Coordinating between two DJ's

[guygilbert]

How do you best divide the work between two DJ's? How does Daftpunk, Sasha and Digweed, etc. do it?

1. What is the workflow / division of labor?
2. How do you technically make it all work together? Ideally with Traktor Pro.

Thanks,
Guy

[Mr.Jones]

Wow - That's a massive question. Seeing as I'm digesting a huge lunch, I'll take a crack at it though. I'd be curious to see what other tag-team DJs' answers too.

I very seldom tag-team at club events, festivals or all-night parties. After four years, I've just started - on occasion - tagging with my friend, Andy at some events. Here's how it works:

1. Workflow
- Figure out what time we're playing and for how long. Based on the time of day / evening we play, and who plays before and after us, we come up with a rough plan for the arc of the set. We get together pretty regularly to play records, so the 2 weeks leading up to the event are spent culling tracks and getting used to what the other person has in their box.
- Play to your strengths. Andy sticks to the techno, I take over when something a bit more melodic is in order. Our basic rule of thumb is to play 3 tracks and then switch. This can go pretty fast if we're short-mixing our tracks.
- Communicate. We warn each other if we're going to take a 180 in the plan, or if a track end abruptly, etc. If we feel the other person is on a roll, we let them carry things longer than the 3 track norm.

2. Technical Stuff
- We use one laptop with Traktor Scratch Pro. All our tracks are in separate folders. We compromised on what browser columns/fields to show so we could both sort our music accordingly.
- We use one controller for loops and some effects. We both agree we need something a bit more intuitive. The Nocturn is okay for effects, not great for triggering loops.
- We have actual record bags with records (remember those?!) and small CD wallets. We'll usually end up playing a couple of vinyl records.

Why only one laptop? Simpler to set up than two laptops when the booth is crowded.

- Jones

[Jester]

We used to do full sets each but now that we have more lads on the crew we tend to do around 30 mins each, pretty much going with the flow. can be a bit of a hassle sometimes coordinating between the softwares and the cdjs but also means i have time for a beer every hour or so.

[Xonetacular]

Jester, I think you are misunderstanding the OPs question.

Usually duos have one person selecting the tracks and organizing the set with the other person focusing on the actual mixing, they may switch jobs. The person picking music might also do the effects, looping, etc. Mr. Jones - Two DJs taking turns is not what he is talking about either or how most professional duos operate, they work simultaneously throughout their set.

[Mr.Nicklebe]

Me and a friend have barely only just started trying to DJ together. He has very little gear at the moment so relies on mine. But it's quite usefull having a second set of hands to just reach in when you need it.

I was watching this video of 2ManyDJ's ages ago and thought it was pretty cool seeing them work together. You can really see what each of them are doing in this video too which is great.

They really have the headphone sharing down to a fine art

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfZ2o...eature=related

Also found this one of Daft Punk up close and personal in their pyramid of epicness. It's from the Grammy Awards when they came in at the end of Kanye West's song to do a short appearance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9-bvD9nNT4

I'm not entirely sure if they're actually doing anything as it just looks like he's going tap happy even if it is in time to the words. You can sort of see the other guy doing what appears to be effects? I'm not sure. Either way their screens a fucking cool and I want some

Found a better quality vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYTaGxOuURU&NR=1

Skip ahead to 2.50 and you can much more clearly see them taping away on those touch screens. I heard that Daft Punk used ableton live but that program doesnt look anything like Ableton

[josh@firestorm]

Skip ahead to 2.50 and you can much more clearly see them taping away on those touch screens. I heard that Daft Punk used ableton live but that program doesnt look anything like Ableton

they do use ableton... those touch screen devices are made by jazz mutant, the ones they are using are the lemur models and they output midi and osc.

check out jazzmutant.com

[DennisHuiberts]

What I would really like to know is how the guys (and girl) at M_nus work all together as they did during their Contakt shows. They were on that stage with 4 people at the same time and they were all together fiddling with loops at the same time; not like everyone gets to play, let's say, two tracks and then someone else gets its turn. On youtube you see a lot of videos during the Contakt shows, but not behind the decks so that you can actually see what they are doing...

[mpetersen3]

my understanding of the contakt shows is that they have each artist making choices of loops for richie to select from.

[djlokifl]

my understanding of the contakt shows is that they have each artist making choices of loops for richie to select from.

This is exactly how it works. Everything feeds through Hawtin's 4d and he puts it all together. The master midi clock is set by his Traktor.

[DennisHuiberts]

At the Contakt shows they used an A&H Xone:464 as "main mixer". I just watched the movie in which Richie explains his setup, because some things weren't crystal for me neither. He tells that his laptop is only sending the midi clock to the others, but all the other guys still controlled their own computer so they could add loops to the mix as they saw fit.