It may be something that many people overlook, but locking tracks in Traktor is a very important function to prevent unwanted, accidental changes to a track. In this very quick video I will show you how and why it is important to lock all your tracks after setting the beatgrid.

The Guide to Locking Tracks

Admittedly, Traktor does automatically beatgrid tracks. Sometimes however, it doesn’t get it spot on.

When listening back to some mixes, you can hear that one beat maybe ever-so slightly behind or ahead by a millisecond or so. Initially to the untrained ear, the mix sounds OK, but for those that have been beat-mixing for sometime, your finely tuned ears can detect the slightest anomaly. What might sound great to one person, sounds off to another.

When there is an issue you can dig deeper into the track and align the beatgrids so that match by sound and not just by sight!

Once your tracks has the perfectly set grid, you are going to want to put the small yellow lock icon to use.

You will find this in the advanced drop down section of the track deck, in the ‘Grid‘ section. You can see from the picture below that once you have clicked the lock icon, all Grid controls grey out.

This is the reason locking tracks is important; greying out these features will stop you from accidentally changing the BPM of the track whilst DJ’ing.
Watch the video to see why this is important.

What the Manual Says:-

If the Beatmarker and Beatgrid are set, you can lock your results by clicking the Lock button.

• After clicking the Lock button, all buttons in the Grid panel are deactivated.
• The stored tempo (BPM) is locked and cannot be changed until you unlock it by clicking Lock again.
• All tracks with a locked Beatgrid will show a small Lock Icon within the Browser.

Making sure you lock your tracks is a surefire way to prevent accidents whilst playing out, start making it a habit.

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