DJ Studio 2.0

The Lounge Other Gear
1

Definitely worth checking out for a focused workflow. Really accelerates creating sets offline.

DJ Mixing Redefined | DJ.Studio | DJ.Studio

Aside from my Elektron-centric music, I also do DJ performances (mainly house, disco, funk, etc) on my Denon hardware or Pioneer gear if provided by the venue. But a lot of tasks are a PITA, especially generating offline long-form sets for people to hear, or sometimes having to put together new sets, last minute, for live performance. Even when basic song and other element selection is done, there’s a fair amount of gruntwork in getting a start-to-finish track list with all your transitions and other elements planned out.

I’ve done a few tests with DJ Studio and have found that I can slam together new sets from scratch in no time, and I can export to a finished audio or video file, or even export ordered audio tracks with data for import into DJ software/hardware for live performance of planned and curated sets.

As of today, they just added sample tracks, which means you can have a separate samples/loops pool in your projects and place them on dedicated sample tracks to work with your more long-form song content. For me, this means I can more easily pull in some of my recorded Elektron patterns and other loops/samples, then arrange them with the songs as an integrated part of a DJ set.

Another cool feature is that you can export to Ableton projects for polishing, mastering, or other additional work. Note that they also have direct integration with pretty much every DJ library software, so you can use your already-curated and organized libraries directly in DJ Studio.

The feature list is too long to really get into here, but just from my short (few days) experience with DJ Studio, doing this sort of DJ-centric work in a focused dedicated app like this instead of a DAW has been a breath of fresh air for me. I wish I had this before Halloween party season this year. Would have saved SO much time in prepping new sets for live performance, and a DAW isn’t really streamlined for this kind of work.

For those working mostly OTB or not interested in DJ aspects of music making/performance, this probably won’t be for you, but I got in on a 70% off “Pro” license deal and it’s already “paying” for itself in how much time I’m shaving off generating new mainstream “club” sets for some upcoming events.

This weekend is when I’ll start really getting into cranking out some sets focused on “my” sound, with mashups, remixes and my original stuff coming together in a flow. I say “some sets” instead of “starting on one set” because once you learn the basics, this software is THAT FAST in accelerating a DJ’s workflow, that I can expect to power through several in a couple of days.

Should be fun!

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2

Sounds intresting, 300 is still a bit pricey, but if youre putting weekly/monthly sets out, might be intresting for such a use case.

3

Sucks every bit of fun and spontaneity out of djing but would be great for polished produced type mixes for release.

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4

This “producing mixes” use-case is part of what I’ll be doing. The other part is prepping for live shows by planning out my set orders with a foundation of music order, cues and transitions. But it absolutely won’t replace reading a room and adjusting accordingly, or adding some freestyle to the mix. I do love to sometimes just go into a set cold, starting with a couple of known bangers, then letting the vibe direct where I go next.

The DJ Studio software will only get me so far, planning out a foundational set list, but as the old saying goes, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

5

Until November 6th, I think you can get in on a promo at 149 for Pro, which buys a permanent license and 2 years of updates. That’s the price of about 5mos of monthly $29 subscription billing, which was a good deal to me.

DJ.Studio at ADE 2023 | DJ.Studio

1 Like
6

My prep is usually digging out around 15 to 20 hours of music then I pick from it at the gig reading the crowd. Weirdly in over 20 years of djing I still don’t have two tunes I practice mixing, everything is off the cuff.

I have friends who practice sets though and master mixes. This would be really good for that.

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7

I’m somewhere in the middle, depending on the event and situation. But I do have a good curated and organized library where if I WANT to just “wing it”, I can.

A few years go, I ran sound and did significant DJing for an outdoor festival. One night, I started with a scheduled 80s/90s dance party vibe, then over the course of about 3 hours, did a musical journey kind of thing where I morphed into some hip-hop, old soul, a bit of nu-disco, into some 2000s and later dance tunes, then finally transitioned through a series of real-time remixes into hard-hitting modern house music. I knew the guy following me was going to be doing hard house in his set and wanted him to start with an audience that was already vibing to it.

Those 3 hours just FLEW by because I was having so much fun just being in-the-zone and playing off of the crowd’s energy. One of the greatest compliments that night was from the guy who followed me. First, he told me I was a “machine” for doing a non-stop 3 hour live remix set like that, which was cool to hear, but what was really great for me was his amazement at how the time just flew by for him and all of the crowd of dancers because I had started with 80s music and ended up at hard house music so organically that he couldn’t really detect any obvious genre transitions, just music that flowed and somehow eventually landed on the genre that he was going to be spinning. I was high on that one for a while.

But some events, I feel a little pressure to be more consistent and bring a more organized mindset to the proceedings. Not that I usually STICK to the program completely, but often that soft bed of prepared material helps me get in a relaxed zone more easily because I can weave in and out of the prepared set(s) at will.

That said, I don’t really practice overly complex DJ moves and sequences, like some might for a competition or technique demos. I do mostly the foundational stuff and have my collection of go-to transitions, effects and remixing techniques for live that tend to be more practical than showy. But I see DJ Studio as being a useful tool for trying and settling on some known remixes, cues and transitions in an offline setting that I can then remember and have confidence they will work live on my DJ hardware with the same material.

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