4 Deck Mixing

[FreeCandy]

I get incredibly nervous when I use a virtual 3rd and 4th deck. I find that if I just use two and focus on them, then I perform much better. That's just me though, I don't know if you do a lot of looping or other work with your tracks, but I find that I can't do as much as I would like to do when I have more tracks running. Anyway that's my two cents. Good luck!

[djdavibe]

Ive been mixing for 20+ years, so this controller stuff is quite new to me. But I was on Final Scratch when it came out, so I got pretty familiar with Native Instruments products such as Traktor Scratch.

Anyways, back in the day we used to use sequencers when we made a mega mix. Basically, it was a tape deck player that would record your work at twice the speed as a normal deck. It would take the left and right channel of each side (A+B) and give you their use to record on going one way, hence 4 channels to record on... bla blah blah, but that taught me how to sequence and by using todays dj programs, it is a heck of alot easier.

My biggest contribution here is that you should prepare tracks ahead of time by beat gridding the track, then setting up cue points and pre-determined loop points. It takes away alot of the nervousness etc, but once you practice that layout a few times, it becomes natural... buttons on the contoller become very familiar (similar feel to hot cue on keyboards). I've been doing 4 deck mixing for the past two years, it is truly awesome dj-ing has come this far

[Mrspyaman]

Anyways, back in the day we used to use sequencers when we made a mega mix. Basically, it was a tape deck player that would record your work at twice the speed as a normal deck. It would take the left and right channel of each side (A+B) and give you their use to record on going one way, hence 4 channels to record on... bla blah blah, but that taught me how to sequence and by using todays dj programs, it is a heck of alot easier.

My biggest contribution here is that you should prepare tracks ahead of time by beat gridding the track, then setting up cue points and pre-determined loop points. It takes away alot of the nervousness etc, but once you practice that layout a few times, it becomes natural... buttons on the contoller become very familiar (similar feel to hot cue on keyboards). I've been doing 4 deck mixing for the past two years, it is truly awesome dj-ing has come this far

So basically do a pre-mix?

[djdavibe]

If you are playing live, then it's all by what the crowds into but if it is for a mix to showcase your skill, then I lay out the tracks that go well together, add in cue points and loops, and run it a few times to get the timing down. Eventually you memorize it, check out what I mean on my couple of mixes over at https://soundcloud.com/dj_da_vibe , they are all done live. I prepare all my tracks that I plan on using frequently by beat gridding them, then I like to chop up the tracks by using cuepoints and then when mixing into the next track, I loop the current track and then exit when it's right. Traktor does a great job at doing that. As for the harware, I use a Denon MC6000 w/ 13" macbook.