Digital Deejaying with Hardware from an 100% blind perspektive

[DJPat]

Hello DJ Tech comunity,
My name is DJ Pat S (real name Patrick)
I am an 33 year old jung man from Germany.
I am 100% blind from birth. Ah by the way sorry for my bad English writing. I speak it much better:-)

Since I am 8 years I play Music as a dj. I started out with just 1 kassette recorder running on the street. When you are small you can do that. Today people would may be laugh at me:-)
I moved on to 2 tape decks, a mixer and cd-players. In early 2000 I bought the Numark CDN-88 and a mixer. I saved money for it for 7 years!
Today I have the Numark CDN-95 (a mp3 cd player) and a small mixer.

I know a lot when it comes to mixing. Vor a year now I look for what I call the next step in mixing as a DJ for me. Thats Digital deejaying because it makes the Job easier.

I looked into digital mixing because of music control and exact bpm mixing and even mixing in key.

The biggest challenge is to find an accessible solution that does everything needed and still sounds great.
Right now I use V-dj 5.01 with a beringer BDC3000. A very ambitioned blind musicker and also DJ knows a lot about programming scripts for our screen reader solution Jaws for Windows.
While it is high end in terms of accessibility it does not sound so great and is in my opinion unstable. I would not go into a club with it.
How ever for a mix cd or a web radio show it is ok.
But inwolves a lot of learning.

I have a dj shop near by where they have the gear I want to take a look at.
An idial setup would be hardware that is fully accessible and software that reads out the needed information.

Right now there are 2 systems that really amace me!
1: DJay Pro on the mac
The developer also listens to blind people for improvements what is realy rare seen in the DJ software world.

2: Paionier ant their new system with Recordbox
I am speciffikally looking at the "XDJ-RX " all in one system. Not that I need a mixer but my one has no efeckts and this one is great.
It also has a lot of high end stuff in it. I need to find out if I can navigate it. does someone have the manual? On their website they have only the grafical version. I need a pdf-file or text.

How I DJ right now:
1. I analyce my mp3s with mp3 gain and mp3 tag. then I have a software here that can tell me the bpm and key.
2. then I burn my playlist DJ set to 2 mp3 cds.
3. When I mix I spent up to 1 Min. beatmatching and setting cue-points.
It is time intensive and not so awesome:-)

4. with my V-dj 5.01 software I have started to use loops to mix in and out. It sometimes helps to take the stress out.

So when I DJ I have always headphones on and need to be always at the top of my game:-)
In a DJ curse I learned that it is also important to have conversations with people etc. Ofcurse I have known that before.
So I am thinking about digital deejaying more as a tool to have more control over the music and be faster in mixing so I have more time for the people and looking for song requests.
Also I finally want to start this as a caria that may earn me a living.

An complete inacessible solution that just works with a midi-controler would not be for me because I want to have access to information like playing time, time remaining, name of the song, bpm, and key.
The new beadgritting and quantice funktions of Traktor and recordbox in connection with the XDJ-RX is realy what could help me the most.

Here is how I imagine my new setup to work:
1. I prepare my music with my software may it be mp3 gain, mp3 tag, or the new solutions mixed in key and their Platinum Notes software.
Atwantage from mixed in key and Platinum Notes it is club qualety ready! Disatwantage: it is inaccessible and I will need help doing it.
the new version of mixed in key even sets cue-points in serato and traktor. It would need to be discovered if that is ok for me:-)

2. until now I never was able to save bpm, key, beatgrit, cue-points and loop info.
that should defenitly change with my new setup!
So next step is to load my music up into a software for analycing final bpm, beatgritting and setting cue-points. With classic eurodance that is hard to mix I also want to save loops at speciffic times of a song so I can mix in and out of it.

3. after that information is saved for ever !!! Yea!!! I can start mixing on a midi-controler or the XDJ-RX or any other hardware that may help me.

So I have a long way ahead for me to find that baby that does it all and is accessible:-)

Best solution would be if DJay Pro does all of it because it is allready accessible a bit and the developer care about blind people.
what is not there yet is deck info like remaining time, bpm and key. But I must get a mac and test it out myself.

Your insights into all of this is welcome. I even have TeamViewer here should we need a remot control solution to do some inaccessible setup.
Mapping is also very important. I could imagine at home 2 to 3 controler with different things mapped to it. For the club I go with the XDJ-RX or a mac with DJay pro and a accessible controler.
what I love about Traktor is the fact that it also could be used as a remix station. thats very nice. But if nothing can be read it might not be for me because of the Info I will need.


I am also on the look for a Mac book pro with 15 zoll, 16 gb ddr ram and a 512 or 1 tb ssd drive with a cd-rom drive.
If someone has it and sells it let me know I take it!!

So I hope you enjoy reading my insights. Your help is welcome.

thats it for now:-)
DJ Pat S

[Ed Paris]

Hi and welcome to the forums. you may also check out this thread. it's from 2010 but if i remember correctly, there was quite a lot of useful information for blind djing.

http://forum.djtechtools.com/showthr...ighlight=Blind

edit: i see, you already posted in this thread. my bad.

[DJPat]

Hi Ed,
Thanks for your Post! I read that infact it is how I got aware of this comunity. I was searching for accessibility with Traktor.

[DJPat]

Hi all,
It is a while ago since I posted here.
Just to update you all I have a macbook pro now. I am getting into testing DJay Pro. I put the other solutions aside for now because DJay Pro seems to be the most accessible and best solution for now.

I will still keep digging into all of this:-)