News
January 22, 2010
Djay
Djay is special in that it’s fairly inexpensive, easy to learn and does a really good job of digitally recreating the feel of real, live DJing.
Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s DJing was pretty much my life. Over the years other interests, primarily my career and my discovery of the web, technology and design took over and I put away my decks, mixer and my record collection. Every once in awhile I’d get the chance to spin and each and every time I’ve thought, “I should get back into that” but never did.
I’m not sure I ever will, but after a few hours messing with Djay I feel like if I did, I’d probably leave behind all the equipment, sell off my records and set up and go all digital.
Djay was my first real foray into digital DJing. I’d always been scared off by what look like really complicated UIs. To me, DJing in real life is more of a manual skill than anything else. The controls, for the most part, aren’t all that complicated. What’s killer and amazing about Djay is its ability to use software user-interface to fairly accurately capture what it feels like to spin records in real life. All of the controls function pretty much as they would in reality, from the realistic sliders to the small “pitch up” and “pitch down” buttons that do a remarkable job recreating how one would manually slow a record.
There are also lots of things I wish I’d been able to do with records, and most of it is done in a fairly straight-forward and accessible way. Accurate multiple cue spots, the ability to auto-loop beats, sampling, seamless integration with iTunes, etc. After an hour or so I was really wanting to have a manual control to go along with it, simply because my keyboard and touch-pad weren’t cutting it. Good thing they offer exactly that kind of set up. I might look into that at some point.
There are some issues. For example some of the spots where they try and mimic reality are, well, pointless. For example, there is drag when you “throw” a record that you can’t really compensate for with a finger swipe. That’s to be expected I suppose. The auto BPM feature is marginal at best and I can’t seem to figure out how to over-ride it, making it a bit hard to plan out mixes. But for $50, I don’t see these are big problems.
If you’re at all into mixing records you should check it out. Try the free demo, it’ll give you a good feel for it. Also, if your interested in what you can do quickly, I’ve posted a little mega-mix thing I made with Djay. It’s my Lady Gaga vs. Madonna mashup (“Vogue” 12” + DJ Dan Remix of “Bad Romance”) It took me about an hour of tinkering and it’s by no means professional (I messed up a few times as I hadn’t really mastered the interface) but can give you an idea of what you can do with very little knowledge or practice with the application.