DJ Hane K

Nina, that’s exactly correct. Well, you CAN of course mix live using only your laptop and DJ software by using keyboard shortcuts, but doing this is far from intuitive and you for sure will have a much harder time pulling off all the cool tricks you could do with something tangible to mix with – a controller. Some “DJs” even play “gigs” using nothing but iTunes or winamp, but the quotes should give you an idea on what my personal feelings about this type of “DJing” are 🙂

And yes, you can pre-mix things at home and then just press play. Just look at what Paris Hilton does (ok, she doesn’t pre-record her own sets, someone else does this for her and she just stands behind the decks waving her arms and looking pretty). While an option to be sure, you will probably get a lot of grief from other DJs for doing this. After all, if you’re not mixing live, why should anyone hire you to perform, when they could just go on soundcloud and download a recorded dj-set from one of the world’s best DJs and play that?

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, get some gear to practice on, learn the art, and then go kick ass pulling off crazy mixes and wowing people left and right! 🙂

I’d say there are about a million ways to easily do this. Ideally, you don’t want to use a dedicated app that people need to search for, download, and install because getting them to do this will be a pain (speaking from professional experience as a HCI researcher). Something people already have on their phones will definitely work best.

The simplest solution, of course, would be good ol’ SMS – print a sign saying TEXT YOUR REQUEST TO XXX-XXX-XXX and hang that outside the booth. If you’re not comfortable handing out your number like that, use Twitter – again, print a sign saying TWEET YOUR REQUESTS – USE HASHTAG #REQUESTSTODJ or something along those lines, and then follow that hashtag yourself. Or Facebook, create a page for the event you’re playing at and let people write requests on the wall.

I’m sure there are tons of apps out there that let you do many-to-one messaging, but like I said, getting people to download and install anything is usually difficult, especially due to the huge variety of brands and models out there – you don’t want to restrict this service to those with, say, Android smart phones.

Well, to each his own, I guess… If your library is well organized and you’re used to working with that, who am I to tell you differently 🙂

I could never work like that, personally, but that’s just me. For instance, I’m playing a 4 hour set this coming saturday, and my virtual dj-bag for that gig currently consists of 135 songs, which I feel is too much already. But I know every beat and every drop of each of those songs like my own pockets which, to me, is the most important thing.

Also – and this should go without saying – regardless of what you play on, you really shouldn’t take 147k songs with you for one gig! Depending on how long your set is going to be prepare a setlist accordingly, and make sure you know each and every tune to the boot. Otherwise you’ll be digging through your enormous library trying to find the next tune, and not paying attention to the more important stuff like mixing, feeling the crowd and, yes, having fun yourself.

FYI, the N4 is out. You can order one from Thomann, for instance.

Check it out: http://www.thomann.de/gb/numark_n4.htm

Hey,

if I understood you post correctly, you’re looking to practice DJing which, usually, means playing music from two (or more) decks (i.e. audio sources) and mixing them together on the fly. Ableton is really more for music production – making music, remixes, etc. So, while many DJs nowadays are also producers, if you’re looking to really learn the basic skills of playing music in a live situation in front of an audience, I think you should consider getting a controller better suited for this purpose. For the price of Ableton Live 8 and Traktor Audio 6 (Ableton Live being around 300EUR, and the audio interface a little less but still over 200EUR) you could get a very decent 2 or 4 deck all-in-one controller with physical controls, mixer section, soundcard etc.

Many start with the Numark Mixtrack Pro (~200EUR), but if you’re looking to spend a bit more, for less than the ~500EUR you’d spend on Ableton and TA6 you could get, for instance, the new Numark N4 which to me looks like a very capable 4-deck unit.

Mixtrack pro has two ‘decks’, A and B. You load songs to both decks, and then mix between them using the built-in mixer, the most simple use case being bringing the crossfader from deck A to deck B. The audio lead from the master output on the mixtrack connects to your speakers, and thus the mixer controls what’s coming out from the speakers.

Like so:

DECK A ———|———- DECK B
……………..crossfader
…………………..|<- master out audio lead
…………………..|
…………………./
…………………/..
…………….SPEAKERS

Now, if you add in an external mixer, you’ll get a situation where the master out audio lead is connected to one of the mixer channels – let’s call that channel 1. In this situation, all audio from the mixtrack is going in to channel 1 – exactly the same thing as when the master out was connected to speakers (without the external mixer). So the schematic would be something like this:

…………..
DECK A ———|———- DECK B
……………..crossfader
…………………..|<- master out audio lead
…………………..|
……..
CHNL 1 ———|——– CHNL 2
(mixtrack) ….xfader…. (nothing)
…………………..|
…………………..|<- mixer output
…………………./
………………../…
……………..SPEAKERS

So, now, moving the crossfader on the external mixer between channels 1 and 2 basically does nothing (besides mutes audio coming out from mixtrack on channel 1) – unless there is another audio source like a cd-player connected to channel 2. You will still be able to use the mixtrack crossfader, of course, and in this case the audio is simply routed through the external mixer, but using the external mixer to mix between decks A and B on the mixtrack is not possible.

I hope this rather lengthy explanation clears things up a bit 🙂

DJ Loso, post: 7375 wrote: Personally, I think you are not a Dj if you dont scratch.

Ooh, the first shot in what will surely escalate into a huge flame war!

Please don’t go saying stuff like that, it’s just plain dumb.