fohat

I'm using the ecler nuo4 a couple of month now together with traktor and it just rocks. can do everything within one box no need for an additional controller. it takes some time to adjust everything and get used to it (especially with own workflow) but then it's nothing less then perfect. yes the price is high, but quality is best and mixer itself is imo way better than the pioneer ones.

he he same with my mate, she is a punk lover. and then i took her to the last year's zoom festival to show her how psypartys are working. the lineup was very commercial with IM, Hypersonic and so on. finally she really enjoyed the party, the music and the deco during i had the feeling attending a pop festival. man i was so bored. better to go to punk festivals now :-) note: that doesn't mean that quality of music was bad. hypersonic for example impressed me a lot with his musical skills but the music itself sucks imo.

it depends. if you play only a couple of tracks within the same key area (or fitting keys) before changing to another key area with a couple of tracks you have enough variety but still kind of harmonic flow.

in addition to the harmonic mixing topic we had here lately, i discovered something yesterday which is imo a big step forward in providing good service for original cd buyers: inside the booklet of the actual s-range remix cd, the track listing contains not only track names and bpm values it contains also the listing of the keys of the tracks. is this new? are there any other releases containing this kind of information inside booklets? although i just started to be interested in this harmonic mixing thing, i would be really happy if this will be standard in the future.

cool that finally somebody wrote a review about this amazing release. for me one of the best compilations in the last few month. especially frozen ghost is a great finding for me, phantastic stuff from this artist. although "redevil" is a great tune "half breed" is way better imo. exactly the style i like so much from south african artists: dark and deep kicks/rolling basslines with an industrial approach in melodies, so perfectly cooked and balanced. yummy! i want more of this!!!!

good definition but already there with the usual south african artists. latest example: v/a twilight children

the new hydraglyph `kinetic´ on sanskara comes into my mind for melodic darktrance. especially the title track `kinetic´ and the guitar track `condition black´ (here we have a remixed version, the original was even better imo) are two good examples.

same here. never ever had any problems with them. even if something went wrong i got immediate reply and solution for problems. would like to know why somebody is posting messages like the one above that newcomers shouldn't buy at psyshop without any further explanation. o.k. this mistake sounds like a serious one but let it proof a second time and then start bashing psyshop.

NP: Sorry that I go off topic here.... "Don't trust your friend report him" (Brazil) Don't get me wrong, I know you have good intentions, but results with a "Black Book" would be just horrible. A place where everybody could and would post bad things about anybody doesn't matter whether things are true or not. Ok you could make this a closed thing only for all people involved in the scene. But who is selecting the ones worth to participate? Even with a closed "Black Book" you would have enough people bashing others just for their very personal and *not* objective reasons. What's about a "White Book"? Yes you would get a lot of promotional crap, but it is not as bad as dealing with rumours and reputation destroyers. just my 2 cents

i slighly agree on the terminology thing, i know i used them a lot. but you have to learn the meanings of the terms anywa,y if you want to start over as a dj ;-) doesn't matter what soft- or hardware you will use.

do you mind to explain why he should discard traktor? anyway i think i can do it for you: 1. traktor is child's toy 2. it does everything for you, so no need to learn to mix by yourself. so for example beat matching is done automatically there are no skills needed to learn and do it properly. this is not the real dj art 3. traktor has bad sound quality cause all traktor dj's use mp3's from illegal sources 4. it's not real dj art to stick on a monitor only and just clicking sometimes here and there with your mouse. especially this mouse clicking thing is not really hands on. 5. you know what you are talking about because you tried it by yourself and after a very short while you noticed it is crap cause of the above reasons 6. and as all organizers of the planet think similar, you will never get any serious bookings Am i right? anway for the original question on a personal opinion i would like to recommend the opposite: 1. digital dj'ing will be quite standard in a couple of years (beside CDJ's and Vinyl). if you want to stay on the future side it is a good idea to start over now. 2. if you want to stay with traktor you should do the following: * at first if you don't have a legal version of it buy it. buy the new versions traktor3. there are so many cracked (and older versions) out there with tons of bugs, it is no fun to play on them. (imo one reason why traktor is considered beeing crap. * use original sources only. buy your cd's and rip them only to wav's. 320 mp3's are also good but if you want to avoid discussions with other dj's and/or organizers just use wav files. * learn it from the scratch. consider that it will take month over month until you are able to use all functions. it will take another couple of month until you are starting to be good. if you use traktor as it has been built - a new tool to mix different than with any other source- than you will get noticed, believe me. don't be just a "playing tracks in a row dj". if you are looking for this, it is better to go with vinyl or cdj's. beside the good manual of traktor there are no good tutorials out there. you have to learn everything by yourself or maybe find somebody who is using it already to show you the basic things. * try to understand the loop concept, in setting loops and jumping seamless from one loop to another within the same track or any other loaded track and back again. * try to understand the concept behind high quality time stretching. * try to start to combine both (loop functions and time stretching) with 3 or 4 decks. you will see you can do kind of live remixes then. * learn the bead grid concept. you will then be able to set loops in part of tracks without any beats. * beside learning to mix just with your ears (basic skill you *have* to learn) try to understand the concept of visual mixing. * buy an external midi controller. best solution is imho a combination between a real mixer and midi controller (e.g. ecler nuo4). you can decide then to use the internal mixer of traktor with a very good emulation of the xone92 mixer or use it in external mixer mode, but still beeing able to use traktor build in effects and filters from xone92 and 600er pioneer. * buy a good (external) audiocard (if you don't have one already). use high quality cables. * you will need a good laptop (at least 2 ghz and 1 gig ram). avoid celeron cpu's they are considered not beeing best with audio * if you are on windows make an own partition, make a clean xp installation optimize it for audio (search google for that term) and just use traktor on it. * last but not least: consider that some things mentioned above can be done with good cdj's as well, but using up to 4 decks and *combining* a lot of functions mentioned above can be done only within traktor. have fun! btw.: i'm not at all linked to native instruments, i'm just a long time user (since almost 4 years) who sold one day his cdj's and would never ever go back to any hardware source again ;-)

nice topic... after fanatically consuming electronic music for almost 20 years i decided very late getting a dj. my life was already kind of well organized (work, family etc.) but i felt that there is something missing. something i can be creative with and i can stick on even if other things are running bad. finally i started dj'ing around 1999, being a bedroom dj for almost one year (didn't practise all the time only here and then so it took me longer time than normal). after that time i thought it is time to go public. so i was writing emails to organizers offering demo cd's and asking for gigs. it was the only way for me cause i was not very well connected to the scene. and yes it was really hard to get into it. as most beginners i offered also playing for free but it took me a few month until i got the first gig and it didn't come through my promotion work. it happened more or less as a big coincidence: a guy from slovakia was actually searching in google for "psytrance dj". as i was good that time in search engine optimization my website was nr. 1 for that term :-) so he asked me for a demo, he liked it and i got the the booking. from the very first beginning an international dj, wow i was so proud. this booking and some other smaller ones i used then as a reference for further requests. i still consider myself nothing less than a small and totally unknown dj, but i managed meanwhile to play in different countries (still on smaller or midsize parties) and had also some really nice gigs. my biggest one was a dj set after "parasense live" at 4 in the morning in front of 700 people still heavy in party mood. and it worked well, what a blast. funny thing is that in my hometown i'm still almost unknown. i play on very small partys as starting dj or last one (nothing against it as long as it is fun:-). but i don't want to complain, i'm very happy with the situation. one other thing i noticed through out the years: if somebody wants to get noticed as a prof. dj it is a imo a mistake to play for free (or offer a free play). reputation can only be build up in behaving prof. and asking always for money. sad but true! i get much better gigs since i started asking for money. that doesn't mean that i don't play for free. when i know the organizer and i see it is a non commercial party I agree often times on playing for a couple of beers :-) but i think that's quite common among other dj's as well. nowadays i have 1-2 gigs a month and i am very happy with the situation. i couldn't play more often (cause of regular work and family) and less would be kind of frustrating as well. what i miss is better connection to my homescene and better new releases.

Did anbody hear already the remixed version of Butterfly (Delerious rmx). Finally the first track from Yahel I really enjoy. And Delerious managed to throw out the cheese as much as possible :-)

"Phatmatix vs Audiobrains - Sonic Machine" is mindfucking great but all other comp. releases from him alone are imo just cheap copies of the track above. Or at least nothing special edit: uups just checked sound samples of your np track: back to start, this sounds great (okay but this track is also from june as the one mentioned above)

timestretching in high quality is possible within traktor dj studio (good cpu needed) you can easily mix for example 138 tracks with 145 tracks without any disturbing or disharmonic notice as long as the overall feeling of both tracks is similar. vice versa it works also pretty good: if i really want to mix two tracks together (both have same tempo) although the key is different, i increase the key -maximum half tone- of one track to get it similar to the other one. this works not always but brought me often times good results. both methods i combine to get some kind of harmonic mixing (still need to learn a lot about harmonys)

yes but the point is: he didn't mix it by himself (then it wouldn't be that bad for the low skills he has). it has been mixed by somebody who's name is dj lucas and for a prof dj and an official release, mixing should be way better than it is. but maybe i'm hypercritic on this...

i couldn't agree less about the new raja ram. 1. it is badly mixed (as it is not mixed by himself he should have asked somebody who knows his art) 2. has no flow at all for a mixed cd (jumps between substyles and is not at all story telling) 3. tracks itself are boring as hell (as far as i remember 4 guitar tracks, and the first two in a row) all in all not fresh, just the usual full on which has had it's time long ago. cover art has been discussed already and i find it also just ridiculous. (but maybe he is a really ironic person so that he wanted to make an ironic statement against mr. rockstar skazi?) when performing live with 1200 mics or as a dj i have to say it is fun to attend and his way of performing is just great (doesn't make the music better, but i give a shit then ;-) just my 2 cents

one of the first albums (or even the first, don't know) of tangerine dream is called "zeit" it is a double album and has (as far as i remember) only one very long track on it. maybe it has more tracks on it but they sounded all the same. very experimental stuff. don't know whether you are looking for this.

as i said in another thread he seems to be more skazi like than dark.

when fx and disharmonic melodies are used that way that they should deliver a very very psychedelic feeling but result is nothing more than weird sound. but that's only my opinion as i said. I prefer more the trance feeling of psychedelic trance. this can be kind of dark or as said in my previous post "industrial" but still groovy and catchy. for example i like shift (beside other south african artists) very much. his music is sometimes also very psychedelic, but has still a very touchy and driving groove. even better his side project twisted system.

i miss the industrial spirit from "pentafiles". for my taste "funraiser" is way too psychedelic and not enough variation from track to track. i need some driving spirit when it comes to dark and kind of weird stuff but taste differs i know...

yes astrix is dark stuff and kindzazda is happy morning oldschool goatrance. lol this one was good.

baah these melodies are so incredible cheap, sounds like a beginner playing around with keyboards. on the other side the power of the track is cool. but i would never play it cause of these lame melodies. he managed to do it better with his guitar tracks.

oh yes indeed. and btw: nice skazi like attitude on your picture ;-)

maybe he meant to use regular decks/mixer wiring them to a computer and then record the mix on it? if yes you can simply use the record function of your soundcard. or you go with a more pro software like wavelab with lots of editing and mastering functions. +++offtopic+++ with traktor i disagree that it easy to use. it is easy to start with, but if you want to be really good on it and if you want to be able to be as creative as possible (with all the offered functions and using an external hardware controller) you will need longer time to learn it as getting into cd deck mixing. but finally you get much more out of dj'ing than just using decks or turntables. just my two cents