Good to be back after taking one show off during the Holiday period. Had an amazing break, but missed talking to you guys. Welcome to 2014, hope you all had an amazing break too.
I’m gonna kick things off in this DJ News Show with a little chat about Darius Syrossian. I don’t enjoy focusing on negative subject, but I felt that I wanted to mention a few things about the recent debacle at the BPM Festival.
Following my 2 minute piece about that, I will talk about other most recent news including Mixcloud, iPads, Looping, Midi and some other little snippets of stuff for you!
Watch
Links
Darius Debacle – So as not to focus on the negativity, here’s a link to the BPM Festival Recap for Day 5
Audio 10 Mark 2 – DJworx.com
Join the Beta – mixcloud.com
Ean Golden gets all Loopy – Watch the video for Loop Macros from DJ Tech Tools
Ryan DeJaegher gets sensitive – DJ Tech Tools Video
Top Ten Tips of 2013 – traktortips.com
DJ JEFX and his iPad / S2 case combo – traktortips.com
Hercules DJ Control Wave iPad Controller Review – digitaldjtips.com
Reloop Beatpad iPad controller Review – digitaldjtips.com
Micah Buzan Music – If you like the music at the end you can get hold of his stuff via a link to bandcamp on his YouTube page.
Thanks for Watching
See you in another 2 weeks for the next Traktor DJ Show – If you have any cool content you would like featured get in touch.
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HI Al, Happy new year and all that. Re Ipad’s I kind of went the other way with it. Got back into Djing through my ipad with the Djay app then wanted a controller for it. I bought the Numark IDJ Pro. Which is great. However I got frustrated with a few things after a while.
1. Limited storage you can only play tracks off the ipad itself or from the cloud. You cannot get to your library any other way.
2. Effects get boring after a while no wet/dry params etc.
3. Annoying FX problem where the volume level drops when you engage an effect.
4. Volume level from the ipad is pretty low.
Dj player was an alternative to use with the controller, but still stuck with the tunes on your ipad. That is an apple limitation I’m told where you cannot get to home sharing from apps other than the in built itunes / music player which is such a shame.
Anyway I bought a macbook / Traktor after that and found a guy in the UK who has made a cable that you can use to unlock the IDJ pro for use on the Macbook. It’s a 30 pin to usb cable. Works a treat. So I was able to save myself some money by not buying another controller. (the macbook was expensive enough :).
You still need an idevice to unlock the controller when you power up but otherwise I don’t need to use the ipad with it.
I made some mapping for it all which are up on DJ techtools. Kind of basic features but they work. (reminds me must go off and finish the 4 deck mapping)
Anyway I put the ipad to good use. I now run TouchOSC off of it and use it as another controller with some of the great interfaces you can get on it. I made my own, but have found one which does the DJ tech tools instant gratification mapping like the midi fighter.
Coolest thing is I can now create my own controller interface with multiple pages of controls and it is right there in the centre of the controller. X/Y pads faders, knobs, encoders etc all working over wireless. It is missing a library browser / wave forms. Still it is a good step in the right direction.
Apart from that I recently added a Traktor X1 Mk2 on the side for extra FX controls and a few more buttons as the Idj pro could do with a few more.
Still working on exactly how I want the workflow to go with that one.
Djing on ipads does take a bit of getting used to if you are used to physical knobs / faders. Friction can be a problem. having the app and the ipad as a backup is a really good idea as a sound source if everything goes down.
Anyway keep up the great work on the site and the news shows are great a real time saver. Thanks for that.
Hi Phil, Happy new year to you too.
Thanks for taking the time to structure a great comment. I do like the idea of having the iPad as an additional controller to control Traktor. I have used it this way in the past but feel people could certainly make more of it in that way.
You might be right in saying that the Traktor iPad DJ App is the entry point into which DJ’s move to Traktor Pro, perhaps that was the intention of Native Instruments?
We are all spoilt for choice these days, it’s nice to have so many options, but this can also have a downside in overwhelming people.
Thanks again for your comment and encouraging words!
First, I absolutely love your site and it has provided me some excellent tips (most recently the History tip, as I was looking for my NYE set)! One thing to mention, at least as far as the Ipad question you had: I’ve been using an Ipad with Lemur for a long time as a control surface with Traktor. However, you are correct about the connectivity issue with using an Ipad as Wifi/Bluetooth will never be as secure as a dedicated cord. With that in mind, what I have done with my Ipad 1st Gen and most recently my Ipad Air is to jailbreak and use a tethering program (the one I use is MyFi). What it basically does is opens all the communication protocols to be available over USB, enabling a dedicated wired connection that connects via the standard charging cable and enables MIDI over USB.
You can also accomplish this with the Camera Connection Kit and a USB A cord, but in my opinion this is a terrible design and I don’t understand Apple’s reasoning with supplying CoreMIDI functionality but in a very restricted manner. Possibly in other versions of iOS there will be standard MIDI over USB, but for the moment this has been the best option I have settled on. One thing to note, it does make the upgrading process for the Ipad more frustrating as you need to wait on a jailbreak which will work on your version of iOS.
Thanks for your comment and kind words!
This is a good way to connect the iPad, people should be wary of jailbreaking though as I my previous work with Apple caused me to come across many people who’s iPhones had simply stopped working and were irreparable due to having been jailbroken.
This won’t happen to everyone, but once it’s been jailbroken, you do run the risk of losing your device forever.
That’s absolutely true, and something worth keeping in mind. At least for me, it has been the ‘lesser of all evils’ solution to having a wired connection with an Ipad.