DJ GRE

pilotmike327, post: 683 wrote: So after watching some tutorials, browsing the forums, and RTFM, I gathered my few tracks together and started mixing before the 30 mins expired on the traktor demo.

I had no idea it was going to be this flippin awesome. Yes, between using the laptop mouse and a few hotkeys, some trainwrecking obviously occured. However, overall I reallly feel like it went great. Simply transitioning between tracks (and choosing the right tracks) was my main goal. I did use a couple of fx and played with the EQ a bit, but I didn’t want to do that too much. I’m pretty sure a common beginners mistake is overusing these controls.

For the next few weeks, i’ll be setting up cue points on my tracks, expanding my library, and continue to learn the basics of transitioning between decks.

I’m Hooked.

Taking Adam’s suggestion into consideration, if you like traktor purchase an Audio 2 DJ for about $80 comes with traktor LE, you can cue up your songs in the headphones and to an external source and you can upgrade to pro for about another $80 or so when you feel like LE is limiting you, the soundcard works awesome at home and at a club and it was one of the better investments I have made in Djing.

wow… 2 seconds – I think there’s medication for this… Just kidding, I am not a perfectionist to that extent, I like playing mixes on the fly most of the time so I learn to deal if it doesn’t go exactly the way I planned it in my head… But with the exposure this particular set is getting I can understand the feeling. Now, what exactly is wrong with the two seconds?

Phil Morse, post: 504 wrote: Find and download VLC for Mac and set it as your default music player – it is free and a good, lightweight option for what you need.

Forgot about VLC when I moved over to my Mac, perfect! Thanks Phil.

Yeah recently had this problem too… switched to a mac from a laptop – I didn’t so much find a solution as I just listened on my other laptop and marked them from 1 – 5 stars, 4’s and 5’s were the ones I transfered to my Mac for mixing everything else was just for my personal listening.

agree with sterilize – you’ve got to make your own headway… start talking to promoters, bar owners, managers etc – they have a great series of articles on the regular ddjt site from D-jam that give you some great step by step advice.

actually one of the things I like about being a digital dj is if someone has a cd they want me to play. I can just say “I have no way of playing that. Sorry.” – But I usually then have to explain that I disable the cd drive on my laptop at which point they stare at me in disbelief….

Thalia Thrasher, post: 342 wrote: 6+ hour sets?!?!?!? Rookie question here. As a rocker, my library is mostly rock tunes, but I have been building my DJing library, it’s about 10 hours +, but that’s everything. When you guys are doing marathon sets are you looping one part of a song for an extended period of time? Or do you just have massive libraries and amazing brains?

Usually playing a marathon set with a minimal library you just have to know when to re-drop a song… sometimes I’ve played the same track from the beginning of the set at the end and the people that had been there the whole set went nuts!

Benny Mackney, post: 244 wrote: ^^ LOL’D SO HARD

Worst thing for me so far is a terrible mix (beatmix, of course. I ain’t no fading iPod) with a huge tempo change. I was jumping from dubstep at 140 BPM to some heavy drum & bass at 175 BPM. I used sync (traktor sync ties the BPMs together, with one as the “master”) purely because my pitch faders weren’t set up with enough of a range. I pushed the dubstep track slowly up to the max as I faded in the DnB, then had to switch the DnB track to be master so it could pick up the BPM at the bottom of it’s range. Now here’s the stupid bit: I only engaged sync on one deck, so when the DnB started moving up and the dubstep was fading out, the dubstep kept going at it’s comparatively slow pace. FYI, 156ish BPM dubstep does NOT mix with 175 BPM DnB. FELT REALLY BAD, MAN!

Generally when doing a drastic change like that I’ll use effects to make a slow build up then drop the new track, as syncing is generally gonna make one of the tracks sound off – one time I was using ableton live and somehow my keyboard was set to the master tempo and I typed in 775!!! pure noise and took me a while to figure out what I had done!