How do DJ duos like Justice work?
Hi guys
I was just wondering lately about how DJ duos do their live sets. I’m pretty sure its more complicated than one playing one song then the other playing the next…
DJ duos meaning Justice, Daft Punk, Bloody Beetroots..
Anybody got any info on this?
Thanks!
Speaking for me and my buddy when we DJ together, the best part about it is you can vibe off one another and get more creative. If he’s busy getting a track ready I can be putting together loops and FX or vice versa. It’s weird but I find when I’m not the one mixing my mind is more free and capable of coming up with cool FX and transitions on the spot.
Daft Punk is really performing, not djing.
they use a lot of midi equipment and run that through ableton.
http://www.musicnewsculture.com/daft-punk-pyramid-view/04/2008/
This is how Justice performs live
Ha, that’s really just playing each song one after another.
(DJTT’s review of disappointments of 2009 turned me onto that pic.)
Lol @ the unplugged controller ;p
My pal is a big big DJ, well there’s 2 of them but I’m more friendly with one of them. Anyway they only really play out as a duo on the bigger gigs, like big festivals or their own themed nights. I was asking my boy how they operate cos he uses CD’s and the other one uses ableton. He told me that he generally is doing most of the mixing and the other one drops tunes in here and there. I asked how it works with the mixer, he said that he has 2 channels for the CD’s his partner has one for ableton, he said he is ALWAYS in control of the mixer, even the other dudes channel. I said what if you both bring in a tune at the same time by mistake, he said he just kicks him off. I said what about beat matching and obviously ableton’s got pitch shift so all good.
So basically there’s not really much going on, 2 CDJ’s and a 3rd channel for the laptop. He told me the dude on the laptop doesn’t really do much, which is quite funny cos the last time I saw them the one on ableton looked like he was busy, but all he was doing was bringing in tunes here and there.
The point I’m trying to make is don’t be fooled by big artists or DJ’s pushing all these buttons all the time when all they do is pretty much a standard DJ set. Unless you can actually hear what they are doing and it corresponds with their movements. Most of the time they’re pretty much just pushing play and making it look like they are doing loads of stuff.
People like Glitch mob on the other hand, they use all midi set ups but you can see them doing live drumming with the pads and stuff. I guess everyone is gonna be different. What I would say is just start off simple, plan a work flow with your partner and I imagine a lot of communication would help. Maybe try agreeing on signals, like if you give him a nod it means he’s cool to drop a tune or what ever. Again going back to the glitch mob I know they dont all drop full tracks, one does the drums, one does the bass, one does the lead and so on. Ableton is good for that kinda shit, like if you have you own tunes you can break down all the elements and trigger things as and when. For regular track droppage its literally warping your shit then pushing play, fade in, drop, rinse, repeat. Simple for 2 people to cain it out and look good with all these trigger devices. Looking at that Justice picture it actually looks like one is triggering shit and one is on the mixer, simple, but then I can’t see what other equipment might be out of shot.
Sorry for long ass reply.
hehe, the funny thing dodge, is that the mpd is unplugged. There was a pretty good vid of 2 many djs posted here (aka soulwax).
Oh, I found it
well to be fair, in Justice, Gaspard does nothing live…maybe a backspin…lol
Yeah I knew about the unplugged cable, matey boy reckons he put it back in just after the pic was taken or some shit like that. That 2 many DJ’s vid… they should have invested in traktor, I could do what they are doing on my own with the miracles of modern technology. But still I can appreciate what they are doing seeing as its all kinda freestyled.
how do you sync up dual lappys?
Midi or ethernet
That’s still dj’ing, its just manipulating midi clips rather than audio. The foundation and mechanics are still the same, you’re just able to dig a lot deeper into the elements.
I’m hoping the line here gets blurred more with the bridge from serato, it would be pretty interesting to fuck with midi clips with a piece of timecoded vinyl
MIDI over ethernet even. 
Don’t call me Even. 
Steven than?
I DJ with a partner as Disco Vader. We use 4 channels. 2 for CDJs and two for Traktor. I use a tsi for Maschine that allows me to beatmatch pretty well. We typically go back and forth every track or every 2 tracks.
We’re also experimenting with running the CDJs through Traktor as well so that we can apply many of Traktor’s effects onto the CDJs. If you beatmatch Traktor to the same tempo as the CDJ, you can sample the CDJ’s track into Traktor and slice it up etc and do all your normal FX tricks. Pretty cool stuff… but it’s definitely not as simple as when everything is running in Traktor.
That’s my middle name so better than Even
What hardware would i need to sync the 2? Would my firebox be sufficient? I’ve yet to poke around with it but my friend i produce and mix with is getting a laptop and we wanna be able to run both together.
Any info i more than appreciated 
thx guys!
If you’re connecting via midi you require midi ports for each laptop. One laptop works as a master, one as a slave. The master sends midi signals to the slave, so midi out of the master to midi in on the slave. So you require 2 interfaces of some description both with midi ports. There’s tonnes of info on the net, just google it or look in the manual
When I spin with my friend, I’ll usually just run into an input on his mixer. We don’t switch back and forth more than a couple times a night, so it’s pretty easy. I think we spend most of our time pointing at each others laptop screens to ask if “that’s really what your gonna drop next?”
I actually started a thread a while back about the same subject… my housemate and I play together and are curious about other setups.
Right now he’s on Torq and digital vinyl, while I’m on Ableton. He’s got the mixer in between the TT’s, with my channel all the way open most of the time, and I’ve got my master volume on a midi controller.
We manually beatmatch to each other, but as you can see the BPM readout on the other computer it’s not too difficult and we can pitchbend to stay in time if it starts to wobble and we’re doing a long cross mix.
We generally each play maybe 1-3 songs and then switch it up. Sometimes I’ll do some clip triggering with vocal samples or even run a whole acapella over what he’s mixing the vinyl, although more often we just alternate and are able to do a better job picking songs and figuring out how to mix them when we’ve got a little breathing room every few minutes.
Plus, working with someone else really helps creativity, both finding music and figuring out how to mix because you’ve both got slightly different approaches.