What Is An Outro Edit? And How To Make One For Any Track
An outro edit ends a track on clean beat you can mix out over, instead of a fade, a skit or a cold stop. What it is, when you need one, and how to make one from any track you own.
Most talk about DJ edits is about the start of a record — the intro you mix in over. But every record you mix in, you also have to mix out of. And a lot of records end in a way that makes that hard.
An outro edit fixes the ending.
What an outro edit is
An outro edit is a version of a track that ends on clean beat: a run of 8, 16 or 32 bars built from the record’s own instrumental, starting at a point you choose and carrying on steadily to the end. Instead of the record fading, talking, breaking down or stopping dead, it gives you something to mix the next track in over.
It is the mirror of an intro edit. The intro gives you room at the front; the outro gives you room at the back.
The endings that cause trouble
- The fade-out. The groove is there, but it’s getting quieter every bar, so your blend is fighting a moving level.
- The cold stop. Everything cuts on the last hit. Miss it and there’s silence.
- The skit or talky outro. Great on the album, dead air on the floor.
- The vocal to the last second. Nowhere clean to bring the next vocal in without them clashing.
- The breakdown ending. The drums drop out just when you need them to hold the blend.
If you find yourself cutting out of a record early, every time, because the last minute is unusable, it wants an outro.
Where the outro comes from
A good outro isn’t new music. It’s the bars just before your handover point, with the vocal taken off, looped cleanly to length. So the groove the crowd has been dancing to carries straight on — the same kick, the same bassline — just without the singing and without the record’s own ending.
A couple of details make it sound right:
- It starts on a bar line, so the handover lands on the one and the outro is whole bars. That’s what keeps it in phrase with whatever you’re mixing in.
- A word sung across the handover rings out rather than being chopped mid-syllable.
- The last bar fades, so if you ever let it run to the end it doesn’t stop dead on a full-level hit.
How long should it be?
The same rules as an intro, for the same reason: mixing happens in phrases. 16 bars is the safe default — about 30 seconds at 128 BPM. 8 for quick cuts, 32 for long blends. There’s more on this in how many bars a DJ intro should be; it applies to outros just the same. If you want the seconds for a particular tempo, the bars to seconds calculator works it out.
How to make one
In IntroEdits, step 1 asks what you’re making: Intro, Outro or Both.
- Choose Outro (or Both, if you want an intro too). The view jumps to the end of the track.
- Find the handover. Put the point where the record should hand over — usually the end of the last full chorus or phrase — on the white line, and press Set the outro here. It goes on the nearest bar line.
- Pick the length — 8, 16 or 32 bars — and, if you like, what it’s made of: drums, bass, melody.
- Preview it, then Make the edit and listen to the outro changeover.
- Save it. The file is named “(Outro Edit)” or “(Intro & Outro Edit)” so it’s easy to tell apart in your crate.
With Outro on its own there’s no drop to find at all: the record plays from the top exactly as it is, and only the ending changes.
You can do it in the Mac app straight from your Serato, Rekordbox or VirtualDJ crates, or try it in your browser at introedits.com/lab/try.
Intro, outro, or both?
- Records you mix in awkwardly → an intro.
- Records you mix out of awkwardly → an outro.
- Records you play in the middle of a long blend-heavy set → both, so they arrive and leave cleanly.
Most crates have plenty of each. Start with the records you always cut out of early — that’s the outro list writing itself.