Me and my friend made a duo, but we don’t even know how to play as a duo!! How famous Duos or Trios like Swedish House Mafia play in their dj sets? Their divide the work? One control the mixer and the other the effects? How to DJ like a duo??
My buddy has a vci and i have exponent, we just plug in some rcas into each other then beat match by placing cue points on the 1/4th notes we wanted to play off of. It can be a lot of fun, especially if someone has a sampler and effects. If you could midi sync together that would also be nice but I’d just practice until you guys can beat match together.
There is no guideline on how to do it. Just start playing together and things will unfold naturally. Like for myself and my brother, I like letting him chose a majority of the songs and while they are playing I will layer it with samples and possibly whole other tracks. And if he or I need help that requires more than 2 hands then obviously we help each other. It really makes everything so much more fun. I mean doing it alone is fun, but it’s nice to share the wealth.
Just start playing together. You guys will both start coming up with ideas of what you want to do and that is what will make your duo. Whether it’s the traditional 2 tracks back and forth, or one guy mixing and the other guy doing effects. Whatever it is that you come up with, you guys just have to start playing together and experimenting.
If you want to use Swedish House Mafia as an example, check out some videos of their live sets and try to break down what each person is doing.
2 tracks he - 2 tracks me. both using tpro2. both using external mode and 4 channels. we have a jack splitter in the mixer so both of us can prelisten. syncing either by using a midi cable and the midiclock or beatmatching by ear.
me and my colleague absolutely rocked it the other week, we took it in turns for one to pick tracks and the other paly them without knowing what was coming staright away, was a great laugh!
i remember on an older dancetrippin.tv episode there were two dudes playing…one was pulling records out…cueing them up…the other guy was mixing them in…trust each other…
Good point, plenty of actual duos vs. unplanned back to back sessions there. http://www.dancetrippin.tv/media-library/all
DD’s video on the first page is a good example of a 2-man routine.
In a different style, these two guys deconstruct and rebuild tracks with loops for hours on end:
Whatever you do, just don’t do a duo like these guys :
i was talking to them after a show a few months back and asked them about their setup for djing together, except i was wasted and mumbled out some random idea that, in reality, makes no sense. that was embarrassing…