How Can a DJ Prep if the Power or Web Goes Off

0:00 This video is definitely DJ related

Right, ladies and gentlemen, this video is definitely DJ related. It's one of these videos that some of you may laugh at, some of you may sort of watch halfway through and think this is a waste of time, others may scratch your head thinking maybe he's got a point, and a few of you may follow my advice. So, a lot going on around the world. There is... People walking into countries, there's bombs going off and all sorts, and there's talk of cyber attacks and the malarkey. Now, as a DJ, if you want to carry on your trade, so let's imagine this situation of, you know, there's a party. There's no electricity, you're the DJ, and you can bring light and enjoyment to the party, even though the power's gone down. Well, you can.

You see, technology has moved on so much this past sort of 10 years even that even with no electricity at all you can indeed be the centre of attention and party hard. So I will explain to you in the course of this video but also it's how you can prepare for the future of potentially lights going out and just troubles around the world. Now, first and foremost, if you are a completely new DJ and you rely heavily on streaming, then you're out of the equation because it's just not going to happen, is it? It isn't going to happen. Because if the lights go out, what are you going to do? You know, I mean, forget your massive playlist on Spotify or this wicked set. of tracks you've got on apple download it's just not going to happen it's not there but if you are old school like me you've sort of in a way already got your backup which is vinyl and cd as well of course as your hard drives now first and foremost this is something you should do no matter what it doesn't in fact if you haven't done this already after this video go and do it if you can buy yourself a copy oh sorry i'll start again

2:48 Volts, volt battery, power

By yourself, another hard drive, one, two, three terabytes and make a copy of all your tracks and put that hard drive somewhere safe. Because on numerous occasions I have stories on Facebook and X and Instagram, oh I've lost my, you know, my laptop's crashed and all my tracks have gone. Well if you had all of your tracks just in the one place then you're an idiot. On the other hand, if you've got backup, then of course if you lose your tracks, at least you do have the backup. My advice as well, if you can afford it, make two or three different backups and have them on different types of hard drive because one type could be prone to malfunction over six months or I mean anything can happen. But of course maybe you've got a CD collection and a vinyl collection. Now probably what's going through your mind right now

If you really wanted to go down that route and in a way maybe as a family if you're a mother, father and you've got a family you should also consider Even though, you know, depending on where you are around the world, you could be in 240 volts, 110 volts. It's not actually the volts that kill you. It's the ampage. Do some research and you'll find that out. That's correct. So theoretically, if you think about it, a 12 volt battery, you think 12 volts, that's nothing compared to 240 volts. I mean, all right, you'll get a shock from the 240 volts.

5:05 Inside pretty much every single piece of kit, you have something calle

But the 12-volt battery still can give you a bit of a kick. So, again, I'm not that technically minded, but what you do need is some form of implement that you can get the power from, that is a turbine or solar panel. You need somewhere to store that power and then you need something to convert that power from 12 volt or 24 volt to 240 volts. If you are an electronic genius, then here's the tip here. And this is a great one because there's probably not many, in fact I would hazard a guess to say there is not one piece of DJ kit out there that uses 240 or 110 volts through the piece of kit itself. Inside pretty much every single piece of kit, you have something called a transformer. Now what that will do is it will reduce the internal power to the power that's required to run that item. So for example, you could be in the States with 110 I think it is or 220, I'm not sure, please quote me here.

In the UK it's 240. We have the transformers in there that reduce that down to, it could be anything from 9 volts, 10 volts, 12, 24 and so on. So think about this. If you have a battery, I'm sure now there are videos online definitely showing you how to really go from that transformer into... The piece of kit itself. So I'm sure with a bit of wizardry, if you're an electronics genius or maybe not even a genius, just watch some videos. Again, don't take this as advice as in you should do this. This is just a random kind of video. But theoretically, you should be able to move, not have to use the transformer and go... Wire straight into the piece of kit, which means that you can just use your piece of kit from a 12-volt battery. So what have we got? We've got Denon Prime Go. We've got the new Pioneer kit. What's it? The... Hold on. That's it. The Omnis Duo. I've just made notes there on an old envelope. Look! Go that way.

7:42 MP3s and then controllers and then software and so on

So, you've got battery powered kits. So in a way, you still can DJ. Now, if I go back in time to sort of the 80s, everyone had vinyl and towards the latter part of the 80s, you know, people started using CDs but it was only really towards the end of the 90s when CDs sort of exploded in the DJ community because that's when we had CD players that you could mix on. But of course, a few years later and guess what? MP3s and then controllers and then software and so on. You see, what's happened with the psyche of most DJs is it's gone away from physical into the cloud, into non-physical. Now that's great in a way if you've got good Wi-Fi and you know that you can just turn up, open your laptop, plug your controller in, log into their internet.

And stream away till your heart's content. And you know that if they ask for a track, you've got it because it's there in cloudland. But if that disappears, then potentially your job will disappear as well. Now, I know this hope, I mean, hopefully this will never happen. Hopefully it won't. But if it does happen, you know, we could all be in this kind of predicament where we can't play. But if we do some research and just make sure we have got the potential of having a backup and having the battery-powered items, then we can. I mean, again, I think Pioneer DJ or now Alpha Theta have got the Wave 8, which is their powered speaker. It's also, I think it's got Bluetooth connectivity. But then again, I mean, I haven't got one in here, but...

There are just your basic Bluetooth speakers and a lot of them have got an actual physical plug input as well. So all you've got to do is go out from your controller into that. I mean, years ago, I did a video using the DDJ-400. It's bus powered. That means that it needs an external source so you can plug it into your laptop. Well, you have to anyway. Plug it into your laptop, of course. But if you wanted to, I think... That can be connected through Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, something like that. If memory serves me correctly though there was definitely another Pioneer controller maybe it was a 200 where you know for example you could plug in the controller into a small USB battery via a USB plug, plug that into the controller and then just use your phone and then maybe plug from the controller

10:38 You've got yourself a free party, haven't you?

And as you know, if you've seen a couple of videos I've done on the lasers, these small battery-powered lasers. So you could take one of those with you, take some battery-powered lights and bingo, you've got yourself a little party. But at the end of the day, if nothing happens and everything's hunky dory anyway, and you're going on a camping trip with your mates, mate! You've got yourself a free party, haven't you? This is it. And the life and soul. And everyone would be like, whoa, look at all this kit. And it's like, yeah, it's just battery powered. All right. I hope this has been a little bit of a help. But I'm going to finish off with something a little bit more serious. And that is that, how can I put it? What I've learned, and again, please quote in a comment, is that whatever they tell you...

The opposite always happens. So very often when they say the banks are like doing well, it means they're not. So I hope you catch my drift there. So what I would advise you to do as well is look in your store cupboard, look in your larder, look in your fridge, look in your freezer and if you've got enough products there, foodstuffs for let's say the next couple of days. Then I suggest you go out now and you make sure you've got at least a couple of big bags of rice, pasta because this is, I can't say this is fact, but we have as a world been in this situation a couple of times. One very recently, a few years ago, and that is that if you hear on the news that there's this big thing happening and there's a panic at the supermarkets, just trust me on this.

By the time you've got in your car, you've driven there, it's too late. Okay? So a little bit of advice here inside that advice if you do get into that situation and let's say the supermarket is seven or eight miles away. For God's sake, don't as soon as you're within a mile or half a mile park up. Do not stay in your car Because you'll end up being in a traffic jam with everybody else. Not only that, you'll be in the traffic jam at the car park by the supermarket. You'll be in the jam trying to get in the supermarket. But what you can do is avert being in that traffic jam. It's just logic. It's common sense. Park at least half a mile away. It may mean you've got to push that trolley half a mile. But trust me, by the time you've got there, got back to your car...

You probably would still be in your car in the traffic jam with everyone else fuming at the wheel. All right, hope that's a help. Thank you for watching. Practice and enjoy.

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