Questions Questions - DJing!

I mean, it's your records, right?

If it's not a good club, check. The PA might not even be good enough for you needs.

in my experience indie clubs are a bit hit and miss. depending on if they regulary have music played after bands or have club nights and what not.

anyway, always best to check before you make any plans!

if you're gonna play keyboards, get thinking about hearing yourself play. things get a little a funny what with all the drunken noise and no monitors and you've had too much to drink and that spliff was a bad idea and then it all goes horribly wrong.

Depends on the venue. Find out ahead of time. A good club should have Technics. They are the industry standard for club turntables.

Make sure you bring your own carts. You don't want those club needles touching your records if you can avoid it.

was thinking about picking up a DDJ-400 https://www.pioneerdj.com/en-us/product/controller/ddj-400/black/overview/

just for messing around really. Anyone have any experience with them?

Yes! Been using mine for about 18 months. I absolutely love it. Good to play around with but also an excellent tool to teach you to use the CDJ's/DDJ's that they use in clubs so if you do DJ out, as I do it you can easily transfer the skills to professional machines. I can't believe how robust it feels for the price, the Faders have a nice resistance etc. Anything you need to know in particular, feel free to ask.

I use mine to record mixes too. You can record straight on to your laptop from it.

Awesome! Think I’m going to pull the trigger. For the price it seems like a great value.

Yes, the value is incredible.

btw, I loved this RA Art of the DJ piece with Avalon Emerson. Gave me loads of ideas but it's lovely just to watch her at work and talking about it:
https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3392

fwiw, a friend of mine had the DDJ 1000, which is about four times the price and ended up selling that on once he had the 400 because he thought there was nothing in particular with the 1000 that he couldn't do on the 400 apart from the fact that you have to use a laptop with it (the 1000 can run from USBs) - I do wonder, from a business perspective, whether Pioneer had thought they had shot themselves in the foot by making this unit so good and many of the reviews say the same. Don't get me wrong, if I had the money to have two dedicated CDJs and a mixer I totally would but that's 12-15+ times the price and everything between the 400 and the $£ option doesn't seem to be pitched at the right price point. The 1000 e.g. is about five times the price.

four times but I already said that!

have you ever seen it used with Spotify through Djay ? I don't have an extensive digital catalog without ripping a bunch of cds.

I have no idea about that - I don't use spotify.

it wouldn't be my main source for material because it looks like you lose some functionality using Djay as the OS. it would be cool to have access to the that library though when needed.

i have no experience with Rekordbox whatsoever

It's good software, for sure. I had no idea about the spotify thing. I can't really get my head around how you could adjust the pitch of tracks.

Yeah it’s crazy they already have a stand-alone app you can use on your phone where you can mix and pitch bend,loop samples and everything using Spotify right now.

Apparently Spotify has ended support for Djay and similar apps.

well shit

cool while it lasted i guess

artist will get about the same $$ if you just download on slsk anyway

bandcamp is good tho