DVS with one turntable

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

DVS with one turntable

Hi everyone,
saturday night I was in a gig and the DJ, who was using a Mac with Traktor, was playing with only one turntable.

I’m curious about it.

Is it possible to switch the input to another deck or how was he doing it?

2

yeah you can move the playing track to the other deck. switch to that deck then reload into the original deck.

both traktor and serato can do this

3

yeah you have to enable, “load while playing” or something like that. So that you can duplicate decks.

4

I checked the pictures of the party, it was definitely Serato.

I checked because on Traktor if I duplicate a deck it… sort of double the output volume. The guy instead was playing flawlessly at the same levels.

EDIT: Thank you for the input :wink:

5

There is a Traktor Vid out, where a guy jams the NI Z2 and a single deck.

Zeke performs an amazing scratch routine using the Native Instruments Traktor Kontrol Z2 and just 1 turntable. Utilising features of the Z2 such as duplicate deck, cue point mapping, and tactile control of Traktor’s FX, Zeke is able to accomplish a great deal with only these 2 tools.

6

There is no reason why you can’t use just one turntable. Some old school Reggae DJs used to do it back in the day…they would mix with just one deck…throw a huge reverbed echo at the end of the track to give them time to swap records, and then start playing the next track. I am playing with only one turntable myself right now, because my practice space is cramped andI don’t have room for 2…so I have turntable, mixer, and a Kontrol X1 for loading tracks and controlling deck B. You could easily use just that combination for a minimalist scratch setup. X1 for triggering cues etc…turntable for scratching on your favorite side.

If it doubles the volume, why don’t you just have the volume down on the 2nd deck until you switch to it. Or even more fun, if you have midi controllers…map the eq kills for each deck so that the same button toggles both, but sets them to opposite states, E.g., Initial deck EQLo is ON - Target deck EQLo is OFF (full kill). Hit button then Initial deck EQLo is OFF (full kill) - Target deck EQLo is ON. If you want more smoothness with the transition, map it to a knob…For bonus points, you can throw some FX on the one of the decks and have the FX only affecting part of the eq bands while the other deck has the other band totally dry (basically an Isolator FX setup)…I have done a setup like this using a MidiFighter and Xone:K2. Stewe also has done a more sophisticated version from which I got my inspiration for my setup.

7

Its called ‘Instant Doubles’

More here → http://serato.com/scratchlive/support/1911/how-to-mix-with-one-turntable

8
  • 1 on instant doubles

hit deck load twice on Serato

9

Depending on your mixer and [non-software] FX units, you can do all sorts of other cool things too. My DN-X1700 has input matrix channel assignment, so I can assign input source A to any of channel 1-4. So if I have track on source B in channel 2, I then:

  • select source B for channel 3 as well…so now both channels 2 and 3 have the same input (don’t need to have volume up here at all yet).
  • send/assign channel 3 to one FX unit, select Looper effect (or echo if you wish) Full Wet signal.
  • bring level/eq whatever up on channel 3 as you bring it down on channel 2…now you have a loop of what was playing
  • remove source B assignment from channel 3 (loop will still pay) you can then select a new track and mix it in on channel 2.

This doesn’t work for USB input sources (e.g., Traktor or any DVS) on my mixer as each USB input pair is mapped to a specific channel, but this works totally fine for external sources. Think of this like a hardware version of grabbing a loop in the Traktor Loop Recorder or in a Remix Deck slot.

Actually, sometimes playing with just one deck forces you top think creatively about mixing.

Who says you need 2 decks and a mixer to DJ?

10

I don’t use use DVS at all. I’m on a controller now… Mainly for budget reasons. I was just curious about it, maybe for future purchases =)

Thanks for you hint. Glorious mixer anyway!

11

Im curious about this one too. as I have only 1 TT now and an analogue mixer on the way. though I have an f1 that I mapped to control the cue points.

12

You can use the F1 to map some Deck Focus/Timecode control midi commands to.

You can map a single button to “toggle” which deck has timecode control…

13

Thanks @Patch! I’ll try that out later when I get home. anyway, its about time to update my mappings.