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| quote: | Originally posted by Vida1003
I've only been DJing for 2.5 years accumitvely and in my bedroom but I'll try to give you a hand. First off it's not rocket science, if you already have a background in production you should be able to learn basic mixing in an hour. I started DJing before producing so it took me awhile.
As for gear don't make a big investment in the beginning. You don't need CDJ 2000's to mix in your bedroom and realistically you don't NEED high end equipment of that calibur to get started gigging. I was an idiot and started with a numark mixdeck express which is very limited in capabilites and has no built in effects. Look into some cheap controllers with built in effects. The Pioneer DDJ series offers a wide variety of quality controllers for a reasonable price. http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-DDJ-S...rds=pioneer+ddj This is the one I have been using ever since I got rid of that POS mixdeck express and I would reccomend it to anyone, I plan on using this till I can afford a CDJ 2000/DJM 1000 setup and possibly here and there after that.
Make sure you get a controller with a built in sound card if you are not wanting to shell out extra cash for an audio interface. Now another thing to consider is what laptop to use. If you already have one or even a desktop that will work for now, when you get more serious and think about possibly gigging you may want to invest in something more reliable and tuned to the purpose. I am a scrub and play on an ASUS gaming laptop though most of the people on here will probably flame me and say go Mac which if you are going to Gig live they are right. Windows crashes easily and also causes sound glitches. You also want to consider what software you are going to use for virtual mixing if you go the controller route as I have recommended. I naturally hate numark so don't ask me about Serato, but as for anything else they all pretty much do the same thing and I've used most of the big name ones. Depends on what you're mixing too. Virtual DJ is my go to. Traktor has alot of features that are made for certain Traktor specific controllers so if you want to get the most out of it I would check out some of the traktor specific controllers but otherwise I say VDJ FTW.
Now that you have your gear comes the fun part. Mixing. The first advice I can give has nothing to do with your decks, which is listen to ALOT of fucking music. all day everywhere,at work if you can,while your cooking,cleaning,studying...and be thinking about how the songs are built and how you could lead different ones into each other. There is this theory known as harmonic mixing which involves mixing songs by relative key but you don't HAVE to mix that way. Their are several other aspects of a tune that can allow them to blend well into each other, and there are also times when 2 songs may be in relative keys and sound fucking awful fading in/out of each other. When you start to think about gigging I also suggest listening to radio shows in you're respective genre as well as going to clubs and events and observing the dance floor to see whats hot and how people react to different tunes/styles.
When mixing.NEVER,EVER use the crossfader. Most controllers and mixers allow you to disable it but if not just leave it center and don't touch it. You wanna use you're up and down faders instead, It gives you a lot more control of how you come in and out of your songs.For starters, don't mess around with effects or anything. Try mixing different songs together 2 and 3 at a time or however long of a set as you'd like and just screw with the EQ's,get used to how they affect the track and how adjusting them can help the mix between the two tunes. I.E the kick is the low frequency aswell as the bassline,when coming into a mix assuming you have both tunes synces properly,your kick on deck 2 my be overpowering deck 1,you will want to lower the low on 2 to keep 1's kick while maybe bringing in the lead (usually mid) from 2 over the kick and bassline(lows) on 1.And tip...never do vocals ontop of vocals.It gets a little more complicated and I'm not going to write anymore about it because I'm not an expert myself yet but I hope I helped a bit.I apologize for poor grammar,bad terminology and etc...ahead of time. You might wanna check this guy out most of what I know comes from him https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr..._eA71X2quaKvziw |
Highest quality post this subforum has seen in a LONG time.
Well done.
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Click the link below to stream all of my mixes past and present. New mixes go up about once a month. Enjoy!
www.mixcloud.com/jluger
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