Switching from vinyl to digital can be a minefield for the new digital DJ. Today we answer some common questions for one reader.
Digital DJ Tips reader G writes: “I am an old school DJ, a vinyl man who’s been out of the game for around seven years. As you can imagine the whole digital DJ thing is alien to me but I do like the sound of it and will shortly be taking the plunge.
“One area that confuses me, and the most important, is the music side. With vinyl it is simple (records in boxes), however with digital music what is the best way? I currently have a lot of music on my laptop and access it with a media player.
“All software and controllers seem to be compatible with iTunes. So do I need to tranfer all my music to iTunes in order to access it with DJ software? And should I keep all of my music on a separate hard drive for back up / performance reasons?
Do I need to tranfer all my music to iTunes in order to access it with DJ software?
“Also, all software seems to have crates or similar that allow you to organise your music. Does this mean that I can select just what I want from iTunes or elsewhere, adding or deleting from crates as and when needed?
“And finally, once any crates are full of my chosen music where are they best stored on the laptop? With the software, or as mentioned earlier somewhere else like an external drive?
“Apologies if I come across as a bit of a dinosaur but this is a whole new world to me!”
Digital DJ Tips says:
You don’t come across as a dinosaur, these are common issues and I’ll try to help.
Firstly, you don’t need to transfer all your music to iTunes to use with digital DJ software. All digital DJ software will work fine with music just on your hard drive. (You have to “import” it which means the software makes a note of where to find it when it needs it, analyses it for BPM etc among other things. However, the music doesn’t physically move – it stays on the drive and in the folder it was originally in.)
With iTunes Match or a similar backup service, you can keep a copy of your music in the cloud as a backup.
If you do decide to use iTunes to organise your music (and I recommend you do, as it’s much better than any of the file organisation tools in DJ software, and as you state, all DJ software works with iTunes anyway), then it makes sense to tick the box in the iTunes preferences that says “Copy files to iTunes Media Folder when adding to library”.
That means once you’ve added something to iTunes, it makes its own copy, and you don’t have to worry about where the original was – but more importantly, you can very simply back up all your music by making a copy of that one folder each week. Note that with iTunes Match you can back up to the cloud – the ultimate solution, and what I do. My rule is that if isn’t in iTunes it doesn’t really exist on my computer.
There is usually no advantage to keeping your music on an external hard drive; your computer will cope fine with it on your internal drive and it reduces any issues of your software being unable to find tunes if the hard drives unplugged. For simplicity’s sake, I’d always keep it on internal, and just have a backup solution externally as I suggest. (Also, locate your DJ software’s database and back that up too – if you ever got your laptop nicked, you could then restore any cue points etc. you’d saved with your files.)
There is usually no advantage to keeping your music on an external hard drive…
Regarding crates in DJ software, yes you could only add what you wanted, and organise tunes within crates how you like. But if you follow the iTunes route I suggest, you’ll not use your crates in software at all, as you can do all the crating in iTunes at home and when you open your music software all your iTunes crates are there too – tonight’s set, all your house tunes, all your old school music, your party favourites, everything you’ve bought in the last month etc. It’s a bit like spending hours packing record boxes at home (in iTunes) – as soon as you get to your gig, your virtual record boxes are “just there” (in your DJ software).
But as you ask, any DJ software crate information is stored in your DJ software’s database on the laptop, alongside the other stuff I’ve mentioned (any cue points etc). Hope that helps!
• We spend a lot of time going over simple, effective techniques for planning and organising your music library in How To Digital DJ Fast, along with much more stuff of relevancy to vinyl guys converting to digital. Good luck!
Are you a vinyl DJ who struggled when you first converted to digital? What did you do that helped you? And more advice to add to what I’ve offered to our reader? Please share in the comments.
Now go to:
DJ Midi Controllers: The Ultimate Buyer’s Guide
Over To You: Are 192 kbps MP3s Acceptable For Club Play?
Over To You: Why Does My Digital Gear Sound Worse Than CDJs?
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Tags: icloud, iTunes, itunes match, music library
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I also recommend to use iTunes and to make smart-playlists.
what I did is went through almost all of my music in iTunes, and inserted tags: Genre, Rating (5 stars for the most familiar tunes…), and comment that I use for two things, first, to insert a key using “Mixed In Key” program, second, to write a color. Red for the most jumpy songs, Blue for average, and Green for mello.
After I did this (took me about two weeks) I started to create smart playlists by genres, rating, artists, keys, colors etc…
And now, when I import new songs to itunes all I need to do is write the genre, rating and comment and that’s it. After writing this it will automatically locate itself at the smart playlist.
I work with traktor and i find that using itunes is much quicker then using the Traktor crates cause it wont analyze every time you open a crate.
Hope it helps. Good luck!
[ link ]Hi, Phil! I see on your videos that you own an iMac, which I suppose is not the computer you take to your gigs, right? So, how do you keep your libraries updated in both your iMac and Laptop? I have an iMac (my HQ) and have a laptop (that I take to the battles) and I find it hard to keep both libraries synced. I thought of using the home sharing feature, but it would work only if I wanted to copy selected songs from one computer to another. It wouldn’t work if I wanted a more practical solution, like iPad/iPhone sync function in iTunes, for instance, which automatically updates all selected playlists.
Thanks for your help!
[ link ]why dont you use dropbox or any other free cloud service e.g. skydrive, amazon cloud drive etc.
[ link ]As part of a blog experiment, I’m using iTune Match. It gives me the same collection on all of my devices, but there are tradeoffs and I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone.
[ link ]Slightly on/off topic as my tip refers more for Windows users. Microsoft provides a free application called SyncToy which syncs folder(s) on two different locations to which ever is the most up to date. I’m sure Apple or 3rd party companies have a similar tool for Mac users.
Source: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15155
E.g. I have mainly edit songs and “playlists” on my desktop as I have two monitors for better visibility on Tracktor, while also running Adobe Audition or FL studio on the other monitor for quick song/sample edits. So my Traktor folder database on my desktop (source) syncs the data to the Traktor folder on my laptop (destination) and also on an external hard drive as backup; should my laptop get stolen or corrupted.
[ link ]Great find on the Sync Toy application. Been looking a long time for an easy way to sync files across drives and this is it. Thanks for sharing!
[ link ]Be very careful how you use sync and always check the recycle Bin depending on the options you use (I use the contribute Option)
[ link ]Hi,
For anyone going TRAKTOR, there are two things you want to know when working with iTunes.
The basic rule is, you want to keep the music files in the same place once you have imported them to TRAKTOR, analyzed the tracks, added hot cues/loops, etc…
So if you are going to copy your files to iTunes, do that first, and then import to TRAKTOR by, for instance, right clicking on an iTunes playlist in TRAKTOR and selecting “import to Playlists”. If you import the original file first, which for example was located in your Downloads folder, whatever changes you make in iTunes will be irrelevant to the TRAKTOR library because TRAKTOR will recognize these – the one imported directly and the one imported via iTunes – as two different tracks.
Secondly, I recommend turing off the option “Organize iTunes Media Folder”. With this option ON, whenever you make changes in Artist or Title infos in iTunes or TRAKTOR, iTunes will reorganize your iTunes Media folder by renaming folders and/or moving files. This is a big no-no for TRAKTOR, since TRAKTOR needs to find the file in the same location as the file was when imported. You do have an option to “relocate” the file, but that will give the file a new serial number (smallest unused number) which can be annoying if you like to keep your library cataloged in a chronological manner – old tracks with smaller numbers and new tracks with larger ones.
[ link ]Awesome advice, especially the second tip re organising the music folder – thanks for sharing.
[ link ]I also find it a bother not to be able to organize my iTunes playlist files while in Traktor browser. The time I most want to make changes is while I am working. I have tried twice to use iTunes as my main catalog keeper but find it to be more consumer based than ever. I liked the idea of iCloud and Match to make changes across the board of devices but now thy want to change file types ACC. ITunes is too many changes. I seriously had to separate a DJ collection separate from personal listening.
[ link ]Hey! Good thread.
DDS crew really LUV our vinyl and still play out using that. But we’re messing a lot with digital too via an iPad and iDJ Live controller. Not brill KIT if I’m honest but does the job ok for now.
For that itunes is THE resource. With a carefully managed cluster of playlists, that we update regularly, we’ve done fine up to now. So much that a Vestax Spin 2 is now on our DDs wish list. So we’ve got that choice in future.
Believe it or not, I get gigs COS I play vinyl but I want the flexibilty to use either format as I’m a one man show with his own PA rig. Less kit to lug around is a big plus these days. Bottom
line tho’ it’s still all about the tunes. Format comes 2nd.
Good luck! Keep spinning!
[ link ]I’ve come to the point where I put files on my laptop’s hard drive like I would put them into record crates. I only put on and carry what I’d use.
Some get into the habit of carrying ALL their music around, and thus carry thousands of tunes they’ll never use. Would you carry all your records around to every gig? I think not.
I’ll keep my stuff on an external to store it, but I’ll move stuff into my laptop hard drive for a gig.
[ link ]While the laptop’s internal hard drive is a good alternative, it’s best to use a tower pc, one hard drive holding your programs (Preferably a 500 gb sata)and 1 tb (For music of course), external hard drives can be easily unplugged if a drunk annoying song requestor approaches you in a sloppy fashion and falls over and accidentally unplugs a bunch of wire, that person could ruin the whole night, think ahead always, I also recommend 2 cooling fans as this will keep your software running at optimum performance (this will allow more memory for midi controllers to operate at a real time latency) Everything is so much better in a tower pc, and personally I find the laptop to be a glamorous cliché, also BeaTunes is a great program for determining bpm and keys of songs in your iTunes libarary (Call it cheating, but one day bad luck will hit you when you play for someone’s wedding, a moment they can never get back, cause it happens to all of us). In conclusion, it never hurts to have a backup plan, that gives good time for playing with effects and beat matching your tracks quicker
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