Chris Collins

The 1-letter or 1-number approach is only the first relation you can use. You can read more about it at mixedinkey.com/book (in the advanced section) but I’ll provide a summary.

Sometimes you want an abrupt key change to have a sudden change in mood. It doesn’t work with all tracks, but try doing a +4 (ie 4A to 8A). Also, if you want to go from A to B, you can also try stepping up the number (1A to 2B or 2B to 1A, but not 1B to 2A/2A to 1B).

Also, the quick relation for semitones is such:

One semitone up -> Add 7
Two semitones up -> Add 2

Some of these are hit and miss (best trying at home rather than playing out), but it should give you a little flexibility. I’d advise against long blends when there is a sudden key shift, however. Stick with 8 – 16 bars.

Edit: I just wanted to add that sudden-key shifts should be used sparingly. It dulls the impact/annoys the ear if you’re doing it too much.

Only an admin can see the admins on a fan page. Aside from being the first to “like” it, there’s nothing for an outsider to tell which account a fan page is linked to.

Sorry, one more thing since it looks like you’re a Traktor man.

http://www.djtechtools.com/2012/04/25/perfecting-traktor-beatgrids-eans-method/
Don’t fear sync and beatgrid. Learning to manually beatmatch is great, but there’s no shame in using a beatgrid if you take the time to make your grid perfect.

Some fellow DJ gives you crap about this? Shrug it off. Preparation is one of the best skills a DJ can have, and taking the time to perfect your collection with cues and grids just means that you did your whole night’s beatmatching in advance at home so you can focus on the dancefloor more and on the busywork (yes, I said it) less.

It’s rare that my day job applies to these forums, but:

“Hi, I work in the automotive industry”.

The Vibe/Matrix example is probably the most interesting, and the least relevant 🙂

Toyota and General Motors actually had a joint operation (NUMMI) at one point, so a lot of the engineering was shared between the two vehicles. The drivetrains were shared, but a lot of the finishing and interiors were quite different. This was actually a big step to both companies learning from each other to come out a head (Unfortunately, GM didn’t learn as much as Toyota, which is one of the reasons why Vibes are dying on the road and Matrix (Matrices?) are still holding their value).

If Serato and NI partnered up for a controller project that could run Traktor /or/ ITCH natively, then a good comparison would be the Vibe/Matrix 🙂

However, the core redundancies are within larger companies themselves. Back a LONG time ago when the United States was worried about domestic anti-trust monopolies in the automotive industry (funny how things have changed), congress at the time mandated that once a car company became big enough, it had to segment itself into different brands (GM -> Chevy, Buick, Caddy, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Ford -> Mercury, Lincoln, Chrysler -> Dodge, Plymouth). A lot of these vehicles were just re-badges of existing products. The “redundancy” benefits the consumer, as it is cheaper to manufacture one million of something (per piece) than it does to manufacture one hundred thousand.

MIDI controllers becoming copies of each other is frankly the desired end-state of the controller economy. What really is the difference between an NI S4 and Numark NS6? Functionally, they perform the same tasks (4 deck MIDI controller with almost the same amount of controls) but have small differences (strip search on NS6, dedicated filter knobs on the S4 if I remember correctly, to name a few). Those exclusive features can drive up price because you can pair demand with that exclusivity.

Let’s also bring up the 4-Trak vs NS6. These controllers do not compete against each other (one runs Traktor, the other runs ITCH), so Numark has to project different sales forecasts for each product, let their hardware supplies be aware of the various demands and run with it. For all intents and purposes, they are different controllers.

Imagine, however, that the 4-Trak didn’t need to exist and you could flash the firmware of an NS6 to make it run exactly like a 4-Trak (let’s ignore all the Traktor NS6 mappings for obvious reasons). Now, all the hardware differences between the two are eliminated, so instead of having a supplier deliver 2 slightly different products to Numark (such as the paint details on the casings of each unit), they now only supply the one casing at more units per year. It becomes cheaper for them, Numark, and ultimately the consumer.

When I go shopping for laundry detergent, I could get Tide, or Bounce (change the brands to suit your local market). I personally prefer Tide, and will buy Tide if all else is equal. If Bounce is on sale, well, screw Tide. They are basically the same anyway.

That’s what we should want! If the only difference between MIDI controllers was the sticker on the front, the consumers win. You can get the same functionality from any brand, but you can still be the A&H guy, or the Denon guy if you really wanted to. Quality, brand loyalty and customer service is still important, but you have a lot more mobility as a consumer to move to a competitor.

Well, that turn into more of a rant than I wanted it to be! One last thing, however:

Vinny, can you be a little more specific as to why you think “TOO much redundancy” is not only present in the DJ hardware market and why it’s a problem?

Preface: I have most experience with ITCH (I also have Traktor, I’ll give that a try tonight if I have time)

Check the Traktor manual about tap if it’s not working. Also, do you know if there’s a way to manually set the bpm? Again, If ITCH can, I see no reason why Traktor couldn’t. You could use a freeware program (if it exists, which it probably will) which would allow you to tap out a bpm, and then you just update the ID3 tag and mark the first grid point in Traktor.

This is a pretty hard question to respond to. It reminds me of an old Chevrolet car. The car was called the Chevy Nova, and they tried to sell it internationally under that name.

Unfortunately, in Spanish speaking countries, the car’s name literally meant ‘No-Go’, which damaged the branding.

That’s why companies such as Toyota try to make up words (one reason is it’s easier to copyright a word that didn’t exist before, and the other is you never need to worry about the translation).

I think your best bet is to try for an original word, or a modification of a word that sounds cool. Make sure there isn’t any lingual issues in Cantonese and run with it. Also, make sure the English word doesn’t have any stereotypical consonant sounds that people from that region have difficulty to pronounce.

Take Diplo for example. It’s basically it’s own word, but it’s short for Diplodocus (a type of dinosaur).

Transition tracks are your friend. If you subscribe to a record pool like DJCity, they have lots of transition songs that go from 70 (I generally treat dubstep as 70 bpm as it’s a better indication of phrasing most of the time) up to ~130, and songs that go back.