You may find this interesting…
Hi guys,
So the main reason I now hang around here is because I learnt to DJ for a project at work. I’d be interested to see what you guys think of the videos:
(Part 1)
(Part 2)
(Part 3)
(Part 4)
Unfortunately we couldn’t show the entire set because of music rights, but hopefully you get the idea.
Cheers,
MightySeven
Greetings to OXM, my last subscriped print-mag. Beeing teached by Blakey is huge, you got me jealous 
true.. that IS interesting.
Having the resources to be taught one on one with Blakey is pretty nice.
How much did you end up practicing?
Work sounds like a blast btw.
Nice one mighty7!
You still spinning regulary, or have you dropped it for playing regular DJ Hero?
Very interesting!
That was thoroughly awesome… totally agree with the stuff blakey was saying in the last vid - putting you in front of twelve djs all staring you down was a bit harsh, but it prepared you well for the real deal. And, I totally agree that having people sit there and watch you is completely different from when people are dancing - you should get out there and do it again, you’ll probably be surprised at how much easier it is
nice one m8 
all the best
Glad you guys like it.
I haven’t played much recently, because I was only borrowing the equipment and don’t really have the money or space to replace it. I did actually play the day after the launch party at a work event and, n2hf1st is right, I was much more relaxed about it all.
I’m planning on getting a Vestax controller and continuing, but I don’t think I’ll be playing out again for a while. Happy just to hone my skills at home for the moment. Learning from Blakey was a great way to get started though!
Cheers,
MightySeven
Coolness man, MIDI is the way to continue than.
Please do think about what you’d want to do on your controller. It could even be, that you’d want to go for a complete different setup as a VCI-100 will offer you.
(Think A&H Xone:1D or Native Instruments X-1)
Yeah I’ve been looking at lots of controllers. I like the idea of the touch sensitive jog wheels - one of the things I really enjoyed about learning with Serato was the tactile interaction with my music so I like the idea of replicating that, but on a smaller scale.
For controllerism type stuff I thought I could supplement a Vestax with a Korg Nano Pad and then maybe fiddle about with arcade buttons later. Working on a games mag I can probably get my hands on an arcade joystick pretty easily.
Cheers,
MightySeven
Are you going to stay with beatmatching manually or change to sync? That’ll influence your final decision big time.
Manual beatmatching - best choice would probably be a vci-300 w/ itch
Sync - vci-100 w custom tsi + nano pad or xone 1d, or vci-100 se
The top end controllers are, in no particular order, vci-100, vci-300, xone 1d, xone 3d/4d, xone dx w/ itch (not released yet but it’s allen and heath, bound to be quality), vcm-100 (for supplimental deck c/d control), x1 (not released yet but looks reasonable), and the korg nano stuff is popular despite being cheap. I might be forgetting a couple but those are the big ones.
I’d like to maintain my beatmatching skills really, so I can muck about at friends’ parties on their non-laptop kit etc. Having said that, if playing sync lets me do some crazy stuff that would otherwise be impossible, I’d love to play around with that as well. I sort of assumed using sync was frowned on by a lot of people?
There basically isn’t an area of DJing that I’m not interested in at least having a muck about with.
Using Sync allows you to really screw around with a lot of other stuff. I mean, you get a whole other slew of controls you didn’t have before. The only reason I still use it is cause I have to mix off of external decks when spinning live.
I can dig what mighty7s getting at. Got the same thing on my BCR.
It might be a cool idea to look at Stanton’s SCS.1d or NS-7… But you’re gonna have to bring in the big bucks for that.
Haha if I didn’t need to eat or pay rent, either of those would be perfect 
My basic plan is to try and pick up a Spin when I’m next in the US and see how I like it. If I start bumping up against the limits of functionality of the Spin I might look at upgrading to a VCI-300. If I decide I don’t like DJing on a Vestax console I’ll start looking elsewhere.
I may have supported DJ Shadow, but I’m by no means a brilliant DJ. I think as a next step the Spin will probably be a sensible (and relatively cheap) option.
That’s the plan, but obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts. As you can tell from the videos, I haven’t been doing this for long!
Well, what I see is that you have a good starting point. An open mind for any controller, but clear view of what you’d like.
The advice I a,ways tend to give, think about what you’d want to do with the controller. Think about the preferred way of spinning tunes. Design that or make it into a design for a controller and match that design to the current available controllers.
That way you can be more sure that the controller you want to buy, meets your requirements to a controller.
So you’re at a good point! Can’t wait for you to start off with a Vestax Spin, as that I believe that this is can be an ideal starting controller.