Its time to bring back another techtool classic from the vaults. This week its my article  on paying your travel expenses by djing. Most djs think that gigging abroad is only for the uber-famous tastemakers. In reality, its not, there are many  ways you can travel all around the world, dj clubs and  cover all your living costs without being a famous dj. Before returning to San Francisco to run TechTools full time last year,  I spent almost 4 years playing gigs around the world and  loving every moment of it. In this article I suggest 5 different ways that you can do the same.

Originally Published: October 2008

Written By: Ean Golden

Ah, the mysterious and appealing life of a jet-setting DJ. Who has not seen a show featuring the latest out-of-towner and wondered: How did this punter manage to get paid for traveling the globe? While there are several roads that lead to that elusive goal, most take years to accomplish and involve a fair amount of right place/right time kind of luck. So, for those of you that don’t have a record-label contract or a cover of DJ mag, here are five immediate ways you can use DJing as a vehicle to travel and other kinds of gigs most people usually overlook.

CRUISE IT

Several years ago I gave a lecture at a local audio school to a group of up-and-coming DJs. The gist was simple: Don’t wait around for someone to call you with a plane ticket to Bali. Make it happen yourself, and make it happen now! About 12 months later, I bumped into one of those students, and he proudly told me how he had personally put my plan into action by hitting the pavement. He had secured a lucrative gig DJing for a cruise ship. The relationship has blossomed, and now he could feasibly spend most of the year hopping between islands while playing for wealthy guests and giving DJ lessons. His experience proved my point: It’s not that hard to secure good gigs; you just have to think creatively and make it happen yourself by talking to people who don’t yet realize they need your services.

There are nearly 300 cruise ships operating out of the U.S. alone, and many of them will most certainly hit a port city near you at some time in the coming year. The cruise ship is an often overlooked but logical choice for a DJ gig because it already has everything you need to make a good party happen. For example, a typical cruise line offers several thousand people, no shortage of drinks and the budget to pay you well. Many lines are now are equipped with full nightclubs and sound systems that will give your local bar a run for its money.

PLAY BALL

Not all gigs are created equal, and their benefits come in a variety of forms. Even though a gig may not pay much, that doesn’t mean it can’t help you land more lucrative jobs later. There are untold numbers of sports teams around the world — professional and amateur — and all of them usually play music during some part of the game. A friend of mine, DJ Solomon, has been a resident DJ for the Golden State Warriors for eight years, and even though the gig never paid as well as club appearances, he continues to play during the games because of the number of new clients he meets there. Your local pro team is a long shot? Then pitch an idea to a smaller amateur team. Meet with the director of marketing and offer to play a few games for free. Once you get your foot in the door and establish a value, then it’s easy to ask for a little cash after that.

SNOWED IN

It seems that all types of resorts always try to offer more entertainment focused at a younger crowd, and that is especially true in the skiing/snowboarding industry. From playing music in the bar lounge as the day winds down to setting up a stage mid-mountain, there are lots of places where resorts hire people to entertain their guests. Approach the program director of the local resort and tell him that, in exchange for a pair of lift tickets, you will bring in some speakers and DJ equipment and play music for most of the day. Bring a buddy along and you can trade off spinning tunes and riding; you can’t ask for a better DJ atmosphere than that.

INTRODUCING THE BAND

This is another exposure-versus-benefit thing. Playing between bands may not prepare you for a five-hour Ibiza marathon set, but it will put you in front of large audiences, gaining exposure to a lot of people who may book smaller clubs and venues and making you comfortable playing for a big crowd without the pressure of rocking a giant dancefloor. These gigs usually come word of mouth, so make friends with some of the bar staff and ask around about filling in for their resident DJs. If you can successfully become their go-to backup jock, then it won’t be long before a regular gig presents itself.

BEACH BEATS

There are more small- and medium-size tropical resorts around the world than you can shake a passport at. Most of them are trying to pull in the young, cool crowd with disposable income, so you just have to convince the owner that having a DJ program will upgrade their image and appeal to that audience. Sound daunting? A large number of these resorts already have clubs and bars built in and a regular DJ lineup of locals. It’s not unreasonable to ask for free accommodations in exchange for a few sets as long as you can pitch yourself as an in-demand DJ from another country. Invite your girlfriend or buddies along and make a free vacation out of it. Do a few of these for free, and before long you have several “international tours” under your belt, which will do a lot for boosting your DJ cache.

Still not convinced that you can pull off any of these methods? Then enter the DJ TechTools Mix competition sponsored by Remix magazine and Karma Resorts. Win the grand prize, and you will have scored an all-expenses-paid, weeklong residency DJing with myself and several other international DJs at the gorgeous Karma Resort in Bali, which boasts a killer outdoor club. The contest ends today though- so you better sign up now and upload a video fast!

There are at least a dozen ways to blend from one track to the other and we still use just a few in our sets.  To arm you with a few more mix techniques and explain some basic mixing to the new guys, we are doing a series of videos on various ways to mix the same 2 songs. In this first video we mix the following tracks in 5 different ways:

Alex Gopher- HandGuns (DadaLife Remix) (Website)

Cassius – Youth, Speed, Trouble, Cigarettes (Website)

Even though many DJs have an insatiable desire for new music, the Internet is so awash with listening and downloading options that without direction, you could fritter away many hours of screening music without netting anything to use in your sets. While everyone has favorite recording artists, there are many online tools that will help you keep up with those artists and find new music in similar styles that you’re likely to enjoy. We pulled together the music discovery habits of several DJ Tech Tools contributors to compile a list of sites and tips that is sure to keep you flush with usable new tracks. You may already know and use at least some of these, but a more well-rounded and complete routine will definitely keep you covered with all the new tunes you can handle.

NEW MUSIC DISCOVERY

INTERNET STREAMING

A lot of traditional Internet radio sites, such as KCRW.com, simply mirror or archive their companion terrestrial radio shows, but can still be a reliable source for quality new music. However, more innovative and dynamic Internet music streaming services are out there.

Pandora is a free Internet radio service that will customize an ongoing playlist according to whatever artist or song title you feed it. So if you type in the Bloody Beetroots, for example, you’ll get their songs and others that are determined to be good for fans of the Bloody Beetroots, such as Boys Noize, The Toxic Avenger, Justice, etc. Pandora uses the Music Genome Project — an ambitious effort started 10 years ago — to analyze up to 400 musical attributes and find songs compatible with each other. Give chosen songs the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to further personalize your station. You can access the service at Pandora.com or on their popular iPhone/iPod Touch app. However, Pandora is not available in every country.

Spotify.com, although currently only available in select European countries, is a downloadable app that lets you stream just about any music you want over the Internet for free. You create your own playlist or browse by genre. Listening to the music offline requires a membership with a monthly fee.

SoundCloud has blown up from a wispy little cirrus to a devasting tornado of music in a relatively short amount of time, and that growth in popularity is entirely deserved. This music storage, discovery and distribution site has a highly functional yet eminently usable interface. Music uploaders can post as many tracks as they want, full DJ mixes with tracklistings, and so on. Widespread industry acceptance of SoundCloud means that the listener can find countless DJ mixes and single tracks in every conceivable genre. Many of them are fully available to the public for streaming or even free downloading, and you’re likely to find some music that isn’t available (yet) anywhere else. Subscribing to Soundcloud groups that follow music you’re into will keep you happily listening for hours a day.

See also: Last.fm

RETAIL DOWNLOAD SITES

Most digital download stores include genre charts, recommendation engines, DJ top 10s or other ways to help you sift through the infinite supply of music and find what you actually want. Sites such as Emusic and Amazon give you recommendations based on your past purchases that are remarkably useful. It’s almost spooky how well they can match up your musical tastes to new music you’ll like after only a few purchases.

In many stores, you don’t have to purchase anything to get useful recommendations. Electronic dance music stores such as Traxsource, Dancetracksdigital and Beatport offer bestseller charts for very specific genres, DJ charts so you can see what familiar DJs are playing, and lists of other tracks that people also bought in addition to the track you’re looking at on the site.

PODCASTS

There are a ton of free EDM mix shows available as podcasts online. A little searching on iTunes or Google will have you swimming in them, or check up on your favorite DJs, magazines and music sites to see if they offer podcasts. Many of them offer tracklistings, so you can take note when a track really catches your attention.

EMAIL

Want fresh tracks right off the cutting room floor? Hook up with other burgeoning producers and become part of their “feedback pool.” One DJTT staff writer shares his tracks with friends and receives a bunch of tracks in return, offers feedback on them, and plays them out if they’re good enough. Exclusive tracks aren’t just for Oakenfold or Cox anymore. Anyone can make a quality track in their bedroom and then email it out to their network, so get in on it.

PAY SERVICES/POOLS

One Tech Tools contributor recommends Direct Music Service (DMS) a paid download site just for DJs that covers all types of genres, including hip hop, R&B, rock, 80s, pop, reggae, mashups, and others. DMS offers only DJ-friendly mixes with intro and outros, many of them exclusive edits. There are three tiers of subscription rates ranging from $29.95 a month (or $269.95 a year) for 40 downloads a month or $64.95 a month ($449.95 a year) for unlimited downloads.

Also, check out our recent Digital Record Pool Round-Up.

OLD MUSIC RE-DISCOVERY

KEY-ANALYZING SOFTWARE

Since the whole point for DJs of finding music is to find tracks that mix well together — whether it’s new music or not –  key analysis software such as Mixed In Key can help you re-discover how some of the older gems in your music collection will combine with others. This is a great way to re-vitalize some of your old favorites that have been absent from your DJ sets — by discovering how they may go well together with your latest floor-fillers. You should always test the mixes first before blindly playing them out simply because Mixed In Key placed tracks in a compatible key range, but key analysis software will definitely lead you toward some amazing musical  combinations between the old and the new. There are also a lot of other amazing “playlist” creation tools out there that group similar music in your collection, resulting in the re-discovery of great music.

THE OLD AND THE NEW

ITUNE GENIUS

Many DJs organize their music collections within iTunes, which makes the iTunes Genius feature very convenient. Once you turn on the Genius feature, you can open the Genius sidebar, which will pull up the top albums and songs on the iTunes Store by the artist you’re listening to, as well give you Genius Recommendations: suggested songs by similar artists available in the iTunes Store. It’s a very handy feature in a ubiquitous piece of software. However, I do have a complaint that Genius Recommendations aren’t always available. For many electronic artists, some of them as well-known as Crookers and Authechre, the Genius  sidebar only suggested top albums and songs by that artist, but no other similar artists.

You can also come across nice transitions between older and newer songs when you use the iTune Genius playlist generator, which creates a playlist out of your iTunes Library using songs that the function determines will work nicely together. Not everything that it spits out will be gold of course, but you’re sure to run into something that you hadn’t yet thought of on your own.

THE BLOGOSPHERE

This might be a little bit of nepotism, since DJ Tech Tools is itself a blog, but let’s face it: blogs have really taken over the mantle of influence when it comes to electronic music over the last few years. Because there are many thousands of music blogs, we won’t recommend single ones, but rather the aggregators and search engines.

For searching DRM-free MP3s that have been posted to blogs, we love Skreemr.com. The simple, Google-inspired homepage lets you search for music by song title, artist or album. Type in an artist name and hit the Similar Artists search button for a very comprehensive and accurate list. As an example, a search for artists similar to Joakim brought up a list of 100 other artists, many of whom we already knew, but also many other quality producers who were new to us. Clicking any of those artist links takes you to a ranked list of MP3s available from blogs. You can play and download tracks straight from Skreemr, or link to the blog that posted it. Use the Advanced Search from Skreemr’s homepage to search for music by genre.

Perhaps the most commonly used site across all the Tech Tools peeps is The Hype Machine, or HypeM.com. This MP3 blog aggregator lists songs as they appear in associated blog posts, and you can listen to the tracks right there, link to the original blog post, or search for music by keyword. If you want to cut straight to what’s poppin’ off in the blog-o-verse, you can listen to the Hype Machine’s monthly radio show of hot tracks, hit the Popular tab for the most listened to tracks over the last three days, or check the most tweeted music on its Twitter charts. One tip for the Hype Machine is to save your favorite searches as an RSS feed. Say you discover a new remixer and search for him on the Hype Machine. In the Search Results bar, click the RSS button, which will lead you to an option to save that search in an RSS reader, such as Google Reader. Any new search results for your saved searches will then show up on your Google Reader page.

YOUTUBE

At some point or other, everyone’s received a YouTube link to a video you used to love from your childhood and had forgotten all about, and from that point on, you realized that just about every video every made is on YouTube and proceeded to blow the better part of your day clicking around on all your old forgotten favorites. Not only that, but seemingly every new track gets uploaded to YouTube these days, whether it’s a full-blown video or just a low-res audio file with some still images. New music you like will lead you to more new music you like, and before you know it — boom — another day is shot.

REFERENCE SITES

Discogs.com has a watchlist feature for registered users, which gives you automatic updates on releases from your favorite artists and labels. The Discogs overall database is quite extensive, and a quick browsing of user reviews/comments often yields cool tips on similar artists.

Anyone who’s anyone has a Wikipedia page, right? Chances are you can look up your favorite artists on the online encyclopedia, and if you don’t find a list of similar and associated artists, you should at least get a discography of remixes, singles and albums.

TORRENT SITES

Using torrent sites is definitely a vice that way more people partake in than admit to. Even in a time when many artists will boast about how popular they are on blogs, which also give music away for free, torrent sites can still elicit feelings of shame even in diehard downloaders. But if you are going to get music from torrents, you may want to specialize. There are private torrent trackers out there that focus on certain types of music, and you can gauge the quality of the music by how many people in the community have downloaded and commented on it.

Huge props go out to BentoSan, Cam, Deraadt, DJ Solomon, Ilya, mikecharles and Rolfski for their input on this article.

Most smaller MIDI controllers are low profile, allowing them to slip easily into your bag but are too low to use with turntables and mixers. This makes using small controllers along with standard DJ gear slightly awkward. Those of us who are on the taller side also suffer from controllers that are too far away and not at playing height. The solution for both problems? A few pieces of gear that are already in your bag + a very simple 25-cent investment that will raise up most small MIDI controllers to a playable height without adding any weight to your bag.

4-CORNER SOLUTION

DVS users of Serato Scratch and Traktor Scratch suffer from this problem more than anyone. They need to have their control surfaces at the same height as the turntable/mixer or it’s very hard to access in a pinch. The Solution? Use something that is already in your bag — a needle box — to raise up the controller. The only thing you need: 4 sticky feet, placed on the 4 corners of both top and bottom of your box.  This will keep everything firmly in place and at the perfect playing height. The box sticks to the booth, and your controller stays glued to the box, allowing some fierce button banging without any slippage.

WON’T IT SLIP?

We thought you might ask — so I shot a little video of our good friend Solomon trying out his new 25-cent stand using the Midi-Fighter and Serato Scratch. Download the Midi-Mapping he uses if you’re interested in trying it out.

WORKS WITH SOUND CARDS TOO!

Dont have a Needle box in your bag? Chances are you also have a sound card or Serato box in there. Just add some rubber feet to the top and you’re set.

Larger controllers work too. Just use a slightly larger sound card or needle box, and they will stay put as well.

Has this ever happened to you? You’re ready to drop the set of your life to an eager audience when a technical issue threatens to spoil the evening. Panic stricken, your eyes dart around the room for a sound guy, who of course is absent or non-existent. At this very pivotal moment, the night could be saved by your “Mix Master MacGyver” skills. Most of us have been jerry-rigging turntables and the like since we first popped a penny atop the cartridge of mom’s home stereo and cut up “Sesame Street” records after school. Thusly, I’m sure some of these tips you’ll already know, but if the following information saves just one party, then my job is done. After all, the show must go on.

SLIP NAPKINS

The number one crucial piece of gear that seems to be missing or forgotten has to be slip mats. This one is a simple fix. Push paper bar napkins over the nipple of the turntable, and voila! I’ve heard of everything from doilies to whiskey bags used. Record sleeves or paper of almost any kind can be used in a pinch.

TONE HARM

Bad control signal or mono analog signal is often caused by poor contact between the tone arm and cartridge. Licking and sticking, although sometimes effective, can exacerbate the problem in the long run by causing extra corrosion to accrue. Instead of licking, try using a #2 pencil eraser. Remove the cartridge, insert the eraser end of the pencil in the tonearm and twist it back and forth to clean the contacts. Do the same with the contact points on the cartridge. Don’t forget to blow the erasures away. Reattach the cartridge to the tone arm and throw down.

ZIP IT

It’s a fact. Accidents happen in dark clubs, especially when alcohol is involved. If the tone arm is fastened, and you attempt a bit too vigorously to place it on the record, the handle and the cartridge may part ways, making it extremely difficult to cue records. Paper clips work well as a fix but better is a small zip tie. Affix the zip tie around the cartridge body and trim to length.

TISSUE ISSUE

A loose fader can be deadly in a set. Flying faders are the #2 cause of blindness in the club, right after alcohol and stilletos. If a fader easily slides off, take a small piece of napkin and fold it over the top of the fader post then wedge the fader on top. Make sure the piece of napkin is long enough to be pulled out rather than packed inside, which will add to your problems. Also take care not to tweek the fader by pressing too hard.

STARBURST X-FADERS

Largely due to the problem mentioned above, I can’t count the number of missing faders I’ve encountered. Some nicked, some no doubt shot across the room during vigorous mixing. You then spend the rest of your set trying not to bloody your fingers. Instead, try this. Starburst candies can be pressed over the bare metal fader tab, providing a comfortable and delicious solution. Just don’t let groupies eat them afterwards, no matter how tempted they may be.

LEMON FRESH

One of my personal high points DJing wasn’t opening for so and so, or headlining such and such club. It was actually at a small bar gig, on a Tuesday night, with a reputation for a janky sound system and DJ booth. Upon inspection of the gear during set up, I was unable to locate one of the turntable’s counterweight. Without this small but critical piece of the tonearm assembly, records will not play. It was the only time I’ve ever encountered this particular problem, but I’m sure it’s happened to others, so I’ll share my fix. A small lime from the bar with a hole poked in the end can be slid back and forth to achieve the proper weight on the record. Not only did the show go on but, it was lemon fresh!!!

LOW TECH TOOLS

There are a few things that you can include in your bag of tricks that’ll help you out of a fix.  The above is what I carry with me and each item has proven to be well worth carrying along. After all, even MacGyver would have been shit out of luck without his trusty Swiss Army knife. Make sure along with the knowledge you have the tools as well, and you’ll save many a night and hopefully create a more comfortable DJ experience for yourself.

Designing and building your own hardware was previously restricted to those with huge R&D budgets or extensive technical know-how, but it’s now within the reach of just about everyone. Development of the Arduino and other low-cost, USB powered MIDI boards have sparked many home brewed MIDI controller projects that are relatively easy to use and fairly powerful.  This article will cover some of the low-cost DIY MIDI kits available on the market and evaluate each of their individual strengths and weaknesses. 

What does it take to make your own controller? Much less than you might think. The image above shows the insides of the custom controller built on the MIDIbox platform, one of the first and most powerful DIY MIDI communities out there. MIDIbox projects, while being very powerful, are unfortunately quite complicated to actually make. As more and more people converge on the topic of hardware modding and hacking, some entrepreneurial spirits have developed much easier kits that do most of the legwork for you. Some of these USB powered MIDI boards can run anywhere from $40-300 — depending on its capabilities — and are relatively simple to set up. There are a few important factors that you could consider when looking at building your own MIDI controller with a DIY MIDI Kit.

• Number/type of inputs – how many direct line or expandable (read below) connections are available on the board? Most boards feature both analog (potentiometers and fader) and digital (buttons, rotary) direct wire connections. For more on types of inputs and components see the Cuban MIDI Crisis article.
• LED Outputs- Having LED feedback can also be very useful, but only if the board accepts MIDI control for the lights.
• Size of PCB – Most of the kits are small (credit card size), but make sure they are smaller than the controller you plan on building.
• Modular or linear design model – Can you increase the number of inputs like the Midifighter?
• Component connection type – Components can be soldered in by wire but some boards use ribbon cables and connectors (remember those massive grey cables coming out of your hard drive?) in place of all direct wire connections to save space.
• Plug-and-play – It is also important to note that some boards require USB drivers to be loaded, whereas plug-and-play devices do not. This is because they are USB class compliant, or use system standard drivers.
• Power – Adding more plugs to your set-up is undesirable. Thankfully, most USB bootloading boards are USB powered.
• Middleware Editor – Some DIY boards require a middleware program (software between the hardware and your music program of choice) to configure the inputs and MIDI before they can be used.

Most DIY MIDI kits vary in how complicated they are to set up and how many features they support. Hardcore programmers may find the MIDIbox project up their alley, but building the projects requires extensive experience, testing and patience. On the other hand, more basic kits sacrifice capability in order to reduce the required effort in making your own controller.

Another important aspect to consider is the use of multiplexers and matrices that lower the restrictions of space and power in a circuit board. These extensions allow you to take advantage of the legwork done in simple kits like Builder DIY, and expand them to have capabilities closer to the more intensive projects like the MIDIbox.  A multiplexer takes multiple inputs and sends them down a single channel and are usually chip based. This allows a PCB to be expanded from a static number of direct connections to multiple inputs per connection. The Midifighter, for example, features 16 direct button connections but can be expanded with latch-and-shift chips that multiply the number of possible digital inputs to over 200. While the controller above was originally created with MIDIbox, the same design could be duplicated much faster today with a Midifighter DIY kit.

Bliptronome

This modding kit turns a Bliptronic 5000 matrix synth into a small Monome. The kit includes a DIY arduino, all the necessary components, and even a port of Monome Serial (Monome mapping software) to complete the transformation from cheesy 80’s sounds to scrolling controller mayhem. While this mod is limited, the Bliptronic’s diminutive design and unsatisfying snappy buttons, it is a good beginner-to-intermediate project especially if you have a Bliptronic on hand. Built by Stray Technologies, the Bliptronic 5000 is $49.99 from Think Geek and the Bliptronome is $69 for the Breadboard kit.

• Analog inputs = 0
• Size = roughly 6″ x 6″
• Digital inputs = 64 buttons, 4 analog-to-digital pots
• LED outputs = 64
• Plug-and-play= No
• Connection: Ribbon cable, FTDI
• 4 x AA battery powered
• Middleware Editor: Yes, requires MLR Serial to interface with a DAW

Builder DIY

The folks at Livid, responsible for the Block and Ohm controllers, offer a totally modular approach to building your own controller. The USB “Brain” board is small (3.5″ x 4.5″), offers a large number of inputs and LED outs and is easily programmed with an included firmware editor. The keyword here is expansion; the board can handle a total of 179 buttons and 48 LEDs when coupled the matrix boards. Costs can start adding up quickly, however, as the “Brain” board is best suited to the expansion boards sold by Livid, and everything else must be sourced yourself. Because the Builder is modular in design, it takes more time to get off the ground, but has very wide potential for modification. Find it at Livid for $189 for the “Brain” and around $12 for matrices and other modules.

• Analog inputs = 64
• Digital inputs = 16 (expandable to 179)
• LED inputs =14 (expandable to 48)
• Plug-and-play = USB class compliant
• Component connection type = Ribbon cable
• USB powered
• Middleware Editor = Yes, Brain Editor

Midifighter

DJ Tech Tools’ entry into the pantheon of DIY MIDI controllers strikes a balance between ease of use and creative potential. A button masher can get started within about 20 minutes from receiving the Midifighter, as it comes with the all components to get started and doesn’t require a middleware editor. Though the board features 4 solder-able analog inputs, an analog multiplexer lets you multiply the possible analog to 16. Those willing to dive even deeper can use switch chips to expand the digital and LED inputs as well. Find it at the store for $125.

• Analog inputs = 4 (expandable to 16)
• Digital inputs = 16 buttons, 4 unassigned (expandable 200+)
• LED outputs = 0 (expandable 200+ with latched serial drivers)
• Plug-and-play = USB class compliant
• Connection type = direct wire
• USB Powered
• Middleware Editor = No, can be reconfigured from hardware

Hale UMC32

In this extremely small board (1.6” x 2.7”), each one of the 32 inputs can be configured for a large assortment of analog, digital and LED components. Hale also make a “linker-board” that, you guessed it, links separate UMC32’s together. The board can send MIDI SysEx commands for controlling other MIDI hardware, but the trade-off is that Windows only software is required to configure the output before you can even get started, and it does not feature a MIDI out as standard. Again, components here must be sourced yourself. Find it at Hale Micro for $89.95.

• Analog inputs = 32 (Shared)
• Digital inputs = 32 (Shared)
• LED outputs = 32 (Shared)
• Plug-and-pla y= USB class compliant
• Connection type = ribbon
• USB powered
• Middleware Editor = Yes

Doepfer USB 64

This board is a rectangular 6.2″ x 1″ monster. This controller board from the German modular synth makers is a bare bones board that, like the Hale Micro UMC32, has cross compatible inputs. It also has 2 MIDI outs, for controlling other MIDI hardware. While offering a lot of I/O, one hangup is that the board does not receive MIDI input for LEDs — like the Midifighter or the Bliptronome — and all components must be sourced. Find it at Doepfer for around $200, includes ribbon cable and 240v power connector.

• Analog inputs = 64 (Shared)
• Digital inputs = 64 (Shared)
• LED outputs = 64 (Shared)
• Plug and Play = USB Class Compliant
• Connection type = Ribbon
• USB or independently powered
• Middleware Editor = Yes

Controllerism is fresh and all, but we most certainly were not the first folks to bang out samples using buttons or pads. There are legions of hip-hop producers who spend hours perfecting multi-finger drumming techniques on their MPCs.  To put it simply, these guys rock rubber buttons. You will find a few of my favorite MPC video clips after the break that might inspire a DJ routine or two. Add your favorites in the comments, and we will compile all the videos into a mega-MPC banger archive.

OK: up to this point I am thinking the MPC has some really nice input quantize function, but then this guy busts out the crazy tempo changes.

Ever since I published my personal layout for the Oxygen 8 some 4 months ago, people have been hounding me to finally post the explanation video. The damn thing took 5 years to perfect, I always joke, so perhaps the video might take another 5! Well, we finally found time to crank out a tutorial on the mapping I used in nightclubs around the world for many years.

Compared to the newer controllers on the market, the Oxygen 8 and this interface is relatively simple and somewhat primitive. To be honest though, I kind of like it that way. The interface does just a few things really well, and it’s really hard to screw anything up. Download the mapping and sign up for update emails here, but don’t expect updates too regularly — this controller is my favorite old 66 Coupe DeVille. I take her out of the garage every once in a while and tinker with the engine on weekends, but generally I like to keep things the way they were. For the latest and greatest in modern DJ technology, there is always the Midi-Fighter and our new completely insane VCI-100 V3 mapping.