Since the wide availability of blue LEDs everyone wants those cool blue colored lighting buttons in his gear. It was for me the first thing I saw on the Pioneer DVJs and also the first I saw at the VU meters of the SVM-1000 which look amazing.

I was hoping and also expecting that Pioneer would place them on the DJM-2000 but they didn’t. I think they keep the blue stuff for their video product line. Although there is now a DJM-800 Limited Edition…

From time to time I do sets with DJ friends using a multi DJ setup. If you do this with two DJs you can get the job done with two normal DJ mixers by feeding the record out of each mixer into the other. But when the number of DJs goes up the setup becomes more complex and you need a dedicated mixer for this. The best you can get is a monitor mixer that allows you to make a sub mix of all DJs for each DJ. This type of mixer is sometimes called a matrix mixer and is normally used live on stage to create a monitor mix for all the artists. These mixers are recognized by the large amount of auxilary busses they have.

I think I can fill a whole year with acapellas from Missy Elliott. Her work is very strong and knows a lot of variety. She has for almost all moments a suitable acapella available. But all time favorite is still the acapella of her major club hit 4 My people.

At my work it has become a tradition to dress up the room with birthday flags and a custom made personal birthday poster on the door. We have a few people who can get very creative and are also pretty handy with Adobe and Google.

Back once again… I think everyone knows what comes next. It are the famous words of the classic track Renegade Master that got remixed by Fatboy Slim and an endless list of other artists. I even have a great bootleg remix on Vinyl of it. But even the acapella alone has even become famous enough to make it to the CD map of every self respecting DJ.

After writing about exporting warped tracks from Ableton Live to Pioneer Rekordbox I was planning on testing the same procedure with Traktor. I was assuming the procedure would be the same as with Pioneer Rekordbox and apply to all other DVS software applications. Seems there is a difference in accuracy between Native Instruments’ Traktor and Pioneer’s Rekordbox.

A lot of DJs wish they could do the warping from Ableton Live also in their other favourite DJ software. For example, I would like to be able to warp acapellas in Rekordbox to have them quantized and with the correct BPM for quick and tight mixing. On the other hand you don’t want to warp the same track in multiple programs if you are using a combination of software, e.g. Ableton Live, Traktor, Rekordbox.

With a simple trick you don’t need to and can export your warped tracks from Ableton Live to Rekordbox and have Rekordbox automatically set the beat markers.

A DJ’s headphone is something very personal, everyone prefers his or hers and takes it to every gig. I felt in love with the Sennheiser HD-25 II a few years ago and I still am.

My current DJ/Studio space has to compete with my bedroom space. In the very near future that is going to change with a brand new studio room and dedicated space for a DJ booth. It is still under construction, but the area has already been marked. The Genesis of my new DJ Booth.

With the new Pioneer CDJ-2000s and Recordbox it has become far easier to create loops. But you still need to trigger the loop at the right moment, and on some occasions that can be a bit tricky. Say you have some song that needs a loop for mixing and there is only one chance to trigger the loop and let’s say that the trigger moment is also off rhythm. To make it more complicated you need to start the next song or acapella also at the same time which may be on beat or in a different way off rhythm.