Simon Pridmore
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Simon Pridmore
ParticipantHee Won Jung, post: 19958, member: 948 wrote: Say you you use sync because you cant beat match…fine i accept that. Call it what it is…dont sugar coat it and dont make lame excuses.
Your obviously reading what you want to read, or you’re not reading the post properly or thoroughly – the parts that say “Been mixing since 1989′, ‘learnt to mix on 1210s’ ‘was teaching someone to mix manually on CDJ’s’ etc etc – no time for lazy people who don’t read posts through properly!
As I said, you stick to doing it your way, and although I CAN do it your way, I choose not to 😀
ParticipantDJ Darren, post: 19913, member: 699 wrote: I want to get the Traktor F1 at the end of May to use with my laptop and 2 pioneer cdj 1000s & pioneer djm 500 mixer in the club where I am resident DJ (for over 8 years). I have never DJ’ed with a laptop before. Firstly can this be done, will it work? and do I need a soundcard or audio interface if thats what its called? and I need a laptop stand, plus DJ bag any recommendations? My budget is small less £300 any advice is appreciated.
Well to start you’ll need to ditch the 1000’s as they cannot control Traktor (unless your going to upgrade to Traktor Scratch Pro, and use timecode CDs, but that is a different ballgame as far as setting up is concerned and you would need an external soundcard).
Pioneer 350’s, 400s, 850,s, 2000s will act as a controller for a single deck in Traktor (these have inbuilt soundcards so no need for an external one) – So in essence the way you’ve suggested, for a set up you’ll need 2 x CDJs (for decks A & B), and 2 x Kontrol F1s (for full use of remix decks C&D) – The DJM 500 has four seperate channels so no need to change that in essence – You definitely don’t need a traktor certified mixer.
Of course the other way of doing it is to use a dedicated controller, again you would need a controller with an inbuilt sound card which is where your budget limits you. The ideal controller would be the Kontrol S4 or S2 as you wouldn’t need to worry about mapping (always a bomus for a newbie digital DJ). You don’t always need a laptop stand or riser, but this is dependant on how you work and how much space is in the DJ console/booth.
There are plenty of more varients on set-ups, but what I’ve suggested above is a direct reply to your question, hope it helps a little!
ParticipantHee Won Jung, post: 19921, member: 948 wrote: Honestly Beatmatching in Serato/Traktor is so freakin easy with Beatgrids and with the Beat Ticks in Serato that Beatmatching is a cake walk these days.
So you’ve basically got a bee in your bonnet because beat matching is intrinsically a push of a button now and these new DJs didn’t have to learn the hard way and put in the hours like we did – you know, so what, who cares, get over yourself. As Newportdj Drew said above, if you don’t need to bother thinking about beatmatching why indeed bother, so last century, and you know in essense he’s right.
The flip side of that coin though is that those DJs that are sub-standard will always get found out, because whilst you can push a button to match and sync a beat, they get lazy, and those without the musically knowledge will just crash tunes together. What they won’t do is think about the key the songs are written in, whether or not those keys will mix together, you’ll hear vocals crashing over vocals, mixes coming in at the wrong place, loops atrting in the middle of bars, and the list could go on and on and on.
Yes beatmatching is a piece of piss now, but so what – as I said it’s still a level playing field out there, you choose how you want to mix and let the audience decide. If you want to be a martyr to the cause, then you crack on ‘mixing properly’, well done, bravo! Me, well to be honest I haven’t mixed properly for around 2-3 years I would say (having said that I was teaching someone the fundimentals of mixing the other day with two CDJs and was mixing without using the display etc to show him how you do it by ear). But then again I have been ‘mixing properly’ since 1989, why do I need to bother my arse doing now when I don’t have to. I’m enjoying DJing more than ever now, and when I talk about being creative I don’t mean using a bit of filter or the beathmasher with a bit of delay (as you alluded to. I sometimes have four of five decks going, bringing in different samples over the mix, taking the crowd one way, but then dumping them another. As Drew said I wish we had the technology back in the day 😀ParticipantI learnt to mix vinyl on 1210s when I started – I move with the times – I’m now fully digital and have different software and hardware – my personal preference is traktor and I like using the S4, although equally at home using Serato. I used to be a pioneer pig but as stated above, their controllers are sadly lacking (including their showpiece DDJT1 and S1). There’s also nothing wrong in using the auto sync in my opinion, I don’t run people down if they use it and have never mixed properly. People look down on others who use software such as VDJ, but by using the auto sync it allows you to be more creative in the mix (obviously in traktor you have had to set your beat grids correctly and Serato there isn’t one lol).
At the end of the day it’s still a level playing field for everyone when you decide how you want to DJ – we all have the same choices. And whatever way you choose, the software can’t gauge your dance floor, cannot decide what to play next, cannot read the crowd and cannot entertain, that’s down to the individual skill and talent of the DJ.
Digital DJing is the way ahead, it IS the future. Look at Fatboy Norman, he’s now fully digital (he uses Serato), he’s even dispensing with his timecode vinyl, he hasn’t done too bad for himself 😉 -
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