How to · Serato DJ Pro

Use keylock (Master Tempo) in Serato DJ Pro.

Keylock lets you speed up or slow down a track in Serato DJ Pro without shifting its musical key. Here is how to enable it and use it well.

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Serato DJ Pro deck showing pitch slider and keylock button

The keylock button sits next to the pitch slider on each Serato DJ Pro deck.

Use keylock (Master Tempo) in Serato DJ Pro, step by step.

Keylock is a per-deck toggle in Serato DJ Pro 3.x. Enable it when you need to push or pull the tempo of a track without letting the pitch drift away from its original key.

Load a track onto a deck

Drag a track from the library panel onto Deck 1 or Deck 2. Serato DJ Pro displays the track's original BPM and key in the deck area. These values come from analysis Serato ran the first time you loaded the file.

Enable Keylock on the deck

Click the musical note icon located at the top left of the deck. The icon highlights when Keylock is active. You can also enable it on a hardware controller by pressing the dedicated Master Tempo or Key Lock button, which maps to the same function.

Adjust the pitch slider

Move the pitch slider up or down to set your desired tempo offset. With Keylock on, the playback speed changes but the musical key stays locked to the track's original pitch. The displayed BPM updates in real time while the key indicator stays constant.

Monitor audio quality and adjust range if needed

Keylock applies time-stretching, which introduces artifacts at large offsets. For cleanest results stay within plus or minus 6 percent. If you need a wider range, the standard pitch range options available in Serato DJ Pro are 8%, 16%, and 50%. You can cycle through them by pressing Shift and the Pitch Bend buttons on your hardware controller (exact button mapping depends on your device).

The catch

Time-stretching quality degrades noticeably beyond roughly 6 to 8 percent offset, so Keylock works best when tracks are already close in BPM before you pitch-correct them. Also note that Keylock includes scratch detection and automatically turns itself off when you scratch, then re-enables afterward.

Find compatible

8A120–136 BPM

Where Vibes fits

Prep harmonically matched tracks so you need less pitch correction at the deck.

Vibes does not control Keylock during a live performance. What it does is eliminate the situations where you are forced to stretch a track hard: by surfacing tracks that are already close in BPM and harmonically compatible before you ever step behind the decks.

See how it works

Key analysis with the Skey neural net tags every track with its Camelot wheel position, so you can filter for harmonic neighbors instantly.

The Find Compatible button auto-fills a BPM range and Camelot neighbors for any selected track, giving you a shortlist that needs minimal pitch correction.

Set Designer weights BPM and key together when suggesting the next track, keeping natural tempo flow across the whole set.

Export sends your prepared crates back into Serato as .crate files, so your harmonically matched selections are already in the software when you perform.

Organize in Vibes, export to Serato DJ Pro.

Your playlists, tags, ratings, and cue points travel back to the gear you play on, so nothing you do in Vibes is locked away.

Track 001

Artist A

128

Afterhours

Mysterious

Introspective

Track 002

Artist B

124

Cozy Floor

Peaceful

Home

Track 003

Artist C

132

Rave

Aggressive

Festival

Build & Release

Playlists

Vibes

Mood

Aggressive

Euphoric

Melancholic

Mysterious

Peaceful

Playful

Tense

Function

Arrangement

Sets

Club Night 12/28

NYE Closing Set

Rooftop 01/04

Frequently asked questions

The honest answers, including the trade-offs.

No. Keylock is a live performance control that only exists inside Serato DJ Pro during playback. Vibes is a library prep and export app with no live mixing or audio playback. The two tools handle different parts of the workflow.

Turn Keylock off when you are beatmatching by ear using the pitch slider to find a natural tempo match, or when you want the classic vinyl pitch effect where speed and key shift together. Keylock is most useful when you have already chosen a tempo target and just need to lock the musical key in place.

At small offsets (under 4 to 6 percent) the artifacts are usually inaudible on a dancefloor. At larger offsets you may notice a watery or smeared transient quality, especially on percussive tracks. Keeping your set planned so that BPMs are already close reduces how hard Keylock has to work and keeps the audio clean.

Methodology