DJ Wyld1

So, my computer is probably having trouble with key lock. It’s a 2012 Mac Book Pro and my HD is 90% full since I have about 35 000 pictures and about as much music.But don’t know what to do with these besides leaving them on my computer. I’m afraid to loose them if I transfer them on an external HD (for some reason I don’t trust HD.

All of your data is on you computer hard drive, so what’s the difference from one hard drive to the next?

Pictures: If you don’t want to back these up to an external hard drive, you may consider burning them to a CD, DVD or Blue Ray disc. You may want to look into a cloud storage service. Buy a small NAS external storage solution. Typically they are setup in a mirrored configuration and come with pre-packaged software for making back ups, this way if one hard drive crashes, you can replace it and the NAS software will typically automatically rebuild the mirrored drive (think of it as having a back up and and a back up of the back up)

Music: I use a Western Digital 2TB My passport drive for pretty much all of my DJ “stuff”. Documentation (scanned receipts, manuals, warranty information, etc.); copies of installation software with some kind of text document with registration / license keys; music folders with all of my music in it; the list goes on. The My Passport drive fits perfectly inside a Pelican 1020 case.

I’ll have to post a picture of my drive inside the case later and post it. Anyway, the case protects my hard drive from bumps, thunks, liquid spillage etc.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by DJ Wyld1.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by DJ Wyld1.

By the way, mo one else will probably ever tell you this, but IF you want to mess around with a really cheap controller just for fun in your room (stress relief); you could always consider the Numark DJ2GO – it’s a tiny controller, extremely basic and comes with a version of VDJ and sells for about $35.

This will at least give you something to play around with if the mood strikes you and it’s not a big investment. You also get some jog-wheels (although they’re not good for much other than track search). Here you would get the bonus of having what barely qualifies as a controller without the expense. It may help you at least blow off a little steam if you get frustrated.

Although, my advice is that if you get frustrated, go do something else for a while. I find that going for a walk seems to help me the most. I have a tendency to let my mind wander away from DJ’ing and look around my walking environment and then I’ll just get an idea of something I want to try. If my idea works, it’s awesome. If it doesn’t, I go for another walk -lol.

The biggest key here is for you to slowly figure out what works best for you. If you can do that, then there’s no limits on what you have the potential to achieve as a producer / DJ.

Hey Justin,

I just Googled for a used Native Instruments s2 controller and the cheapest one I could find was around $300. So this again brings up the budget question of how much do you want to spend to find out IF Traktor or one of the controllers is right for you?

Since you seem to be rather intent on producing your own music; I still suggest you at least look into Ableton Live software. Look for whatever you can find online for free first (YouTube tutorials for example) and after you have a pretty god idea of how the software works download the 90 day trial. This will give you the most bang for your time (cuz you haven’t spent any money yet). If you try Ableton Live and it’s not for you, you can still always buy a version of Traktor from their website for $100 and use it without a controller.

Getting to know your software and being really comfortable with what you want to use will help you decide what hardware you want (controller).

You mention Stems in your original post. While Stems has the potential to be incredible (especially for someone that wants to produce music); I would offer some cautionary advice:

Stems is brand new and it may become incredibly popular or it may not. With a big name company like Native Instruments behind it; Stems has a really good chance of being the next “big thing”. However, Stems depends greatly on the rest of the music industry (namely bigger record labels) jumping on the band wagon and providing content.

If you can spend the next year getting really comfortable with the software you want use like DJ Vintage suggests (and I agree), then hopefully by the time you are ready for something like Stems; hopefully it will be far enough along for you to be able to actually use it.

The bonus for you here is you will be able to look at the newer controllers that come out at the time you feel you are ready and narrow the list down to 2 or 3 really solid choices that will do what you want it to do. Where as if you buy one now and have no idea of your workflow; you’re only going to want something else later and regret spending money on something that didn’t really work for you or potentially worse get frustrated and quit all together.

I’m offering you my opinion so that the latter doesn’t happen. I used to DJ 15 years ago, got frustrated with it and quit. The only reason I got back into is because my wife knew I used to DJ, mentioned it to a friend and the next thing I know I was being asked by someone to DJ and slowly hodge-podged a system together. Now I pretty much want to swap to a controller based system and really kind of need to start over. I can trade 1 piece of gear for a controller and get by for now, but that’s me (don’t be me is basically what I’m hinting at here).

If you’re on this site doing homework, you’re further ahead of the game than I was 5 years ago when I started piecing together my system and didn’t know the first thing about controllers or the software options. So, don’t get upset if the software you like doesn’t do what you want it to; that probably means you need to look for different software.