Pads
Each deck has eight pads, with tabs on top that switch what they do. The tabs follow the pad mode buttons of a Pioneer DDJ-FLX4, so the screen and the controller always show the same page.
Pad pages
Four tabs show at a time. The first four are HOT CUES, PAD FX 1, BEAT JUMP and SAMPLER. Shift-click a tab for its partner, as SHIFT + a pad mode button does on the controller: KEYBOARD, PAD FX 2, BEAT LOOP and KEY SHIFT.
Right-click a tab to put another page in it. There are twelve pages in all; STEMS, LOOP ROLL, SLICER and FREEZE are only there this way. For example, put STEMS in place of the sampler. A controller's pad mode button then opens whatever page is in its tab.
The narrow column left of the pads flips the open page's own pages, such as the sampler's 1 and 2.
| Page | Pads |
|---|---|
| HOT CUES | Eight hot cues |
| PAD FX 1 | Echo, reverb, filters, flanger and more, while held (see Effects) |
| BEAT JUMP | Jump back or forward 4, 8, 16 or 32 beats |
| SAMPLER | 16 short sounds, eight at a time (see Sampler) |
| STEMS | Mute and solo the track's stems (see Stems) |
| BEAT LOOP | Loops from 1/4 to 32 beats (see Looping) |
| PAD FX 2 | Roll, gate, echo out, brake and more, while held |
| KEYBOARD | Play from a hot cue at another key |
| KEY SHIFT | Shift the track's key |
| LOOP ROLL | Loops while held, from 1/16 to 8 beats (see Looping) |
| SLICER | Eight beats of the track, one on each pad (see Slicer) |
| FREEZE | Eighths of the playing beat, repeating while held (see Freeze) |
Hot cues
A hot cue marks a place in the track to jump back to.
- Press an empty pad (it shows +) to set a hot cue where the track is playing.
- Press a set pad to jump there and play.
- Shift-click a pad to delete its cue.
The eight hot cues are blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, purple and teal, and show in the same color on the waveform. A saved loop shows a loop sign instead of a play mark. Hot cues from VirtualDJ come in with their names and colors, and are written to the stick in a USB export.
Slicer
Open SLICER and the eight beats from the beat playing loop, one beat on each pad. The pad of the beat playing is lit, so you can watch the section go round.
- Hold a pad to play its beat. It keeps time: it starts at the same place in the beat as the track was, and repeats while you hold it.
- Let go and the section carries on from where it would have been, so you never lose the phrase.
- Open another page to leave the slicer. The track plays on from where it is.
A slicer pad also works from a controller or in Map mode without opening the page: the first press starts the section.
Freeze
FREEZE stutters the beat playing. Hold a pad and the beat is cut into eight short slices: pad 1 repeats the first eighth, pad 8 the last. Press other pads while holding to play other slices of the same beat. Let go of them all and the track carries on from where it would have been, as with a loop roll.
Keyboard and key shift
KEYBOARD plays from the deck's hot cue at another key, like a sampler keyboard: the pads go 0, +1, +2, +3 semitones on the top row and −4, −3, −2, −1 on the bottom. They take the color of the hot cue they play. With KEYS ON PADS on an instrument deck they play the instrument plugin instead, from C up (see Instruments).
KEY SHIFT sets the track's key shift: 0, +1, +2, +3 on top and −3, −2, −1, 0 below. Shift-click a pad to move the key up or down by its step instead. A pad is lit while the deck plays at its key.
See Keys for key lock and key matching.