#4channel | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

faction-art · 5 months

Text

words & Image credit : Eksovichea Tito Hak

Free or inexpensive DJ gear to get the job done... its definitely come a long way since I last checked

It's crazy, I haven't looked into DJ equipment for over 10 years since I exclusively started delving into music production back then, but I was at a place where all my records were stored ('were' being the operative word, since I couldn't find a single piece of vinyl anywhere having spent thousands of dollars on records back then, where I would near ritualistically blow near 80% of my wage on records alone on a monthly basis. Although my two technics turntables were still there, and intact, my backup 4Channel digital hybrid analogue/fully midi assignable Korg Zero4 midi controller was nowhere to be found. In that failed attempt at setting up my DJ rig last night for not being able to find anything, I thought I might as well see where its currently at on the digital front.

Ableton Live

Seems obvious, I used to use it all the time for DJing experimentally after my long foray into using vinyl emulation. Everything else to my mind is just a speed bump as far as DJ equipment is concerned, even CDJ's. The only problem with using Ableton Live though is that you pretty much have to set up a DJ setup work session project within Ableton Live, which can take hours of prep depending how many tunes you want to use (that all need gridding), and what your setup is going to be. It's not simply a case dropping in nay tunes in as you go along. It's not the most affordable option, and would require that you already have Ableton Live (unless you have the pirated version of course). The Ableton Live lite version usually comes free with music hardware, or can be acquired for as little as 20 bucks legit, but it does lack the audio clip manipulation, mix, and remix features that come with the standard, or suite versions of Ableton Live.

Pacemaker DJ device

It's in a box, in pieces. It doesn't work, and was kaput years ago. I didn't want to spend the money on buying another one, especially with having a laptop at my disposal. Surely there must be some laptop software alternatives?

Pioneer WeDJ

In its current form, it's everything that the Tonium Pacemaker DJ device/DJ app should have become on a mobile device for both Android, and iOS. However I don't have a mono headphone monitor, and line out cable splitter on hand, nor could I be bothered ordering one, although I do have one somewhere that I can't find that I bought for the Blackberry Playbook (also now kaput) many years ago. If you have one of Pioneers controllers you can obviously use WeDJ with that instead, which should then give you both stereo pre-mix monitoring, and stereo line outputs to your amp. Pioneer's WeDJ app is completely free to download and use for both Android, and iOS, and is essentially a fully functional DJ app that doesn't require any sort of ongoing subscription for full functionality in order to DJ your music collection.

Native Instruments Traktor DJ 2

Useful if you've got a laptop or a MacBook Pro, and in its most current form is completely free as a fully featured, and highly polished DJ app that functions perfectly for purpose. It's actually shocking how much they actually give you to work with here given that its 100% free from a main competitor commercial brand, but then again with the likes of the open source MIXX DJ app projects giving you way more fully pro features (even a stack of things that many will never even get to using) than this for completely free, I guess they didn't have much of a choice. Although native instruments do have a Pro version of the Traktor DJ app that does come at a premium, which comes with more features than most people would ever even use.

If you don't have a touchscreen to use with it

You'll definitely need an assignable midi controller of some sort to use with it, as well as an audio interface of your own that has a separate set lines for stereo pre-mix monitoring, and stereo line outputs to your chosen amp. Then again, I'm guessing Native Instruments would probably most likely prefer you use one of their midi controllers with it which pretty much gives you a one to one layout. Depending on which you get, there's one with a built in audio interface (which will give you the stereo pre-mix monitor headphones outputs, and separate stereo line outputs you'd more ideally need integrated directly into the midi controller), and one without, but if you were to buy one used from places like eBay, they could be acquired pretty inexpensively for anything between 70 to 150 bucks.

If you have a touchscreen on your laptop

This is probably the ideal, as this gives you the options to 'needle drop', and track scrub via the touch screen, as well as use the controls via the interface, although the GUI controls for the EQ, and pitch within the windows version of Traktor DJ 2 software isn't ideally optimised for touch interactions like it is on the iPad version, but the ability to competently needle drop, and track scrub via the touchscreen, combined with a one of their midi controllers, and an appropriate audio interface would be a killer combination. Something like the Behringer U-Control 222 is great quality as far as its audio is concerned, and can be acquired for around 25 bucks new, However, that won't give you independent headphone pre-mix monitoring, and separate stereo line output compatibility despite the U-Control 222 being equipped with it, where they've most probably rigged it in a way where it Traktor DJ 2 app will only function fully in such a way with one of their own Native Instruments audio interfaces.

MIXX

This has everything that you can find in all the commercial premium DJ application (and more), with compatibility for multiple different vinyl timecode DVS standards too from the numerous different manufacturer brands if you're a vinyl emulation junkie. They've vastly improved the default GUI skin too, that makes it look WAY more professional, and slicker looking than it used to, where it wouldn't look too out of place on a laptop sat next to another laptop maybe running Ableton live on it as part of some sort of sync setup. However, if you're fortunate to have a touchscreen on your laptop, you're a little out of luck here, as it's not really touchscreen interaction friendly optimised, for a fair number of the core control buttons being too small and fiddly on the screen to actually use touchscreen interactions with, so you'll definitely need to have suitable midi controller to assign controls to for this one if you don't want to be stuck using mouse click interactions. Its 100% free to download, and use. It's also the only fully featured DJ app that has a fully functional version for various different builds of Linux too, as well as windows, and MacOS.

RemixLive

It's technically not a DJ app, and if you want to do some fancy stuff with it, it can potentially become quite expensive in order to unlock all its features, but it essentially takes the live remix, and sample based line of approach that Ableton Live can optionally be used for beyond pure music production, and gives it to you within a highly polished, and easy to use touchscreen based application. It's also been created in such a way that you can also use it as a drum machine step sequencer too. You can do some decent stuff with the free features, but if you want to unlock its full potential as an app, you'll have to fork over a fair amount of dough. The app itself is available for both Android, and iOS.

It looks like something from the creators of an app that was originally made for the Novation Launchpad midi controller as a freebie, but greatly further elaborated on, as a separate commercial software product.

There's a lot of potential here…

Using it reminds me of how one might use Ableton Live for stem clip, audio sample based loop music production, but delivered within a very touch based centric package. It's been many years since I last checked it out, and it's certainly come a long way from those plaything like beginnings.

If anything having played with it briefly for a couple of hours earlier this morning via an Android device, with a little more refinement (that’s not to say that it's not actually come a long way since I last briefly looked at it many years ago), it could actually seriously be a much better replacement for the kind of defunct and very expensive Native Instrument stem clip based live remix, and creation controllers, that allows more direct control. It even has full Ableton link sync capabilities within the Android version too. Maybe this was the missing part of development that could have somehow been integrated, and used with something like the stem based Traktor controllers for potential greater success as a product that would have made it less cumbersome in order to simply get things cooking on the fly in a way that's actually fun, and enjoyable without feeling like a chore to get a dancefloor rocking that doesn't require hours, days, or weeks of prep beforehand?

There's a VERY limited selection of free stem packs for it, with the prices for the numerous premium stem packs being very much in line of a chart release track that you might find on Beatport. It's possible to create your own custom combination packs from the packs that you've bought, as well as import your own sample clips too, but they don't make this process as intuitive, or as quick as it could potentially be, as it might be with using something like Ableton Live, or FL-studio mobile for the purposes of creating your own, and using them for quickly putting together a tune off the cuff.

It seems to lack the ability to easily save projects as a separate file save state at any given point which was a little jarring, meaning you need to remember set it up as anew project at the start with its own file name, because if you don't and simply mess with it to come up with something you actually want to save, there's no obvious way to save it that I've found yet.

Touch OSC

If you're a bit strapped for cash, or just simply don't have the space, or need a much more portable fully customisable solution, the traditional midi controller might not be what you're looking for, and particularly if you're limited to android for budget reasons, touch OSC is your friend.

I first came across something like this many years ago, however, back then it was sort of new coming off something called the Jazz Mutant midi controller, which was a dedicated fully customisable midi control surface device, which back then, used to cost a few thousand dollars for the Jazz Mutant control surface device.

However, a few years later, Lemur (the makers of the Jazz mutant) eventually released an iOS app that essentially allowed you to do the same thing with an iPad. I actually got the iPad app, and used it with a hand me down iPad 2 (some time way after the iPad air had been released), and to all intents and purposes it was great, as it did exactly what it said it would do on the tin. I haven't used it since though, nor did I get a replacement iPad after it broke for that specific purpose, since iPads have gotten vastly more expensive where they cost more than a decent laptop these days, and the Lemur app was exclusive to iOS. I never bothered looking into Android solutions, and I do recall seeing touch OSC for android a while back in its very early stages when it was far less user friendly, and limited in features, and wasn't anything like it is today. How is Touch OSC today? The way the application has evolved for Android? It's almost identical to Lemurs Jazz mutant app port to the iPad, with barely any difference. It's perfect for function, and purpose in being incredibly versatile in a DaftPunk wet dream on the command deck of the starship Enterprise kind of way, as it delivers fully customisable midi control surfaces at your fingertips if you have an available Android tablet or smartphone to use it with in conjunction with your chosen DJ software on a MacOS or Windows machine. It's not free, but for such extensive, and powerful features fully unlocked, 12 quid isn't a lot to pay once, and be able to use it as you please for life, for many things, such as any DAW, or DJ app that supports midi. Even if you're using ZeroBug's excellent Touchable Pro app for Ableton Live, you'll still definitely find Touch OSC useful too if you don't want to be moving through layers as often, and have way more room with Touchable for specific control layers always on hand, particularly if you're using VST instruments, synths, and drum machines that are midi control assignable with Ableton Live, but don't have midi control support within Touchable Live pro.

Another sophisticatedly advance multi-tool like feature to add to your smartphone, and or tablet if you often use midi control, that most people would take for granted without knowing of its development, and how its vastly surpassed the capabilities, and versatility of its original high cost premium priced variants…

I suppose this gives you even more incentive to hold onto your old smartphone devices to possibly repurpose them as fully customisable advance modular midi/OSC touch control interface surfaces for your various plugins, and effects modules within your DAW and/DJ software. Obviously beyond midi, as its name suggests, it's all about the OSC, meaning you can also make custom controls for many other things besides DAW, or Video editing software (e.g. national grid powerplant control rooms, etc). Touch OSC running on your Galaxy Tab A7, Tab A8, Tab S6, Tab S7 or iPad 2/3/4 and above via Lemurs original app, whether wired, or more fancy, wirelessly too, it actually provides you with way more advanced features, and capabilities than the original Jazz Mutant controller in a vastly more portable compact device. Even if you had something like an LG V50. V50S, or V60, you'd also be able to plug them into an external touchscreen monitor, and use Touch OSC via the 12/13/14/15 inch touchscreen beyond using it on the actual smartphone device too. You'll probably also find touch OSC very useful to use with MIXX too.

Native Instruments free 'Native Access' apps

'Native Access' is basically their equivalent of the steam app management client, but for all their Native Instruments apps instead. There's mainly premium apps there, but there a number of high quality free apps there too, from synths, instruments, and plugins which you can use as standalone via a midi controller/keyboard, or as a VST plugin for you chosen DAW. Simply do a search for the their free apps on their website.

One app that you won't find there though (although you will need to enter the serial number for it within the Native access client to actually register, and download it after first install the Native Instrument Reaktor 7 player app), is the DP-06+ app, which is basically a faithfully recreated software version of the Roland 606 drum machine that you use like a VST plugin via Reaktor 7. Just head on over to 'Deputi Sounds' where you can buy it for a limited period for the price of $0.00 (you actually have to go through the checkout process to get the activation serial number code for it). I don't know how long the offer is on for, but the temporary offer rolled out yesterday.

#Free or inexpensive DJ stuff #Free DJ software

1 note · View note