Mike Ward

This is becoming a very detailed thread 🙂

Chuck answered the jog wheels question nicely, thanks man.
I’d definitely agree that it is easier to nudge with jog wheels; it takes a while to get used to how slow/fast/short/long to ‘swipe’ on the touchstrip, but once mastered it’s probably as responsive. I often ride acapellas with dubious BPMs/slack beatgridding (yes, I know, poor preparation!) manually by swipe-nudging. But yep, scratching is totally out.

You DEFINITELY need to try the Twitch out before buying, some people REALLY miss the jogwheels, so do find a store somewhere in the Seattle area and go in and have a play. Can’t comment on US stores, but in the UK stores will happily let you play for a few hours to help with the decision making process 🙂

Also, spend a few hours on YouTube watching controller reviews and people’s demo performances, particularly ones where you can see both the controller and a screen capture. It’ll start to give you a good idea of the differences in the software/hardware.

Very solid mix, favourited!
Good luck with it!
I’m in North London – will have to add this event to my calendar… it sounds like it will be a good one!

Software for iPad, as the other guys said, DJay and Traktor are both good. I’ve been messing around with Pacemaker recently too (if you have a Spotify account it’s particularly good).
As for cables, get yourself a MONO-splitter cable (careful here, you don’t want something that just pumps a stereo out on each channel) such as this one (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Griffin-Master-Output-Splitter-iPhone/dp/B0056XAWOU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1399476442&sr=8-2&keywords=dj+splitter+cable).

They’re often advertised as ‘DJ splitter cables’ but as long as it’s splitting stereo into 2 x mono channels, that’s what matters. Then on the software, turn on split cueing. Bingo! You can now cue up tracks properly. You’ll just need a 1 x 3.5mm cable –> 2 x RCA to get into your mixer (or the back of your standalone controller) and that’s it!

I find it very easy to nudge with the touch strips, their resolution is good and you can do bigger or smaller ‘swipes’ depending on how subtle/big you want the change to be – you’ll get used to it within a week or two no problem, it’s quite intuitive.

It’s always tempting to wait, but the Twitch is really an excellent controller, so I doubt you’d struggle too much to sell it on. I suspect a LOT of people with other controllers are waiting for the Twitch 2 as well, so they can snaffle up an original Twitch as a secondary portable controller…

I’d buy the Twitch now, and if in 9 months a second revision comes out, sell it on and upgrade. Plus, you’ll have spent those months mastering it, improving your skills and having a massive amount of fun. Oh, and you’ll get Serato DJ with the Twitch for no extra cost – who knows whether the Twitch 2 would come with the full version, or just the Intro version instead… hard to predict…

In summary, if you think you’ll like the Twitch, I’m almost certain you will love it. And actually, even if you’re not that into it in theory, once you’ve had a go most people love it anyway.

I know I love mine 🙂

Was just thinking about buying a 502 for my Twitch, glad I found this thread 🙂
Thanks guys!

Very cool. I’m a big Electro Swing fan, this sounds like an interesting thing to get involved in.
Obviously there’s the (always copyright-problematic) route of digging out old samples. I’d say with some chopping and beatgridding you could quite quickly build a library of different swing beats you could lay over the top of live musicians. On top of that a library of retro vocal samples would be useful, plus things like piano stabs and short loops. Depends how crazy you want to go really. Plus, if you bought some cheap midi drum triggers you could even play along with some basic beats (or add some bells and whistles).
If I were you I’d go along to a rehearsal and see what they want, dig out a few simple loops you can drop in and see how it sounds… and let us know how you get on! I’d love to be involved in something like this one day so be interested to see how you go!