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Cross-posting from SA Mart. I'm selling my VCI-100 w/ DJTT 1.3 Firmware/Overlay for $265 OBO + shipping what's good, son!   Google Butt fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Aug 24, 2011 |
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Aug 24, 2011 01:24
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Traktor S2!! It's so cute! I'd imagine its perfect for a professional mobile dj (weddings, events, etc) http://www.djtechtools.com/2011/08/25/traktor-kontrol-s2-exclusive-look/
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Aug 25, 2011 17:06
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Firaga posted:Traktor S2!! It's so cute! I'd imagine its perfect for a professional mobile dj (weddings, events, etc) Looks neat and way more portable than an S4. I know Ean Golden is like filter/effect god but do people really use filters so much that it's a big complaint about what's missing? Plus it seems like a good upsell opportunity for him to sell more midi fighters. edit spoke too soon: "This controller, augmented by a more performance-oriented controller could provide a great center piece to your DJ arsenal." qirex fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Aug 25, 2011 |
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Aug 25, 2011 17:48
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relative_q posted:Personally, as a producer in addition to being a DJ, I'm not a huge fan of the whole controllerism thing, simply because I feel like I spend a shitload of effort writing tracks for the dancefloor and structuring them in ways that are interesting to listen to but still DJ friendly. It may be an ego thing (it almost definitely is) but I feel like some dude just deciding to loop a few bars of my track and layer it with a few bars from some other dudes' tracks is a little disrespectful to the music that you're playing. I normally would agree with you 100%, but with much of today's music there are no "acts" in a track. It's just: Intro Beats, Break, Beats with some synth or Stabs that are on repeat, Longer break, usually with some filter applied at the end, Final Beats into Outro. So someone willing to cut up a track into usable loops has plenty to choose from without fully disrespecting the track. Oftentimes it seems a producer who releases 2 or 3 tracks at the same time probably could have made one really solid track with a better structure. But perhaps they're just not creative enough (or have enough musical knowledge) to actually make anything more than just beats and press a few keyboard keys for a synth or stabs. But I'm not a producer, so I digress. I would add that as a DJ it's hard to find nice full tracks - something I've been spending an inordinate amount of time and money to do. If Juno had Beatport's selection it would be nice to be able to listen to more than just a dedicated 2 minutes of a track (you can skip around the entire track). Something I had hoped beatport was doing with their "full wave view" - which it is, but it tells me nothing of the musical arrangements.
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Aug 25, 2011 17:56
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qirex posted:Looks neat and way more portable than an S4. I know Ean Golden is like filter/effect god but do people really use filters so much that it's a big complaint about what's missing? Plus it seems like a good upsell opportunity for him to sell more midi fighters. I use the filters all the time. I use them as an effect and as an EQ, most of my mixing is done with the highpass filter, I don't think I can give it up. That being said I think the S4's (traktor's internal filter I guess) is poo poo and it's one of the reasons (among others) I'm switching to a DJM so I have the colour filters. edit: to elaborate I didn't mean I only use the highpass to mix, it's just essential in my EQing. I also use it a lot as an effect, I do a lot of sweeps and I open it for breaks. Firaga fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Aug 25, 2011 |
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Aug 25, 2011 18:55
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geeves posted:words I'm a huge traktor advocate and I like to play my songs out. I'm not huge on controllerism but I use loops to extend my breaks, and for mixing. A lot of the time I'll have a track looping before I mix it in, then I EQ inside the loop and start on a queue point after a phrase. So I'm kinda sampling it/chopping it up but I end up playing the track out anyway. Joris Voorn is one of my favourite DJs because he does both. Sometimes he will be cutting songs up in traktor, other times he will play them all the way through. I don't think that just because you're using a controller and traktor you should be running 4 decks and mashing loops together, but knowing your software and taking advantage of its features will go a long way. I do agree though that regardless of what you do, nothing beats having a really healthy knowledge of your library and the music you like playing.
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Aug 25, 2011 19:07
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How do you guys know if a gig's money is honest? There's really no way for me to know what 10% of bar actually was, and it would be easy for an employee to cheat on the payout.
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Aug 25, 2011 22:17
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Mescal posted:How do you guys know if a gig's money is honest? You don't.
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Aug 25, 2011 22:22
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If you do a single gig you'll never know. If it's regular you'll be able to spot good and bad nights after a while.
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Aug 25, 2011 22:43
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Sjoewe bring back whatever you had there before that was lol And yeah, you don't know. Have a good relationship with the bar/venue and throw a good party and they might be less inclined to rip you off but in general, nightlife is not the most up-and-up industry and you're kind of at the whim of the bar owner or promoter.
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Aug 25, 2011 22:46
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Hehe, something about boiling tea from your fee money, and if you get high you'll know it's dirty... 
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Aug 25, 2011 23:10
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Mescal posted:How do you guys know if a gig's money is honest? There's really no way for me to know what 10% of bar actually was, and it would be easy for an employee to cheat on the payout. Unless you know them pretty well, they won't be. If you know roughly how many people are there during the night and the typical habits of the crowd are. Here in Pittsburgh at most of the places I've been pretty good at guessing with: Number of people x $5 (average drink price) x 1.5 drinks / person = average bar sales. Granted it's easier at smaller venues. And at those are the places when we've had to negotiate a percentage.
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Aug 25, 2011 23:25
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I wish I had to worry about whether somebody is cheating me or not! There is so much competition here if you get a gig that pays you've worked hard for it.
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Aug 26, 2011 00:08
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Firaga posted:I wish I had to worry about whether somebody is cheating me or not! There is so much competition here if you get a gig that pays you've worked hard for it. What city do you live in? Yeah--being in the self-promotion business as much as the djing business gets frustrating, but wearing out your shoe leather is worth it since it tends to pay off all at once. (Not that i'm a "successful dj" by any means, I'm doing small venues.) I broke into the places I'm playing now by being available as a last-minute rescue DJ when people cancel. After that they knew I was reliable, so I got my regular gigs with them. btw--if you ask around venues and a number of them all do booking through Joe Blow, MAKE FRIENDS WITH JOE.
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Aug 26, 2011 00:28
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Mescal posted:What city do you live in? Toronto, everybody here is a DJ. When I say everybody I mean everybody. It's not like NYC where you have a bunch of dirty loft/warehouse parties in Brooklyn and a few big clubs/venues, also the drinking age is 19 (I love you NYC, no offence to you!!!). There is EDM coming out of every single club/bar/lounge/you name it. It sounds amazing until you realize that all this creates is an outlet for the most popular kids in college to throw their stupid parties. The quality in this city is extremely hit or miss and some of the bookings are completely rear end backwards. Nobody is even going to look at you because every other 20something year old is spamming facebook with their soundcloud. You need to either kiss some SERIOUS rear end, or find people that are extremely like minded and be very good so that when you get a chance behind the decks you get rebooked. Getting paid/making money is hard because there are a million parties going on every single night, chances are you're either going to break even or have just enough money to pay the "headlining" DJ. If you're making money, you're either A. playing a real venue, probably opening for somebody or playing an offnight. Or B. you know a lot of loving people and you're playing something really accessible like dubstep. Even then, I know people who work at clubs and throw parties on their offnights and sometimes only break even. The older, more established locals all have residencies and have an extremely loyal following, or have blown up and are touring the world/moved out (deadmau5, sydney blu, carlo lio). So unless you want to see the same guys every single weekend, it can be hard to find a good show. Although every so often something happens and reminds me why I love this city so much. So don't get me wrong, I'm just venting, but my point is this industry is pretty cutthroat, especially in this city, and you need to work really really really hard to get noticed and paid. I'm lucky I run with a group of really awesome and talented people. When people ask me for advice I tell everybody the same thing, just keep going. Some days its like pounding your head against the wall until you pass out but eventually you'll punch a hole in said wall. Make connections, make yourself known, PRACTICE. Find promoters and DJs you like, rather than ones that simply throw big parties. If you can work with the person you'll help each other go really far and create something yourself. Hard work and favours don't go unnoticed. Firaga fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Aug 26, 2011 |
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Aug 26, 2011 01:28
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geeves posted:On another note, is it just me or is rekordbox probably the worst piece of poo poo music management software out there? You've got something quite odd going on there, I loving ADORE Rekordbox as it's so ridiculously easy to use and of course plays very nicely with my CDJs thanks to the BPM analysing it does. I've got something like 6500 tracks on it at the moment and often make new playlists to piss about with, sometimes selecting swathes of tracks in one go to copy over and I've never had a fault with it in that respect. Initially when I tried to throw thousands of tracks after the first install it didn't like it and crashed. Feeding it less stupid amount of information was obviously the right thing to do and it's worked almost faultlessly since then, only crashing on really rare occasions but then the PC I use it on is a fairly ancient 1.8ghz 2gig RAM'd beast...
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Aug 26, 2011 13:53
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88h88 posted:You've got something quite odd going on there, I loving ADORE Rekordbox as it's so ridiculously easy to use and of course plays very nicely with my CDJs thanks to the BPM analysing it does. It's been behaving more nicely - thanks to some advice from Dopo. It still crashes often and doesn't quantize, but it's playing nicely with playlists. Now I just have to get used to finding things by track name - which I've always been a very visual on a record's label color, etc. or would know the location of what track I wanted in my CDJ book and would then know the position of the track name written on the CD, and get what track number - all without ever remembering the track name. Weird, I know. I did a mix (my first in probably 2 years and first time I've really mixed since Feb/March) last night that I'll post in the Mixes thread, but it was frustrating as hell having to "re-find" the tracks I wanted to play and barely got some of the mixes off. Edit: I really like the playlist history and export of it - makes it easy to get my setlist. Need to write a good regex method though to make it better. geeves fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Aug 26, 2011 |
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Aug 26, 2011 13:59
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geeves posted:Now I just have to get used to finding things by track name - which I've always been a very visual on a record's label color, etc. or would know the location of what track I wanted in my CDJ book and would then know the position of the track name written on the CD, and get what track number - all without ever remembering the track name. Weird, I know. I use CD's and I do this exact thing.
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Aug 27, 2011 02:20
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I'm playing a party/event dealie sometime in the middle of September. They're throwing me on first and having me play for an hour. However, I know the guy running everything personally and he says that my hour officially doesn't start until there's a good amount of people dancing and the like, so that we all have our fair time to play. So if there's no one there by 9 but by 9:20 there's a decent amount, then I'd play from 9:20-10:20. Since I go to a music school, there's usually a variety of music playing, but when they have DJs it's usually electro/dubstep/etc, which is what I spin and I think I'm pretty decent at. However, due to the rather odd nature of these events, I have to basically start off at a decent energy level and ramp up quickly in less than hour, but at the same time not overwhelm everyone. I think I'll be spinning mostly drumstep and dubstep, with a little drum and bass, moombahton, and electro here and there. Anyone have any good tips for ramping up energy levels in a shorter time span but in a coherent way?
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Aug 27, 2011 02:39
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I don't know what kind of scene you're talking about but I would frown really hard at anybody playing drumstep at 9pm... no offense but there's really no way to ramp the energy up like that at that time of night, people aren't hosed up enough yet (unless you're Rusko and this is a music festival or something). You MIGHT get away with funky moombahton or chill, non-wobbly dubstep but I think that high energy music is a bad idea. At 9pm I'm playing like, Tom Tom Club and Nas instrumentals.
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Aug 27, 2011 02:48
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That Wicked Walrus posted:I don't know what kind of scene you're talking about but I would frown really hard at anybody playing drumstep at 9pm... no offense but there's really no way to ramp the energy up like that at that time of night, people aren't hosed up enough yet (unless you're Rusko and this is a music festival or something). You MIGHT get away with funky moombahton or chill, non-wobbly dubstep but I think that high energy music is a bad idea. At 9pm I'm playing like, Tom Tom Club and Nas instrumentals. I definitely understand where you're coming from, but Boston's scene, at least around parties and a lot of night club events, is really loving weird. A large amount of people show up out of nowhere at the most random times, wanting heavy hitting music immediately. Unless you're playing at a proper night club, most places usually start strong and peak strong. If it was up to me, I'd be playing something more along the lines of tech/deep/funky house, liquid dnb, chillstep, and the likes, and ramp up the energy for other DJs. However, a lot of people will show up at random times, and they won't move for anything unless its heavy bass and dirty. Ramping the energy up in a timely and cohesive fashion is almost always a very bad idea, and never works out well. It's not easy to adapt to, hence why I came here for some advice. One of the biggest criticisms I heard from the guy running this place about another opener DJ is that his tracks didn't hit hard enough. He tried to stick to a more reasonable formula, but between 9-11pm there were already a good enough mix of drunk and sober people that it demanded some harder hitting music to be played. I've tried playing chiller dubstep to warm people up at a mostly dubstep/drum and bass night here, such as Benga/Coki/Skream etc., and it did not go too well. The moment I tried playing harder stuff, everyone responded positively. I'm not sure how to ramp up energy in a smaller time frame, but if anyone has any experience with this weird kind of situation, it'd be awesome to hear from them. Edit: Boston's night scene has a very constrained amount of time under which it can operate. People head out somewhere between 9-11 depending on where they live, and at 12 almost all the transportation systems shut down. Since most people can't afford taxi fare, this is the extent to where a lot of students can party, unless they're willing to walk long distances. Bars and clubs shut down at 2 AM unless it's RISE, and that's to the extent where the rest of the population stick around. I've seen some live shows last longer than that, but those were bigger acts such as Dieselboy and the like. In general, Boston is pretty drat weird. reversefungi fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Aug 27, 2011 |
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Aug 27, 2011 08:10
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The Dark Wind posted:I definitely understand where you're coming from, but Boston's scene, at least around parties and a lot of night club events, is really loving weird. A large amount of people show up out of nowhere at the most random times, wanting heavy hitting music immediately. Unless you're playing at a proper night club, most places usually start strong and peak strong. If it was up to me, I'd be playing something more along the lines of tech/deep/funky house, liquid dnb, chillstep, and the likes, and ramp up the energy for other DJs. However, a lot of people will show up at random times, and they won't move for anything unless its heavy bass and dirty. Ramping the energy up in a timely and cohesive fashion is almost always a very bad idea, and never works out well. It's not easy to adapt to, hence why I came here for some advice. I go to school in Boston and have lived in the area my whole life and this seems pretty accurate. I think it's because Boston is basically all college students or recent graduates that want to party their faces off whether its 9pm or 2am. I do think though its more about energy and variation than anything though. The best received opening DJ I've seen in Boston was Marty Party for The Glitch Mob and he played stuff that was significantly heavier than The Glitch Mob but it didn't take away from their set one bit. People still went nuts for both.
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Aug 27, 2011 14:10
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I don't know if this is the right thread to ask, but what are some of the best (i.e. most effective spread for cheapest price) lighting units for you guys? I've been looking at the Chauvet 4-bar and some of the stuff at cheaplights.com but I'd like some of your input.
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Aug 27, 2011 18:30
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Let me know if this is worth it. I'm thinking of getting a pair of technics SZL-1200MK5s for use with the Traktor Kontrol S4. A guy on craigslist is selling the two 1200MK5's with a case for $700. Is this a good deal? Overkill for the application?
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Aug 27, 2011 23:04
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Irish Thunder posted:Let me know if this is worth it. I'm thinking of getting a pair of technics SZL-1200MK5s for use with the Traktor Kontrol S4. A guy on craigslist is selling the two 1200MK5's with a case for $700. Is this a good deal? Overkill for the application? If you're still playing vinyl - then definitely. If they're in good condition, including cases those things will last you forever.
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Aug 27, 2011 23:07
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I recall a while back someone was asking for tracks which transitioned from one style/tempo to another for ease of mixing between them. Electro (131~bpm) - DnB (175bpm): Shock One - Polygon (Dirtyphonics remix) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoF4zX24c7s Are there anymore which transition like this at all? I recall the Tits & Clits remix of DJ Fresh's Gold Dust did similar going from Electro to dubstep, it'd just require a bit of tweaking and it's good to go. Any tips for mixing between genres at all? Some BPMs just aren't going together so what are the options for doing this? Anyone here mix multiple BPMs/genres willing to throw some knowledge/examples at me? Much appreciated!
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Aug 28, 2011 17:37
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That Audio1 guy created a bunch of dubstep to drumstep transitions available for download on his Soundcloud. I usually just echo out of my current track and start up the new song. I guess I could make my own in Ableton, but that would require me to be good at Ableton, which I'm not.
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Aug 28, 2011 17:50
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88h88 posted:I recall a while back someone was asking for tracks which transitioned from one style/tempo to another for ease of mixing between them. I've been slowly gathering some songs that do these transitions. Here are some good ones Bassnectar - Ready 2 Rage - Goes from Dubstep to Drumstep Pendulum - Salt in the Wound - Drum and Bass to Dubstep (then back to DnB) Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood (Borgore Remix) - Dubstep to Drumstep/DnB Doctor P - Big Boss (Oscillator Z Drumstep VIP) - Drumstep to Dubstep Tremourz - Sexy Party (Terravita Remix) - I believe starts Dubstep, then Drumstep These are just off the top of my head. There are also some other songs that don't change tempo but whose breakdowns are sparse and wide enough that they can be used to transition to anything else. One thing I'm always a fan of doing is playing Noisia - Stigma, then at the breakdown after the main drop it does a sort of whirring powering down sound, and at that point it's really easy to just filter and volume fade in another song before Stigma starts back up again.
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Aug 28, 2011 21:28
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88h88 posted:I recall a while back someone was asking for tracks which transitioned from one style/tempo to another for ease of mixing between them. Electro/stuff around 126-130 to dubstep is pretty easy, I just put the pitch slider to -8% or so if it is 70/140bpm, and then put it back at 0% after 4 measures (or when the song kicks in), all while filtering the electro/house track. You have to be good at adjusting it on the fly or else it sounds bad. Like Dark Wind said just find songs that have breakdowns where it just a whitenoise sweep or something like that with no beat.
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Aug 29, 2011 01:49
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The Dark Wind posted:One thing I'm always a fan of doing is playing Noisia - Stigma, then at the breakdown after the main drop it does a sort of whirring powering down sound, and at that point it's really easy to just filter and volume fade in another song before Stigma starts back up again. Ha, you mean the power down at the end of the track? It's a 3 minute track so there's not much you can do with it after the initial intro and blast off into the chorus. I know what you mean though, I've got a fair few tracks with breaks and I've mixed off them before but never really thought to use them to either crank or drop the tempo. Clearly I'm looking at this in the wrong way! Electro to dubstep isn't bad to get to, I have a couple of higher tempo electro tracks that I can build up to 140bpm so the transition is smooth as gently caress as I'm not a fan of tempo tweaking the poo poo out of everything even though few people would ever notice. Thanks for the suggestions, I need to go play some more.
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Aug 29, 2011 21:29
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Well, rekordbox was playing nicely. Can anyone explain this (aside from terrible software programming)? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD_upB8Msn0 Yes, the tracks moved to the play list change to other tracks?!
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Aug 30, 2011 15:53
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geeves posted:Well, rekordbox was playing nicely. How did you manage to get the collection up on the same page as the playlists? Standard layout keeps them separate and I highlight tracks, right click them either one by one or in groups and then 'add to playlist - whichever playlist'. 
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Aug 30, 2011 17:21
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88h88 posted:How did you manage to get the collection up on the same page as the playlists? Standard layout keeps them separate and I highlight tracks, right click them either one by one or in groups and then 'add to playlist - whichever playlist'. That's what the tab with the small arrow is for. 
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Aug 30, 2011 17:32
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Something very strange is up with your install as it works fine for me.
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Aug 30, 2011 17:40
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88h88 posted:Something very strange is up with your install as it works fine for me. Are you using 1.5 or 1.4.x? I'm on 1.5
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Aug 30, 2011 17:42
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1.5 here too, it prompts auto updates whenever it sees one online. Very very odd, wish I knew what th deal was with that.
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Aug 30, 2011 18:43
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So I just ordered a Traktor Kontrol S4. I want to have a cheap laptop to go with it (currently most of my music is on a desktop). As the Traktor Kontrol has an integrated audio card and all that, what should I be looking for in a laptop to pair with it? Just a poo poo box with a big fast HD, and decent CPU and RAM?
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Aug 31, 2011 01:56
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Yeah. I think that anything that isn't a Netbook should be fine.
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Aug 31, 2011 02:28
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Irish Thunder posted:So I just ordered a Traktor Kontrol S4. I want to have a cheap laptop to go with it (currently most of my music is on a desktop). As the Traktor Kontrol has an integrated audio card and all that, what should I be looking for in a laptop to pair with it? Just a poo poo box with a big fast HD, and decent CPU and RAM? Depends if you're using sample decks and FX.
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Aug 31, 2011 02:56
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OG KUSH BLUNTS posted:Depends if you're using sample decks and FX. Very true. I can run Traktor 2 with 2 decks and FX just fine on a Macbook 2.1ghz Core 2 Duo with 4gb of ram, but to get low latency/sample decks/tons of FX at once, really, you need something decent. There are some great deals on last gen Intel i5 processor laptops, I would seriously consider your options there.
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Aug 31, 2011 10:49
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