Rodders
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Rodders
MemberDie.version, post: 36718, member: 4406 wrote: That makes sense. But how do you organize the tracks by BPM or energy etc.? Sorry if that sounds like a noob question. I have Traktor Kontrol 2 and I use iTunes for organizing my music. How do you do it by BPM, energy and other attributes of songs? I am really new to all of this.
P.S.-> Thank you so much for helping me out here….:)
You might find these articles useful:
http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2010/08/how-to-organise-your-tunes-while-djing-part-1/
http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2010/08/how-to-organise-your-tunes-while-djing-part-2/In a nutshell, make good use of iTunes and ID3 tags. For me the key tags are: genre, BPM, star rating (‘energy’) and I use the comments field for the key (C, Am etc). Combined with Smart Playlists, it makes for a very powerful and easy way to keep my library organised and it’s all displayed nicely in Traktor.
MemberI’m going to second Terrys’ comments above. The driver thing is really important. I used to run events for a DAW manufacturer, and no matter how much prep and prestaging of equipment we did beforehand, there would always be issues with the PCs onsite. If a demo artist brought in their own material on external drives, it would be fingers crossed it would work if plugging into a PC, or involve lots of tweaking to get it working. It’s not the PC’s fault, like Terry said there’s so many vendors and manufacturers involved, getting everything to work together just became a time-consuming pain. I think PCs are great for a lot of applications, but music isn’t one of them. Yes Apple products can seem horrendously overpriced if simply looking at like-for-like tech specs but at the end of the day, we used them because they brought peace of mind, and in a situation where you are relying on this technology for any kind of public performance and you don’t have the luxury of time to tweak and maintain, I believe it’s false economy to go the cheaper route just to save money.
MemberReally appreciate the feedback, thanks. The mix was originally planned for two halves, hence the transition from deep to more proggy/house mid way through. Regarding Ornette as an opener, I guess I always plan mixes like this as if it’s a mixtape to be listened to in the car / at home rather than in a club, so I like to ease people in. And yeah I agree about there being no money in deep house 🙂 I just like listening to it is all.. my taste has definitely mellowed with age!
MemberI use Ozone 5 a lot, and the Waves stuff is awesome if you have deep pockets.
Memberyou’re welcome!
MemberNever used the mixer, but looking at the specs on the website, the Mono 1/2 Stereo button toggles between VU meters showing individual left/right levels, or an overall stereo level. It doesn’t say anything about it affecting what’s actually coming out of the speakers.. unless of course you can tell me differently 🙂 so the VU would show you either a combined stereo input (left VU for input 1, right VU for input 2), or show you whats coming out of left/right on both inputs (so left VU would show you left output of inputs 1 & 2, right VU would show right outputs of 1 & 2). I guess a practical application would be to quickly check that your levels are equally balanced, or biased to one side.
Contour – when you move the fader, how loud / quiet it makes the audio in relation to the fader position (or how quickly it pans left / right) would depend on this setting. So as you move the fader down, the level would either decrease in a nice smooth fashion (slow fade), or would very quickly go quiet (fast cut). It’s easier to understand visually, check out the Rane Empath data sheet under ‘Fader Response’ here http://www.rane.com/pdf/empadat.pdf
Applications, depends on mixing style really. I believe scratch mixers prefer the fast cut style, especially on a crossfader.
MemberLove the track choice on this (not too dissimilar to my last mix :). I’d echo Nadal’s comments regarding key mixing, but disagree with his comments regarding tempo.. this sort of house works better for me around 120 – 124, it gives the tracks chance to breathe. The only other thing I’d say is maybe building the mix up a little more, although the tracks themselves are great, I always like mixes that leave me in a different place to where I started. But when the tracks are good, it’s a minor quibble.
MemberMy last mix was taken down immediately by SoundCloud due to copyright infringement, so I can no longer rely on SC to help me. Which is a real shame, but nothing I can do about it. And at least I know the artist does get royalties from it being on MixCloud.
MemberNot sure what it’s like for D&B specifically but I’ve been finding some unknown gems on SoundCloud.
MemberWill, post: 25413, member: 46 wrote: Otherwise known as: cheating.
In the end, you are cheating yourself if you pass out mixtapes and your abilities don’t match up to it when you play live. Club owners will not book you if you can’t deliver a consistent performance. I notice this with bands alot, they have a really well produced album, but when you go to their concert, they just plain suck at performing. That’s usually the first and last time I ever bother seeing them again.
Agree that you need the skills to back up the mixtape, but I don’t see using a DAW to sequence your mixtape together as cheating at all. James Zabiela openly admits to using Ableton to sequence some of his released mixes (of course the guy can mix), and I’ve heard stories of well-known DJs basically just compiling the records and getting their engineers to mix them together for certain compilations. Unless you’re recording the mixtape (I love how we still call them tapes :)) live in front of an audience, it’s not going to be a true reflection of how well you can actually perform, because it’s going to be recorded an environment where there’s a lot less pressure, you aren’t reading a crowd and you can hit stop if you fluff a mix.
MemberTheReturn, post: 24883, member: 2640 wrote: Pick a theme, a mood, a time of day, a story or any kind of narrative and build the mix around that. Your ideas can come from experiences in your life or from TV , fiction, history or movies or they can just emerge from messing around on the decks and stumbling across songs that work well together. Check these examples and the mix blurbs below.
A lot of mine are about creating a soundtrack to a real or potential experiences.
http://soundcloud.com/thereturn/dj-return-rotten-coconuts
You’re on a deserted island, all there is to eat is coconuts. You eat a bad coconut and it makes you trip out and run around the island a la Leonardo De Caprio in the Beach. This is the soundtrack to that experience.There’s no way I could resist that description – downloading now 🙂
MemberEchoing the above really but don’t treat it like a 60 minute club set – it will likely be listened to in a different environment so treat it differently, like you really are doing a mixtape in the traditional sense of the word. You have the luxury of time, to plan, to get creative with your track selection, to get out of the “2 deck” mindset, to make sure every mix is absolutely perfect and in key, so use it wisely.
July 20, 2012 at 4:43 pm in reply to: akai apc40 ableton performance controller and vci 380 #1008258Member1) I personally think so but I use it for production and live work as well as DJ-ing.
2) Out of the box it works pretty much as you’d expect, but it’s custom mapping where it really shines – it will control whatever you want it to.
3) Like Live itself is different to most other DJ software, it is totally different to standard DJ controllers. It is well built with good quality encoders, faders and buttons that feel solid – it is built for live work after all.
4) I don’t use FL but it does work as a standard MIDI controller so if FL supports this, my guess would be yes. I’ve used it to control Pro Tools.If you haven’t already, do a search on YouTube to see it in action. A great example of how it can be used for DJ-ing and how customisable the mapping is can be found on Will Marshalls website – http://willmarshall.me/products/dj-template-pro-apc40
MemberCongratulations Terry!
MemberSound advice from Steelo and Yaka! Definitely make sure you find out what style of music they are expecting, as you don’t want to turn up with your latest hardcore selection when everyone wants pop music (even though this is something I would actually do). And the organisers don’t need to know it’s your first gig..
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