Stazbumpa
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Stazbumpa
ParticipantYou’re on about a sound card, or more accurately an external sound interface. A DAW is the program you do the production with.
And yes, you will need one with either some decent headphones or monitor speakers to make your tunes with.
ParticipantIt’s in your settings somewhere. There’s a tick box(es) to get rid of the fx units on one side and replace it with the recording option.
Participant“When you feel ready” would be the ideal answer, but I felt ready after 6 months and I was bloody awful. The more gigs I did the more I realised there was other parts of DJing I needed to work on, no amount of bedroom practise will teach you how to read a crowd, how to program your set, or deal with annoying club owners.
It’s probably more accurate to forget the question “how long before you felt skilled enough to play live?” and instead ask “how long before you felt ready to learn more in a practical environment?”And it was 3 years for me before I got my first residency and felt actually at ease behind the decks in front of people I didn’t know.
But the learning process didn’t stop then, and still hasn’t 18 years later.ParticipantUnfortunately the DJ world is dominated by guys and I think it suffers for that, however there’s probably a lot more ladies into DJing than you might think.
As for learning, I was lucky because I had a couple of friends who got their first turntables about the same time I did so I had people in the same boat as me. This helps a lot when your first mixes sound like a pair of trainers in a tumble dryer; there’s people who can relate to it directly and laugh about it.
Think of it in terms of separating the DJing into 2 parts; the techniques and skills will be most likely practised alone, however discovering music you want to play is something you can enjoy with others.
The DJ learning experience can be solitary but in my opinion that’s no bad thing. The music itself, on the other hand, is for everyone 🙂
ParticipantIn your shoes I would choose option 1, but I also wouldn’t limit myself to the NI kit you mentioned.
I personally use CDJs+mixer but I had specific criteria to be met and my kit also isn’t Pioneer, which made it worth it in my opinion.
To each their own, but Pioneer CDJs are vastly overpriced.
ParticipantDepends on the records you are trying to mix and what will sound good. For a lot of records it works fine, for others not so much.
One particular tune I play at the moment has an intro with no beats, so I loop an 8 beat section at the end of the record and mix that as my “intro” before thumping the cue point I’ve set at an appropriate point near the beginning when the time is right to end the mix and play the record.
For me that’s the best sounding way of bringing that particular record in.
The is one of the things I love the most of digital DJing, I can rearrange how the record is mixed because thanks to loops and hot cues the track no longer has to be played in a stricly linear fashion.Also, that counts as using a hot cue live 😉
ParticipantThere’s a setting in Traktor’s options menu to have it start up in the same resolution as your desktop.
ParticipantI’m going to add my voice to the chorus currently singing hymn number 27, “Thank You Lord For My Sennheisers”.
HD25 II’s, had mine since the very early 2000’s and the only replacement has been 2 sets of ear pads. They sound great, I actually like to use mine in conjunction with my Adam studio monitors to see if my vinyl rips sound ok. Seriously, you cannot go wrong with them. If I was buying new I would consider the NOC’s also, but not much else comes close to the Senny’s.
ParticipantStick with the controller and forget the cdj’s. The Nexus stuff is ridiculously overpriced anyway.
Anyone looking down their nose at you for using your controller is probably an idiot with jealousy issues.ParticipantMy issues is with this:
“This is a win for all songwriters and composers in this country; the possibility of standing by and watching the implementation of an exception to copyright for private copying without a fair compensation scheme was unthinkable.”
– Vick Bain CEO of BASCAHow in the name of sanity is an individual supposed to provide “fair compensation” to an artists that they have already paid, by way of purchasing their music in the first place, when all that individual is trying to do is protect their investment (backup) or provide convenience (not clutter the car up with, and also potentially damage, your CD collection), particularly when the law explicitly states that you cannot copy and then sell or give away that music?
Totally agree with Vintage, all this proves is that BASCA, UK Music et al, are simply seeking to justify and continue their own existence. Unfortunately the High Court has agreed with them but if someone bothered to take this to the Euro courts I could well see it being reversed as I don’t think any case exists whereby an individual can be expected to compensate an artist when all that individual is trying to do is make their own life a bit easier.
But as I said before, 99.9% will totally, and justifiably, ignore this ruling.
ParticipantI don’t think this is abput selling ripped music on ebay because the law has always said that is illegal. The main problem with the ruling is that there is no private space anymore for someone to arrange their bought and paid for music collection how they want it.
In context, I can’t compile my many Prodigy albums into a single mp3 CD for the car. The music industry insists I take all the originals.
Also, you are no longer allowed to practice proper IT protocols in backing up your digital collection anymore, if you want to keep your music on a backup hard drive the music industry says you must buy it all over again for that hard drive.
This ruling will also impact creation because making your own mashups of music to play out, or even to yourself, is now forbidden in the UK.In practice though I have no idea how this will be enforced and just about everyone will ignore it just like they do the pro dub licence, or whatever the hell that is.
Watch this space though for a roadside arrest because someone has a couple of mp3 cds in their car, or a DJ being carted off in handcuffs because he played his latest mashup in a club.ParticipantThe DJM 900 is Traktor certified (sort of, see below) so for you the simplest route would be the Scratch Pro time code and software kit and something like the F1 for remix deck stuff. The DJM would be your soundcard and save you several hundred in upgrade costs.
The only problem with this is that the latest update for Traktor unlocks 64 bit and this very helpfully means your DJM 900 won’t work with Traktor at the moment, so if you do decide on Traktor then update it no further than version 2.6.8 until Pioneer get off their arses and release 64 bit drivers for the 900.
A lot of Traktor DJs have ignored updates from 2.6.8 onwards because it isn’t stable and, since 2.8, has stopped working with their setup.ParticipantThe rules (abridged from bob’s suggestions ;-)):
i5 CPU
4Gb RAM should be fine, 8Gb for safety though.
SSD – This is not negotiable. Either buy a laptop with one fitted or get one after and fit it yourself. A 240-256Gb SSD, or thereabouts, will do nicely.
Get the Windows install disc. Demand this from your vendor, because the first thing you’re going to do with your shiny new laptop is format the drive and reinstall Windows from scratch.Everything else is dependent on your budget, but for me the above are the core values for DJ’ing on a Windows laptop. I also agree with bob, you can use your laptop for more than just DJ’ing as long as you’re smart and don’t download daft things.
ParticipantI record in Traktor, chop it up into individual tracks and normalize it all in Audition and then burn to CD, remembering to remove the 2 second gap between each track.
If I make a mistake during the mix I start again. Or not, depends how bad a foul up it is.
ParticipantI don’t like updating Traktor once get a version of it working properly. I’m on 2.6.8 and refuse to budge from that given the reported buggyness of the updates since then and also the fact that my mixer won’t work from 2.8 onwards.
I gig every weekend, and have a full time job, so the last thing I want is to upgrade and then still be fighting to get it working an hour before my gig starts. -
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