DJ Mixing Lesson on Old School Disco Pioneer XDJ-RX

0:00 My first demonstration stroke, also tutorial on the Pioneer XDJ-RX

Alright ladies and gentlemen, my first demonstration stroke, also tutorial on the Pioneer XDJ-RX. So, what do I think of it? I'll tell you in a bit. Now first of all, you have two USB ports, one on the right, one on the left, top right, top left. Both of them will play files. They'll play normal files, so if you've just got a bunch of MP3s, chuck them on and away you go. But if you want this to come to life, I highly recommend you use rekordbox. Quick tip here as well, very small tip. When you're in quantize mode and you want to use the hot cues, and you want to have a really good dabble at the old hot cues, it might not work. Because in quantize mode, it finds the kick. So, you could be doing something like this, you know.

And it won't happen. Listen, that's out of quantize mode. So let's go into quantize now. I'm going to hit there. Now then, that's another hot cue.

Can you hear my tapping?

Let's go out of quantize. Now listen, here we go.

1:24 Bedroom wants, wants quality, wants bedroom

There. This, it's happening, alright.

I'm not going to say I love it. I do actually. Alright, this is what they've done. And I've seen it. I've said this in a previous video, alright. You got loads of DJs who travel all the way around the world, and they want loads of the best kit in their rooms before they start their set or just to practice. Well, it's a pain in the ass probably taking all of the separate CD players and mixers. But what you have here is you have all in one. Finally, a company has gone, let's take our best products and put them into one unit. And that's exactly what Pioneer, what Pioneer have done with the RX. The mixer is great because it's got fantastic effects. They haven't thought, let's just make lots of money by making another controller and just like chuck it out there.

No, they've thought about this. They've understood what not only the club DJ wants, but the bedroom DJ wants. The bedroom DJ wants top quality. The bedroom DJ wants top quality kit that will work last and it's happening. It's there, it is, you know, when you put your finger on the platter, you're not going to be moving your finger and thinking, why isn't the sound moving with me? It does also for from a bedroom DJs perspective who let's say can't afford high end kit. You pretty much got a CDJ there and one there and a DJ in the middle for a fraction of the cost. Now I don't say to people all the time, go buy, buy, buy. I don't like to do that. I like to do a demo and give you an idea of what the product's like.

4:04 Radio station, listening

It's up to you to choose whether you want to get the item or not. What I will say is if you've always wanted high end kit and you haven't really got the budget, then have a go, have have a feel, have a play. What I advise you to do is if you can go to, let's say for example, a DJ store that's got the high end kit, go and try it out. Then have a go with the RX and you may find that there's very little difference, which is a good thing. Okay, now as I said, this video is a bit of a tutorial as well. We have two old school tunes. Have a listen. This is BB&Q band on the beat and then Young & Company, Young & Company.

Okay, now again these are all school disco tracks, so unless they were made, with drum machines, the beat's going to be all over the place. Now what I've recommended time and time again is when you're mixing old school, what you want to do is just do a chop, very simple chop. One important factor is make sure that the keys work well because you want to keep the vibe. Now when you listen to music or more importantly, sorry, when you listen to a mix, what keeps the ear together? What keeps the ear, listening to the tracks and listening to the mix is the matching of the keys. As soon as you hear that sort of, oh I mean I was listening to a certain radio big radio station in the UK this morning um and there was a mix that this guy did and I was going it was too full.

It was wrong. It just didn't sound right. I'm not gonna say who it was or what radio station but it was absolutely bloody terrible. I'm thinking this is a huge radio station and the Muppets doing that. But who am I to say? Okay, so I'm going to do this transition twice. One is just a flip over the other one we're gonna change it a little bit. It I might make some mistakes. I don't give a toss if I do because I don't care. Guess what? I'm human. Oh, you know that again. Okay, right. So what I'm going to do as well is I've set up four hot cues now I need to get rid of those. So I'm going to press shift and press on those pads. And now the hot cues are gone. That's exactly the same as you would do with a normal controller.

Okay, so let's go back. But that's pretty much where I want to bring it in there. In fact, perfect queuing. Okay,

There.

6:10 It also starts at the point where you've got a lot of love

Oh no, I want that one really. I want the one nearest to. The end of the phrase there. Okay, so what I've done as well is I've got the beginning of the young and company track at a point where the beat and the tracks sort of kicks in perfectly. It also starts at the point where you've got a lot of love.

The music starts. I'll explain. If I go back to the. The beginning of the track. So if we go back to the beginning, have a listen, I could start mixing it here if I wanted to, but I don't want that dip in the dance floor. I want the people to carry on dancing. Keep the vibe up there. It could work here, but this is why I don't want to bring it in. So if we go forward a little bit more there, so exactly like a normal CDJ player whilst it's in play mode, that's important whilst it's in play mode. I'm going to get that beat there and I'm going to queue it up there. Take my finger off. So whilst it is in play mode, I put my finger on the platter. I find that point where I want to queue it and then I press Q at that point

There. So listen now if I want to start the track from that point, just press play pause bang cue again and it goes back to that cue point. There. So let's go back a bit, right? Let's do a first very simple transition. They're very simple. I'm working to the timing and phrases of the track, but I want to make this slightly different. I want to beef it up a little bit. So let's just go back.

This is where the hot cues come in. Let me do that again. I did twice. I really wanted. It did it on the Baba on the beat. So what I'm trying to do where it says on the beat, I'm going to bring in the on twice before we get to the proper on the beat. So it's on the beat on the beat. So I'm almost editing that part of the track before that part of the track actually comes in to play naturally. But I'm hitting the hot cue at the point where it would. Normally come in naturally. I hope you follow. Okay, let's try that again. Here we go.

10:01 It is very simple because we're not doing a mix

There. Okay. So that kind of transition is and isn't simple. It is very simple because we're not doing a mix. But what we're doing, we're just adding a tiny bit more of an effect to the transition. And if I was quick enough, we could. I'll try. Okay, maybe we could use some filter. So let's go back again. Okay, remember, I've got my cross fade. So I've got to move that do that and use my nose to hit that my leg and my willy to put that across. I hope I can do this. Here we go. Okay, so that time I used a tiny bit of the filter as well. And the filter on the track that's playing is all the way over to low now. But it doesn't really matter because we're not listening to it anyway. So that was just a bit of filter.

A couple of hot cues on one track with one transition. Imagine what you could do, like, with lots of tracks and transitions and stuff. Okay, so there we go. The XDJ-RX. I know I'm going to have a lot of fun with this. It is very simple to use, very self explanatory. You've got the knobbly bit in the middle that is pretty much the nucleus of the whole player. So that will take me from track to track and as I said earlier, try and use Rekordbox. Practice and enjoy. Thank you.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.