. Preview any record with ▶: your own file plays in full once you connect your music folder, otherwise a 30-second store preview plays and the bar says which store. The gig report prints, downloads as CSV and shows a real clock when the gig has a start time.
How do I get a set back into rekordbox?
On Set, the export panel lists what the file contains (one rekordbox playlist in set order; a comment on every entry with position, key, tempo and the transition into the next record; your own key notation, round-tripped), then downloads one playlist XML for you to import. It never touches master.db, and because rekordbox mounts an imported XML read-only there is nothing to back up. A set built on the demo collection is refused. There is no "Backup created · Restore" step and no cue lock in the studio.
The gig pack
What is a gig pack?
A gig folder of lanes instead of one set. Lane A is the planned first hour; every other lane is a menu for a job the room might ask for: hand over, go deeper, go warmer, rescue. Each lane has a counted label, every record in A and HANDOVER is owned and cued, and the folder is frozen the night before. Today packs are built in the operator lane as rekordbox folders; the latest was the 10/18 Sunbar opener folder. R2 makes the pack the main Prepare screen.
What are the lanes?
A: the planned first hour, about 20 records for an opener. A2: the same hour with an alternative first three. HANDOVER: about 5 records that land where the next DJ starts. DEEPER and WARMER: menus to cool or lift the room (older packs call them PULL BACK and TURN UP). BACKUP: owned, cued "I know this one" records covering the keys you might need. OPENERS: five ranked first records. MASTER: a long reference arc, never a script. Party and residency rooms add PARTY EDITS and GROOVE.
When do PARTY EDITS and GROOVE appear?
In party rooms and residencies. PARTY EDITS holds the bootlegs, mashups, pop and disco house edits and Latin records you reach for when a party room is up. It exists because at Vitri on 9/7, 34 of 62 records were off-list and clustered exactly there, and the pack had no lane for them. The first one was seeded from that day's hours 2 and 3: 32 records, ramping 120 to 128 BPM. GROOVE is your last best set at that venue, played straight when a late or second session needs it.
How big should the pack be?
About twice what you will play, all of it records you know. Phil Morse's rule of thumb is roughly 2×; DJ Brain's canon allows 2 to 3×. Over-packing hides the right record: Vitri on 9/7 had about 230 prepared records for 62 plays, including 28 rap-bridge records of which 3 were used, and the 10/4 Sunbar pack was roughly ten times what got played. The 10/18 pack came down to 66 records across five lanes, with A and HANDOVER (25) as the part expected to play. Review (R1) will count the ratio.
What is the first-three rule?
The first three records set the tone, so each has a job. #1 is a groove, not a moment, ideally with a long intro. #2 lifts: one or two BPM up, a hook, the same or an adjacent key. #3 is current for the room and has a hook. A singalong never comes before #3 and must sound current for that crowd. This is v2 of the rule, because v1 failed at Sunbar on 10/4: Golden was too soft for #2, and Young Hearts Run Free at #3 was too hot and too classic.
How are openers chosen?
By outcome, not by how often you played them. The OPENERS lane ranks five candidates, and a record that was a hit outranks one played three times with no hit: Golden had opened Sunbar three times and still made a soft #2. A miss rests a record as an opener at that venue for two gigs, and in a residency no #1, #2 or #3 repeats from the month before. For 10/18 that meant nothing from 10/4's first three: Tango In Space went to BACKUP and Golden became the handover record.
What does a lane label mean?
It is a count, recomputed on every write, never a description. For example, A · 119–122 · OPENER (20 · 13 owned) gives the lane's BPM range, its role, how many records it holds and how many are owned files. A label carries only what can be counted from the records: when the first PARTY EDITS lane was written, a planned "E3 to E5" energy range was dropped because the library had no energy data to count it from. If a number cannot be derived, the label leaves it out.
Why is my classic in BACKUP?
Because the room reads current. When a venue's crowd profile says it reads current records, a pre-2010 original at #1 to #3 scores low on the currency test, and classic singalongs move to BACKUP marked "room skews older". They are still there when the room asks for them: BACKUP is the "I know this one" lane, owned and cued. At Sunbar the rule came from 10/4, where a 1976 record in a 2016 remix at #3 read as "older crowd" to a late-20s room.
What is the freeze?
The night-before lock. The pack is exported to both sticks and verified, and after that nothing changes in A; any gig-morning change goes to a separate MORNING EDITS list, with a timer against a 15-minute target. The rule exists because Sunbar on 10/4 cost about 40 minutes of gig-morning changes when the founder wanted 15 minutes of flipping through tracks. For 10/18 the freeze was Saturday night and Sunday morning was 15 minutes through A. R2 adds a Freeze step that stores the pack so any device can show it.
Can I export the whole pack to rekordbox?
Not from the studio yet. Today it exports one playlist XML: the set, in order. R2 adds a multi-list export, one rekordbox folder with every lane, the colour legend and counted names, which you import yourself. Until then the gig folder is written in the operator lane by a script that finds bought files by title and artist, lists anything not owned as TO BUY, refuses while rekordbox is running and never edits an existing folder.
What does the gig-pack engine do today?
It exists in DJ Brain's engine, but with older shapes. It makes a primary set, a backup with zero overlap, a lift lane (+2 to 3 BPM), a cool lane (−3 to 4 BPM) and a 24-record owned rescue crate covering keys in turn. It retires a record after three plays at a venue, lists what to buy and says whether the pack is USB-ready. R2 replaces those names with the role lanes in this section, and only A will be sequenced as an arc; every other lane becomes a menu sorted by BPM, then key.
Venues & residency
What is venue memory?
Everything a room has taught you, kept with the room. A venue holds the crowd profile, the rules in force with the gig that taught each one, the retired list with reasons and dates, the openers bank ranked by outcome, the residency calendar, gear notes and the other DJs on the bill. Today venue files are kept in the operator lane, and the engine already derives a venue's play history from stored gigs. R1 adds a Venue page, and every new pack starts by applying that venue's rules.
What does DJ Brain know about Sunbar?
A worked example. Sunbar is a Sunday brunch room in Tempe near ASU: late 20s to early 30s, reading current disco-house and nu-disco rather than classic house. A one-hour slot is about 20 to 25 records at a 2-to-3-minute pace. The booth is CDJ-3000 with a DJM-A9 (CENTER LOCK off, FILTER selected, resonance low). The opening arc is now read from the two Sunbar nights on record rather than typed: 10/18 held 119 to 123 for eight records (about 32 minutes of the hour), lifted once to 126, peaked at 127 and handed off at 125. Woman Like You and Coma Cat are retired there. Outcome: a monthly residency from November 2026, confirmed again on 10/18 ("basically guaranteed that I'll be playing back there regularly").
What is the opening arc?
The room's real tempo curve, counted from what you actually played there: how long the open held inside a 4-BPM band, where the one lift landed, the peak the room took and the tempo you handed off at. It exists because of 10/18 at Sunbar: the pack graded A against a plan while Scott graded its sequences C+/B- ("you tried to bring me in too hot, too quick on almost every single playlist"). The night itself held 119 to 123 for eight records, lifted once to 126, peaked at 127 and handed off at 125. The Venue page shows the arc from every gig there; the Set Pilot's "then" and the next pack are checked against it, and a record above the band in the opening is named "too hot, too quick". A room needs one gig with at least eight tempos on the stick before it has an arc, and until then the page says so.
What is the retirement rule?
A record played at the same venue three sets running is rested from every planned lane. It failed once: Woman Like You was noted as retired but stayed in A, so it played a fourth Sunbar in a row on 10/4. The fix is that retirement removes the record from the lanes instead of adding a note, and since DJB-83 the engine has a test proving a retired record is absent from every lane. (v2: corrected; canon v4 still allowed a retired record in the emergency crate.) A watch list flags records nearing the limit.
What does residency mode change?
Each month's pack starts from last month's record. It keeps the hits and the fines from the last AS PLAYED, adds 8 to 12 new current records, never repeats a #1, #2 or #3 from the previous month, rotates singalongs, and makes GROOVE last month's AS PLAYED. For Sunbar 10/18 that meant three repeats from 10/4 in A, none before #11, Golden moved to HANDOVER, and Woman Like You and Coma Cat stayed out. The app will show which month of the residency you are in, with the last outcome.
What are My rules?
The rules in force and the decision log, in one place. My rules lists the product's standing promises and the decisions behind the set you just built, and every correction you make becomes a rule. What it does not show yet is provenance: R1 ties each venue rule to the gig that taught it ("from Sunbar 10/4 review"), and the Review screen will propose rule changes in plain English for you to accept or edit before they apply to the next pack.
Own to play & USB
Can I take a set to Traktor, Serato or Engine DJ?
Yes, from the Set screen's Implement tab: the same set as a Traktor .nml playlist, a Serato .crate and a plain .m3u8 (Engine DJ, VirtualDJ and any player import that), beside the rekordbox XML. Each file uses the file locations your rekordbox import carried, drops a record without one and names it, and states its own caveat: Traktor keys a file by volume name, which rekordbox does not store, so the export assumes the Mac default and Traktor's Relocate fixes a wrong volume once; the Serato crate is written from the documented layout and read back by DJ Brain's own reader but has not yet been opened in Serato by the operator. Libraries still import from rekordbox XML only.
Why must everything on the stick be owned?
Because a streamed track cannot be exported to a USB, and a record that cannot reach the stick cannot be played on a CDJ. A pack is ready only when every record in A and HANDOVER is an owned, cued file with a clean export log. If no store sells a record, it is not in the plan: Brooklyn and Disco Chance were unbuyable on 10/2, so neither could sit in a primary or backup list. The 10/18 sheet listed 7 records to buy in A and 2 in HANDOVER before the freeze.
Does DJ Brain buy music for me?
Never. It builds the buy list and you pay. The 9/7 list was ordered by coverage per dollar ($576) and flagged licensing risk (39 DJ-pool edits are DJ-use only, not distributable). Packs keep a fully owned fallback so a wifi failure is survivable. Since October the list is split by role into carts, gated by the gig fee, with a promo-code check before checkout and free re-downloads of anything bought before. R4 brings the buy plan into the app; it still never purchases on your behalf.
How are carts split?
By role and by what the gig pays. Must-buys come first (A, HANDOVER and the original primary lists), then the emergency or BACKUP records, then extras you decide on later. A $50 gig does not get a $170 cart. For Sunbar 10/4 the founder bought two carts and skipped a third because the owned lanes already covered the brunch. For 10/18, nine must-buys (7 in A, 2 in HANDOVER) were required before the freeze and the 11 in DEEPER and WARMER were optional.
How should my USB sticks be set up?
Two sticks, a main and a mirror, named in rekordbox's device settings. For CDJ-3000 rooms use exFAT with a Master Boot Record; keep one FAT32 stick as the fallback every player reads; never NTFS or GUID. On the stick: eject lock on and hot-cue colour on in MY SETTINGS, the energy colour legend, and keys shown in Camelot. Files must be local, not evicted to iCloud. Sticks are inventoried, never erased by DJ Brain, and you load one track per list from the device to check the pads.
Why is an export error a P0?
Because an unexplained line in the export log can mean a record missing from the stick. rekordbox's export log is appended all day, so only the lines from the latest export count. Reasons: [1] a missing file, [2] an unsupported format (streaming rows, video), [4] no analysis. Fix the cause, re-export and read the log again. Two traps: cancelling an export after confirming "replace folder" wipes the gig folder on the stick (it happened on 10/4), and a renamed playlist leaves its old copy on the stick.
What is the Gig-Ready light?
A single check you can trust before you leave home. It will run as one job and turn green only when every item passes: files local (no iCloud eviction), cues present, no duplicate copies, both sticks identical, the latest export log clean, device settings and MY SETTINGS right, and the gear note for the room shown. One missing file turns it amber. The night before Sunbar 10/4 this checklist was done by hand; the goal is that the same list runs as one job with a green light.
Which files will a CDJ play?
MP3 at 320 kbps and 44.1 kHz plays everywhere and is the safe default. FLAC and ALAC play on CDJ-3000 and NXS2-generation players only. Avoid 48 kHz WAV or AIFF, and never put MP4 video on a gig stick. Check every file is actually on the drive rather than in iCloud, and remove macOS ._ files from FAT sticks, which can cause read errors on older players. The 10/4 gig files were checked this way: 101 of 101 local.
Practise & record
What do Transitions and Practice do today?
Transitions assigns one of five transitions to every seam of your set and counts the echo-out budget. Practice builds drills sized to the time you have, from the riskiest seams, with a timer, and remembers what you ticked. Both work on the planned order of one set, which is their limit: in the booth you play A and then lanes, not a fixed order. R4 folds Transitions into a Practise room built on what Practice Review (R3) measures in your own recordings, rather than on a running order.
What are the five transitions?
From DJ Blakey's most-watched lesson, filmed on a DDJ-FLX4: the long blend (faders only), the bass swap (both at full volume, swap the low), the drop mix (deny the outgoing drop at the end of a 32-beat phrase and drop the incoming one), the echo out (one-beat echo, fader down, next record in), and the crossfader cut. The quiet two carry a set; the loud three are events. Set B for 9/7 used 13 long blends, 15 bass swaps, 4 drop mixes, 4 echo outs and 3 cuts.
How many echo outs should I use?
About four in a two-hour set. Echo out is an escape hatch, not a workhorse: it forgives up to a 10 BPM difference, which is exactly why it is easy to overuse and why sets built on it sound monotonous. Use a one-beat echo for a longer, cleaner tail. In practice, three reps are enough. (v2: corrected. v1 said "three per two-hour set, not twenty"; three and twenty were practice-drill reps. The set guidance in the same source is about four, and Set B used exactly four.)
How should I practise for a gig?
Make practice as close to the gig as you can, record it, and listen back the next day. Phil Morse calls recording the single best way to improve: listen once casually and once as a DJ, and log the timecodes of transitions to redo. The founder practises phrasing drills first, then A from #1 to #20, then the default handover. In the canon, a pack is graded after practice and only an A triggers the USB build; anything lower comes back revised with a short note on what moved.
What is Practice Review?
A transition scorecard for your own practice recordings. Upload a recording with that session's history file, and it measures each transition: overlap in bars, phrase alignment (how far the cue-in sits from a 32-beat boundary), when the bass swapped and how long both basses ran full, beatmatch drift in milliseconds, and loudness change. It classifies each into the five transitions and gives three drills with timecodes. Analysis runs on your Mac and the audio never leaves it. Any figure it cannot support shows as missing, with the reason.
How will Practice Review be proven before I trust it?
Against known answers first. Synthetic mixes rendered from owned files, with known crossfades, EQ moves, phrase offsets and tempo drift, must be measured within tolerance, and deliberate errors must be caught: a 16-beat phrase error flagged and a one-beat drift detected. Then the founder's four practice videos, recorded on the DDJ-FLX4 on 7 and 8 October with the camera above the controller, become the first real test set, labelled by hand and compared. Reading which knobs and faders moved from video is a later version.
Can it turn a YouTube tutorial into something for my gear?
Yes, in an operator session; there is no Study Desk screen in the studio. Three DJ Blakey videos (32:04, 24:22 and 18:44) became a written method for one morning with take-or-leave verdicts, translated from Serato to rekordbox to the DDJ-FLX4 control by control ("SHIFT + BEAT SYNC for tempo range" isn't on the FLX4, so the on-screen path was given instead). It also reports honest absence: 52 videos catalogued, nothing on slow house sets. (v2: labelled OPERATOR; v1 read as a product feature.)
Can I record a set that uses streaming tracks?
Usually not inside the DJ software. Most DJ software cannot record streaming playback; Serato, for example, disables recording for streaming services and in Practice Mode. Use a loopback or a hardware recorder, or practise from owned files, which you will need for the stick anyway. For Practice Review, a phone video or audio recording works as long as the session's history file comes with it, because the history is what tells the analysis which records were playing.
Perform & the room
How does the Set Pilot choose what comes next?
"Then" is ranked by what this room taught you first, tonight second, the seam last. From the room: a record that landed here rises, one that missed sinks, one retired here (three gigs running) is excluded and says so, the last gig's first three are excluded for the first three slots, and a tempo above the room's opening band early on is marked "too hot, too quick". From tonight: Landed rises, Died sinks. Then the key move, the tempo step and a back-to-back-vocals warning. Every candidate shows its reasons; an excluded one stays visible with its reason. Name the venue in the brief's notes to use its memory; with no room on record the pilot says it is ranking by tonight and the seam only.
How do I read the room?
Selection first, technique second: pick the right record, then work out how to mix it. Step into the crowd and ask what you would want to hear right now. In a warm-up, play for the people already dancing; at peak, play to the edges; use a hard reset when the floor needs one. And leave the plan on purpose when the room tells you to. At Vitri on 9/7 the founder left the plan at about 13:30, played mostly off-list from there, and drew the venue's best turnout in two years.
What did the Sunbar 10/4 set teach?
That a good first hour can carry a whole slot. The founder played 16 records from lane A, in A's order, with zero pivots, and the tempo arc landed as designed, 119 to 125. The booker asked him to play monthly. The miss was #3. The lesson was not "follow the plan" but "make the first hour right and keep the lanes ready". The 16-record list was read with a stick reader later found faulty, so it is being re-read from the mirror stick in R0.
How do I ask for help mid-set?
Tap Rescue → tap one chip: Crowd dropping · Train-wrecked · Vocal clash. No keyboard in the booth — ever. The prompt behind it: "Gig rescue. Playing [TRACK] at [BPM] [KEY]. It's [TIME]. Room: [what's happening]. Three options." Rescue lives on the Booth screen and in Ask the Brain's Gig rescue mode, which you can open from ⌘K.
What comes back?
COOL / HOLD / LIFT — each key-compatible with what's playing, each with its transition — drawn only from tonight's panic crate or from records later in your set. Ends with one Pick. The Brain is told to answer in under 120 words with the action first; that is an instruction to the AI, not a hard cut-off. The studio's panic crate holds up to 12 owned, stored-offline records (energy 6 and up), one for each Camelot key next to the keys in your set. If the AI layer is unavailable, the Booth still shows the crate.
What is the Set Pilot?
A three-button companion for the booth. As each record goes out, tap Landed, Died or Skip; the Pilot re-plans what is next from the planned set plus the rescue crate, and the marks are saved to the gig. It works from the Booth screen on a phone. It does not know which lane you are in, and it rebuilds the set from that device's library, or the demo library if none is imported there. Booth v2 (R5) will run on the frozen pack instead.
What if I can't reach it?
"If you can't reach me, you don't need me. The table is the answer." The studio does not yet store tonight's set and crate on the phone, and there is no Offline pill. Set Pilot marks made without signal are kept on the open page and saved when signal returns only if that tab is still open; reload or close it first and they are lost, and a failed save is not shown to you. Print or save the gig report (Set → report, also CSV) before you leave for the booth.
Will it buzz me during a set?
The studio sends no push notifications at all. Set Mode and Stage View (a locked full-screen mode) are not built yet; the Booth screen says so in its own "What this could not establish" panel. Booth v2 keeps the same rule: no notifications of any kind while you play.
Do I need my phone in the booth?
No. The phone is optional, never required. At Sunbar on 10/4 the whole hour ran from the CDJs with no pivots and no phone. The Booth helps when you want the next good record in a lane in seconds, a rescue suggestion, or a place to stamp moments for the review. A design rule backs this up: no feature may make the phone a dependency, which is why the planned Booth works offline from the frozen pack and why the gig sheet prints.
What will Booth v2 do?
Run on your frozen pack, offline, one-handed. Top: the clock with time remaining and a handover countdown, plus Now and Next. Middle: swipeable lanes (A, WARMER, DEEPER, HANDOVER, BACKUP, PARTY EDITS), each showing the next three records that fit what is playing by key, BPM, energy or a Signature Blend. Bottom third: Landed, Died, Skipped, Mark moment, Rescue, the handover card, I'm on and I'm off for slot times, and Hang back. It must work with Wi-Fi off and without scrolling at 375×667.
Hand over
How do I hand over to the next DJ?
Leave them a room they can take, not one they have to fix. Be ready two or three songs before your slot ends; finish on a long, loopy record that is easy to mix out of; never out-energise the headliner; and never play their records, remixes, bootlegs or label. Tell them the BPM and key you are handing over on. Your last record should be a good handover point, not your biggest tune (Serato, Crossfader, Magnetic). DJ Brain plans this as a HANDOVER lane built to a target.
How was the 10/18 handover planned?
From the founder's own Shazam timestamps. After his 10/4 slot ended at noon he stayed about 90 minutes; only two Shazams fell in that window, one at 12:47 pm and one at 12:59 pm, both 120 in 7B. He had ended at 125, so the risk was handing the headliner a room too hot. The 10/18 target: land at 120–122 in 7B, 8B, 8A or 7A on a long outro. Default route: You (8A) into Ozran (8B) into Golden (7B, 120). The headliner's records and lane went on the Don't play list.
What went wrong in the first handover sheet?
Version 1 misread which Shazams were the headliner's. Of eight records in that batch, six were added at other times: Asking at 12:53 am that night, four on 1 October and one on 29 September. Only two records fell inside the window after the slot. Version 2 corrected it, and the correction stays visible on the sheet. The mistake is now a test: the handover planner must keep exactly those two and exclude the rest, and intel is always joined to the window after your slot.
What will the handover planner do?
Build HANDOVER to a target instead of by hand. You enter who plays after you (and before you) and when. It builds their observed profile from evidence, such as Shazams with times or earlier gigs on the same bill, with each observation showing its source. The target is a BPM range, keys within one step, energy at or below theirs, a long outro, and their tracks, artists and labels blocked. It writes a handover card for the booth ("tell him 120 · 7B"). Reverse mode gives a start target when you follow someone.
How does a back-to-back set work?
Take turns in short runs and leave your partner room. Hernán Cattáneo and Nick Warren suggest about three tracks each, roughly 15 to 20 minutes, and records with a friendly outro. Practise together beforehand, agree a direction, and leave space for the unexpected. DJ Brain has no B2B mode yet: alternating lanes and friendly-outro picks for two DJs come with the multi-DJ work in R6. Until then, build a shared HANDOVER-style lane and agree on keys before you start.
How will Shazams become venue intel?
By joining each Shazam to the window after your slot at that venue. Shazam adds identifications to a "My Shazam Tracks" playlist with the time each was added, and DJ Brain reads that for the founder through Spotify. Spotify limits an app in development mode to five users and requires an organisation with 250,000 monthly users for more, so other DJs will use paste or CSV, then a Hang back button in Booth v2 built on ShazamKit. Every Shazam counts as "this went over".
Review
What is a GigRecord?
One record per gig, the unit Review is built on. It holds the venue, date, slot, fee and gear; the crowd profile; the pack version; AS PLAYED with reloads removed; plan vs played by lane and by hour; the first three you actually played; moments stamped in the booth; one grade with one sentence; the booker's outcome and turnout; a hit, fine or miss for each record with a reason; and the lessons it produced. The type is in the engine, the founder's gigs are written up in the operator lane, and the screen arrives in R1.
Where does AS PLAYED come from?
From the history your gear already writes; you never type it. On CDJs the history is written to the USB stick, not your Mac, so the stick is read after the gig. On a laptop, rekordbox keeps it. Readers for the CDJ stick (export.pdb), rekordbox history text, Traktor .nml, VirtualDJ .m3u and Serato .session files are IN CODE. R1 adds "Add gig from stick or file", and the R4 desktop agent opens a review when you plug the stick in. CDJ history has no clock, so slot times come from you.
How does it tell a gig from practice?
With a points score, so a practice session never opens a review. Points for: at least 45 minutes, at least 12 distinct records after reloads within 6 minutes are merged, gaps of 2 to 8 minutes, coming from a CDJ stick (two points), matching a calendar event or "I'm on" (two), a weekend evening or a Sunday daytime slot, being away from home, and most records coming from a gig folder. Software marking most records as not played publicly costs two. Three or more opens a review; one or two asks. Fixtures: Sunbar 10/4 scores 5, Labor Day 6, a two-record practice 0.
What is plan vs played?
A count of where each played record came from: which lane, which hour, and how many came from no lane at all. It shows how much of A you played in order, which pivots you used, and your actual first three. At Vitri on 9/7 it reads "plan carried hour 1; 34 of 62 off-list", which is what proposed the PARTY EDITS lane. At Sunbar on 10/4 it read 16 of 16 from A, pending the re-read. A high off-list share means a lane is missing, not that you failed.
What do hit, fine and miss mean?
Your verdict on each record, with a reason chip: too hot, too classic, too early, didn't land, floor filler. Marks from the Booth pre-fill them. A miss rests that record as an opener at that venue for two gigs; hits rank openers and feed the next pack. Young Hearts Run Free at #3 on 10/4 was a miss, "too hot, too classic". Today the studio's Debrief offers proven or flopped per record of the set it rebuilt, with no "fine" and no reason; R1 replaces it with Review.
Why is the booker's answer the score?
Because it is the outcome that matters, and plan adherence can mislead. Review records the booker's outcome (residency, rebooked, no response, not rebooked), turnout and fee, and ranks gigs by outcome. At Vitri on 9/7 the founder "barely played the plan", which would have read as a failure; it drew the best turnout there in two years. Sunbar on 10/4 led to a monthly residency. With two reviewed gigs there is no target yet; one will be set after at least six.
Why was the 10/4 record flagged for a re-read?
Because the stick reader was wrong, and a number DJ Brain cannot stand behind is not published as fact. DJB-83 found the CDJ export.pdb reader used the wrong row layout: on a real stick it returned 97 of 435 tracks and 1 of 4 history entries. It is fixed (435 of 435 on the SCOTTY 3 backup), but the 16-record AS PLAYED for 10/4 was read before the fix, and five records marked as skipped may in fact have played. The mirror stick is re-read in R0 before any residency logic relies on it.
What does Career show today?
What the studio can actually count: sets built, hours prepped and rooms prepared for, with a CSV export. It says plainly that it cannot know a gig was played, because nothing in the studio reads your history yet. R1 rebuilds Career on GigRecords: an outcomes ledger, rebook and residency rate per venue, which lanes you actually used, first-three hit rate and prep time. The engine pieces exist; the screen and the storage are the R1 work.
What will Review count?
Only what it can count from data it holds: rebook and residency rate, how much of hour 1 came from A, plays per lane, off-list share, bag ratio, first-three hit rate, retirement violations (target zero), owned share of A and HANDOVER at freeze (target 100%), export-log problem lines (target zero), gig-morning edit minutes (target 15 or less) and hours from slot end to review. Each shows a dash with the reason when its input is missing, such as no fee entered or no slot times.
Signature Blends
What is a Signature Blend?
A pair of records you have proven you can mix, kept as a first-class object: the direction (A into B), your cue notes ("in at D, swap low at bar 17") and the evidence, meaning the gigs or practice sessions where you played them back to back. In the seam check, a Signature Blend counts as signature-compatible and overrides the Camelot rule, labelled as such and counted separately. The pack builder can keep a blend together as a two-record mini playlist inside a lane.
Why would DJ Brain allow a key clash?
Because your ear overrides the rules. Ease My Mind into Brooklyn sits five steps apart on the Camelot wheel (1A into 6A, as the founder logged them), yet he played the two back to back at Vitri on 9/7, in the hour the room took off. The engine's key check scores that seam as a clash today. Real mixes back this up: DJs choose compatibility by selection and rarely key-shift. Once a blend is proven, DJ Brain will never "correct" it.
How will blends be suggested?
From your history. Any pair you have played back to back twice or more with no miss becomes a suggested blend for you to confirm; the 9/7 AS PLAYED should propose Ease My Mind into Brooklyn. Deleting a blend restores the normal key check. A blend also shows when one side cannot reach a stick: Brooklyn was unbuyable on 10/2, so that blend works from a laptop on streaming but cannot go on a CDJ stick until it can be owned.
Do key rules still matter?
Yes, as guidance. In a warm-up, hold a key for two or three records and then move one or two steps on the wheel, with tempo moves of about 0.5 to 1 BPM per transition. The scorecard still counts key-compatible seams and publishes the count; signature seams are reported separately, so a proven blend never hides a real clash. Keys are read from rekordbox's analysis, not the store, and checked by ear where the file tag disagrees.
Studio & shortcuts
What is the first screen?
Home, where you stand tonight: describe the gig in one sentence, or pick up the gig you last built. The intake itself is Gig (/studio/prepare): where, when, how long, genres, notes. The "Tonight desk" in the first version of this guide (which set for this room with if→then forks, the clock, rig confirmations, START HERE) was the 9/7 workspace's gig-day page. It is not a studio screen.
What does each section do?
The rail runs in the order of a night. Your record: Career (every set you have built, counted) and My rules (every correction becomes a rule). Prepare: Gig (where, when, how long), Library (import your rekordbox collection; own vs stream and the shape of what you have), Set (tonight's set, its scorecard, its reasoning, the export). Practice: Transitions (how to mix every pair) and Practice (drills sized to your time). Perform: Gear check (make your cues fire) and the Booth (a tab on Set). Profile and Plan are in the account menu.
What order do the screens go in?
Top to bottom, the rail is the night: your artist card, then YOUR RECORD (Career, My rules), then the three phases — PREPARE (Gig, Library, Set), PRACTICE (Transitions, Practice) and PERFORM (Gear check; the Booth is a tab on the Set). Operators get an OPERATOR section under those. Every phase is on screen with no click. Every section starts open; click a section's header to fold it, and the rail remembers that choice. Ask the Brain, top right, works from every screen.
What are the keyboard shortcuts?
⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows) opens Jump to…, which reaches every screen and action; ↑ ↓ move through the matches, Enter opens one, Esc closes. In the tour, ← → step through. The g-then-letter shortcuts, ⌘\ and a ? key in the first version of this guide are not in the studio; Help is the ? button in the top bar. Every screen also has its own address under /studio, so Back, Forward, refresh and a shared link all work.
Where is the AI analysis?
On Set: the scorecard (Harmonic flow · Tempo flow · Energy arc · Crowd fit, each with a sentence, or "—" when your library cannot support a score), the set analysis (the arc drawn from the real BPM of each record, phase bands, flagged seams) and The Brain's read. Ask the Brain (✦ in the top bar, or ⌘K) opens a drawer on the right: a mentor that knows tonight's set, with a Gig rescue mode. If the AI layer is unavailable, every set, seam and score still builds; only the mentor's words are missing, and the screen says so.
Light or dark?
Appearance in the account menu (top right), or ⌘K → "Switch to light mode" / "Switch to dark mode". Remembered per browser. The landing page has no toggle of its own. The studio is dark-first because booths are dark; the planned Booth v2 adds its own warmer, dimmer theme for the room itself, with no glow except on Rescue.
How do I get home / back into Studio?
The DJ Brain logo (top left, everywhere) always goes home and back to the top. On the site, App access in the header opens app.djbrain.ai/studio; sign out lives in the Studio account menu. Every new screen starts at the top; Back returns you to where you were on the previous one.
What changes in the v6 studio?
Three rooms: Prepare, Perform and Review. Set becomes the Pack (R2), Transitions folds into Practise (R4), the Debrief becomes Review (R1), Career is rebuilt on GigRecords (R1), and Gear check folds into a Gig-Ready step and this guide. Addresses are already fixed under /studio, so links you share now keep working: Career is /studio/career, My rules /studio/rules, Gear check /studio/settings/rig, and /studio/gigs/:id/review is held for Review.
Gear check
Why are my cue points red and unusable on the FLX4?
Red triangles are memory cues; FLX4 pads fire hot cues (A–H) only. For a Beatport streaming track the only sequence that works: Store Offline → Import To Collection → auto-analysis → hot cues A–H. "Analyze Tracks" is greyed until the track is stored; Import To Collection is the step that triggers analysis. Documented nowhere by Pioneer or Beatport. Verify in the deck's pad grid, not the waveform letters.
Which settings must be right?
Preferences → Analysis: Set CUE during analysis ON (Auto) · CUE Type HOT CUE, upper limit 8 · Prohibit overwriting CUEs OFF only for the repair pass, then back ON · Controller → Deck → Memory Cue Call Lock: Unlock. Repair safely: Analyze Tracks with only CUE(Auto) checked.
The waveform shows I–P letters — did the cues land on a second bank?
No. Verify in the deck's pad grid, never the browser preview; the pads still read A–H. The letters in the preview are not a reliable picture of what the pads will fire. For a gig stick, load one track per list from the device itself and press the pads before you leave; that is the check that counts.
What's the streaming wall?
The Beatport Offline Locker is a hard 1,000-track cap; anything not stored offline is unanalysable and unplayable without internet; a lapsed subscription deletes the locker. Beatgrids on streaming tracks are mostly unfixable (manual grid edits revert); narrowing BPM Range on re-analysis is the only lever, and it's per-repair — put it back to 70–180 afterwards.
rekordbox doesn't show a playlist I just made.
Click ⟳ on the Beatport row in the left tree (about 60 seconds), then re-expand My Playlists. New playlists sort newest-first by ID. rekordbox caches the Beatport playlist list and does not refresh it on its own, so a list made in the browser or by the API stays invisible until you do this.
The DJM-A9 filter feels wrong. What do I change?
Turn off CENTER LOCK. On the DJM-A9 the Sound Color FX knobs can stop at 12 o'clock, so a fast sweep from high-pass hits a wall and never reaches low-pass. Press CENTER LOCK in the Sound Color FX strip (left side, next to the MIC section) and the knobs behave like a DJM-900NXS2. Make sure FILTER is the selected Sound Color FX, and keep PARAMETER, which is the filter's resonance, low for a brunch room.
Can I listen to the pack on my phone the morning of the gig?
Yes, but not through rekordbox's Mobile Library Sync: on 10/4 it dropped three times in a row over Wi-Fi and cable with a 2,224-track library, and cost 15 minutes of gig morning. The known-good routes are a Beatport playlist of the A list, built in your Beatport account, or a numbered folder of the A files sent to your phone. Then spend the 15 minutes flipping through A, and nothing else.
Listen (not built)
Is Listen built?
No. Listen needs an on-device signal pipeline, and that does not exist in the studio. Until it does, Rescue cannot fill in "Room:" for you, and you pick the chip yourself. The studio uses the microphone for one thing only: Say it instead, under the sentence fields, turns what you say into text using your browser's own speech recognition (Chrome and Safari send the audio to their speech service, so it needs a connection; Firefox does not offer it). It never listens to the room. The answers below are the design Listen will follow.
Will it record me?
No. Features are computed on-device and discarded after the snapshot; no audio is stored or uploaded; it never runs in the background (iOS shows the orange dot while it listens). The only network use is the opt-in Track ID fingerprint. (v2: tense corrected. The app's short FAQ answered "What does Listen record?" as if Listen were built.)
Why not a live "crowd energy" meter?
Physics. The phone sits at the PA's ~100–105 dB ceiling where phone mics clip and auto-gain kicks in, and the crowd is 15–30 dB quieter and 5–20 m away. Phone SPL is trend-grade, not number-grade (NIOSH: most apps miss by >2 dB; Android worse). So DJ Brain never shows a dB number, never claims a crowd score, and never claims noise-compliance. "Read the room" stays your job; the app gives you measured facts.
Why isn't the mic a tab?
Tab bars are navigation (Apple HIG); the mic is an action. It will live in the accessory island above the tab bar, next to Rescue, where your thumb already is. A tab would also suggest it runs all the time, and it never will: one tap, 15 seconds, then it stops.
Trust & privacy
Will it change my rekordbox library?
No. The studio reads your rekordbox XML export and writes a new playlist XML that you import yourself; it never touches master.db. The only scripts that write master.db are an opt-in operator tool, wrapped to refuse while rekordbox is open and to take a verified backup first.
Who can see my library?
Only you, and only in your browser. The library you import lives in this browser's storage and is never uploaded: a collection export names every file path on your drive and every record you own, and DJ Brain would rather not hold that. Your account holds your gig briefs, outcomes, practice ticks and preferences, under rules that deny everyone else by default. (v2: corrected. v1 said your library "lives under your own account"; the library never leaves the browser.)
What leaves my computer?
Today: your gig briefs, Set Pilot marks, practice ticks and preferences, stored in your account; the library stays in the browser. The plan keeps that line. When Review arrives, only play events (position, a track key built from artist, title and length, and times if known) leave the machine, never audio or file paths. Practice Review analyses recordings on your Mac and sends only the results. Frozen packs will be stored as rows without file paths, so your phone can show them without your library.
Does DJ Brain listen to my audio files?
No. Your library already did: rekordbox analysed the tempo and key, you placed the record in a lane, and the room told you what it did. DJ Brain reads those and never opens the file, uploads it or analyses it. Tools built on audio analysis (energy, danceability, sub-genre from the waveform) are a different product; where DJ Brain ever needs an audio-derived figure, it will come from the shared analysis service planned for Producer Brain, over one callable, with the same rule: a figure it cannot support is shown as missing.
What if it cannot work something out?
It says so. Every set carries a list of what it could not establish, and that list is shown at every density level — it is the one thing turning the interface down does not turn off. A number DJ Brain cannot compute is reported as missing rather than filled in with a plausible one.
What does "counted, never claimed" mean?
That every label, metric and grade is computed from data DJ Brain holds, or shown as missing with the reason. The engine returns no score rather than a plausible one when your library cannot support it; a playlist name carries only counted figures; a review figure that depends on a faulty read stays flagged until it is re-read, as the 10/4 AS PLAYED is. This guide follows the same rule: anything not built says so, and every number in it comes from a named gig, document or source.
What will DJ Brain never do?
Never edit a playlist you are using. Never write master.db from the product. Never buy on your behalf: the buy list is a list, and the card is yours. Never print a token or credential. Never drive DJ software while the decks are live: the Booth answers, it does not act. Never scrape stores or record pools. And never hide what it could not do: every output carries a "not done / not verifiable" block.
Can I take my data with me?
Yes, in your own formats. The gig report prints or saves as PDF and downloads as CSV, the set exports as rekordbox XML, and Career exports a CSV. Your library never left your browser in the first place. When Review arrives, gig records export as JSON, and deleting a gig deletes everything stored under it. Pricing is stated before any paid feature is switched on.
Pricing & access
What does it cost?
Nothing today: early access is free and nothing in the studio is gated by a plan. The published framework is Free ($0 forever: one set at a time, the Library X-ray, the scorecard, a read-only Booth), Pro (unlimited sets and gigs, Transitions and Practice, the full Booth with Rescue, rekordbox export, your rules versioned) and a Booth add-on for gig night (Rescue on your phone, Listen, offline locker awareness, Stage View; the last three are not built). Pro and the add-on have a founding price, set at launch, that locks for life.
Will Review and the Booth be behind a paywall?
No, on the current plan. The v6 principle is not to paywall the thing that proves value, so Review and the Booth viewer stay free in every tier. That is the recommended default and it awaits the founder's final sign-off, along with the rest of pricing. No prices will be set until the three-DJ pilot in R6, and any number this site shows will be a real, committed price, never a placeholder.
Why is there no price yet?
Because nothing validates one yet, and a placeholder on a public page becomes a promise. Free is genuinely $0 forever, so it shows a price. Pro and the Booth add-on show "Founding price · set at launch · locks for life" instead of a number. The R6 pilot asks working DJs what they would pay per gig and per month before anything is set, and you will hear about the founding price first if you reserved.
What it can't do yet
Can it read rekordbox's master.db or my Beatport history?
No. rekordbox's master.db is encrypted and has no API, and Beatport has no play-history endpoint, so DJ Brain reads your XML export and the history files your gear writes. The planned desktop agent (R4) reads history and export logs read-only. Writing master.db stays out of the product entirely; it exists only as an opt-in operator tool with a safety wrapper.
Can I review a gig, keep venue memory or build a pack in the app?
Review and venue memory: yes, since 2026-10-19. Career's "Add a gig from a stick or a history file" writes a GigRecord, its Review opens at its own address, and the Venue page keeps the outcomes, the retirements, the openers bank, the residency guard, the opening arc and the rules with provenance. The pack by role, the handover planner and Signature Blends arrive in R2 with a multi-list rekordbox export; until then the pack is built in the operator lane for the founder's gigs.
Does the Booth work offline?
Not yet. The studio does not store tonight's set on the phone, there is no Offline pill, and Set Mode and Stage View are not built. Set Pilot marks made without signal survive only while the tab stays open. Booth v2 (R5) runs offline from the frozen pack. Until then, print or save the gig report before you leave for the booth.
Can it measure my practice?
Not yet. Practice Review (R3) starts as a tool run on the founder's Mac, tested against synthetic mixes and four real practice videos, and comes into the app in R4. Today Practice gives you drills and remembers what you ticked; it does not listen to anything you play or read your recordings.
Is there a desktop app?
Not yet. A small, read-only menubar agent for macOS is planned for R4: it watches for a USB stick, reads its history and opens a review, reads export logs, runs Practice Review jobs, and tells other tools when rekordbox is open. It needs the founder's approval to install and a signed build first. Windows comes after that.
Does it detect genre, energy or sub-genre from the audio?
Not today, and not inside DJ Brain alone. Genre comes from your rekordbox tags (an unmapped genre is counted and kept, never guessed), energy from your lanes and rekordbox's analysis, and the room's verdicts from your reviews. An audio-derived label would arrive through the analysis service planned for Producer Brain, shared over the Bridge, and it would abstain below confidence rather than force a label. Until that exists, nothing here claims to hear the record.
Does it work with Serato, Traktor or Engine DJ?
Not as libraries: the studio imports rekordbox XML only. History readers for Serato .session and Traktor .nml files are IN CODE, and a built set exports to Traktor .nml, Serato .crate and .m3u8 (on dev since 10/18), which is how Serato and Traktor DJs are reached first. Serato 4's database, Engine DJ and a reader for rekordbox's live database are not built. Open Key notation is not offered either; keys show in Camelot.
Can it fix beatgrids or hear the room?
No. Beatgrids on streaming tracks are mostly unfixable in rekordbox, and manual grid edits revert. Listen is not built, the microphone never runs continuously or in the background, and DJ Brain will never show a decibel number or a crowd-energy score from a phone. Reading the room stays your job.
Will it buy, license or publish anything for me?
No, and that is a design rule, not a missing feature. It builds buy lists and you pay. It flags licensing risk on pool edits (DJ use only, not distributable) but does not license anything. It never publishes a set, a mix or your data on your behalf.