Decks fixed... DJK has arrived...

So I went out the other day and invested some cashish in fixing my decks. If you remember as stated a few weeks ago in this blog, I bought the Hercules Mark I DJ controller that doesn't have a soundcard incorporated into it (its the budget option at €99). That means that it requires your computer to have two sound cards to be able to listen to the main track on the speakers and the next track on the headphones.

However, being the intuitive physics student and generally resourceful young scallywag that I am, I solved the problem quite simply. For €35, I picked up an external sound card and some headphones for €25 from PC City (Spain's version of PC World). After some gentle coercion and some software jiggery-pokery, I managed to sort it out and now it works perfectly as a set of decks should. So in effect what I have is an improvised version of the Mark II for €159 instead of €219 for the real deal. Bargain!

The final straw that made me fix the kit was the fact that the day before I made an 80 minute mixtape without headphones: the tunes are cracking but technically the mix is far from ideal. Hopefully when I move back to England in early July I'll have another bash at it properly and put it online for all to enjoy. It's not bad at the moment but still too raw to put out there.

DJK's First DJ Set!

So I finally tried my hand at DJing in public on Thursday at an Erasmus party! My buddies at www.europesounds.110mb.com were organising a Hip-Hop party at Bar Sahara in Santander and asked if I wanted to try and do a little warm-up set for them. Naturally I jumped at the chance!

In January I bought a Hercules MP3 controller for my laptop which came with some DJing software and have been trying my hand since then. Thursday was the first time I tried in public and although I still have a lot to learn, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Hopefully this summer I can spend a bit more time learning and need to upgrade my kit: currently I'm using Virtual DJ but I think it is fairly recognised that Traktor VinylScratch is top banana. Also I either need a second sound card for my laptop or to get a new MP3 controller with one built in: I didn't realise in January that with the controller I bought, you can't listen to the incoming track on my headphones. Which is kind of the point of DJing. Silly sod that I am.