Whilst I have owned the Kontrol F1 for almost two years now, it has remained rather dormant up until recently. I have tinkered around with it on various occasions but very rarely immersed myself in it for any notable length of time.

The remix decks have been feeling a little neglected and have been used simply to launch radio jingles over the last few months.

With the recent announcement of the Kontrol S8 it is obvious that the DJ landscape is changing. Due to being deeply routed in the old school scene of turntables and CDJ’s, it has been a real challenge for me to change my perspective and to pull myself out of the ‘mixing two records together’ style of DJ’ing, to the ‘layering of sounds and live production’ style of DJ’ing.

Ableton somewhat tempted me down this route a few years back when there seemed to be an explosion of Ableton DJ’s. But the program to me was quite the mountain to climb and I didn’t want to spend time learning another software. (If you do however, then Vespers is a great tutor)

So this is where Traktor remained the strong contender, it bridged the gap nicely between old school DJ’ing and digital possibilities and so I sunk my energies into that. Two years later Traktor Tips was born and now I am faced with the perfect storm: Digital Vs Old School.

Thankfully I am not forced to use or buy a Kontrol S8 and as such, I still have the old school flavour of jog wheels at my disposal on the Kontrol S4. I am however grateful that I have a kontrol F1, which allows me to delve deep inside the remix decks without any hardship of midi mappings and technical wizardry. This gives me the luxury of bridging the old with the new, allowing me to experiment with digital whilst still being able to defend myself from the ‘you’re not a DJ if you use the sync button‘ crowd.

After finally spending some time in the realms of the remix decks, I am starting to see the value in these fantastic additions to an ‘old school’ DJ set up.

It takes time for people to accept change and some never will, which is great, but others will adopt things right away and are all for it.

The tweet below sums it up nicely:

@traktortips @Traktor It’s OK you got to it when it was time for you!! It’s Just so much fun and creativity going on! I love it!

— Ben Blayton (@bbtennisman) October 3, 2014

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It doesn’t matter which type of person you are, so long as you are following your truth and your passion. Which reminds me of a recent article on Digital DJ Tips advising you to only play music YOU like.

We are all spoilt for choice these days and rather than being grateful for all these choices, many of us tend to preach that our own choices are best.

It’s important to ‘know thyself’ and do what’s right for you.

So anyway, back to the point, you are going to see some Remix Deck tutorials emerging over the coming weeks and months. If this is something of interest to you then you might want bookmark the ‘remix deck section‘ of Traktor Tips, or sign up to the newsletter, so that you don’t miss what’s happening.

Now Check Out:
Traktor Kontrol F1 unboxing Video
Traktor Remix Deck Basics
Making Vs. Buying Remix Sets

Take Charge of the Remix Decks:
Sign up for the Remix Deck Course