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A few months on Hacker News there was a post about Mixxx[1], an open-source DJ software. It prompted me to download it and play around. It's very cool. Despi

A few months on Hacker News there was a post about Mixxx[1], an open-source DJ software. It prompted me to download it and play around. It's very cool. Despite being a complete novice, I learned a few things after a dozen hours of playing around: * I don't have a physical controller, but I can understand why people always use them. Keyboard and mouse are not fully sufficient. * The built-in key and beat detection is really quite good for house music, and it gets you most of the way there in terms of managing song transitions (but not all the way there) * A side effect of consuming 99% of all of my music from youtube and spotify means I have no local library to feed into Mixxx (I ended up yt-dlp'ing a bunch of stuff) * There is a true art in song selection, and I don't possess this skill. [1] https://mixxx.org/ https://mixxx.org/

ErneX 2y ago
I could not get it to work, there was a dialog window popping up that I couldn’t click to dismiss. Tried many times and went back to Serato.
comprev 2y ago
Your last point is the most important skill a DJ needs to learn. Song selection is everything.
browningstreet 2y ago
I'm playing with the djay app which can source from Apple Music..
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dylan604 2y ago
Song selection comes from hours of listening to music in the style you will be playing. Eventually, you will hear a riff from one song and it will make you think of another song. Those will be interesting to mix together. You might hear one song with a bass line that you really like with a melody line that is on the lighter side. You might then come across a song with a strong melody, but a bass line that could be punched up. Combine the two with some appropriate EQing, and make your own mix. After mixing for awhile, you will learn to listen in a different way than just someone listening to music. Using a tool to beat match has always been considered "cheating", but it is obvious why it is a tool. Beat matching is probably the most technically challenging aspect. Eventually, you'll even get a feel for songs that are close in tempo--most music in a genre will be pretty close by default. Learning to ride this bike with training wheels is just an option I did not have. Being able to manually adjust the pitch/tempo (depending on equipment) without the auto tools becomes quite satisfying. Some DJs talk about knowing what key a song is in, and if it will mix into another song. If you then have to adjust the pitch for beat matching, how does that affect the key of the song and how it now mixes? I've never claimed to do this, but after playing in school band I can at least hear the wahwahwah from something being out of tune (or was that the nitrous??). Maybe if you're mixing some prog-trance with sustained chords you might hear that, but I'd suggest finding a different place in the track to be mixing. The physical controller is precisely why I love vinyl.
- jrowen 2y ago
  Using a tool to beat match has always been considered "cheating", but it is obvious why it is a tool. I guess in the same way that using a higher-level language than Assembly is "cheating." I'm not sure if you're referring specifically to the Sync feature (which is still largely frowned upon) or more generally analyzed beatgrids, BPM readouts and Master Tempo (which keeps the pitch in tune when you change the tempo), but the vast majority of practicing DJs today are not needing/using the old school vinyl beatmatching techniques. Call it whatever you want but you're going to be incredibly hard-pressed to find anyone that can mix as smoothly on vinyl as someone decent with CDJs. Sure it's a cool dying art and analog and all that but at this point virtually anyone trying to play vinyl out is sacrificing the listener's experience for cool points (including the physical issues with reproducing sound from delicate machinery in a chaotic environment).
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > Call it whatever you want but you're going to be incredibly hard-pressed to find anyone that can mix as smoothly on vinyl as someone decent with CDJs. Sure it's a cool dying art and analog and all that but at this point virtually anyone trying to play vinyl out is sacrificing the listening experience for cool points That's a sad commentary on today's DJs then. Yes, there were some very bad vinyl DJs that loved the shoes in the dryer mixes and could not advance past that. They love the "beatmatch" magic. Doesn't mean that those that could are less of a DJ which is what you're trying to say? My perfect setup would be vinyl controllers of a digital player which is very much a thing. Of course, hearing a DJ mix vinyl that is older with all of the snap crackle pops of a burning log is not pleasant, but that does not diminish the vinyl as a controller being superior to a tiny plastic spin wheel on a digital controller.
    - jonwinstanley 2y ago
      I agree that the beat sync tools feel like cheating for the old school DJs, but the newer generation are using it to get more creative. Without spending half the time beat matching, they now have time to interact with the tracks more - play with stems, loops, filters, fx, scratching etc. It’s becoming more of a live performance
nisa 2y ago
> I don't have a physical controller There are a lot of really cheap USB based controllers on the second hand market - I've got an old Vestax USB 1.1 based controller that was state of the art in 2007 and was used by some famous DJs back in the day for 50€ and it's working perfectly fine - it's only midi - you can dump the hex values using midi tools in Linux when you turn the nobs. Surprisingly for me latency and interactivity are no problem. Eq'ing, pitch, jogwheel feels like analog. However I'm not a professional but I didn't recognize any noticable delay. You can even scratch using the jog. I'm sure there is a reason for the price difference to modern hardware but from a haptics and sound perspective it's perfectly fine. Mixxx is doing all the hard work. Mixxx has a really long list of supported devices: https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/wiki/Hardware-Compatibility https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/wiki/Hardware-Compatibility You probably need another soundcard for headphones, there also exist lots of cheap old USB soundcards for that - there are also controllers with an audio interface like Vestax VCI-300. Then it's up to you to practice. I'm also struggling to get better but it's really all you need to DJ. I'm also yt-dlp'ing my collection which feels strange but is budget friendly :) I've used to DJ as a hobbyist using vinyl ages ago and I'm not missing anything. You can ignore the sync button, hide the bpm on the screen and mix only using your ears like you'd do with vinyl only. Matching the beat using pitch fader and gently pushing the jogwheel is very similar to like you'd do it with the platter on a turntable. Of course it's not the same but for me it's close enough. Maybe don't tell your vinyl snob friends or other fundamentalists but it's lots of fun for little money.

ErneX 2y ago

I could not get it to work, there was a dialog window popping up that I couldn’t click to dismiss. Tried many times and went back to Serato.

comprev 2y ago

Your last point is the most important skill a DJ needs to learn. Song selection is everything.

browningstreet 2y ago

I'm playing with the djay app which can source from Apple Music..

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dylan604 2y ago

Song selection comes from hours of listening to music in the style you will be playing. Eventually, you will hear a riff from one song and it will make you think of another song. Those will be interesting to mix together. You might hear one song with a bass line that you really like with a melody line that is on the lighter side. You might then come across a song with a strong melody, but a bass line that could be punched up. Combine the two with some appropriate EQing, and make your own mix. After mixing for awhile, you will learn to listen in a different way than just someone listening to music. Using a tool to beat match has always been considered "cheating", but it is obvious why it is a tool. Beat matching is probably the most technically challenging aspect. Eventually, you'll even get a feel for songs that are close in tempo--most music in a genre will be pretty close by default. Learning to ride this bike with training wheels is just an option I did not have. Being able to manually adjust the pitch/tempo (depending on equipment) without the auto tools becomes quite satisfying. Some DJs talk about knowing what key a song is in, and if it will mix into another song. If you then have to adjust the pitch for beat matching, how does that affect the key of the song and how it now mixes? I've never claimed to do this, but after playing in school band I can at least hear the wahwahwah from something being out of tune (or was that the nitrous??). Maybe if you're mixing some prog-trance with sustained chords you might hear that, but I'd suggest finding a different place in the track to be mixing. The physical controller is precisely why I love vinyl.

jrowen 2y ago
Using a tool to beat match has always been considered "cheating", but it is obvious why it is a tool. I guess in the same way that using a higher-level language than Assembly is "cheating." I'm not sure if you're referring specifically to the Sync feature (which is still largely frowned upon) or more generally analyzed beatgrids, BPM readouts and Master Tempo (which keeps the pitch in tune when you change the tempo), but the vast majority of practicing DJs today are not needing/using the old school vinyl beatmatching techniques. Call it whatever you want but you're going to be incredibly hard-pressed to find anyone that can mix as smoothly on vinyl as someone decent with CDJs. Sure it's a cool dying art and analog and all that but at this point virtually anyone trying to play vinyl out is sacrificing the listener's experience for cool points (including the physical issues with reproducing sound from delicate machinery in a chaotic environment).
- dylan604 2y ago
  > Call it whatever you want but you're going to be incredibly hard-pressed to find anyone that can mix as smoothly on vinyl as someone decent with CDJs. Sure it's a cool dying art and analog and all that but at this point virtually anyone trying to play vinyl out is sacrificing the listening experience for cool points That's a sad commentary on today's DJs then. Yes, there were some very bad vinyl DJs that loved the shoes in the dryer mixes and could not advance past that. They love the "beatmatch" magic. Doesn't mean that those that could are less of a DJ which is what you're trying to say? My perfect setup would be vinyl controllers of a digital player which is very much a thing. Of course, hearing a DJ mix vinyl that is older with all of the snap crackle pops of a burning log is not pleasant, but that does not diminish the vinyl as a controller being superior to a tiny plastic spin wheel on a digital controller.
  - jonwinstanley 2y ago
    I agree that the beat sync tools feel like cheating for the old school DJs, but the newer generation are using it to get more creative. Without spending half the time beat matching, they now have time to interact with the tracks more - play with stems, loops, filters, fx, scratching etc. It’s becoming more of a live performance

nisa 2y ago

> I don't have a physical controller There are a lot of really cheap USB based controllers on the second hand market - I've got an old Vestax USB 1.1 based controller that was state of the art in 2007 and was used by some famous DJs back in the day for 50€ and it's working perfectly fine - it's only midi - you can dump the hex values using midi tools in Linux when you turn the nobs. Surprisingly for me latency and interactivity are no problem. Eq'ing, pitch, jogwheel feels like analog. However I'm not a professional but I didn't recognize any noticable delay. You can even scratch using the jog. I'm sure there is a reason for the price difference to modern hardware but from a haptics and sound perspective it's perfectly fine. Mixxx is doing all the hard work. Mixxx has a really long list of supported devices: https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/wiki/Hardware-Compatibility https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/wiki/Hardware-Compatibility You probably need another soundcard for headphones, there also exist lots of cheap old USB soundcards for that - there are also controllers with an audio interface like Vestax VCI-300. Then it's up to you to practice. I'm also struggling to get better but it's really all you need to DJ. I'm also yt-dlp'ing my collection which feels strange but is budget friendly :) I've used to DJ as a hobbyist using vinyl ages ago and I'm not missing anything. You can ignore the sync button, hide the bpm on the screen and mix only using your ears like you'd do with vinyl only. Matching the beat using pitch fader and gently pushing the jogwheel is very similar to like you'd do it with the platter on a turntable. Of course it's not the same but for me it's close enough. Maybe don't tell your vinyl snob friends or other fundamentalists but it's lots of fun for little money.