So where to begin? I first started djing back in the early 1990s as a way to supplement my income by working freelance doing lighting and sound for concerts and stage performances. I got a job as a DJ in a strip club working weekdays, which worked with me freelancing since those events were usually on the weekend. I finally quit working for the clubs around 1995. During this time, I played a mix of everything, obviously, but I got pretty good at reading the crowd and recommending music to help the dancers make money. For equipment, we had a cheap, I think a Radio Shack DJ mixer, a couple of turntables, and even a couple of cd players, not cdj’s, just regular home cd players, so cue, play, and go.
I didn’t dj again til the early 2000s when I found online club DJ events and online Shoutcast radio. I worked in some online clubs and a couple of online radio stations. For equipment, I was using a software-based mixer, I don’t remember which one. It worked well for me and gave me some flexibility. During this, I was mainly playing rock, alternative rock, and hard rock. I was listening to more electronic music in my off time and was looking into moving into some Trance and House sets, but I didn’t have the music. I eventually stopped dj for these places to go back to college and get my BAS around 2010-2011.
So here we are 12 years later, and I got the urge to do something creative. Ran across some people doing their own DJ shows and thought, that looks fun. So I looked into what I would need. I ended up ordering a used Traktor S2Mk3 console and started practicing with it while trying to get my old music collection into some semblance of order. I did purchase a lesson package from Club Ready DJ to learn the stuff I never really dealt with previously like beat matching and phrasing.
The issue I had was the lessons being aimed at getting you ready to DJ a club, using club-level equipment or something close to it, and the Traktor console was not close. So I upgraded to an Allen & Heath Xone:PX5 mixer I got used on Reverb and 2 PioneerDJ XDJ-700 controllers. The nice thing about this setup is it is very versatile. I can use the mixer directly with the Traktor DJ software, use the XDJs as controllers for the software, either Traktor or Rekordbox, use the computer as music storage with the XDJs and mixer, or export the music to a USB and use the mixer and XDJ’s freestanding.
So here we are. I am working on my music collection, practicing and taking my lessons, and soon will start putting some mixes out, which I will post links to here. So check back and see how things go.
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