Pioneer DDJ-400 rekordbox & the Minirig on a Beach

0:01 I'm on a local beach and behind me we have the coast of Wales

So I'm on a local beach and behind me we have the coast of Wales. So if I point hopefully in the right direction, we've got sort of Aberara and then we've got Aberystwyth and then all the way along here is what's known as the Llyn Peninsula which is like the arm of Wales. So what have I got? I have got a mini rig speaker I have my laptop and I have the prize that's going to be given away for someone Christmas 2018. It's the Pioneer DDJ-400. There it is. I've also got RCA cable to mini jack. The RCA is going to go from the out of the DDJ and the mini jack is going to go into the mini rig speaker. My USB cable, of course to go from the controller into the laptop. And I have a set of headphones. I'm also going to be using some tunes from Karmic Power Records. Now don't expect good quality audio because we're out in the wild, it's quite windy. I am using a very good speaker, the powered speaker from Minirig. It's metal construction, it's not plastic.

2:45 I've made sure my laptop is fully charged because the controller is bu

It's tough, durable and it's quite loud but of course I'm really banking on the wind not blowing in the wrong direction but you'll get a general idea so don't go away. Okay so I didn't bring as many Karmic Power Tunes as I thought I would but what I really want to prove here is that you can have your own little private party anywhere. Now, I've made sure my laptop is fully charged because the controller is bus powered. So what that means, it's taking the power it needs from your laptop. So even if your laptop's fully charged and normally it lasts say four or five hours, of course it's going to last slightly less because it's having to power something else up. The mini rig is self-powered And that should last for quite a few hours anyway. So, I'm using rekordbox software and I mean I'm outside in the middle of nowhere. There's no electric cables or anything like that. It's just me and my thing. Alright, let's have a look at this controller.

Like I said, it's the DDJ-400 from Pioneer and I will put in the description of this video the link to the other video I did where you can enter a competition to win this controller. Anywhere around the world, it doesn't matter where you are, what you've got to do is go to that video and post a comment giving a reason why you should get this for Christmas at the end of November 2018. I'll be choosing one person and they will get the controller. Terms and conditions are really simple. One of the most important ones is I would like you to pay the postage simply because if you're the winner and you're in Australia, it's going to cost quite a bit to post you but it's not going to be that much. But, you know, I'm doing this for free so I don't want to start paying extra money. Okay, so again with this controller, it's great.

5:04 Admittedly, yeah, it's the same track

Because it just works, you know what I mean? You don't need to use mass array of kit all over the place. It's not about the kit you've got, it's about the person you are and how good you are at DJing. You know there are people out there with like four Nexus and a DJM900 and are they as good as someone with a small controller like this? Who knows? It's about you and it's about how you appreciate the music and enjoy it. Right, okay, so... Okay, admittedly, yeah, it's the same track. Alright, this one here is One Day, it's the original mix you heard, and now it's the club mix by Paola. Okay, there will be a link in the description for Karmic Power Records, so come over here, let's have a look. Right, let's take the camera off the stand.

And see what we've got. It's quite funny because at the moment I've got a sock on the camera stopping the sound from the wind. So it's a very basic setup. The controller is there, we have the mini rig, we have the laptop with rekordbox. And again, as I've said to quite a few people, if you're going to buy some Pioneer kit, you know, you can use other programs and it should work, the piece of kit you've got should work relatively well on other programs. But, you know, you are far better off using rekordbox simply because Pioneer kit is designed around rekordbox and vice versa. Now if you're interested in the DDJ-400 when you do buy one and you open the box and you plug everything into your laptop there'll be a small icon that will come up

7:53 Screen, I hope you can se

Saying, do you want some tutorials? Which I think is a great feature because it means you haven't got to scratch your head wondering how things work. You will be directed online to proper tutorials on all of the features. Okay, so we're on channel two. Bit of echo. Let's do a beat loop. Beat loop. Needs a bit of practice there. Okay, so you can loop. Also, we've got beat jump. Now, a lot of people can't understand beat jump. Very simply, beat... Oh, sorry, one beat loop. Beat jump... Hold on. Let's get back to beat loop. Come out of that. Go back to beat jump. So, we have one beat back. Sorry, one beat forward. Two beats back, two beats forward. And then, of course, four... So if you look at the screen, I hope you can see this just about. Again, I'm using a camera that once it's set, you can either go back one beat forward, back two, forward two, back four, which is one bar, forward four, one bar, or back eight, which is two bars, forward eight, two bars.

9:52 Melody, loop beginning, time

Level depth, again, exactly like a lot of the high-end kits. That will determine how much an emphasis you want on the effect over the track that's playing your master volume. This dial here, of course, is for track select. Oh, hold on. This is for track select here. Bass, mid and treble. And your trim. You can loop. Also, if you're going to use loop, it's a good idea to make sure you've got quantize engaged so it snaps it perfectly in time. Alternatively, you could always go to beat loop. If you do lose a loop as well, try and make sure that you use that loop. In time with the track, there's nothing worse than, let's say, having a loop that sounds out of time or sounds very repetitive. So the loop should either be used as a good effect or used in part of the track so it doesn't sound as though, you know, it is an effect if you get what I mean. And a good way of explaining that is, let's imagine that you have a 7 inch single.

Now a lot of radio versions in 7-inch singles, very small intro, very small outro, loads of vocals, there's very little time to form any kind of loop. So maybe a good idea is to find the intro or the outro where there is no vocals, just the bassline, melody and beat, and try and loop that. But be very careful to make sure that that loop doesn't sound repetitive. What you have to do is you have to listen to the music, the structure of the music and listen to the melody. Does the melody have like a beginning and an end? If it does then loop that beginning and end. Don't start the loop at the beginning and finish the loop halfway through the melody before the melody itself has ended. Okay right so there's the setup very simple it's bloody cold out here but yeah

This is lovely, and what you should try and do, like I do, is get out more. Stop looking at a bloody screen all the time. The screen may give you information on what it wants to show you, but what it's not giving you is what you will see naturally, if that makes any sense. Now this is real life, this is natural. This is just beautiful, even though it's absolutely, it's not freezing, it's just cold. It's still warming and you get a lot of good energy from being outside in the natural world. Alright, once again, go and check that out. That is going to be given away to some lucky person in December 2018. Big shout out as well to Minirig because that is one hell of a nice little speaker. Small, compact, it's metal.

It won't break, well of course everything breaks if you sort of try your hardest, but it's pretty much bomb proof. So I'll finish with that. Practice and enjoy, thank you.

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