Who amongst us has not had their love of buttons forged in the fires of Super Mario land? None, I surmise, none. There-fore its not surprising that most men in their 20’s still have a soft spot for all things Nintendo, especially the original NES paddle. With the exception of the Wii, frankly, its all been down hill from there
Check out the video below for a guide on how to re-use those original paddles for other interesting things like giant Nintendo controllers.
When djing, your essentially a pilot manning the helm of a plane. While there are many obvious things your in charge of during the flight, there is one that you may not think of. Its your job to make sure the sound coming out of the speakers is the best quality it can be. Lets look at a few basic rules you should follow to keep yourself out of the red.
Continue reading ‘Dont Crash the Plane- Follow these rules.’
Since we first wrote about his forays into musical experimentation and what some are calling controllerism, Dj Numark has added more toys and a bunch of new tricks to his arsenal. Curious to finally find out what he is actually using we decided to give the man himself a shout out and ask a few questions.
Dj TT: Would you call your performances with controllers a dj set or a live show?
Numark: Well I do two types of shows right now. The first type of show is basically a straight DJ set where I mix records for people to dance to (rare Funk, Hip Hop, Brazilian etc). The second set involves a bunch of Kids toys, gadgets and drum machines. I use an Mpc as my cue point controller for both shows. I guess I’d call the DJ set a DJ set and the Toy set a DJ set / performance. I think I bring a performance quality to both sets though.
As Traktor and Midi controllers have evolved, the number of possible ways you can assign a jog wheel has increased dramatically. There are more than 10 ways for instance that you can slow down or speed up a song in Traktor 3.4. So which do you want to assign your jog wheel to? Lets take a look at the primary 3.
Continue reading ‘Pitch Bend, Tempo Bend, Jog Bend, CD Touch Jog?’
Its safe to say that the very DIY arcade button mod I did about a year ago kicked off this whole crazy site. As we have improved the site, so it seemed it might be time to also upgrade the old VCI. Its now equipped with a band new case, professional grade cutouts and a hi grade paint job that should last a lot longer than the first one. The point of this article is not to make you jealous, but instead to let everyone know I made 2 and the other one is on ebay right now.
Yes, auto mixing is the ultimate anti-dj tool and goes against everything we stand for. But then there are weddings, or opening sets where a over-zealous club owner has requested that you start playing before the doors have even been opened. Its during these times that auto mix and an open wifi connection allow me to catch up on deep back logs of Dj TechTools mail. Traktor is equipped with a nifty “auto-play” feature but it only cross fades and requires building a good play list. Auto mixing that includes beat matching and cross fading directly in I tunes would be the ultimate lazy dj tool.
Reviewed by: Bill Griffin aka SOCIALPEST
If you’re looking for a MIDI pad controller on a modest budget and can’t be troubled to build your own then no doubt you will have found these three; M-Audio Trigger Finger, Korg padKontrol and the Akai MPD24.
They are all around a similar budget and each has their own appeal but on paper its a tough call. Thanks to the help of online store thomann.de I got my hands on all three and set each up in Traktor, Serato and Live to see which would be reigning champ in the sub 200 EUR midi pad controller class.
Continue reading ‘Pad Controller Smackdown’
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