It's a good question and not a silly one. I, too, am not familiar with the latest cdjs first hand (still rockin my 800-mk2), but especially at these big festivals I don't think they're doing much. I think much is pre recorded or at least pre planned completely. Everything is synced with the lights, effects, etc. to a t. Lately, the club djs you see actually still doing more of the traditional stuff you mentioned.

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You it would actually be quite interesting for a few people who either know or who have witnessed what's going on in the booth.

I have mixed impressions; I saw sharam a few years back (2010) at a big club here in LA and he was on CDJ1000's mk3's.

He was obviously mixing with CD's but he had some young guy feeding him (selecting) tracks to play. The guy would give it to him and sharam would just slot it in a cue up. He was actually doing the beatmathcing/mixing That went on for the entire set and it sadly the music got progressively harder and worse as the night went on.

I then saw him a year ago using a laptop and he barely touched the turntables for two hours.

Now someone like Carl cox works everything and mixes everything and maybe with exception to a few set pieces during his set (if he even does that?) the whole thing is basically on the fly as he goes.

With people like SHM/Angello/Hardwell and I imagine the vegas circuit guys (emery, zedd etc) everything is pre-programmed, from track selection to cue points to BPM's, so really all they're doing is pressing play a whole lot of fist pumping.

Joel (mau5) put out a statement a while go that turned in a massive flame war that all the big DJ's were just pressing play these days as the entire sets were programmed even down to the lighting, which then caused Armin to "show" how he does his set live yet still can have his lighting synced.

I think you'll find the more "product-like" the DJ (i.e. commercial, lowest common denominator pop-house), the more programmed the set.

I did see that video from Armin describing how he mixes live and cues up the lights with the lighting engineer on the fly. I have to say I did believe him. I've seen him a couple of times live and you'd know he was mixing live. I just find it hard to believe at the big performances such as ultra or big american concerts were there are many sponsors putting a lot of money in, that somone like ties to or avicci would risk putting out a naff mixing session or even worse, pressing stop on the wrong CD deck ( we've all been there). I did watch a hardwell session and I couldn't get over it. He was basically just playing tracks back to back and fading out. Not the least bit of mixing. Plenty of fist pumpin and fake American accent on the mic. Its probably one of those best kept secrets of the industry. To be honest I don't have a huge problem with it as most of these guys have proven themselves in the production studio and so are producers first DJs second. Some of them probably don't feel as comfortable with the djing aspect and see it more of a chance to showcase their material and get appreciated by their many fans.

quote:

Originally posted by Freak Watching how this thread develops with interest... I may or may not post some stuff, depending on how it goes

Judging by the rest of the Dj booth forum, I wouldn't wait too long mate

quote:

Originally posted by KiNeTiC ENeRgY Judging by the rest of the Dj booth forum, I wouldn't wait too long mate

Um Judging by the the djbooth as a whole, who cares?

quote:

Originally posted by Freak Watching how this thread develops with interest... I may or may not post some stuff, depending on how it goes

Spill it!

I will if you will

quote:

Originally posted by PaULiN0 Um Judging by the the djbooth as a whole, who cares?

For the 10th time, fuck off

quote:

Originally posted by KiNeTiC ENeRgY For the 10th time, fuck off

Holy shit, did I hit a nerve? if I did than stfu.

Im not sure if i'm answering you question but ill try...

in ableton, warp tracks to same bpm and then when mixing tracks on cdj, as long as the pitch is exactly the same on each cdj the songs will mix together perfectly and not drift. example - track A is playing with the pitch at +.9. if you load track B into the other CDJ, and set the pitch to .9 it will be at the same BPM as track A and once beatmatched, will not drift at all how to do this:

warp track CORRECTLY, PERFECTLY. Not always easy but usually is. in ableton, i insert warp marker #1 on beat 1 (not always a beat necessarily) and right click click warp from here straight. it is important to get beat 1 perfectly marked. then i go to end of the track and see the drift and correct it. im not sure about terminology, but it takes me about 10 sec to warp an "easy" track correctly. Hard tracks are done the same way, but in smaller increments (like every 32 beats) but when you get the drift corrected on beat 32, you right click and click warp from here straight. and do it over and over (not always 32 beats sometimes i just go from the first beat after a drop or build. songs with intro's can be done too but you just gotta play with it. the intro might not have snares or kicks at all. so where the waveform starts, insert warp marker 1. then warp from there (straight). then you find the first real beat/kick. adjust any drift and insert beat marker 2 and warp from there. easy tracks usually only have 1 or 2 beat/warp markers (they are yellow). hard tracks can have many. its hard to explain but any person who understands ableton can warp almost any track perfectly, even old rock tracks what were not made with computers, just a live drummer, just gonna have lots and lots of warp markers and take forever.

then after your track is warped, save the file at a bpm of your choice. for example someone who mixes a lot of 4 by 4 and the tracks range from 120-130 would save all of their tracks at 125 bpm. then when they load the tracks into their cdj's they will all be at 125 by with the pitch at 0 default.

of course you dont want to stay at the same bpm all night, and you dont want to play a 130bpm track at 120bpm. so you go through the same logical process you would go through when mixing the set, however you would not need to beatmatch for longer than a few seconds. once you get the tracks beatmatched, they stay. technically you could do it without headphones i guess.

i dont use cdjs or use this method. but i wondered how these djs were doing what your explaining so i figured it out by recreating it.

*** i must add, a lot of these big djs have their own remixes/edits/original tracks. So even though they are "cheathing" its considered ok for them because they put in the work of creating a one of a kind track (for the most part). some djs just do this so they have perfect mixes and can socialize in the booth.

of course EQing comes into play and if you cant EQ or phrase match you still sound like crap.

hope this answers your question, i tried my best. not up on all the proper terminology, but definitely can recreate what you are questioning.

and add the cues or loops or whatever via your cdj (not really sure how the new ones work)

LOL when did little disco learn how to warp? wooow!