How To Make Intro Edits Straight From Your Serato Crates
Work through a Serato crate and give every cold-start track a proper run-up, without exporting, re-importing or opening a DAW. Works with Rekordbox and VirtualDJ libraries too.
Every DJ has a crate full of records they love and never play, because they start cold. The vocal is in on bar one, there’s nothing to mix over, and bringing it in means a hard cut. Most tools for fixing that make you leave Serato: export the file, open a DAW, edit, bounce, import, re-analyse.
This is the version that starts and ends in your crate.
What you need
- Your Serato library, as it is. Rekordbox or VirtualDJ works the same way.
- The IntroEdits desktop app. It reads your crates directly, read-only.
- About a minute per track.
Step by step
1. Open the crate you actually play from
The app shows your crates as they are in Serato, so start with the one you’d play tonight rather than a folder of “tracks to fix one day”. The point is to clear the cold-starts out of a real set.
2. Pick a track that starts cold
Anything where the vocal is in on bar one, or the intro is too short to beatmatch. Click Intro.
3. Set the drop
Where should the track drop in? Move the playhead to the moment you’d want the record to land if you’d mixed it in properly, usually bar one of the first real phrase, and press Set the drop here.
If that point isn’t on the start of a bar, the app asks before moving the grid, so you stay in control of where it lands.
4. Choose the length
How long should the intro be? 8, 16 or 32 bars. 16 is the safe default. Not sure? Make it at 16, listen, then try 32. There’s more on choosing in how many bars a DJ intro should be.
5. Make it, then listen to the join
Click Make the intro. The app builds the run-up from the record’s own instrumental, lines up the join on the one and fades it so it doesn’t click.
Then use Hear the changeover: it plays just the seam, the last bars of the run-up into the drop. That’s the only part that can give an edit away, so it’s the only part worth your ears.
6. Save it next to the original
Click Save. The edit goes in the same folder as the original, named with your DJ name, so it’s easy to find and easy to tell apart. Your original file, its cues and its place in your crates don’t change.
7. Add it to the crate
Add the new file to your crate the way you’d add anything new, and let Serato analyse it. Done: next time the track comes up, it has a run-up.
Working through a whole crate
Once you’ve done three or four, the rhythm is: pick, set the drop, 16 bars, make, listen, save. About a minute each. A crate of 30 cold-starts is one evening, not a month of weekends.
A few habits that help:
- Do the must-plays first. The tracks you already try to force into sets are where an edit pays off most.
- Keep the drop on the phrase, not the loudest moment. The energy peak is often a bar or two after the real start of the phrase.
- Listen to what’s just before the drop. A pick-up or ad-lib leading in is often the best part of the transition; set the drop after it and you throw it away.
Why not just use a loop?
You can loop the first bar in Serato and ride it, and in a pinch it works. But a loop of the full mix repeats the vocal, sits on one bar rather than a phrase, and you’re working the controls when you’d rather be picking the next record. An edit does that work once, properly, before the set, so you can mix it like a track that always had an intro.
Try it
Your first three edits each month are free. Download the desktop app from introedits.com, point it at your Serato library and start with the crate you’re playing this weekend.