Bahstid

You’re right that using the same track on two decks might not be the best way to go about it – you sort of need to train your brain to listen to two things at once and you won’t get the “separation” with the same track.

Don’t really know what you mean its impossible to not drop the track on the first beat – if thats just because the track starts on the first beat I can understand what you mean, but in reality you will almost always want that behavior anyway, and you’ll likely make a cue point there if you’re using anything but vinyl. If you want to develop that ability, turn your controller to vinyl/scratch mode and you can learn to cue like that.

As for the tracks then being perfectly in time, well either you have selected 2 tracks with identical bpm, in which case just give one of the pitch controls a random bump and then learn to match up the other without looking at your screen… or turn sync off in your software!

you can repeat the “random bump” technique over and over – yeah, you will know that the track has become faster or slower, but not by how much and also you need to learn not to overshoot, or how to re-adjust if you do. Basically just stop looking at the screen for a start, and if you find yourself subconsciously or inadvertently “cheating”, you can throw a cloth over the playing tracks pitch fader, so you can’t match pitch fader positions even if you want to practice with 2 identically bpm’d tracks.

Getting told which tracks to use isn’t going to do you many favours and is also a genre dependent thing, the only thing is maybe to choose a “second” track with quite a long intro that is quite sparse in terms of sounds until you start to get the hang of it.

Good luck and keep at it!

I’ve just gone the opposite route – after many years finally moving of vinyl and cds to “digital”, and would second the above comments that a controller is basically the way to go, but with one more idea for you:

I’d say forget the CDJs completely – basically they’re not going to teach you anything more than using a reasonable controller will, nor be any more fun, especially when trying to be budget concious. At the very top end, being able to use the CDJs as a controller is quite a major feature, but even then they only work as fairly limited controllers, but will do severe wallet damage anyway – I’ve just bought a top-end controller with a bunch of extra toys for much less than ONE of the CDJs I would have otherwise bought, never mind the mixer I would have wanted to match them with.

You seem to be wanting to get more physical in your mixing, so what I’d maybe think might be good for you is to aim for a DVS-ready or upgradeable controller, and when you have the budget, hunt down some used 1200’s and try out timecode instead. A pair of used turntables will probably run you less a single entry-level CDJ too.

I haven’t got rid of the laptop for you, but I’m not sure why you really want to – once you have a controller, its less “laptop djing” than having a clear screen and a way to carry heaps of music without worrying about needing to burn CDs, skippping CDs, or finding *that* track that’s somewhere on one of these 10 discs… if you were thinking of USB sticks/SD cards instead, speaking from experience its still fiddly. And back to the thing about the screen, even the best CDJs are just poor imitations of the nice one you’ve already got.