SwingDJs

Utah_Nate wrote:I have been djing off of my laptop for over a year and a half now. I really like it because I can tag all of my songs so I know which ones are good and can also make comments on how many people dance to it/enjoy it. I use BPM Studio, which is great because people always ask me about "that song I played last week" and BPM keeps your playlists for you!

Yay! Someone else who uses BPM Studio.

GemZombie wrote:

Utah_Nate wrote:I have been djing off of my laptop for over a year and a half now. I really like it because I can tag all of my songs so I know which ones are good and can also make comments on how many people dance to it/enjoy it. I use BPM Studio, which is great because people always ask me about "that song I played last week" and BPM keeps your playlists for you!

Yay! Someone else who uses BPM Studio.

It's great, but the only downside is it's actual BPM counter. It usually counts big band tunes at half of the tempo, so I am taking Jesse's suggestion and using Delay Time to count BPMs. It works great.

On another note, do you get flack from other djs in your scene about djing off of a laptop? I have taken some because they say I am not "putting on a show."

Just downloaded the manual for BPM Studio Pro....Now i know what to ask Santa for. I wish it wasn't $500....

falty411 wrote:I have never had any problems with freezing, or having to reboot or anything crashing. Of course, I use a powerbook g4.

Nor have I, and I use an old ass Dell that's taken a beatin.
A good computer is a good computer... regardless of race.

Utah_Nate wrote:

On another note, do you get flack from other djs in your scene about djing off of a laptop? I have taken some because they say I am not "putting on a show."

LOL. Unless they're beat juggling, scratching sand using vinyl I don'r see how any DJ can be "putting on a show".

there is a visual element to a DJ with a huge book juggling lots of CDs. takin the disc out, workin the mixer, hitting "play" just in time. folks like to look at my CDs with all of my colorful handmade BPM cards. it's clearly appreciated. it ain't much but in this day and age anything with handmade elements or physicality is like the last of the dodos.

a laptop DJ looks like he might be checking his email or playing minesweeper -- if a CD DJ doesn't have a lot of visual impact, a laptop DJ has absolute zilch.

like i said it ain't much but there is a difference.

Utah_Nate wrote:

GemZombie wrote:

Utah_Nate wrote:I have been djing off of my laptop for over a year and a half now. I really like it because I can tag all of my songs so I know which ones are good and can also make comments on how many people dance to it/enjoy it. I use BPM Studio, which is great because people always ask me about "that song I played last week" and BPM keeps your playlists for you!

Yay! Someone else who uses BPM Studio.

It's great, but the only downside is it's actual BPM counter. It usually counts big band tunes at half of the tempo, so I am taking Jesse's suggestion and using Delay Time to count BPMs. It works great.

On another note, do you get flack from other djs in your scene about djing off of a laptop? I have taken some because they say I am not "putting on a show."

you can set a range for it to choose from by right clicking in the deck bpm area. it's very accurate.

Utah_Nate wrote: On another note, do you get flack from other djs in your scene about djing off of a laptop? I have taken some because they say I am not "putting on a show."

No, most DJs in my scene ask me a lot of questions and are interested in swithing over.

We are 1/3rd laptop DJ in my scene, several more are talking about making the switch.

A year ago or so, George was the only laptop DJ in our scene.

Nate Dogg wrote:

Utah_Nate wrote: On another note, do you get flack from other djs in your scene about djing off of a laptop? I have taken some because they say I am not "putting on a show."

No, most DJs in my scene ask me a lot of questions and are interested in swithing over.

We are 1/3rd laptop DJ in my scene, several more are talking about making the switch.

A year ago or so, George was the only laptop DJ in our scene.

Right now I am the only laptop dj in our scene, although I am starting to use vinyl. There is one other dj who uses vinyl, but refuses to go laptop, which is fine. For me, the laptop is the way to go.

I'm still seeing quite a few DJs out there using iTunes. Is there any way to use two sound cards, one for previewing, one for the sound system with iTunes? I think I'm going to have a big problem giving up the awesome iTunes database setup. I'll do PCDJ if I have to, but I think we're going to have a stormy relationship.

Shanabanana wrote:I'm still seeing quite a few DJs out there using iTunes. Is there any way to use two sound cards, one for previewing, one for the sound system with iTunes? I think I'm going to have a big problem giving up the awesome iTunes database setup. I'll do PCDJ if I have to, but I think we're going to have a stormy relationship.

I dj off of my laptop only using itunes, on a mac.

What i do is use 2 instances of Itunes at the same time. One on one user and one on another.

It sounds harder than what it is (how i set it up) but what i do is have two users. One is Mike and one is DJ. The DJ one is set to have itunes play through the external sound card to the Mixer and out to the floor. Then i have the other user mike that is set to just play through the internal sound card that goes straight to my headphones. I start a new playlist on Mike and share it. THen i go to DJ and find the shared playlist and hit play, thr sound goes straigh to the floor. Then I switch back to Mike where i can preview and add songs to the playlist which updates on the fly to the DJ user that is currently playing to the floor. So on Mike, i just preview tracks find one i like and add it to the next song in the playlist that plays on DJ.

I hope that makes sense.

Utah_Nate wrote:On another note, do you get flack from other djs in your scene about djing off of a laptop? I have taken some because they say I am not "putting on a show."

Years ago when I first noticed some people spinning from laptops, there were some minor glitches with bad mp3s, or dj software getting swapped out by the OS and causing delays - so that was bad. I think most of that is behind us now.

Just actually listening to every MP3/Ogg/iTunes etc. song that you've ripped before playing it live seems to be a good rule of thumb.

When I bring my full rig out (dual Pioneer CD-100s with MDJ-300 mixer in its big coffin) the rubberneckers around the dj booth are drawn to it because it's big and shiny and has knobs, and they ask me all types of questions like "How much would I have to spend to get that?" It has features that my laptop doesn't have (like separate eq settings for each channel, pitch locking speed control etc), but a decent DJ is a decent dj regardless of the setup because he/she puts the time and effort into it to make it work (plus they play good songs).

falty411 wrote:I dj off of my laptop only using itunes, on a mac.

What i do is use 2 instances of Itunes at the same time. One on one user and one on another.

It sounds harder than what it is (how i set it up) but what i do is have two users. One is Mike and one is DJ. The DJ one is set to have itunes play through the external sound card to the Mixer and out to the floor. Then i have the other user mike that is set to just play through the internal sound card that goes straight to my headphones. I start a new playlist on Mike and share it. THen i go to DJ and find the shared playlist and hit play, thr sound goes straigh to the floor. Then I switch back to Mike where i can preview and add songs to the playlist which updates on the fly to the DJ user that is currently playing to the floor. So on Mike, i just preview tracks find one i like and add it to the next song in the playlist that plays on DJ.

I hope that makes sense.

Thanks, Mike, that's really helpful. I'm on XP, so I'm not sure how to implement that, but it gives me something to work with.

Shana, I use iTunes to preview/search for tracks (since iTunes has great text search capabilities) and I use WinAMP to output my tracks.

Basically, iTunes uses the default sound card (which can be set in your Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > Audio tab area) I typically set that to be the laptop's sound card.

Then in WinAMP I go to the properties (Ctrl + P) and to to the Plugins > Output > Direct Sound Output and select my external sound card (to avoid interference caused by my computer in the internal cound card).

Then when I find a track I want to play, I drop it from iTunes into the WinAMP playlist. Very convienent.

LindyChef wrote:
Then when I find a track I want to play, I drop it from iTunes into the WinAMP playlist. Very convienent.

Cool, i didn't know you can drag and drop from itunes to winamp. I know you can from itunes to dj1800 which is what i do sometimes.