Any DJ in the house?

[rei101]

Hi

I have a Mac Book Pro 17" and two iPad G4. I do electronic music and I am an audio engineer and stuff. I am a professional VJ, have done shows at teh Ultra Music festival and things like that for over 10 years.

I want to do some DJing to spare time and have fun at parties and probably mixing at some places eventually, for the fun of it and to make some money here and there.

Any way, I was thinking in buying a Pioneer DJ DDJ-SZ Professional Serato DJ Controller or something like that. But I have my MBP and two iPads.

Is there a way I can have a DJ software in the MBP and control it from the two iPads for scratching? And what DJ software is the best out there?

I already have OSC and Lemur I believe. But can I use the two iPads to control at same time? I would like to take that route and have some fun before expending money in a Pioneer.

Thank you!!!!

 

[Johbremat]

• Buy a mixer and decent set of headphones
• Buy the Traktor DJ app
• Load the app on both iPads and wire output to mixer

Saves having to use your MBP. Learns the basics (track selection, blending, beat matching) and decide if it's worth spending more money on hardware or if this type of setup is suitable for you, and if the money and your time is better spent on developing your track library.

 

[sim667]

'Kinell, a DDJ SZ is a bit overkill for "giving it a go" My housemate has one, they're beautiful pieces of kit, but about £1700?! Also you've gotta think about logistics, if you end up playing at club nights, how many people are going to want to clear their CDJ's etc off the mixing table, to accomodate a DDJ SZ which comes in at over a metre long.

I've got a Traktor Kontrol S2 which I've had 2 or 3 years, its been absolutely amazing and I've learnt a lot with it, but admittedly I am looking to upgrade. That said, it was a quarter of the price of the DDJ SZ. Having just bought two record decks and a nice mixer, I'm seriously toying with the idea of getting a soundcard with split output so I can just plug that into any club mixer and use two channels.... Although I still need to find a way to have a jogwheel and I like the phase skip function on traktor, so I'd have to buy a F1 (i think its the F1 it might be the X1).

As far as scratching on the ipads go, you can get midi controllers for the ipads that will control serato and traktor, you need to use an application called osculator (or there's a very complicated free one called Pbase or something like that) on your mac, and then use TouchOSC on your mac. I would say (and I'm saying this as someone who can't scratch), that doing it on an ipad probably wont do you any favours, its simply not tactile enough.

You can scratch on jog wheels on controllers, but again its just not quite right. If you really want to learn to scratch but digitally, my suggestion would be to go either with traktor or serato (as per preference), and use control vinyl on actual vinyl decks. But talking about scratching when you're think about just having a go at DJ'ing for the first time, really is trying to run before you can walk. To get into scratching you need to learn phrasing and beatmatching first. As a digital DJ I can phrase very well (Often better than my freinds who learnt to dj on analogue), but I can't beatmatch my ear (all my freinds who learnt analogue can), hence I'm teaching myself to beatmatch.

If you want to hear what you can do on the Kontrol S2 all of my soundcloud mixes are mixed on one (except the live at Soundsystem strikes back one, thats a combination of traktor, CDJ 3000's, A DJ800M and a Kontrol F1 - its my freinds setup).

Personally if I were you I'd got for something like the S2 or S4 just to start off with (I believe the S4 is now the same price as the S2, it used to be double the price), and then I'd look at using the ipads for samples, one shots, or using traktor remix decks or something.

BTW I'm not saying the Native Instruments Kontrol range is the one and only, there's lots more on the market, I just don't know what they are.

b!shbashbosh soundcloud