May 17th, 2013
News & Opinion
Disco innovator, prolific producer, and collaborator with Donna Summer on the seminal ‘I Feel Love’, Giorgio Moroder is now turning his hand to DJing…
This week we’ve been flat-out finishing to our new video course, the Acapella Mixing Masterclass, which will get you from scared/avoidance of acapellas to confidently using them like a pro in your DJ sets!
More about that soon (we’re really excited about this one!), but for now, here are the articles from around the web that we’ve found ourselves going back to and talking about the most this last week.
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May 14th, 2013
News & Opinion
Denon’s iPad-friendly, wireless DJ system for its SC2900 and SC3900 media players has had a spruce up…
Denon DJ has updated its innovative Engine DJ library software for its SC2900 and SC3900 media players, across PC, Mac and the iOS version, it was announced today.
Updates for the SC2900 and SC3900 media players have also been announced, to help them to take full advantage of some of the improvements – hot on the back of the announcement of Hybrid Midi Mode for the SC2900.
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May 10th, 2013
News & Opinion
Is Daft Punk’s superstar disco-influenced album about to spearhead a revival?
We’ve been hard at work talking to dozens of you guys at length this last week as part of the research for our forthcoming pro DJ course – but we haven’t failed to notice that there’s a distinct feel of disco in the rapidly warming summer air right now.
With the release of Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” spearheading this summer’s now almost-inevitable disco revival, we thought for this week’s round-up we’d point you to some posts around the web that, inspired by the Daft Punk song, dig deep into the sound that gave house/EDM etc the permission to exist…
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May 8th, 2013
News & Opinion
MixVibes Cross 2.4 now offers four decks, and as well as working with controllers can, as you see here, work (in full HID) with up to four Pioneer CDJs.
MixVibes has moved closer to the biggest names in DJ software by brings four decks to its Cross software as of the latest version, Cross 2.4.
The company has also added out of the box compatibility with a number of the latest DJ controllers, including the Mixtrack 2 and Mixtrack Pro 2, the Pioneer DDJ-WeGo, and the original Numark Mixtrack.
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May 3rd, 2013
News & Opinion
Vinyl has a certain romance that digital files can’t compete with, says the writer of one of the stories we’re covering this week in our Friday Roundup.
In the second of our new Friday series, we’re sharing some of the articles that we’ve found most inspiring online this week, to save you the bother of trawling around the web looking for them yourself! (You can still catch up on last week’s links here.)
This week, a very personal piece about what vinyl means and why it has a place alongside MP3s, some common-sense advice on why it’s sometimes OK to not be doing anything when you’re DJing, and the first of what looks set to be a useful three-part tutorial on using Traktor DJ on the iPad.
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May 1st, 2013
News & Opinion
Serato DJ multi FX mode allows you to chain three effects within each effects engine, in the same way that is possible with other Serato software and competitors like Traktor.
Serato has announced the first major feature upgrade to its Serato DJ software, with the big-ticket news being that multi FX has arrived for the platform.
At the same time, the company has announced support for the Vestax VCI-380 (as exclusively revealed by Digital DJ Tips last month), the Pioneer DDJ-S1, and the Numark NS7 ITCH controllers. There is now the option to upgrade from Serato DJ Intro for Numark Mixdeck and Mixdeck Express users, and finally, there’s a 14-day free trial of Serato DJ for owners of compatible Serato DJ Intro hardware.
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April 26th, 2013
News & Opinion
by Staff Writer
Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich, Radiohead lead singer and producer, in New York City. Pic: Rolling Stone / Ahmed Klink
In the first of a new Friday series, we’re sharing some of the articles that we’ve found the most inspiring online this week. Bookmark them, add them to your reader, or just kick your feet up and give them a look right now!
This week, Thom Yorke of Radiohead on the state of DJ culture, five big myths about getting on in the DJ/music business that just aren’t true, and how the classical rules of narrative can help you put together better DJ sets.
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April 24th, 2013
News & Opinion
The Toaster (that blue thing) is a Mic-enabled binaural mono splitter, aimed at iOS DJs who want independent headphones and master outputs and a microphone input… all through one socket.
Kickstarter is a site where people pitch product ideas and get other folk to pledge financial backing to help make them a reality – and let me tell you there’s some weird and wonderful stuff on there! (Actually, QuNeo is one of the big success stories in our industry that came through Kickstarter.)
Today something with lower ambitions than QuNeo: The Toaster. It’s a small adaptor for iOS devices that provides mono splitter functionality so you can use compatible DJ software (ie Algoriddim’s djay) to “hack” full headphone cueing as well as a master out, by converting a single stereo output into two independent binaural mono outputs. Nothing new there (there are lots of splitter cables out there) – but this one has a difference.
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April 17th, 2013
News & Opinion
Richie Hawtin posted this picture on his Instagram over the weekend to show why he wouldn’t be playing at Coachella that night.
Just as a reminder that what can go wrong, will go wrong, here’s a story about Richie Hawtin’s set at the Coachella Festival in California on Saturday night just gone. Or rather, his planned set.
Because shortly before he was due to go on, he posted the picture we show here with these words: “Unfortunately the technology that is the foundation of my career is not playing friendly today…so…I’m not able to perform at Coachella.”
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April 16th, 2013
News & Opinion
DJ Angelo engaging his crowd and showing that modern DJing doesn’t have to be boring, at a showcase at Musikmesse 2013. Ways of enhancing your DJ performance seem to be top of the agenda again, thankfully.
With a lack of huge tech innovation going on at Musikmesse 2013, it was nonetheless possible to identify a couple of trends in digital DJing that I think we’ll see more of in the future. For our final post from the show this year, I’m going to look at each of them more closely.
The first of these – the rise of the iPad – is only surprising in that it took this long for manufacturers to start getting some mainstream products out there. And the second – “macro” performance features – shows a welcome realisation that DJing is ultimately about performance rather than blind progress (especially if that “progress” ultimately means simply pushing more buttons, regardless of how clever what those buttons are controlling purportedly is).
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April 16th, 2013
News & Opinion
Serato DJ is now US$99 for the standard version, and US$149 with Serato Video thrown in as well – savings of US$30 and US$99 respectively over the two programs bought separately previously.
Serato is having a sale. The company has dropped the price of its Serato DJ software to US$99 as of today.
Also for a limited period, the company has announced that Serato Video can be bundled with a Serato DJ upgrade – normally US$149 on its own – at a total price of US$149.
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April 15th, 2013
News & Opinion
Musikmesse is one of the biggest music shows in the world. You can get lost, very lost, in its depths. We’re cool with that: we just made sure we had a camera with us at all times. Here’s what we emerged with…
In the daily videos and round-ups all this last week from Musikmesse 2013, we’ve tried to pull out the things we thought you’d like the best, but as always there just isn’t room to give everything its own article.
So here’s our traditional round-up of a dozen or so other things we think you may just like. From mixers to controllers, headphones to record decks, synthesisers to DJ stands, and just the odd fridge or two, welcome to the official Digital DJ Tips Musikmesse 2013 Best of the Rest…
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April 15th, 2013
News & Opinion
The Numark iDJ Flex adds iPad options to the mix, meaning it can work with iPad software or with PC/Mac DJ software as required.
iPad controllers were everywhere at Musikmesse 2013, and Numark slipped a new one under the radar, showing the Numark iDJ Flex for the first time.
“Flex” stands for “flexible”, and this controller is designed to work with both iPad and PC/Mac DJ software. They were demoing it with Algoriddim’s djay software, but it’s not clear which PC/Mac software – if any – it will ship with.
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April 15th, 2013
News & Opinion
The Blue Microphones Spark Digital is designed for digital users, recording direct to computer or iOS device. It is perfect for online DJ mix shows.
Digital hasn’t only changed the way we play music, it’s also changed the way we bring it to our audiences. Nowadays many digital DJs are producing webcast, podcasts, mix shows, internet radio shows and so on, all in the name of getting their names out there, and their music to the masses.
If you want to do any of these things, one thing you need in your set-up is a good microphone, and the Blue Microphones Spark Digital is just that – a studio quality condenser microphone, but at a relatively low cost, and with a host of features designed to make life easy for us digital guys. At Musikmesse 2013, we took a look…
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April 15th, 2013
News & Opinion
In this video, we take a look at this recent range of Tiesto-branded headphones from AKG.
Lots of you have been asking us our views on the AKG Tiesto range of headphones, so we tracked AKG down and had a look at Musikmesse 2013.
The range as a whole feels well made, looks good (the Tiesto styling is sharp, with no obvious use of his name on them), sounds good, isolates well and offers something for most DJs.
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April 14th, 2013
News & Opinion
The Numark Orbit wireless Midi controller now comes with Orbit DJ software, so you can play with your music using the controller right out of the box.
Announced at the NAMM show but still forthcoming, the Numark Orbit is a technologically neat little product. But being a box of coloured buttons connected via Midi wirelessly to DJ or music software, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people who like the look of it at the same time have less of an idea of how they might use it than Numark would ideally like.
Maybe that’s why Numark has added software to the unit now. This helps the company to show the Numark Orbit off, but also ought to give people ideas about how to map it. So in this video, Numark’s Chris Roman dials some tunes up and shows off what the unit can do.
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April 13th, 2013
News & Opinion
The Reloop Jockey 3 Remix is physically the same as the Jockey 3, but has a whole new firmware and mapping layer to add some exciting ‘macro FX’ for the creative DJ.
In this video, I catch up with Christian from Reloop to find out about the thinking behind the new Reloop Jockey 3 Remix.
We discuss the “macro FX” idea (lots of effects mapped to one control), how the Reloop’s FX layer can put exciting new tools in the hands of the creative DJ, and how this controller offers an alternative to the Kontrol F1 route of creative DJing.
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April 12th, 2013
News & Opinion
It’s a wireless mixer, but this one’s for lighting, not audio. American DJ’s WiFly could revolutionise the portable lighting market and find a whole new niche for itself.
You know how we love doing things in new ways here at Digital DJ Tips. We love clever portable, good value and modern ways of doing things. So we fell in love instantly with the American DJ WiFly lighting concept.
Basically, WiFly replaces lighting cables with a wifi system. You have a small DMX mixer (DMX is to lighting what Midi is to audio), that connects wirelessly to your lighting system. the lights themselves would probably be modern, compact LED and battery driven, although this system can work with any lighting via various “breakout” boxes to have wired lights involved too.
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