Mixing/music program suggestions?

freehugs

freehugs

Bluelighter
Joined
Oct 18, 2010
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2,765
Location
Nor Cal
But I have no idea where to start. I mostly want to mix dubstep, house, and maybe some trance. What programs did you guys use when you were first starting out? Any good tutorials that you found?

Note: I will not be producing right now, only mixing.

Note two: This will be all digital.
 
Well I gotta start somewhere and I figure that digital mixing would be the best choice.
 
I agree with Mehm. But if you want to start digitally try Traktor Pro. Or a slightly more simple option would be Virtual DJ.

Check youtube for tutorials.
 
Will do thank you for the help. If I really get into it I'll be buying some tables for sure.
 
What does everyone think about Adobe Soundbooth as opposed to say, Ableton or other mac software?

Also does anyone know if flash and soundbooth can talk to each other so I can do live-animation to music? It's mostly guitar and keyboard over synths and a few other effects, so I'm dealing with live inputs, if that helps...
 
Have you considered FruityLoops or Cubase?

One word of caution - If you intend to mix music to entertain others, you must always remember that the successful mixer mixes music with the intent of pleasing their audience and not stroking their own ego. If you create something that you think is absolutely brilliant but your friends/audience think it sucks, you may want to consider trashing it or modifying it based on critique. Otherwise you have technically failed as an entertainer.
 
^ I don't necessarily agree. Sure, you want it to please your audience but it should satisfy you, the producer, first.
 
ableton is pretty much designed to be used in a live environment and it does support video, although i dont know if it supports live flash
 
If you're just mixing, get some tables and use Serato or Traktor. Most DJ's in my city seem to know Serato. As for producing I would suggest Ableton Live.
 
traktor is god awful software. its hard to use for no reason. use Vitrual DJ its a much simpler program for a beginner
 
You'll find that Traktor is the industry standard...it's popular for a reason. I've never seen any DJs who use virtualdj. Traktor is also paired with an audio interface. I have the Audio8 and I love it.

:D
 
atri said:
ableton is pretty much designed to be used in a live environment and it does support video, although i dont know if it supports live flash
Click to expand...

yeah, that's what I'm running into.

Anyone can program a light show if you have a rigid set and aren't mixing it live, but i'm trying to do a live animated light show, and some of us actually play instruments, putting a huge variable in that equation.

I'll have to check out Ableton (again) to see if flash can talk to it in real time.

Edit: not that tables aren't an instrument, and mixing is important, it's just that live instrumentation puts huge variables in the whole production.
 
i would say virtual dj is a great starting point for any dj, i would say traktor is better but really you need some kind of interface to use its full potential.

ideally we would all have ttables or cdjs but they can be pricy enough and the cheap ones sometimes just dont cut it!

so if you just want to play around before investing any money id say get a crack copy of virtual dj.
 
i wouldn't touch virtual dj with a barge-pole. You can get a cracked version of Traktor Pro for free so the cost is irrelevant (if that's a factor in favour of virtual dj) Obviously, when you become a world-famous superstar you'll cough-up for a kosher copy of the software.

It's true that you need a controller if you want to work live, but you can learn without one. The most important thing is a sound card with at least two output branches.

For producing I used Reason (paid-for) but recently switched to Ableton Live (not yet paid-for) and am wishing i'd tried it years ago. Tunes come together much more easily and it takes less time to reach a given level with a project. But I think the choice of DAW is very subjective - loads of people prefer Reason (or cubase etc etc) to Live.
 
Thanks for the mass amount of replies guys :D
I actually found a program called MixMeister that I am going to start using today. It seems very simple so I'm going to start from there and work my way up.
 
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