DJAdumbration

Teisto remix of Silence by Delerium. I have lost a few close friends in my time - this song always brings a tear to my eyes... Oh, and Take me Away posted earlier has the same effect. Sorry I don't have a link to the song.

I thought I'd write a quick post for all us noobs about the best tracks to learn on (from my experience). Of course, you can start with any tracks you please, and you'll definately want to choose tracks that you really love as you'll be hearing them over and over and over and... ad nausium. Also, if you know the tracks inside out, you'll know the structure of the song very well. If there's a breakdown, you'll know when the beat cuts out and when it comes back. Everywhere I've been recommends starting with something that has a simple beat to it. You might want to get into hip-hop, rap, RnB, Drum n Bass straight away but it's going to take you a lot longer to master the basics. You'll be looking for songs with a strong bass drum followed by a strong high-hat/snare drum and where this is consistant across the majority of the track. House and trance (as long as there are no breakdowns etc) are going to be your best bet for this. Below are the tracks I found really helpful when learning to count beats, beatmatch and mix. GravelPit (Wu Tang Clan) and Just Lose It (Eminem). This one is actually really good. Once you can get the two songs beatmatched, set the crossfader to the middle so both tracks are coming out of the speakers. If you're mixer is good enough, you can kill most of the vocals from Gravel Pit and kill the bass from Just Lose It. You'll end up with the vocals from Just Lose It playing over the bass from Gravel Pit. Not a good idea if you're playing at a club as you can't toally kill the vocals/bass but it really gives you a confidence boost when you're learning to be able to pull this one off. California Dreamin (Royal Gigalos) and Somebody to Love (Boogie Pimps). These two are remixes of old school songs and should be a piece of cake. Try and use the Tek House Remix of Calinfornia Dreamin and the Club Mix of Somebody to Love. PS. Watch the video clip for Somebody to Love. OMFG - married or not, you would NOT turn her out of your bed! Pump Up the Jam and Rythem is a Dancer. Old school 80's tracks but they mix really well together. I actually used these two tracks to learn the loop and hot start features on my decks. There are plenty more combinations out there, why don't you post some tracks you first learnt to mix on? These ones were what I learned with - before I had BPM counters on my decks! Ciao Adumbration

Hey All, Sometime early next year, I'll be looking to get me some speakers. I have a kick arse amp - an ancient JVC that still drives as hard as any amp I've listened to recently. Up until a few years ago, was being used by the folks to almost blow the windows and roof off their house (it's great having parents who like music). I'd like to replace my current setup with this amp and a big assed pair of speakers. I suspect this thing would have enough oomph left over to power a medium sized sub (and possibly a nuclear submarine) as well. If anyone is looking at offloading a pair of speakers, drop me a line. Would prefer Newcastle/Central Coast/Northern Sydney as I live in Gosford. Cheers

Cafe Del Mar - Volume 2 through 11 are best for this sort of thing. You won't be 'mixing' as there are some pretty chilled out tracks here, but it really does set a nice mood. Classic - that'd be funny as.

Thanks for the comments peeps! I havent seen many reviews of this mixer so, I decided to write my own! I had a play with it this afternoon. StoreDJ has it listed for a bit over $500, but DJ Warehouse sold it to me for $350 so not sure what the deal is. Possibly because they stuffed up on the website and had it listed for $295 instead of full price (this was next to an 'open box' DNX120 for $295). Either way, I think $500 would be a bit steep for this mixer. $350-$400 is about as high as you'd want to pay. Enough of that, onto the performance. This mixer has a fully adjustable curve on the cross fader, which can also be reversed. I suspect this mixer was designed as a hybrid scratch/dance mixer as the area around the cross and upfaders is devoid of any other controls. one that is within fat-finger distance are flush with the faceplate so you can't bump it. Although all that one does is change what the level displays represent - cue/master or master L/R channels. Having SFA experience with scratching, I'm just going by the other scratch mixers I've seen around. As I suspected, while mixing with this, the feel of the cross and up faders was, for me anyway, spot on. Very little resistance, great feel and no bleed on the cross fader - though for a new mixer it wouldn't bloody well want to either! The EQ dials work pefectly but have a fair amount of resistance to them. Not sure if this is because it's new, but I'd like them to feel a bit 'looser'. It takes a fair amount of effort if you want to kill a range to quickly turn the knob all the way down (this unit doesn't feature kill switches). On the cue front, you can select which channel(s) appear on Cue by pressing the respective button for channel A or B. You can run both at the same time, the switches are totally independant of each other. Through the headphones, you have the choice of a mix between cue/master, which is fully adjustable, or split cue with the push of a button. Master through the right, cue through the left (unless I had my headphones on back to front!). As mentioned, you have 4 inputs with a choice of phono/line on two of them. I have my DNS1200 through one channel and the DNHS5500 through another 2. You can choose between the Line and Phono/Line input with a nice simple flick of a switch. These switches kind of stick up above the EQ and gain knobs, so you may want to be careful when moving your hands around. I haven't bumped one of these... yet. Last feature for now is the Mic input. I can't see myself using this unless I get a request to DJ a party, but you have a two band EQ, gain and 3 position switch with 'Off', 'Mike On' and 'Talk Over'. If you can get this mixer for $350-$400 I would certainly recommend it for noobs and even more advanced DJ's who want something simple and classy. Mix up people Adumbration

I started off with the $400 all-in-one from JB HiFi. No beat counters at all! Was good to learn on, but once you want to play for anybody else - upgrade! Definatley agree on knowing your songs inside and out. Know where the break downs are, know where the beat, melody, vocals etc come and go. And most importantly, trust your ears. Even the best beat counter can get it wrong!

Good points. I suppose trance is probably the easiest to mix and also the one where any stuff ups will be especially noticeable and if you can't even get that right, well... Cheers

Wow, that's one hell of a list! I'll start researching and selecting some kick ass tracks. + Rep heading to all. Thanks guys! Edit: +Rep done!

Just wondering why you should forget about them if they want you to play tech, prog trance etc? I personally cannot stand clubs that play rnb, top 40 etc. Or am I not drinking enough coffee and misreadin the post?

Hi All, Well, my search for a basic mixer eventually led me to the Denon DNX120. I was going for the A&H Xone:22 but couldn't compete on value (for what I want). I've had a bit of a play with the mixer and thought I'd post my initial thoughts here. I love the design of the mixer, it's about as simple as you can get. Like most 2 channel mixers, you can configure it to have four line level inputs or the 2 line/2 phono with the flick of a switch. Having a HS5500 and a S1200, I need three line level inputs. It'd be nice to be able to mix between any combination of the three, but as I duplicate the tracks on the HDD's, it's kind of a moot point - I can use the second deck of the HS5500 for loops while the S1200 is playing with a quick flick of a switch. I'm not happy with the external power brick and RJ45 (yes, RJ45) power connector. I'd much prefer an internal PSU, or at least a standard power plug so if (when) the PSU fails I can get a generic one from Disck Smith. Considering it has an external PSU, the unit has a decent amount of weight to it and feels well built. Admittedly I haven't played with many mixers, and the best of those I have was a poor Pioneer 700 hire unit that had seen better days (but was still an absolute joy to mix on). I also realise that cross fader feel is a very personal thing but I like the smooth feel of the cross and up faders on this unit. The rotary dials all have a consistent feel, which is good. That's all I'll post for now until I've had a more thorough play with it. Cheers Adumbration

Welcome! Another Coastie - awesome.

Cool - thanks I'm having some trouble tracking them down atm but once I find them, I'll give them a whirl. Thanks!

Hi All, I'm looking at moving into Drum and Bass - great music to listen and dance to - some of the easiest to dance to in my opinion. I'm still learning the basics of DJ'ing and was wondering if anybody had any track selections that would be good for a beginner? Cheers Shads

I use GoldWave for my recordings... which I still need to post up. Just trying to get a set where I don't royaly screw it up! Getting there...

$100 will buy you a 320GB external HDD that will work on these decks. Western Digital My Passport drives work very well - they're what I use.

You could also try GoldWave. It's free, though on my laptop recordings do sound a bit tinny. Not sure if it's the program or (more likely) my sound card.

Hmm, I'll have to give Audacity go. So far, I've been using GoldWave. I might wait till I get my new mixer before I record the set list from my party. I've started to suspect my current mixer doesn't have enough oomph to run both speakers and recording output at the same time (I actually have to turn the stereo RIGHT up when I'm recording a set). Still, can't complain for the price I paid for it! Actually, something I quite liked about lerning on this set of decks - no BPM counter. I had to learn to do it all by learning to count beats and actively listen to the music. And another little "quirk" of the decks - they appear to store about 10-25 seconds of the track in memory when paused and once this is used up, continue direct from the cd (I suspect...). Problem is, on rare occasions there is a tiny half-beat difference when switching. So you'd have the first part of the track all lined up perfectly then, you'd find you're half a beat off half way through fading into the track. Bit of a pain but it did teach me to fix up mistakes very rapidly! Once again, thanks for the tips and welcome! Cheers Adumbration

Thanks for the welcome. I'll post a mix at some point in the near future although the only digital recording method I can use is the Line In on my laptop which produces incredibly tinny recordings. It'll probably be the set from my 30th birthday - or at least a short version of it. Goes for over an hour.

I use one of these - I love it. The 2 decks in 1 can sometimes cause me some grief but I really need to use it more before I pass judgement on this feature.

Hey All, I'm looking at upgrading to a new mixer. I played around with a Pioneer DJM700 series mixer at my first gig and loved the layout and functionality it provided. I came across the Behringer DJX750 which is a complete rip-off of the Pioneer unit (at least as far as layout). Considering the Behringer is a quarter of the price of the Pioneer unit, I'm not expecting it to perform anywhere near as well but for my purposes, it should suffice. My question is has anyone had any experience with the DJX700 or DJX750 mixers? I've done a bit of goolging and come across some mixed reviews for this unit. At this point in time, I'm not particularly bothered with the effects on the unit - I'm still coming to grips with loops and hot starts! Cheers Adumbration

G'Day, I'm a DJ noob from the Central Coast of NSW (just north of Sydney). I've had a love of music since I was a kid and dance music in particular since about 1999. It took me until about 2008 until I got my first set of decks. Admittedly it was just the incredibly cheap set from JB Hifi with 2 CD decks and mixer all in one. They did the job though, I'll have to say for $400 you really can't go wrong with them. However after just fooling around for a couple of years I had my 30th birthday this year and decided to upgrade and put on a proper performance. I now have a pair of Denon decks - a S1200 and HS5500. The HS5500 does not have the CDROM or HDD caddy options, I just use the USB port to connect up USB media. With the S1200, I mostly use the USB port for media but do use the CD drive from time to time. I'm now on the lookout for a 3-4 channel mixer (the HS5500 can be used as two decks in one - rather handy but there are some limitations). For my party I had the pleasure of using a Pioneer 4 channel mixer. Absolute joy to use but well and truly out of my price range. For the moment, I just use the mixer on the old set from JB hooked up to a home theatre. Anyway, I mostly mix house and trance primarily as they seem to come easily to me. I love listening to breaks and hip-hop but trying to mix these causes me grief every time I try. But I'm not giving up yet! Ciao Adumbration