Why digital Djing beat Vinyl

There’s no contest any more between vinyl and MP3 DJing, despite any misgivings die-hards may have about making the switch.

1. You can have all of your tunes with you everywhere you go

This is the biggie. The biggie with digital cameras over film cameras was: You don’t have to wait see your pictures. With MP3 DJing, it’s this simple: you can have all your tunes with you everywhere you go. Of course you still need to plan your sets, but to have that “I know what would mix well into this!” thought, and not have it followed by “Shit, I haven’t got it with me…” is, for me, the real big one.

(Actually, when I was a vinyl DJ, I knew I wouldn’t have that old tune that had just occurred to me with me. So in reality, for a long time after switching to digital, I used to have exactly that feeling, then suddenly realise that actually, wahey!, I had ALL of my tunes with me. This joy was then invariably followed by the thought “digital is the way forward, now why won’t everyone else realise it?” )

2. You can locate any tune immediately

Searching digitally is a great thing. With modern DJ software such as Serato ITCH, typing three or four letters, or a year, or a genre, or looking at last week’s set list, all means you can find any tune in seconds.

Now, personally I was always proud of the way I could find a tune in my record box fast. But that was out of say 80 tunes (or 160 if I had two boxes with me), and it still often took a minute of crouching down out of sight of the crowd, and out of touch with my club night. Digital?  You can search 50,000 records in sometimes 2 or 3 seconds. No contest.

3. You don’t have to put your valuable tunes into the hold luggage when you’re flying

Being able to tuck your laptop, controller, headphones and a change of clothes into a cabin bag and jump on a flight, secure in the knowledge that 1) You can be off the plane and in a taxi in 10 minutes, but more importantly 2) All your kit and tunes won’t leave your sight, is a great thing.And all of them had that ashen “I spent most of my money and half of my life finding these tunes, and now I’m going to let them out of my sight?” look on their faces. Bags go missing. that’s bad enough. But records? To start with, they really are truly nickable, and secondly, what good is your tunes turning up a day later when you’ve just missed a DJ gig? Unthinkable.

4. No relying on record companies to send you upfront and hard-to-find tunes

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, to be on the record company’s promotional lists was a major aim of many working DJs. It took years of effort to get in with all the right labels and promotional companies.

It was worth it, though: You got loads of juicy hard to find, upfront vinyl mailed to you practically daily. Lots of never-to-be-released exclusives, all for you! All you had to do was fill in reaction sheets to the tunes and post your top tens to various publications on a weekly basis. I used to get scores of records a week for nothing, and they made a major difference to the quality of my sets.

Thing was, the bigger the DJ, the more freebies. So while my DJ pals and I got some great music, sometimes only 5, or 10, or 50 of something would be mailed out, while we were only in consideration when they had maybe 100 or 200 copies of any given new tune. So if you weren’t in the top 5/10/50 DJs for that genre, no free tunes. You heard the tunes on the radio and in the clubs, but no copy of your own to play.

And of course, newer or smaller DJs got nothing at all, and were reduced to trawling the second-hand record shops for copies that bigger DJs had off-loaded for cash because they didn’t want to play them in their own sets.

While CDs and vinyl (don’t get me started on CDs…) are still mailed out, that stranglehold is now well and truly broken. Now it’s completely about connections that anyone can make online by putting the hours in to get to know their favourite artists and labels – and more to the point, by keeping their ears to the ground for new artists on MySpace etc. Of course, big DJs still get exclusives – but if you’re an MP3 DJ, it’s a far more level playing field than ever it was.

5. You can remix a tune on the fly without having to buy two copies

I often used to buy two copies of a record so I could create effects and mixes to make a tune my own. Whether “echoing” vocals by mixing them a beat or two apart all the way through, or lengthening breaks, or dropping acapellas over remixes, or removing dodgy bridges, such techniques are now far simpler – simply drag the MP3 onto both decks (or four if your controller allows it)

EQing

The Basic Concepts of EQing

Technical details aside, the channel EQs in your mixer allow you to adjust the level of different frequencies (normally highs, mids and lows) in the sound that comes from the decks. And since each of the track’s elements – such as the kick drum or the vocals – often belongs to only one frequency range, the EQ allows you to cut or dampen those elements at will.

The chart below lists the elements of a song and the frequency bands they normally belong to. To actually get a feeling of what I’m talking about here, play around with your mixer’s EQ and take notice of what instruments and elements of the tune the particular knob is responsible for.

Frequency band	Range, Hz	Track elements
Treble (highs)	3,000–20,000	Hi-hats, strings, top part of vocals
Midrange (mids)	250–3,000	Lower part of vocals, melody, percussion
Bass (lows)	20–250	Kick drum, bassline

Channel EQs on the Pioneer DJM-600 mixerThe channel EQs of a mixer have separate rotary controls for each of the three main frequencies (see photo). At twelve o’clock, a knob doesn’t alter the level of its frequency range; turning the knob clockwise boosts it and turning the knob counterclockwise lowers it. Some mixers also have Kill buttons (or a special zone in the leftmost position of the knobs), which cut the frequency range completely.

What does it all have to do with mixing? A lot. The thing is that when mixed, the two tracks’ kick drums and hi-hats often clash with each other. As a result, even despite the tracks’ beats being aligned, the transition may still sound messy. To avoid that, the DJ first hides the potentially conflicting elements of the incoming track with the EQs and then, during the blend, replaces the old one’s elements with them.

(By the way, it follows that when mixing, you’ll most often have to deal with the high and low frequency knobs. The mids are adjusted less often, also because during a blend, at least one of the tracks is in its intro or the outro, where there’s normally no melody or vocals. Thus there are no clashes in the mid frequency range.)

EQing in Action

Now that I’ve covered the basics, I’m going to tell you how I use the EQ when mixing. Note that the tips below aren’t a standard of some sort; they’re just a starting point for your own experiments.

OK, let’s begin. Before you start bringing track B in, cut its bass almost completely and lower its highs by about two-thirds. Then, as you’re making the transition with the upfaders, adjust the EQs to increase B’s bass while at the same time lowering it in A. Make sure to be doing the same with the highs, too. By the end of the transition, you should end up with the dancefloor hearing track B only, with all three of its EQ knobs at twelve o’clock.

Since you’ve only got two hands, you’ll have to be manipulating the faders and the EQs by turns. Start the transition from A to B as usual – by moving the channel faders. After track B becomes discernible on the dancefloor, forget about the faders for a moment and extend the transition to the realm of the EQ by starting to gradually increase B’s bass and lower A’s. Then you may return to the faders, and then, after a while, turn your attention to the highs. Your hands will end up going back and forth between the faders and the channel EQs, advancing the transition here and there.

Here are a few other approaches of the same sort to stimulate your creativity:

Bringing in on the highs. Sometimes there’s a melody element in track B’s intro that’s nice to announce right in the beginning of the transition. If that’s the case, you don’t lower B’s highs but as you’re bringing the new track in, you gradually dampen them in A so that the two channels’ highs don’t clash.

Swapping the bass. Instead of gradually increasing B’s lows and lowering them in A, you can add a bit of a dramatic effect to the transition. As both tracks are at about the same volume, slam B’s bass in and at the same time cut it out in A. (Remember that sharp changes like this one can only be made on the first beat of an 8-bar phrase.)

Swapping the hi-hats. Same as the previous trick, except that you do it with the highs.

To Sum Up

The EQ allows you to make really smooth and unnoticeable transitions between records. At the same time, a full account of DJ’s actions during a blend may be pretty intimidating. The disc jockey has to work the channel faders, handle the EQs, monitor the sound in their headphones from time to time, as well as track and fix any beat drifting.

The good news is that if you practice, take it slow and don’t give up, you’ll be able to make all these various DJing skills fully automatic. And the day will come when you’ll suddenly realize that you’re able to mix like a pro, effortlessly.

DJ Controller

DJ digital controllers are MIDI controllers or USB-to-analog devices used for controlling computer-based DJ software, installed on a personal computer, laptop, or tablet device.

DJ digital controllers aim to emulate the traditional mixer/turntable/CD turntable set up. Most controllers come with shuttle jog dials that mimic turntable control of an audio file, though with slightly less accuracy.
The use of DJ digital controllers with DJ software allows for smaller, more mobile sound systems. Usually, the use of a DJ digital controller frees the DJ from having to transport more expensive, fragile, heavier, analog equipment. With the use of the controllers there is no need to use CDs or records. This is particularly beneficial to mobile disc jockeys who are increasingly using computer-based equipment for this particular reason.
A problem with controllers had been their latency; that is, the time between manipulating the jog shuttle controllers and the effect on the audio file. However, this does vary with computer speed, sound card latency, and MIDI latency. By either changing configuration settings or upgrading hardware, latency problems can often be easily resolved. Currently, with the newer computers, better software, and newer controllers, latency has become a negligible concern.

An advantage of controllers is that the processing power of the computer can be used to manipulate the sound, giving a wide range of effects and sampling options. Native Instruments Traktor software was among the first DJ applications to take advantage of this. Also, controllers are often platform-independent, allowing for highly customized setups. A DJ can choose and configure the software and use a variety of controllers with it. Some DJs even use two or more controllers for different applications during a set