Laptop DJing
If you mentioned the words Laptop and Djing as a compound noun just a few years ago, you’d probably elicit a ton of very negative reactions from both DJ’s and electronic music fans. The crowd complains that mixing from a laptop looks like some guy checking his mail in front of the floor, and traditional DJ’s continue to bash CD players even to this day! However, change is inevitable especially in a technologically reliant scene such as electronic dance music, and today we have laptop + cdj + turntable hybrids that run all the best clubs in Manila.
Embassy runs a comprehensive DJing system that uses the aforementioned combination of top shelf CDJ’s, analogue mixer and laptop running DJing software. I’ve seen their Wednesday Night mash-up set (i think John personally spins on these nights) get a huge response from clubgoers whenever a precisely drawn track gets dropped on another one to form the perfect mash. It’s impressive, to say the least!
Whenever a laptop is present at the DJ booth, chances are a track or two (or even the entire set!) gets played from it. DJ’s have the option of controlling the DJ software directly with a hardware controller such as those offered by M-Audio (the Xponent and X-Session) and Vestax. Some DJ’s may not like this because it takes away the feel of using a real turntable or CDJ which they’re used to, which is why analogue/digital hybrid solutions such as Serato Scratch are more popular in big clubs.
I’d love to have a setup as detailed as a Serato system complete with a pair of turntables, cdj’s and a macbookpro, but since I don’t mix at gigs anymore it’s really quite steep. I was able to digout an old X-Session controller from our old electronic outfit Cactus Team and, coupled with NI Traktor, was able to mix some tracks albeit awkwardly:
Hope to get back to mixing in 2009 when I’ve got more free time (without having to wake up super early everyday). For the meantime, I’m loving Beatport and all the great tracks you can get from it.
