What scenes do DJTT DJs play in? And how do you spin?
So when i look at pictures in the set-up forum, i cannot help but wonder... How do you use all of that, and where do you play? What kind of gigs give the opportunity to use that amount of gear or do anything interesting with it at all? I play in the rave scene in New England. Around here, the scene is almost 100% dominated by CDJs, or Serato Control vinyl. I am one of a handful of DJs who use controllers, and out of the hundreds of DJs I've seen, I've almost never seen anyone do much besides beatmatch and trransition. Is this local to me, or is the rave scene everywhere just about using a traditional set up and transitioning between tracks?
Where else do you guys play that lets you do performance DJing? Most events around here involve booths where you can't see what the DJ is doing in the first place, and the thought of someone doing more than transitioning between two tracks has never really occurred to anyone in the crowd. Everyone around here thinks DJing is all about beatmatching two tracks, then transitioning. During most DJs sets, there's one track playing most of the time. There is no concept here of performing or doing anything creative live, most DJs don't even mix anything longer than a a few measures, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone spin more than two decks at a time in my life. I'm not really frustrated by it, but I do wish more people were aware of the concept of performance DJing, and I wish more people did it, and got booked for it. I only know two or three DJs around here that do anything similar to what we talk about doing on these forums.
TL;DR: The scene I play in is 100% dominated by traditional DJs who transition, and nobody understands performance DJing/controllerism. I'm wondering what it's like where you are.
So,
where are you based?
What scene do you play in?
What gear do you use?
What styles of music do you play?
And how do you spin? (how many decks? sync vs no sync? loops? sampling? finger drumming? scratching? effects? long mixes? live remix? live mashup? etc.)
How is your style received, and do people understand/appreciate that you're performing and doing stuff live, and not just beatmatching and EQing?
Personally,
I spin in the New England rave scene.
I use a Kontrol S4 and a midifighter with Traktor 2, sometimes one control vinyl (largely for backspinning)
I spin freeform, so I use electrohouse, glitchhop, DnB, and I'll use dubstep or hardstyle for epic drops once or twice a set.
I use four track decks in traktor 2. I usually have have a previous track looping, and two current tracks EQ'd together and playing, all rotating through the four decks as a deck clears up. I use sync on all decks when I'm not cue point juggling, or doing something else that requires it off. I do a lot of cue point juggling, and live sampling using cue points. I use a lot of effect combinations mapped to my jog wheels, as well as the insta-grat mapping on the MF. I abuse the hell out of Armyofome's whoosh knob/echo out button for transitions and build ups. I make sure I'm literally doing something that changes the sound of the music 100% of the time.
What about you guys?