This is a practical demonstration about using the Remix Decks with the Native Instruments Kontrol S8. This controller has been released about 6 months ago, and it helped to improve my DJ workflow tremendously, because it integrates so many useful functions in one device (e.g. you have 8 individual faders for controlling the remix slots).

Special thanks to Label “broque” for allowing me to use their music in this mix !

DJ Mixes

My mixes now released on Beatport

21. June 2015 Written by chris626

From now on, I will release my DJ mixes on Beatport. Advantage: you can stream them (as always), but also can download them in high quality. You find them here:

http://dj.beatport.com/klangtraeumer

DJ Mixes

AudioTour 50 Techhouse/Trance Mix

14. June 2015 Written by chris626

AudioTour 50 (2015-06-12) by Klangträumer on play.fm

Mix Description

Hypnotic techhouse/progressive grooves and song transitions in first half. Second half: Trance (mixture between older classics and newer tracks).

This time no S8 remix decks have been used.

Playlist

Tom Strobe – Too Close (Radio Edit) – Armada Music Bundles
Tom Strobe – Missed Love (Original Mix) – Chill Cake
HVOB – Tender Skin (Original Mix) – Stil Vor Talent
Manu F, John Rosignoli- Cordoba (Manu F Groove Mix) – Balkan Connection South America
Nicholas Van Orton – Even (Nicolas Rada Remix) – Balkan Connection South America
Nicholas Van Orton – Funktitude (Original Mix)- Balkan Connection South America
Dark Matter – Riding With The Wind (Original Mix) – Mena Music
Navid Mehr – Space Nomads (Original Mix) – Particles
Rodrigo Cortazar – The Traveller (Original Mix)- Balkan Connection South America
D.X.Xavier – Eclipse (Loquai Remix)- Balkan Connection South America
Royksopp – I Had This Thing (Joris Voorn Remix) – Green
Dave Pad – Time To Change (Original Mix) – Tronic Soundtz
Volkan Erman, Hypnotic Progressions – Black Butterfly (Original Mix)- Balkan Connection South America
Philthy Chit – Colours (EA3 Reconstruction) – Touchstone Recordings
Lens – Beyond The Shadows (Moonbeam Remix) – Coldharbour Red Recordings
Kenneth Tjonasam, Spekuless – Curacao (Gabriel Batz Remix) – Alter Ego Digital
BT – Mercury & Solace (BT Dub) – Black Hole Recordings
Solarstone – Shield (Pt. I) (Original Mix) – Black Hole Recordings
Chakra – Home (Above & Beyond Mix) – ARVA
Mana, Christish – Kimochi (Simon O’Shine Remix) – Suanda Music
Artifi, XiJaro & Pitch – Moment Of Forever (Extended Mix) – Silent Shore Records
Sebastian Brandt – Ashes (Original Mix) – Armada Music Bundles

DJ Mixes

AudioTour 49 Techhouse/Trance Mix

4. May 2015 Written by chris626

AudioTour 49 (2015-05-04) – Full Moon Story by Klangträumer on play.fm

Mix Description

Many beautiful tracks ! Deephouse/Techhouse lovers, check out the first half of the mix. Second half contains lots of great Trance tracks, among them one of the best vocal parts I ever heard.

Playlist

Kaban – Million Miles (Original Mix)
WhoMadeWho/ – Heads Above (Robag Wruhme remix) (Remix)
Matias Sandrini – Don’t Look Back (Original Mix)
Ivan Stabile – 1991 (Original Mix)
Junge & Maedchen – Nutopia (Original Mix)
DJ Simi, Marcus Raute – Appleboom (Plastic Deep Mix)
Alfred R_ – Warm Memories (Original Mix)
Astrid Suryanto, J. Axel – Start Receiving (Keep Receiving Remix)
Gunnar Stiller – Closer (Nikola Gala Remix)
Deepbass – Dune (Original Mix)
Subsphere – Fragrance
Alex M.O.R.P.H., Hannah – When I Close My Eyes (Alex M.O.R.P.H. Vocal Club Mix)
Solarstone – 4Ever (Pure Retouch)
Feel, Aelyn/Suanda – If You Feel Love (Cold Rush Dub Mix)
Lost World – A Life Elsewhere (Kimoto Lopez Remix)
Mana, Christish – Kimochi (Simon O’Shine Remix)
Ahmed Romel – Saudade (Original Mix)
Anthya, Solis & Sean Truby – Timeless (Ultimate Remix)
Victor Lyalchuk – The Dream Of Life (Original Mix)
Vincent De Moor – Fly Away (The Thrillseekers Remix)
Syntouch – Into The Sky (Original Mix)

DJ Mixes

AudioTour 48 Techhouse / Trance Mix

23. March 2015 Written by chris626

AudioTour 48 (2015-03-23) – Peace & Love by Klangträumer on play.fm

Mix Description

This DJ mix is very powerful, especially in the first half of the mix. It benefits from two things: high quality of the songs, and massive usage of remix deck extensions. The remix parts deliver additional power to the individual songs. The flexbility is fantastic: a song uses some weak bass drum ? Just add a remix bass drum part. It is missing a bass line or some percussions? No problem, simply add some suitable parts.

It is so much fun mixing with these Native Instruments Kontrol S8 remix decks ! And improves the mixing quality tremendously.

Playlist (recommendations as always in bold)

Paul Kalkbrenner – Aaron – Paul Kalkbrenner Musik
Jonas Woehl – Instincts (Original Mix) – Poesie Musik
Alberto Iglesias – Sin Fin (Original Mix) – Rene Records
Pav Parrotte – Don’t Dare! (Original Mix) – Tronic Soundz
J. Axel – Like A Shadow (Original Mix) – Plastic City
Koloniari – Rebel (Metamann Dub Mix) – Irpish Records
Simone Vitullo, ReLight Orchestra – Goodnight Moon (Simone Vitullo Deeper Dub Remix) – Go Deeva Records
Alberto Iglesias – Statico (Original Mix) – Scutum Records
Audion, Troels Abrahamsen – Dem Howl Feat. Troels Abrahamsen (Joris Voorn Mix) – Kompakt
Michel De Hey – Whitebird (Digital Only) – Tronic Soundz
Tom Hades – Sound Flares (Original Mix) – MB Elektroniks
Sebastian Brandt – Serenade (Original Mix) – Armada Music Bundles
Karanda – Grumpy But Gorgeous (Original Mix) – Lyon Echo Records
Paul Oakenfold – Southern Sun (Paul Webster Remix) – Perfecto Fluoro
Dash Berlin, Roxanne Emery – Shelter feat. Roxanne Emery (Photographer Remix) – Armind
Tarmo Tammel – Sunday (Kaimo K Remix) – Club Educate
Midway – Cobra (Original Mix) – In Trance We Trust
Sebastian Brandt – 450 (Original Mix) – A State Of Trance
Talla 2xlc, The Thrillseekers – Fracture (Sebastian Brandt Remix) – Tetsuo
Ultimate – Wonderland (Original Mix) – Infrasonic Recordings
Allan McLoud – Sound Is Sexy (Original Mix) – NoYu Records

DJ Mixes

My DJ Equipment History

13. March 2015 Written by chris626

In this article I will explain with which equipment I have done my mixes in the last years, and what was the reason for change.

DJ Equiment History

Year 2000 – January 2012 (until AudioTour 05):

Pioneer DJM 500 Mixer, 2 x Technics 1210 Turntables
Recording until 2010 with Archos portable device (Mixer Line Out), after 2010 with Logic 9.1 (Mixer Line Out into Audiofire2 Audio-Interface)

January 2012 – November 2013 (AudioTour 06 until AudioTour 28):

Pioneer DJM 500 Mixer, 2 x Pioneer CDJ 850-K
Recording into Logic 9.1, Audio-Interface Echo AudioFire 2

December 2013 – December 2014 (AudioTour 29 until AudioTour 44):

Pioneer XDJ Aero
Recording directly within Aero onto USB-Stick

Since January 2015 (since AudioTour 45):

Native Instruments Traktor Kontrol S8
Recording in Traktor

Reasons for change

2012: After many years with vinyl based setup, I switched to the digital world (MP3) for many reasons: less physical room needed, cheaper songs, easier organization. The CDJ 850-K are great quality, however I do not need the CD-functionality at all (because use them only at home), and the handling with digital files is a bit impractical (need to write the playlist songs onto 2 USB-Sticks, then load the Sticks within the CDJ’s).

2013: So some time later, I changed to the XDJ Aero. With this device, I have direct (WLAN) access to Rekordbox songs on the computer, perfect. Also it can record directly within the device (USB-Stick). Altogether I could replace 4 devices (DJM, 2 CDJ, Audio Interface) by 1. This simplifies the setup architecture and also requires much less physical room.

However, the jog wheel quality of the CDJ’s is definitely better than that of the XDJ Aero. Those of the Aero are not so fine grained , it is difficult to perform minimals adaptions. But altogether, the advantages are bigger than the disadvantages.

2015: I have been thinking for years to move to Traktor-based setups, but was not satisfied with the controllers which were on the market. That changed when the Native Instrument Traktor Kontrol S8 was released. I have to state this is a fantastic tool. With its integrated remix decks, it opens new possibilites for DJ mixing, within one device ! I will write more on the S8 in a future article. Summarized, with this device you are not limited to classic DJ mixing anymore, but can easily add some individual instruments (remix samples) to existing songs, or even build own tracks with these remix samples. When you checkout my latest mixes since AudioTour 45 , you will notice a considerable quality improvement compared to the older mixes. The reason is the switch to S8.

Pictures

Current setup:

Native Instrument Kontrol S8

Older setups:

Pioeneer XDJ Aero

Technics, CDJ’s plus DJM 500

DJ Mixes

The benefit of Beatport Pro DJ application

6. March 2015 Written by chris626

Today I like to share some experience regarding the use of track download portals or applications for DJ’s, especially regarding the Beatport Pro Application for Mac OS X.

DJTunes.com

When I started with digital DJing in 2011, the Beatport website for me was a no-go: slow, bad organized, only 2 minutes track preview. For me, it was simply unusable regarding pre-listening a large amount of new tracks. At that time, djtunes.com offered full track preview functionality (not only fixed 2 minutes). And djtunes.com had a website which was well usable. Only disadvantage was that not all tracks were available there (contrary to Beatport). So I used djtunes.com as my main download portal for the following 2 years.

But in mid 2013, DJTunes changed their preview policy and now also allowed only 2 minutes per track. This was the reason why I left them. There is one other portal with full-length preview, trackitdown.net. However, this portal has very annoying flashy advertisements. Nevertheless, I stayed there for some time, because lack of alternatives.

Beatport Pro for Mac OS X

Then in April 2014, Beatport made a tremendous step forward: it released the Beatport Pro Application for Mac OS X, which is clearly focused on professional DJ’s: very fast, easy to use regarding bulk listening of many tracks, individual filters, and remembers which songs have been listened already. I have been using this application since the first release and I do not need any other DJ portal anymore (also not the Beatport website, which still is not much better than years before). It saves so much time and has very nice functions for organizing searches and favorites, and linking elements. This helps me detecting beautiful songs, which I would not have found with any website.

The only annoying disadvantage is the high amount of track duplicates (because of different labels releasing the same songs), but that is a problem of Beatport itself, not of the Mac OS X application. I hope they will be offering a duplicates filter in the application in future, that would improve its value even more

=> strong recommendation for this great Beatport Pro application (if you have a Mac) !

Here is a screenshot, which gives some insight (the green circles indicate that you listened to these songs already. At the top, you see a list of individual filters. The song lists are easily browsable with keyboard shortcuts, and they react very fast):

There are also functions for organizing the already downloaded tracks (playlists and so on), but I dont use that. I copy all downloads to my iTunes application and organize the playlists there. But this is stuff for another article…

DJ Mixes