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Hey guys,

I've been bartending in a student bar at a technical university for 1½ years. Since I don't have such a hefty workload on many nights, I would like to get into DJ'ing too. We're already doing this in the sense that we're editing a playlist with our huge (but old, and shitty) music library, but I'd like to start doing something where I can get the songs to flow together and generally make a continuous, unified sound experience rather than a bunch of shitty tunes.

So I'm thinking:
- What software should I start out with? I have a dual core IBM T60, and not alot of extra real estate on the bardisk.
- How do I get experience with this?
- Usually we take a lot of wishes in one night... most of them we don't have, so we incorporate them into the set by playing them from whatever streaming service we can find them on. How do I incorporate this into the set?
- Anything else I need to do/know?

Get Mixxx a reasonably sized USB storage solution and possible a USB DJ Controller.

(note I don't actually know what I'm talking about since it's WEEKEND and etc ;))

oh spelling/grammar well who cares?

My fave DJ:ing tool is Traktor (Pro) by Native Instruments. But then again, I'm no DJ so I dunno if there's something better out there ;). It's a cool tool though with loop control, filters, beat detection/automatic matching, playlist control etc. AFAIK it doesn't support streaming but maybe you can use an external stream player and get Traktor to play the stream player from an aux input, I don't know. Or, find a tool that reads the stream and dumps it to an mp3 in stream-time while Traktor is reading the same mp3 in real-time.

I suppose you get experience as with anything else - practice! Play around, play music, mix and match and get feedback from people.

Oh, and a hardware mixer controller could be very useful if you want to get serious. Novation Nocturn is great to start with (I got into it in a matter of minutes myself :)): http://us.novationmusic.com/us/products/midi_controllers/nocturn

I've been in a similar situation during my studies.



The usual suspects, Traktor, Virtual DJ...



Incorporating random stuff is the leaf of no-good so make it difficult. Pretend you don't have the internets. Because streaming 96k/128k mp3 on loudspeakers will sound like shit. It's better to train people to bring the tunes on USB anyway. I remember once a girl coming home burning a CD so that she would bring back her wished music.

Also you want to DJ but I think it's way better to have a local DJ playing, since a lot of people have turn-tables and really know their stuff. It's a real skill that takes years to master... it's not about having the right software and you won't learn it right with software.


Yes. Pretty much everyone like heavily compressed music, especially the youth, especially on a shitty room and/or shitty speakers. Clean, dry and compressed sound will be preffered regardless of the genre.
The acoustics of the room will make or break the tune you play.
People will dance approximately 57.45% more with sub-basses.

Somehow, you have to recognize which drugs the attendants are using and how it affects their tastes. As a very rough approximation, let just say marijuana users will love deep bassy dubby stuff, drunk people want to have fun, and people taking amphetamins won't be able to stop dancing with proper techno vibes. Girls seem to prefer songs with vocals they already know, etc... well, at least in my experience. IMO.

Technically: For DJing with your Laptop you will probably need a second sound card for pre-listening. When using Traktor/Mixxx/whatever you can do everything with your mouse or touchpad, but a controller is much more convenient. Bonus is that there are also controllers that have an audio interface builtin.
When using Mixxx (or any other software) make sure the hardware is compatible!

I suppose I should stick my oar in here?!?!

...need I say more?

Ableton + nanoKONTROL is my vice.

Mp3 player and audio crossfader should suffice.

i use a noseflute

Traktor and some stuff to enhance your laptop sound output is what the MP3ing DJs use over here.

I like http://www.virtualdj.com/ better than Traktor. It lacks a view where both tunes are layered on top of each other, but it is a matter of taste. What isn't a matter of taste is http://www.mixedinkey.com/, I strongly recommend that you look into that and tag your entire library. Oh and http://musicbrainz.org/. Also get a decent external firewire card (Focusrite Saffire?) and a good midi over usb controller. This way your setup should be scalable for bigger PAs as well. Fix latency issues with http://www.asio4all.com/. If you have enough money, buy two Technics sl1210s, a mixer and some vinyl to get the basics right.

Have fun and good luck!

Stating the obvious, but ofcourse if you can ditch all usb-stuff and do all external stuff with firewire (controller, harddisk, audiocard).

If you're on a budget, look into the Korg nanoKONTROL or Behringer controllers (like bcd 3000 / bcr2000) and use a (Terratec?) internal pci soundcard. Be sure to have a second line-out for prelistening with headphones (like by rär said).

Let the visitors write down all requests and download them once the party is over, tag them and add them to your library. Using Virtual dj in combination with youtube/spotify (for the requests you haven't got on mp3) is tricky, since you'll be unable to beatmatch and you don't know the key of the requested song. It will require a lot of improvisation I'm afraid. Take a look into radio-jingles maybe, or make some yourself?

If you want to get into PROPER djing, i.e. Beat match mixing, turnsole use a midi controller, use a proper hardware mixer. No matter how low your latency is, it will never be the same as a good set of faders.

As for software, I swear by traktor.

Cool, thanks guys, I'll look into it. Seems like I can get something worthwhile going. Thanks.