Hey everyone, I’ve been thinking about getting into DJing for a long time now. I just haven’t had the money. I’ve recently gotten a career type position. I would hope to start DJing as a hobby to start. However there’s one huge issue. DJing is expensive. I looked around at the Budget DJ equipment thread but that only gave me more questions. I guess I can list out my main questions and hope someone can answer some (or all) of them. and one more thing if i go wit controller i’m thinking about Pioneer Controller’s but i want in small budget because i use to change my hobbies.
Thanks in advance!
What’s the best to start out with DJing? A controller or decks and a mixer?
Best places to get new music?
Common DJ equipment/DJing terms?
What is the difference between Serato and Tracktor?
There is a series of videos for beginners on youtube made by digitaldjtips. You can find it here:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL85AB77DB5A3828A2 It adresses almost all of your questions. It starts with the differences between turntables, cdj’s and controllers, gives you ideas where to get music and talks about software and which one to choose among other things.
Choosing software and equipment is somewhat personal. Take some time to think about what you want to do. What music are you going to play? Do you want to get into turntablism (scratching for instance) or controllerism (samples for instance) at some point? Do you want to learn how to beatmatch manually? Write all of this down after watching some of the videos and do some research on the available software and equipment for it. You can find free buyer’s guides online for equipment. Then people in forums like these can give you directions on where to go.
thanks for your reply dude. and sorry i forgot to mention that i already used cdj’s at my friends place and i know beatmatch manually. i want to get a home setup in low budget.
Since your questions are probably the most asked on this forum, reddit etc. You will find a lot of additional information when doing some research on with google - which I would recommend no matter how many people do answer. Anyways I will try to give a brief overview:
What’s the best to start out with DJing? A controller or decks and a mixer?
There are basically four possibilities: turntables with vinyl, CD-Players (CDJs) - which can be “downgraded” to be used as controllers as well if wanted, controllers which are basically a keyboard for DJ software and DVS (digital vinyl system) which use special audio vinyl or CDs to control DJ software.
There is a lot of discussion on which system is “the best”, but in the end they all have advantages and disadvantages:
Vinyl is famous for its “feeling” - the classic style etc.
CDJs are what you will find in most clubs around the world today, but it’s the most expensive solution too
DVS is somewhere in between: It can give you the vinyl feeling while granting a mobile solution as well since you don’t use real vinyl, but music on your laptop.
Controllers are the cheapest gear (given that you don’t need to buy a laptop as well) and they are often referred as the most creative solution since the possibilities are much more limited by software (which is cheaper) - not too much by hardware.
What this means to beginners: A good point to start is grabbing a free DJ software and just mess around with it. Try VirtualDJ or the Traktor demo. This does not cost any money and you can already get some insight. For your first gear it comes a lot to personal preference and the budget. A controller is the most common choice since it’s the cheapest in most cases. You can find decent controllers form about $200 up and even the top line controllers do not cost much more than $700-1000 (apart from one or two exceptions). Maybe let us know what your budget is and we can help some more. Also just do some research on this. “Which controller to start with?” is by far the most common question asked!
Best places to get new music?
There are quite a few: Beatport, Juno, iTunes, Amazon, Google, …
Common DJ equipment/DJing terms?
Take a look at reddits /r/Beatmatch wiki
What is the difference between Serato and Tracktor?
Serato is plug-and-play since you can only use it with “certified” controllers (the software is bound to the hardware)
Traktor can be used with any MIDI device - though the controllers by NativeInstruments (the company behind Traktor) are a bit more accurate here and there and also plug-and-play. Traktor is not bound to the hardware though which is good to know in case you want to get some second hand gear.
Both softwares serve pretty much the same purpose. There are some differences, but they are not too big.
thanks tilldrop. your answers were really usefull to me.
and after searching in google i decided that i’ll start with controller.
so here is the list i had noted that i’ll get for my home setup:
First, download the demos of Traktor and Serato. There is other DJ software out there, but these are the most popular. Find out which you like better. Play with the effects, etc. Once you’ve done that, the cheapest way to get into DJing is buying a controller. Find one that works best for your software or has a really good mapping for it. Beatport and traxsource are what I use for digital songs. You can also get a lot for free from soundcloud.
By FAR the best way to learn to DJ these days is to download the software, and just click around with the mouse until you know what is going on.
THEN, once you know what the software is capable of, and what you want your controller to do, get a controller.
Too many people buy a controller and expect to dive right in. Take some time tpo do some prep work, and understand what the controller is ACTUALLY controlling. This can be done for FREE (software demo’s and a mouse), and will pay dividends later on.
I was in your position 3 weeks ago. Between this forum, a lot of gear reviews, some outside friends, and this guy:
I was able to piece together a set.
This guy has about 4 hours of material. I would highly recommend grabbing a bowl of popcorn and just watching his 4 videos. He goes over just about everything you can think of.
If an artist posts a song for free download, (and this happens plenty of times) it’s legit. If it’s a bootleg or mashup on the other hand…but I tend not to download those.
There are different kinds of licences on soundcloud. They are quite hidden, but you can filter results by licence. So far I found almost no song with a licence to use commercial. The law in most countries is very uncertain with these things (eg. on most CDs you will find “not for commercial use” even though noone would pursue someone for DJing with bought CDs. Anyways this is a bit too deep into it and might change a lot in different countries.
Not really IMO. Most of the ones I’ve heard are one of two things: not better than the original to me, or perhaps it’s great music that I really like or even love, but it’s not quite good enough to justify my downloading and using up precious space on my hard drive. One thing I’ve learned over the last year of doing this is that there’s a boat load of good music out there. I can’t download and/or buy everything I like. So I’ve learned to be a lot more selective of the stuff I buy or download.
Technically, any mix I (and most others) post on soundcloud is breaking the laws is my understanding. I’m not too worried one of the potential people that listen to my mix are going to bring about charges. I’ve actually contacted a producer to ask about using his songs in a set, which was a bootleg of a popular song and he said go ahead. But…this conversation is going away from OP’s post.
To get started, you can get plenty of free music by downloading off of soundcloud. (as well as purchasing from the many online sites: beatport, junodownload, traxsource, and trackitdown are the main ones I’ve used in the past) Just beware the potential legal issues that could arise.
There are tons of bootlegs that aren’t technically legal, but thinking someone will knock on your door because you downloaded a bootleg of a Krewella track is just ridiculous.
I’d recommend looking at youtube user: Ellaskins. I’ve seen Djs use his videos to become really good. Equipment wise, start off small, dont do anything wild cause you wanna make sure 100% that this is something you wanna do. Get a DDJ from Pioneer if you want a controller, if you want turntable get technics, CDJs I’d go with the 400s from pioneer. Speaker wise: I LOVE the Behringer MS40’s. Music wise, get it legally, dont be like some dicks out here that get there music illegally. Artists work really hard for their stuff to sell, its not fair to rip them off of hard work.
while this is kinda thread hijacking, what i would say is back in the days of the white label record…which were bootlegs usually, the unofficial word from the MCPS/PRS was is there was less than 10,000 copies made it wasn’t worth their while doing anything about it
I agree with most parts, just not with this. Most artists don’t necessarily want their product sold a lot, they just want recognition for it as they’ll make a lot more money going places playing their stuff than they would make selling it. Sure, it’s always good to support artists by paying for music, but there is a reason why MAKJ, Tiesto, etc still give out so much free music
I agree with that. Most people don’t have the funds when starting off to pay $1.5 a pop for their music. If you’re established, I guess that would be a different story.
