I’m finally going to do it, but I need some advice!
Hey everyone, new to the boards.
My name is Jordan aka Mental_Twist. I have always been interested in music production / DJing, and I actually stumbled onto this site about two months before I saw Ean on Attack of the Show. Just seeing what he could do with the VCI-100 was enough to peak my interest again. I’ve always tried to find a hobby that could potentially make me money. But, music is my passion, and now I want to make it.
I used to download trials of Fruity loops and listen to the projects (pre-loaded complete songs) people made, and was fascinated but I was so far out of my league… I had/have no clue where to even start.
Now enough about my life story, I’m 23 now and I’ve done a lot of research into what I need to get started, and I am just looking for confirmation on this stuff. If you have any suggestions please let me know.
What I have:
Right now the only thing I have is a sick laptop, I’m a gamer but it has enough power to do anything.
Beats Studios by Dr. Dre
What I (think I) need to get started:
VCI-100SE Arcade OR N.I. Maschine (Need advice on which might be the best for starting out)
Traktor Pro software OR Ableton Live (Need advice on which might be the best for starting out)
That’s really as far as I’ve gotten for a basic entry level set up. Do you think it needs to be more extensive than that for beginning beat making / DJ sets?
Any and all advice is welcomed. I searched for previous threads, couldn’t find any on a starter set up (read the beginner’s to DJ blog entries 1-3, good but I’m a total beginner so I didn’t get a whole lot out of it).
Welcome mate Yep get the VCI and a good Audio card like the audio 4 and you are good to go on the dj side of things, production is a whole different kettle of fish though.
Traktor is for straight mixing, whereas ableton is a bit of both. That may be the direction you wanna go if you want to do remixing etc. Bento is the ableton expert he’ll be able to help you out a lot with that. Its also possible to run traktor thru ableton so i’ve been told.
Cool, thanks for the help and advice. I think I’m probably gonna start with Traktor then as I get better with that move up to Ableton, just seems like the proper progression.
i havent used traktor but i would definitely recommend that first. try downloading the trial version of ableton to see if you like it. creating a workflow that works well for you can be frustrating and very time consuming. BentoSan, a moderator on the message board, has a smart mixing template which is a great tool. you can look on the ableton message board for tips (also checkout tarekith’s effects pack, free and useful).
i started off with serato itch and learned the basics there (beatmatching, phrasing properly, shit like that [all with the help of this site!]). it was great but i wanted to move into production, so i made the jump to ableton.
traktor seems very awesome! from the videos that ive seen, the program seems very solid. DJtechtools seems to be focus a little more on traktor, so you would always have a community of people that can help you out.
If you just want to dj then get a vci and traktor.
but it’s not really a production tool. you could think about the oxygen 8 keyboard set up (which ean uses to dj too) and then maybe get production software as well as traktor (ableton / cubase / logic (mac) / fruity loops / reason)
I actually think Reason is a great production tool in conjunction with ableton. Though I’m a Logic and Mac man
Yep get the VCI and a good Audio card like the audio 4 and you are good to go on the dj side of things, production is a whole different kettle of fish though.