So I’m looking at picking up some gear in the next couple of weeks and starting to have a crack a DJing. I live and Breathe EDM and has always been something i wanted to do. In the past I have had a bit of a play a round with mates’ CDJ’s just simple stuff: beat matching; transitions and stuff, but nothing serious. I was wondering if my best option would be to pick up a controller like the Traktor S4 to learn on. As initially this seems like the cheapest route if I find out that I don’t have the time for it, and then expanding to CDJ’s and a mixer if it turns out well. Or am I better off just springing for CDJ’s and a mixer off the bat. My logic being I can pick up the basics on the S4 of both traktor and Djing and then as i get better picking up the CDJ’s to get comfortable with them as they are in every venue. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
a serious controller like the S4, then expand later? sounds like a GREAT idea. personally i’m coming from 10+ years of djing (vinyl, cdj, dvs) and condensing DOWN to a S4 and I love it.
I think its a great piece of kit and is a great intro, yet also has serious power. sounds like a good plan man!
and honestly, if you can beatmatch and understand phrasing of songs and structure (ie - dont mix into the breakdown like a twat)… youre already doing better than 99% of “djs” out there! good luck!
I understand money can be an issue but if you want to learn, you’ll learn way more on CDJs than a S4. The lack of waveforms etc will train you to really listen to what’s going on.
Don’t get me wrong, the S4 is a fantastic piece of hardware, it has plenty of features. I dont like it cause it’s too small for me, but it’s really a good controller, solid and nicely built.
Still, (and i can see it with a friend who bought a S4 as his first dj gear) with the S4 you will have “bad habbits” : staring at the screen, not able to beatmatch if Traktor makes a mistake etc. Controllers are very poweful tools, but learning on them, i don’t think it’s a good idea.
And the end, money will decide, but that’s my opinion
yeah I can definitely see those issues arising. although I was going to start with sync off so i could manually beatmatch and i suppose not watching the waveforms would be a discipline thing.
I Think at the end of the day money will be the decider. if I can pick up CDJ’s off one of my mates for a good price I’ll go with that. If not the sensible side of me says to go the S4.
I was just worried about the skills being transferable from the S4. Am i right in assuming that if i can be disciplined enough to avoid the aforementioned bad habits that most skills would be transferable?
there definitely appears to be a lot of pro CDJ chat. I just have to balance out versatility of CDJ but spending 6k on gear for something that could turn out to be a pipe dream and the fact that my mates who play clubs and festivals just take laptops and use the CDJ’s as glorified midi controllers anyway. excellent food for thought.
CDJ’s are the slowest adopters of technology out of any industry. Any other industry that uses technology are quick adopters. LED TV’s, Smartphones, etc. And yet some DJ’s still us CD’s…People who listen to music don’t even use CD’s.
Forget about CDJ’s and get a controller like the S2 or S4 with Traktor 2. You can do so much with it. And this is coming from a DJ that started spinning with vinyl. Traktor 2 has a built in sampler, which is AMAZING. Sampling doesn’t even exist with CDJ’s. Neither does synced looping. If you want to set a loop you better have perfect timing.
the cds are for you and your burning them its the same thing as copying things to a thumbdrive, i perfer cds because those 30 mp3 narrows it down from when i downloaded the music and in the end of the day its easier to keep track of your music.
How can burning CD’s be easier to keep track of than using Traktor and having all the music in your hard drive?
With CD’s, you have to keep some sort of organized filing system. What you end up with is a bunch of random singles burned onto a bunch of CD-R’s, with sleeves that correspond to them showing which tracks are on them…And if you’re a mobile DJ or you take requests then you have to keep a separate list which needs to be updated every time you burn the aforementioned CD, just to keep as an alphabetical reference to all your music.
With Traktor you would never have to burn a CD, just load your MP3 into itunes, and you’re done. Not to mention you can search for it by track name, artist, genre, arrange them all by BPM, etc. etc.
This is simply untrue. The top pioneer CDJs have quantised loops and you can effectively sample using the hot cue/loops either on the fly or using memory points.
To the OP, I’d recommend CDJs over a controller any day.
I agree completely. While the large jog wheels of CDJ’s might be nice to use they definately arnt worth the price tag in comparison to a good midi controller. If you were to use them with traktor scratch then that would be fine, but then they just become massive controllers and it would be a bit of a waste of money. Traktor allows you to take your whole music collection with you and be prepared for any eventuality, rather than to have to rifle through dozens of CD’s trying to find the right one. While it does have its issues traktor is just as reliable as CDJ’s IMO. have you thought about buying some turntables and TSD/P?
[quote=“tokenasianguy, post:10, topic:34085, username:tokenasianguy”]
How can burning CD’s be easier to keep track of than using Traktor and having all the music in your hard drive?
With CD’s, you have to keep some sort of organized filing system. What you end up with is a bunch of random singles burned onto a bunch of CD-R’s, with sleeves that correspond to them showing which tracks are on them…And if you’re a mobile DJ or you take requests then you have to keep a separate list which needs to be updated every time you burn the aforementioned CD, just to keep as an alphabetical reference to all your music.
With Traktor you would never have to burn a CD, just load your MP3 into itunes, and you’re done. Not to mention you can search for it by track name, artist, genre, arrange them all by BPM, etc. etc.
There’s no comparison.
[/quote] ya but you have to bring your laptop, with cds you just bring a sleave and your headphones and your done
I kind of agree with you. But, well, I’ve gone through a lot of stuff and am down to just a couple controllers…and if I had the money, I’d go back.
After a while, you learn that “capabilities” aren’t really that different. You’re still playing tracks…basically the same way. Everything you can do with Traktor, you can do with real hardware. It’s just that the hardware is more expensive. And while I don’t think it’s safe to say that learning on an S4 will give you bad habits, it’s hard to learn good habits with a computer. It’s really rare, IMHO, and all these bedroom setups where the laptop is right in front of the DJ is evidence.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
CDJs use beat grids now, so sample accurate looping is absolutely possible. AFAIK, it’s better than Traktor’s looping because it’s not limited to 32-beats.
As for sampling…there are like 80 bajillion of those. The PVDJ Grabber (aka Red Sound Cycloops) was a really easy way to do sampling off any audio source (including vinyl) and keep the loop in time.
There is nothing that Traktor can do that hardware can’t. It’s just that Traktor is a lot cheaper.
Oh and most of the time you have to bring your controller thats at the minimum $500 and thats if you have an avarage laptop and controller, if you have and s2 and a macbook thats past $1000
This is all very situational…Depends what kind of DJ you are, what kind of venue, whether you have to supply your own gear etc. Although a “sleeve” doesn’t hold nearly as much as a laptop. Even a whole flight case won’t hold as much music as a laptop.
For the sake of the conversation, the OP is referring to being a “beginner” where being on the road or playing out is of no consequence yet.
I still say get a controller. It would be prudent to turn off the sync feature and learn how to beatmatch, but he can do that too.
Having big platters like on a Tech 12 or a CDJ-1000, 900, or 2000 doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense unless you’re scratching.
What’s happening here is everyone is chiming in with their personal preferences, but the most important thing is for the OP to figure out what his needs are, and pick the best system accordingly.
But you think buying CDJ’s a good quality mixer and constantly burning CD’s is cheaper? CDJ’s and a mixer alone are more expensive than a controller and a PC (forget about the Macbook).
As for “playing out” it’s not like you can show up with CD’s expecting that it’s the industry standard. It’s not like in the days of the tech 12 when you could show up with a crate full of wax and know that you’ll be able to play it. Alot of the local clubs here have Rane mixers that are Serato Scratch ready, so you’re up the creek if you show up with CD’s or only have experience playing CDJ’s at home. At least with a controller you can plug into any mixer at any club, made at any point in history.
Sorry, but you’re not making a good points any more.
I’m not really fussed about portability at the moment since I think it’s safe to say I won’t have to worry about rolling my gear into clubs for quite a while. I just wanted to learn and then the plan was to pick up CDJ’s after I’ve stuck to it for a while and learnt the basics. just wasn’t keen on shelling out all the coin for CDJ’s to find out I didn’t have time for it with working full time and being at uni. I’m not sure i get the cost statement though. I have multiple laptops already so that’s cool and I was looking at an S4 for around a grand which is still far cheaper then the 6K for CDJ’s + mixer, 3K if can find decent condition second hand. any way you look at it the controller is cheaper .
That’s exactly what I’m saying, not every place has CDJ’s. I’m in Toronto and when I started DJ’ing, it was straight wax and tech 12’s everywhere (even though CDJ’s had been around for a long time). By the time local DJ’s made the transition to CDJ’s, digital had already taken over. These days you’re best off checking first, because it’ll either be CDJ’s or a Serato mixer. But my point was that if you use CDJ’s you’re screwed if a club wants to book you and all they have is the Serato mixer. You’re not as screwed if you use Traktor or Serato and the venue only has a traditional CDJ+Mixer set up. But the best scenario is if you have a controller, you can use it anywhere, and hook it up to any mixer. You just have to make room for it. So I totally agree with you, for portability, controller wins over CDJ’s hands down, even for walking into any club and being able to plug into any system, the controller wins.
Even at home, you could have CDJ’s and a mixer taking up a lot of space, or a controller taking up minimal space.
