DJ Vintage

A simple trick to do is to start the second track playing and, while keeping your fingers on the rim of the jogwheel, quickly rotate (nudge) the jogwheel clockwise about a third or so. LISTEN if the result is better or worse than before your nudge. Better? Then you need to start speeding the track up with the pitch fader. Worse? Then you need to slow the track down. From that point on it’s going back and trying again in ever smaller steps until you hit your mark.

By keeping your fingers on your jogwheel and quickly deciding if it was the wrong way, you can immediately reverse (just nudge back to where your fingers started the original nudge), getting your ready for a quick nudge the other direction to confirm that you indeed had it wrong.

Like with many of these things in today’s world, I tend to err on the side of caution

50 euro is about what I’d expect to pay for mastering a track normally (not sure what a radio edit would add), so prices are not outrageous. On the other hand, if you are a label and think something is good enough to publish, would you not just get it done and out there and deduct the cost from any future revenue?

But, I haven’t dealt with this particular issue myself, not producing tracks, so hopefully one of our producing members can shed some more light on this one.

Look at the tests done by our colleagues over at DJ Tech Tools.

You will see MiK is clearly in the lead (over 85% correct) with others slowly catching up (70% for Serato and RekordBox DJ) and the one free program (Keyfinder) at 65%. While 70% sounds fine, it still means 3 out of 10 are wrong. And for VDJ and Traktor Pro (41% and 47% respectively) it means that more than HALF of the results are incorrect which, imho, makes their key detection utterly useless.

Personally, not being a musician at all and having to rely on software for this, if I want to do harmonic mixing I want to get as close to perfect as possible and MiK has always been the frontrunner here.

At the end of the day “trust your ears” still rules the day. If it sounds good it works, if it doesn’t sound good it won’t work, no matter how harmonically in tune.

Again, the latest version of MiK does have tag options and they are pretty nice, just not as extensive when it comes to batch rename and things.

The only thing that has always bothered me about the WeGo is the lay-out. Never could get use to having the buttons so close to where they are to the jogs and in places where they can’t be found on any other controller.

Might just be old-fashioned, but think it needs a bit of attention before buying.

I would throw something into the mix. Assuming you already own an iPad and your kid is fluent with it (as most 7-yr olds are in my neck of the woods), you could start with something as easy as a DJ splitter cable and DJay for iPad.

It’s a low-treshold way to get an idea of what it is. If he likes it, for his next b’day/xmas/easter/whatever you can then get him an iPad supporting controller in the knowledge that he will indeed continue with this hobby.

While for us old hands tactile feedback (i.e. real faders, knobs, etx) still rule, the young kids I see on tablets and phones these days are so agile and don’t seem to care that their “keyboards” have no keys and their games have no “buttons”.

DJay is an easy to learn platform, he can sit on the couch and play with it, or take it to his room or in the backseat of the car.

The splitter cable let’s you hook up a headphone for cueing and connect a stereo or speakers for master output.

In order to avoid blinding the crowd I would say up-lighting (i.e. have the light on the floor behind you shining upwards). This will keep direct beams out of their faces.

Lights come roughly in two flavors, spots and floods. Spots are – as the name suggests – used for small area illumination, like the nice circle on an artist on stage. Floods have a much broader angle and are used to color areas of walls, ceilings or floors.

Shouldn’t be too hard to rent one of each (get LED because regular lighting gets way too warm to have close behind you heheheh) and try them. Take someone to shoot some vids while you are experimenting and you will soon find what works best for your purpose.

Hard to get this done without time and (some) money. Clearly you are not allowed to use Spotify for playing in public and the integrated service in Serato is not free.

Scour the forums for some info on building a (mobile) collection. There are some relevant and recent posts on the subject. Buying second-hand sampler collections can be a good step in the right direction.

Apart from that, learning how to deal with requests that you can’t honor (been doing this for close to 40 years and still get requests for tracks I don’t have!) is always a good thing 😀

As for having another full-time job, be happy! Being the struggling DJ is overrated imho. Mobile DJs can build up a pretty substantial business. It is, apart from being mainstream hero, probably the best-paying part of DJ-ing. But starting out, the fact that you have no financial risk because your bills are already paid is a big bonus.

As for playing for free, this is one I have pretty strong opinions about. Personally I think you should never play for free, ever. Even my charity events I get my drinks and food for free. Family party? Get a little something to help cover the cost of gear or gas money. An old boss (unrelated to DJ-ing) of mine once told me “That which is free has no value”. And I tend to agree.

Also, once you move out of the small bar/family party arena you will come in to take the place of someone else. Sure you will be chosen if you are free, but it won’t make you happy and it will kill your rep and any chance of working together with other DJs in the region.

I turn down gigs from time to time because the price is not right, even when “threatened” with “but DJ X does it for that money”. In which case I wonder why they still call me.

So, be brave and value what you are “bringing to the party” and make sure that value materializes in some shape or form. And sooner than you think you will receive payment for gigs and will be able to pay for (the expansion of) your collection (and some gear and …).

Final thought: while it may seem easier to get gigs when playing for free, the time it takes to get from playing for free to playing for serious money is way longer than needing a bit more time to start getting well-payed gigs from the getgo.