Digital DJ Tips reader Marvin writes: “I am a student from the Netherlands who tries to combine study with the whole DJ thing. Over the past two years I started with a Reloop Mixage and Traktor Pro, and quickly decided to get a second-hand Traktor Kontrol S4. Three months ago I had my first official gig in a small club/bar, then another, and then I started to really think about it.
“Now I am about to leave the Netherlands for an internship in Berlin, Germany. I understood that the German DJ scene is shifting back to the old school, with vinyl. I see this as a good opportunity to get my skills on the raw basics of DJing. My question to you is: Would you go all old school with analogue mixing and no software or would you combine the Traktor S4 and Traktor scratch with timecode vinyl?”
Digital DJ Tips says:
I have no idea if the German scene is shifting back to vinyl, but I’d definitely take anything you hear in that direction with a good pinch of salt, and find out for yourself – digital is not going away whether you’re in Berlin or Brisbane.
Having said that, learning manual beatmatching and vinyl mixing is a great thing (you don’t need to do the second necessarily to do the first, by the way; just turn off sync…), but if you’re asking me, I’d definitely go for DVS, unless you want to be severely limited in the amount of music available to you, and are made of money for buying prodigious amounts of vinyl.
Finally, there’s no such thing as cheap, quality turntables; Reloop and Stanton both have decent models, but you’re going to be paying out a decent amount of cash if you want a decent direct drive turntable set-up. At least you can use your existing S4 as the mixer should you choose to go the DVS route.
Are you in a position to tell Marvin if vinyl is taking over again in Germany? What would you advise him to do if he wants to learn to DJ the “old” way? Please share your opinions in the comments.