deathy

… and until I can afford to pick one up, I’ve written a quick hack for my iPad so it will act as one.

A refrain you will hear repeated over and over here (and on most other DJ forums) – ultimately, trust your ears. That doesn’t mean they’re always right, but you can train them to be much more reliable. Practice constantly, and you will start to be able to hear what sounds good to you, and that is how you will define your sound.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take advantage of every information resource you can, of course, but those resources are not going to be able to tell you what sounds good to you… they’ll just help you to shape your style to fit your taste.

I enjoyed the mix, although I admit I was working at the time so didn’t listen closely to your technique so I can’t comment much on that, sorry.

For performance pads, I find myself drawn to a Novation Launchpad Mini – that is likely to be the next bit of kit I pick up.

Yeah, I was just using my picture to post my mixes until quite recently. I still don’t have a logo with my name, just an iconographic caricature of myself.

I like option 4, that’s the one I’d go for. 😉

Beatunes does a handful of things, so the question is perhaps a little bit broad… that said, I personally didn’t find the application very appealing – a lot of the cooler features, like identifying sections of the song, seemed to be rather flaky (which is no great surprise, it’s very difficult to do that sort of thing).

What is it that you want to use Beatunes for? Maybe that would help to give you a more focused response to your question.

Hi, Danzik, welcome!

That’s a good place to start with DJing, but there is a lot more you can do for a transition. I tend to spend a lot of time adjusting the EQ of the two playing tracks so they don’t step on each other, and keep them playing over top of each other for a real long time (I rarely have only one track playing alone).

I suggest either checking out some of the courses available here (your setup is a pretty hefty one, so I imagine a little bit of cost isn’t going to break the bank). Alternatively, there’s also a lot of great tutorials and the like on YouTube – EllaSkins is pretty popular, and his stuff is very amusing, although you’ll have to read a lot between the lines to really figure some of it out.

Another thing that is hard, but worthwhile, is to listen to other folks’ mixes on MixCloud and listen for spots where you don’t know what they’re doing, and try to figure it out.

More than anything else, practice, practice, practice.