Don’t get hung up on the latest and greatest kit. In it’s basic form you need two players of some kind, a mixer, some headphones and a set of speakers. Once you have this you can develop your skills to a point where you can be as good as any of the pros out there from a technical standpoint.
However, in a flooded industry I feel it’s important to develop a style that is unique to you. Now I’m not talking about doing aerobics on the DJ desk or throwing cake into the audience, I’m talking about some kind of signature. There is an every increasing number of innovative ways to create sound that can enhance your mix or set. Maybe grab yourself an effects pedal that no one else has thought of to give you that unique sound.
I’m constantly evolving my setup and looking for ways to make the mixes more interesting
MATT CLOVER
Equipment positions
This is one that gets the internet hot under the collar. If you post a DJ setup on any social media platform that is anything other than two turntables or players either side of a mixer then you are in for a whole barrage of comments from concerned citizens worrying about your mixing wellbeing.
I’ve never been one for conforming to “the norm” and prefer to experiment with the position of the mixer, turntables, players and peripherals. The classic that gets everyone outside of the hip hop world going is when you turn the turntables around into what is known as battle mode. I personally like this even for regular mixing but it seems to really upset people! Then take that to the next level where you have two turntable on one side of the mixer then you have literally started armageddon.
People are afraid of different but I urge you to try different ways of doing things, you might just stumble upon a new way of doing things that really makes sense. If you are planning on long DJ sets get the heights of the kit right, you’ll thanks me later. I’ve seen so many instances of kit that’s set up on a dodgy old table or worse still a Kallax record storage unit from Ikea.
Check out the video above. On this particular setup I could benefit from a rotary setup and a linear fader setup all in one. By feeding the rotary master output into a single channel of the Xone PX5 mixer.
