quote:

Originally posted by whiskers good, simple, free software

Those words don't usually go together. when you say "key tracks" are you looking for the midi controller to launch tracks via or one where you can literally play notes? If you're looking for a synth where you can play music, there's a million of them out there that are pretty good. The key is to find a VST that can operate as a stand-alone and not strictly as a plug-in in a DAW. For trance, something like Superwave8 would be good (although I don't know if it operates as a stand alone). However, with most dance music, the melody is fairly simple. What makes it sound good is tons of automation, which you simply can't do live. Look at the image below. Every parameter on that thing can be automated:




Which brings me to my second point: I hate to burst your bubble, but PVD fakes it. 99% of the crowd has no idea what he's doing, so they eat it up. (Granted, he has actually keyed stuff live [which sounded soooo cheesy] but mostly just launches a sequence from Ableton Live.)

It's like a recent incident where Tiesto was trying to look like a bad ass with 4 CDJ's going at once (bullshit). The only problem -- there was no audio out cable on one of them. I hope I can find the photo a friend of mine took of that. Absolutely priceless.

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Temporarily retired from the world of DJing.

do find that picture...would love to see that

quote:

Originally posted by DJChrisB It's like a recent incident where Tiesto was trying to look like a bad ass with 4 CDJ's going at once (bullshit). The only problem -- there was no audio out cable on one of them. I hope I can find the photo a friend of mine took of that. Absolutely priceless.

that's quite hilarious, i'd love to see that photo!


i want to just play notes so that i can identify the keys the tracks are written in for harmonic mixing. i was doing this with a virtual keyboard from rapid evolution, and it sounded pretty neat, playing the notes along with the tune - i saw pvd do this at his NYC gig last month.

basically, i just want to play notes with this midi keyboard i borrowed from a friend, maybe during a gig, maybe not.

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i dont know if this will work because i dont know or use the demo, but try the ableton demo and run a free synth in a midi channel and see what you can do.

My mate and i use something like this as a standard during our gigs! We dj in traktor, and then do play-overs with synths. We use m-audio's oxygen 49 for the synths and evolution's uc-33 for traktor.
The way we set it up, is we run the instances we need (traktor, of course, reason for the orchestral sounds and some standalone vsti for electronic synths) and use them as needed.
A good thing is to have lots of out channels on your soundcard, like m-audio 1814, but atm we're stuck with firewire audiophile, which doesn't make pre-listening of the synth easy.
The one thing you must take care of is asuring that you have equal latencies in all proggy's you'll use, that you have enough cpu and then the sky is the limit.
We do this on one laptop, so it's a bit of alt+tabbing while playing, will buy another one to be really cool & fancy when some € arrive, but anyway, it can be done, and the crowd loves when you play something xtra over a good track they know.

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www.myspace.com/retrackd

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Originally posted by Drake44444 i dont know if this will work because i dont know or use the demo, but try the ableton demo and run a free synth in a midi channel and see what you can do.

+1

quote:

Originally posted by Drake44444 i dont know if this will work because i dont know or use the demo, but try the ableton demo and run a free synth in a midi channel and see what you can do.

i thought about that, but ableton is a resource-heavy app, and using it alongside traktor is something i'd rather avoid.

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Originally posted by Tarpex My mate and i use something like this as a standard during our gigs! We dj in traktor, and then do play-overs with synths. We use m-audio's oxygen 49 for the synths and evolution's uc-33 for traktor. The way we set it up, is we run the instances we need (traktor, of course, reason for the orchestral sounds and some standalone vsti for electronic synths) and use them as needed.

that's exactly what i'm talking about! what's the vsti you use?

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quote:

Originally posted by whiskers what's the vsti you use?

z3ta+, absynth, v-station and albino do the trick!

Oh, and one thing, you'll have to have equal tempos in all instances, meaning if you have a ryhtmic synth sound, it'll be out of sync if the tempos arent the same with traktor's.
If we plan to use these sounds a lot live, we just run cubase, throw the vsti in and off we go.

CPU strain can get quite heavy, and 2 giga of ram is a must with this kind of gigging.

But the "omg-wtf" looks of bystanders and production-dumm dj's, when you scroll through the synths and turn the parameteters on them, and when a great sound comes through with a good track under it, is priceless
Wish there were more cute female trance dj'z. I'd definitely impress one with this.

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www.myspace.com/retrackd

for a cheap trance oriented vst, try REFX vanguard