Sunday, January 22, 2006
Hang the DJ, hang the DJ
Last night had my public debut as a DJ (in contrast to playing music on parties at home), together with the almighty roommate aka. Till. We played at the cozy Octopussy Club in Friedrichshain at a party I organized together with some friends from the university.
Things I learned: The DJ is always wrong. Girls come to you complaining that nobody likes the record you are playing at the moment, although people are dancing. You give in, play something else and other girls come complaining. Guys never seem to complain, they just come by to tell you if they like it or to see which song is just playing.
We dj’ed with Traktor 3 Demo on my PowerBook because I have not yet found a different program that simply works. Other programs do not work with CoreAudio sound hardware, rely on iTunes (which I simply dislike) or force you to “import” each and every song before you can play it back, something that is just not possible if you have 100 GB of audio data. Markus, who came to the party as well, told me that they are evaluating open source audio and DJ tools at the moment, something I’m interested in very much.
The 30 minutes limited running time of the Traktor Demo version was not so much a problem as we had enough to play from vinyl anyway, so we restarted the program every four or five tracks anyway. On the hardware side, I used the Maya 44 USB audio interface from Audiotrak I recently bought for 99 Euros. It seems to be the cheapest external interface with two separate stereo outputs available at the moment. It sure isn’t studio-grade hi-fi at that price, but it it way better than the noisy soundboards in my desk computer or my old laptop. For DJing, it’s perfect. It also has two stereo inputs I have not tested yet, but I guess they are perfectly okay for home recording. They sure won’t kill any sound my cheap Behringer mixer hasn’t killed before.
So, where’s my next assignment? Making people dance certainly appeals to one’s subconscius lust for power and being a DJ is a form of dictatorship I’m always in for.
Sometimes, everything is strange. I just searched for i driver for my maya soundcard and found your blog. In the first moment i thaught, you would be one of my dj friends, ´cause his name is also Philip, he uses Traktor, he is on a university and so on.
Anyway, i am also using Traktor, have a Behringer and a Maya. If you like to change music contact me. My flat is U Osloer and the most time, i am at home and make music.
Matthias
when I was VJ-ing the first few times, I was working with a bunch of quite experienced DJs. These guys had some fifth sense for “Ms Complaint” and similar annoyances as enthusiastic, drunk talking head, who’s even worse. Whenever a member of these species approached they “vanished” in their headphones for obviously difficult and mysterious PFL tasks – so they permanently addressed me, the VJ. This was the perfect thing: I let them talk …and talk… and when they finally came to the point -if I would play their favourite music for the rest of the night- I told them that I had nothing to do with the music….