DDJ-1000 Rekordbox Tutorial: MIDI Mapping Cue Call Without Shift

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This week, lets take a look at how to re-map Cue / Loop Call to be the primary function of our search buttons on the Pioneer DDJ-1000. It’s easier than it sounds!

The DDJ-1000 is by and far the best and most capable DJ controller on the market. It looks and feels like a club-style Nexus setup, it is seamlessly integrated with Rekordbox DJ, and it is a joy to play on. But allow me to turn your attention to a teensy little issue.

Look to the bottom left of either jogwheel and you will find your shift, memory, and search buttons. On the CDJ-900 and 2000NX players, there are two sets of search buttons — one for tracks and one for cue points. The DDJ-1000 put these together by employing a shift button. By default, the search buttons function as follows:

Short press: Load Previous/Next Track
Long press: Jump through current track
Shift Press: Call Previous/Next Memory Cue / Loop

This is all well and good, but if you’re at all like me, you primarily use Cue / Loop Call to move around to key points in your tracks. So let’s customize our controller so Cue / Loop Call is the primary function of the search buttons.

Remapping MIDI in Rekordbox

In the more recent version of Rekordbox, Pioneer took a page from Traktor’s playbook and integrated a MIDI editor so that users may customize the functionality of their controllers. The amount you can change with this editor is staggering, but let’s focus on the problem at hand.

Step 1:

In order to replace a function, you need to free up the control. So go to the “Deck” page and delete all the “Track Search” entries. There should be eight – forward and back for each of the four decks.

Step 2:

Find the “Memory Call” entries on the “Pads” page. Click the “Learn” button at the bottom to activate MIDI Learn. Now one by one, select each entry and press the appropriate search button on the appropriate deck, making sure to turn off learn mode to access decks 3 and 4.

Step 3:

If you want to retain your track search function, you can reprogram it in the same manner. Add the track search functions again using the Add button, and follow the same procedure, making sure to employ the Shift button.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have just completed a re-map of the DDJ-1000. If you ran into trouble mapping Memory Cue Call to the search buttons, try also deleting “Search forward / Search Back” from the Deck page. You can always re-map it using the same method described above.

And finally, don’t be afraid of botching the process and ruining your setup. You can always restore the factory default setting with the Default button.

Until next time,

Chris Lazaga
AudioMunk