Core skills

What are cue points and hot cues?

Cue points are how a prepared DJ stops searching. Instead of hunting for the drop in a dark booth, you press a button and land on it exactly.

Published 31 August 2026 · MixReady

Short answer. A memory cue is a bookmark you jump to; a hot cue is a pad you can hit instantly, including mid-track. Mark four things on every track: the mix-in point, the first drop, the breakdown, and the mix-out point. Keep the same meaning on the same pad number across your whole library and your hands stop having to think.

The two kinds

	What it is	Used for
Memory cue	A saved marker on the waveform	Preparation — where the track's sections are
Hot cue	A marker assigned to a pad	Performance — jumping there instantly, live

The distinction matters less than the discipline. What makes cues valuable is consistency: the same pad meaning the same thing on every track.

A layout that works

Pad	Mark	Why
1	Mix-in — first downbeat of the intro	Where you start the track. Removes all guesswork under pressure
2	First drop	The payoff. Also where a hard swap lands
3	Breakdown	The easiest place to mix out of, and a rescue point if a mix goes wrong
4	Mix-out — start of the outro	Where the next track should be arriving

Why consistency beats cleverness. With the same four meanings everywhere, "get to the drop" is pad 2 on any record in your library, at 2am, without reading the screen. A library where pad 2 means something different on every track is a library with no cues at all.

Put them on the downbeat

A cue placed a fraction before or after the beat means every launch from it starts out of phase. Zoom into the waveform and put the marker exactly on the transient — the sharp vertical spike of the kick — and quantise to the grid if your software offers it, which also means the grid needs to be right. See beatmatching and beatgrids.

Cues as a performance tool

Once the points are set they stop being bookmarks and become moves. Jumping back to a hot cue re-triggers a phrase, which is how loop-and-cue routines are built; skipping a long intro on a track you are mixing in late is a single press; and when a mix goes wrong, pad 3 is an escape hatch to a breakdown where the drums thin out and you can recover. See recovering from a mistake.

The trap: cues that do not survive the journey

Cues live in your software's database, not in the audio file, so they can be lost or shifted when a library moves between applications or onto a USB stick for club hardware. This is the single most common way a prepared set arrives at a venue unprepared.

Always verify after export. Put the stick back in, load two or three tracks, and confirm the cues are where you left them — before you leave the house. Exporting to USB for CDJs covers the whole routine.

FAQ

What is the difference between a memory cue and a hot cue?

A memory cue is a saved marker you navigate to, usually with the search or cue controls, and it does not need a pad. A hot cue is assigned to a physical pad so you can jump to it instantly while the track plays, which makes it usable as a performance tool. Most DJs save the same important points as both.

How many cue points should I set?

Four is enough for almost every track: where you mix in, the first drop, the breakdown, and where you mix out. More than about six becomes hard to remember under pressure and slows preparation without improving performance.

Do cue points transfer between DJ software?

Sometimes, and never reliably. Cues are stored in each application's own database, and exporting between ecosystems commonly preserves beatgrids while losing or shifting cues. Always check on the destination system before a gig rather than assuming they arrived.

Bars and phrases · Exporting to USB · Recovering from mistakes