Whether you’re looking for the latest tracks and acapellas or searching for new avenues to expose your own productions, digital record pools are a great dj tool. Record pools, now more commonly known as music or dj pools, are symbiotic arrangements between professional djs and record companies. Djs get access to a large pool of new music for minimum or no cost and the record companies get feedback and exposure. This concept has been in effect since the mid 70’s and, more specifically, since disco club pioneer David Mancuso and others created The New York Record Pool.  Over the past 5 years, digital music pools have become more popular and with all the new options it can be a bit confusing which ones are worth your time or money. Read on for our thoughts and breakdowns of some the top options available today.

Continue reading Digital Record Pool Round-up

2009 was a hell of a year for the digital dj world. We saw a lot of great announcements but not that many great products. There were a bevy of releases and offerings that didn’t quite live up to their expected promise or just flat failed completely. So to wrap up the year, we would like to share a short list of some more notable failures and a few dj technologies that did hit their mark.
Continue reading Epic Dj Fails of 2009 (and some good stuff too)

As big proponents of harmonic mixing, the DJ TechTools staff started out with a simple question: which program that analyzes a song’s key gives the most accurate results? To find out, we looked up the keys using sheet music for a selection of 50 pop/rock songs and then analyzed those songs using four key-detecting apps: BeaTunes 2, Mixed In Key 4, MixMeister Fusion and Rapid Evolution 2. Read on to find out the results.

Continue reading Key Analysis Software Smackdown

How many times have you searched through the hundreds or thousands of tracks in your library and found yourself trying to remember what a particular track sounds like? I’m sure some people will say they know every single song in their collection at all times, but that was a lot more believable when you only showed up to the club with a crate of vinyl or a book of CDs.

When you are squinting into your 13-inch computer screen at 1am in a sweaty club, with three girls tapping you on the shoulder telling you what track they want to hear for their friend’s birthday, I doubt you can still remember what that demo your friend sent you last week sounded like. You’re pretty sure it should mix well. It’s in the same BPM range and relative key as the one blasting on the dance floor, but will it really work? Was it a laid-back warm up song, or a great groove track? Did it have a solid bouncing bassline or a large woman belting out a passionate chorus? I have been in this position so many times, I devised a system that should help you to never question your next track again.

Continue reading Organize Your Music By Track Type

In the dj world its all about the name. If club owners, booking agents and the public recognize your name then a successful career is not far away. Getting your name out there will require years of hard work, dedication and a dash of luck but its all going to be lost if your name is not memorable. So how does one dj set himself apart from the crowd and make his name memorable?

mem·o·ra·ble
Function: adjective
Etymology:
Middle English,  from memorare to remind,
: worth remembering : notable <a memorable occasion>

So according to that definition, you need to remind people of your name and make it worth remembering. One true and tried method used by djs and corporations alike is to make yourself a great logo. While a logo may go against everything your artistic personality stands for, the fact is that a logo WILL help people remember your dj name and take it more seriously. Our friends over at Mixed in Key created a handy tutorial on dj logos and here is a portion of that article:

Continue reading Build your Dj Career

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Today is Friday, October 31rst so that means its time for tricks and treats in digital dj domain. Here is the letter of the week:

I just read your tagging tutorial and you mentioned you will/did? do a part 2. I looked around (maybe not thouroughly enough) but I could not find it. I am looking forward to purchasing a vci-300 in the future and started tagging my files and would like to see how you and others do it.

Any help on this would be great.

Stephan

Thanks for the letter Stephen, and for pointing out we never did a tagging part 2. For those that didn’t see the first one I recommend you start by reading that article here. There are so many ways to go about organizing your music and I am sure our readers will have many more great suggestions than I do. Here is one trick I have employed that works really well and will be even more relevent in Traktor Pro. Continue reading Tag your Songs

Since MIDI is becoming a major part of how many people dj it seems appropriate to understand as much as possible about the format. A few questions have popped up about midi latencey, how to reduce it and which cables or interfaces are the best to use. Instead of shooting in the dark we asked an expert, namely Florian Bomers- creator of Bomes Midi Translator, the tough questions about midi.

Continue reading Midi Latencey Interview with a Pro

Brought to you by the makers of Mixed in Key, Platinum Notes (PN) is the tool you need to put that extra polish on your mp3s to make them really sizzle in the clubs. Some of the things you can expect are:

• Automatically adjust the tracks volume, so that every track has the same perceived loudness.
• Repair clipped peaks
• Adjust the dynamics of the music if needed
• Adjust the pitch of the tracks if needed, to make perfect harmonic mixes.

So, does it work as advertised? I’ve tried the software on numerous tracks, like Beatport MP3, ripped CDs, and on various musical genres, from pumping techno to disco. Let’s take those features one by one:

Continue reading Review: Platinum Notes (Mac)+ Give Away

There is currently a heated debate about the use of the Sync button. Some say it’s cheating, some say: as long as it sounds good for the audience, it’s ok… I think that everyone is missing the point. Learning to beatmatch by hand is a skill that any DJ should learn. The only reason he should learn it is to have at his disposal a broader way to express himself artistically.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using the sync button. It saves time and allows you to do something else, it can also be a lifesaver when you have lost it while in a mix. I’m really glad to have that function at hand, and I use it often, even if I’m able to beatmatch two records by ear in a short amount of time. So, what’s the big deal with learning to do it by hand? Well, I think that the perfect mix in term of phase and speed doesn’t really exist. It is all a matter of what you want to express artistically. Hand beatmatching techniques can be used to breath life and spontaneity into your mixes, and have been used this way by all the best DJs since the beginning. And it sounds really different from automated matching. No judgment of value, there, both can be useful.

I now need to show you a trick to prove my point. It’s a very old and cool trick, which has a lot of practical applications, among them being able to teach you how to beatmatch by hand, or get better if you already know how.

Continue reading Phasing – Old school beatmatching for all