bob6397

3 or 4 tracks is a lot – that’s about 10-15 mins of music. If you are just using 15 min mini-playlists and chopping and changing between them then it is probably fairly easy for your audience to start to spot patterns from week to week – something that you never want to happen as they then start listening for it rather than enjoying their night.

A suggestion could be to simply delete all your mini-playlists and start them afresh. I personally don’t use any playlists at all – other than if I am doing background music (as a mobile DJ) – but my sets are all unique and respond to the audience rather than being too scientific over the mixing (indeed – I don’t mix tracks through each other as the people I DJ to actually don’t like it)

A solution could be that you start doing what a few other people on here have done- which is instead of using mini-playlists, simply tag (maybe use the comment field?) each track in your collection with a couple of tracks that it mixes well with. This means that the tree-like structure of where you can go splits every track rather than every 3 tracks. This means that you will avoid repeating tracks in the same order more than just occasionally.

An example could be as follows:

Your current method:

LIST 1
Track 1
Track 2
Track 3 (TO LIST 2/3)
Track 4
Track 5
Track 6

Wheras the other method could give you:

Start
Track 1 (To Track 2/3)
Track 3 (To Track 2/4)
Track 2 (To Track 5/6)
Track 6 (To Track 4/5)
Track 5 (To Track 4/7)
Track 4 (To Track 2/7)

OR it would look like this:

Track 1 (To Track 2/3)
Track 2 (To Track 5/6)
Track 5 (To Track 4/7)
Track 7 (To Track 1/6)
Track 6 (To Track 4/5)
Track 4 (To Track 2/7)
etc..

Does that make sense?? So you have the same tracks but many more ways of ordering them, which mixes up your sets..

Hope that helps,

bob6397

HI Cody,

Producing and remixing are 2 different skill sets (which often complement each other) but are not the same – it takes a certain level of musical understanding to take a track and change it into something different but that level is much higher if you are creating your own tracks from scratch..

And again there is a difference from remixing live and remixing in a studio environment. If you want to remix live, I cannot help you (although I would advise against getting older hardware and suggest choosing your software carefully – many people prefer Ableton for remixing over Traktor and I haven’t heard of maschine being used properly live by many people at all..) If you do get hardware, make sure that it supports the software you are using – You have mentioned 3 different controllers and all are designed for different software. The Maschine is for just that – Maschine (which apparently links to Traktor), the F1 is for Traktor natively and the Launchpad is designed for Ableton.. You need to make your mind up – download some trials!!)

BUT, if you are looking at remixing and/or producing in a studio environment, I wouldn’t be looking at any of the ones you suggested – indeed beyond a midi keyboard I wouldn’t get any hardware at all (I haven’t)..

What you would want in this situation is a DAW – Digital Audio Workstation – which is software designed for producing midi tracks/mixing audio and creating music.

Examples of this would be:

Apple Logic Pro X
Avid Pro Tools
FL Studio
Reaper
Reason
etc.

Have a look at this thread for the pros/cons of all of these and more.. http://www.digitaldjtips.com/topic/daw-selection-help/

Basically, you need to decide what you want to do with the software, that will lead you to which bit of software to use (many do the same things but all have a different workflow), and that will lead you to how much hardware you need to work with it.

bob6397

A DJ’s way of finding new tracks is normally their best kept secret lol.. It’s what separates you from the crowd if you have the right music – and the methods vary depending on what kind of genre’s you play. I play a wide variety of music, a lot of “Classics” – not in the traditional sense but to this very particular crowd. But most of the new stuff I find is either in the charts of a bit funkier/occasionally a bit of Deep House or Blues in there as well.

For the charts, I have a weekly look down the chart lists (I’m in the UK) and listen through on youtube. I save links of any tracks I like in different folders depending on how much I like them. Roughly a week after I have added the last lot, I go through and refine it and buy maybe 2 or 3 tracks from that collection.. Also useful for charts are the radio (A, B or C) playlists, which are often published by the radio station online. I tent to use the lists for BBC Radio 1 as that tells me what is being played and how much on the radio without having to physically listen to the radio myself all the time..

For more obscure genres, I use Spotify radio. This lets you upload a playlist, and then Spotify will play a load of tracks similar to the ones in your playlist but (Crucially) not the ones in your playlist. This is great for sticking on in the background for finding new tracks.

For finding remix’s, I tend to use youtube (where most of the ones I have found have been posted), or I find one I like on soundcloud and often in the “Recommended” section there are some decent tracks/remixes. Problem with this is that it is very personal what is a “good” remix and what isn’t – presumably at some point the person who made it must have thought it was “good” enough as they published it!!

It’s really up to you to find you own tricks. These are mine and I am doing alright so far – I hardly ever get requests and have a crowd following me now (I have only been DJing regularily since September) so I must be doing something right!!

bob6397

You have pretty much answered your own question..

My tip would be to:

– Not flood yourself too much with new music to start with – You won’t be able to DJ as well from a load of music that you don’t know – having said that though, if you’re playing that sort of music as background then you might as well prep a basic playlist before hand – it is hard to read a room when they aren’t focused on you!!

– Don’t bother with showing off your amazing mixing skills when no one is listening (IE when you are playing as background) – no one will notice and your effort will be wasted.

– Remember that people will start dancing when you play stuff they want to dance to – not that you should start playing popular stuff when they start dancing – it’s the other way around. If you suddenly change genre just as you get people up they are just as likely to sit down again..

Just my thoughts.. Good Luck!!

bob6397

Works fine for me.. must be a Holland thing Vintage.. 🙂

The main issue with controllers (all of them) nowadays is that increasingly controls are being added to them that are for functions in only one bit of software – this has been the case for a while with Ableton controllers – and whilst you can use controllers with software that they aren’t intended to be used with, they work with the software better if you do.

A prime example of this would be the Traktor S8 – which has no jogs, and faders on the deck sections specifically designed to work with remix decks and (eventually) the new stems format that they are bringing out.

On the other side, I don’t see any Traktor hardware supporting the “Flip” effect in Serato any time soon… 🙂

And an additional advantage is that everything is plug and play when you use hardware with spftware it has been designed for – the mappings are built in.

That’s why we say choose you software THEN controller to all the beginners.. It makes more sense in the current market.

bob6397

My advice would be to make use of the playlist folders in iTunes – start off by sorting out your playlists into different folders – I do it by date with a different set of folders for the different types of DJing I do – so I have a “Weddings” folder, and in that are other folders, such as “15-01” or “15-02”. And then my playlists are in there – following a specific format for the name. As DJay 2 (my backup) doesn’t read playlist folders (out just displays them all in one huge list), I use a format which describes which folder it is in and the date and then the event name – so an example would be “WED 15-01-05 Large Wedding 80s Music”

What I also do is never download a track during a gig – unless it is really important. I have all my tracks organised in a proper folder structure in one place on my hard drive (iTunes does this for me) and then I have my entire music library analyzed in my DJ software.. That way I have instant access through the search function to any track in my library…

Up to you how you do it – the important thing is to have a system 🙂

bob6397

If you want a set up without a controller, decent gear is not going to be cheap..

The cheapest no-laptop solution would be something like a Pioneer XDJ-RX – an all-in-one controller which doesn’t need a computer. That will set you back around £1,100.

A complete separates system (with 2 x Pioneer XDJ-1000’s and a DJM900) would cost in excess of £3000. And if you change that to CDJ-200’s, the cost would be over £4500.

A cheaper alternative could be a pair of Numark NDX500’s and a Allen & Heath Xone 23 Mixer – that would set you back around £600.. But it wouldn’t be as good as other, similarly priced pure-digital options. And with the numark players you lose the advantage of Rekordbox – IE the ability to cue your tracks before hand and store them with the tracks on the USB’s as that is a Pioneer system.

In my opinion, cheap isn’t worth it – for a reliable, decent-sounding system you are going to need to spend money, unfortunately.. The cheapest option (by far) would be to get a decent controller (Pioneer DDJ SX2/Numark NV/Terminal Mix 8) that would cost between half and 2/3rds what a proper no-laptop solution would cost for a similar outcome, but would have much more flexibility.

But – this is a digital-DJ forum. Our automatic response is “Why would you not want a Laptop”.. So you might be in the wrong place. But, seriously, don’t bother going too cheap.

bob6397