Mike Ward
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Mike Ward
ParticipantDzien Dobry, Artur! Witamy!!
Which city in Poland are you in? Such a great country 🙂
ParticipantItch or Ableton Live 8, depending what I’m doing. I like that I can use Ableton more like an instrument, hook up a couple of my drum pads through my Alesis DM10 and whack a MIDI keyboard in. Or djay on my ipad for house parties 🙂
ParticipantI bought a second-hand copy of Live 8 (Standard) for about $170 (equivalent) over here in the UK a couple of months ago. Decided the extra features of Live 9 weren’t too much of an interest to me, but the limitations on the Intro version would have been too restrictive for what I wanted it for. My general impression is that it is a very, very well designed and engineered piece of software, and once you get used to the little interface quirks (not too many) I find it very quick to use. Also, the Live performance aspects are so appealing to me – MIDI mapped my Twitch and it’s like a whole new world of possibility. I know I can always pay the money later to get the upgrade (or buy the synths or plugins I’m missing individually) and I like that flexibility.
I’d echo what Edgek8d said about online resources too, so many high-quality (and free!) video tutorials and blogs on Ableton out there.
Download both and play around – follow some tutorials, try and make a full track end-to-end – and get which works best for you!Participant@Dizzle: Love the fliers! How’s the licencing laws in BKK these days? Grease is open until 4:20? That’s pretty good going… I always seem to end up in Spicy at those kind of hours, I should probably research my nights better!
ParticipantSounds like a good approach, gotta keep that crowd happy 🙂
Plans for a next gig?ParticipantWelcome!
Practice makes perfect, particularly with beat matching 🙂
While you’re waiting for your Aero, you can still practice – download Virtual DJ Home (Free) or Mixx (Free, Open Source) and learn the keyboard shortcuts. Phil wrote an article on it a couple of years ago…http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2011/11/djing-with-just-a-laptop/
It’s definitely not a wasted skill – if you were ever doing a gig and your controller caught fire you could just hop onto your keyboard until you could fix it. You can also practice your mixing when you don’t have your controller. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve rocked a mix on the train home from work…
ParticipantCongrats on the first gig 🙂 Glad you rocked it, and sounds like it was a pretty difficult situation so kudos for not letting it get to you. What sort of music were you playing out of interest?
And no shame in playing music the crowd want to hear – that’s pretty much the aim of the game.
Your Gangnam experience reminds me of being in a tiny club in Hanoi a few months ago when Gangnam Style came on, and a group of Korean girls went mad for it and started dancing on tables. The DJ then loaded it up on the other deck and created a nicely done extended version on the fly – smart move I thought 🙂ParticipantWelcome. Good luck in your competition – sound fun!
April 4, 2013 at 1:23 pm in reply to: Upgrading Controller and need some options? Advice please! #38777ParticipantAhh I started on that Hercules 12 months ago! It’s so tiny and plasticy. Great to start on though, rocked a few house parties with it 🙂 I never really liked Virtual DJ LE, I used Mixxx a fair bit instead.
Anyway, I recently upgraded and took the slightly alternative choice (no jog wheels!) of the Novation Twitch. Pushing your budget @ £300, but so far (2 weeks only!) I’m happy with my choice. Great build quality, good sound quality, and at the moment I’m starting to get used to the Itch software (but will get a free upgrade to Serato DJ I think any day now). I’ve mapped it to Ableton in a breeze, and it really works great with that too because of the layout of the pads. Not tried with Traktor, but I know it supports four-deck mode if that’s your bag.
But no jog wheels, so no scratching – not a big deal for me, most of what I want to do in the future is focussed around loops, mashups etc… but that could be a deal breaker for some I’m sure.
Looking forward to starting gigging on it in the near future 🙂ParticipantWelcome dude!
If I’m in a club the only thing I care about is that the DJ is dropping great tunes. They could be using a microphone taped to a boombox for all I care (OK, maybe the sound quality might upset me a tiny bit). I impromptu DJd a house party on a tablet a few weeks ago – I just loved the flexibility. I downloaded a couple of apps (DJay, CrossDJ) about half an hour beforehand, and learnt as I went. Really blew me away the quality of DJing you can do with these things, all my regular deck techniques just transferred straight across and I was waveriding in lieu of cueing. So go for it. If anyone says you’re not a “proper DJ”, tell them to shut up. You can also tell them you’re actually doing a LOT more DJing than some supposed superstar “DJ” producers 😉ParticipantI like the ideas, I’m thinking about logos myself at the moment (see mine in my avatar).
Make sure it works in two-tone so it prints in black/white and also it’s readable from a distance (imagine you were playing a festival or something and your name gets a tiny slot on the poster, you’d want people to be able to read it!) Make multiple versions with different colours too, get a feel for what you like (but keep the colour count low, maybe just one).
Also, what software are you using? I would HIGHLY recommend Inkscape, which is free and produces all-important Vector graphics (as opposed to raster) – that way you can scale, flip, change colours etc… and still keep it super-crisp.ParticipantThanks for the follow, Candyman. Followed you back! Glad you’re liking the swing mix, I’ll have a listen to some of your stuff later tonight!
ParticipantHave you downloaded the 30-day Ableton evaluation and had a play? It’s fully-featured so you can get a feel for how Ableton fits together. I would DEFINITELY recommend going through the lessons that are included within Ableton (they also have projects included so you are actually hands-on while reading) and there are some videos on YouTube that talk about setting up Ableton in ‘DJ mode’ (assigning the A/B deck, how to organise effects etc…)
Also, take a look at warping (ensuring a track stays on the beat throughout), that’s pretty much the essence of anything that’s done in Ableton – it’s extremely powerful and very easy to use, once you get your head around it.As for Push, not used it, but had a mess with the Launchpad in a store. Push looks to be a whole extra level on that (Launchpad is literally just a lot of buttons on a square board used to launch clips and scenes), and I’d be interested to take a look. Anyway, definitely download Ableton first, it’s a hefty download (and a heftier price tag if you want to buy it) but it’s definitely worth it! It’ll Midi map a breeze to any Midi controller you have to get a feel for how it might work from a performance, rather than a production, perspective.
FYI – you can often pick up second hand copies of older versions (Ableton Live 8) on eBay for half the price of what Ableton 9 is going for… -
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