If you use hot cues to navigate your way through DJ transitions, you’ve probably hit this problem at some point: there’s a track that works in multiple transitions, but you’ve already used up all your hot cues setting it up for one of them.
What do you do? You can’t add more cues, you can’t delete the ones you’ve got without breaking your first transition, and you can’t use the same track twice with different markers in Rekordbox – or so you’d think. There’s actually a neat trick that gets around this entirely. It only works in Rekordbox, but if that’s your software, it’s a handy one to know.
The filename fix
Here’s how it works: Find the track in your music folder using Show in Finder (or File Explorer on Windows). Now change a single character in the filename – a lowercase letter to uppercase, or vice versa. That’s the entire trick.
Your operating system recognises the file as the same audio, but Rekordbox sees a different filename and treats it as a brand new track. Drag it back into your collection, and it comes in clean – no hot cues, no loops, no analysis data. A completely fresh slate.
You now have two versions of the same track in your library, sitting on the same audio file on your hard drive, each with its own independent set of hot cues and loops. Use one for your first transition, the other for your second. It’s one of those small things that, once you know it, you’ll wonder how you managed without it.
Next Steps
If this trick sparked your curiosity, our Rekordbox Made Easy course covers the software from top to bottom – library organisation, track preparation, and all the features most DJs never get around to exploring. You can join the training on its own or get the whole lot with an All-Access Pass – lifetime access to every course we make, now and in the future.
Did you know Rekordbox could do this? Have you ever run out of hot cues on a track you love? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
