Fake DJ required

September 2, 2008 4:56 PM

Can anyone recommend mac software for someone who has absolutely no experience at beat matching etc, to 'DJ' a party. By DJ i mean play music without horrible gaps and ridiculous tempo changes, and to do so in a spontaneous way (choosing songs on the spur).

I've heard some programs can beatmatch/crossfade and calculate BPM automatically. Suggestions please, and opinions on this. The demo looks and feels okay (loving the iTunes integration though), but would like alternative suggestions in order to scope the field a little before forking out the cash.

Sorry to all the purists out there, but this is a totally spur of the moment thing, and I have no wish to actually learn how to DJ. I hope to be able to use a Macbook at said party.

posted by ashaw to media & arts (7 comments total)

Traktor is the weapon of choice, and it will beatmatch for you. You can't cue up a track in the headphones while another one is playing unless you have an audio interface that has at least 2 outputs though, but you probably won't even notice the difference as a casual DJ.
posted by knowles at 5:26 PM on September 2, 2008

I'd try AsktheDJ at wildbits.com. It is a stand-alone player that auto-analyzes the BPMs of songs and creates (claimed) pro-DJ sounding transitions between them. If you purchase it for $30, it comes with a license for a beat-detecting program that you can run on your entire iTunes library, and an iTunes plug-in that will allow you to do the pro-like transitions from within iTunes. I haven't tried it myself, but it seems to be the perfect thing for a spur-of-the moment "gig".

There's a free demo, so give it a spin.
posted by pmbuko at 6:06 PM on September 2, 2008

Seconding AskTheDJ... perfect for the casual sort of DJing you are talking about. You do have to give it a set of tunes first, and let it analyze and sequence them so it can do its best. I think it adds some kind of phasing effect to the transitions to make them sound more seamless.
posted by omnidrew at 6:20 PM on September 2, 2008

Are there any similar programs for PC?
posted by alcopop at 8:15 PM on September 2, 2008

Not a purist but a bit particular:
the auto bpm matching is going to leave you desiring something. They might line up the beats but i doubt they do it in measure, they wont be respective of "the drops" in a song, nor allow you to add something over a break...but that doesn't matter here. There are books already written about this, but djing is more than matching the beats. The programs cant choose the feel, the vibe of your party for you. And besides, matched transitions are not what makes a party great. Its building the party with song selection, something anyone can do given enough time to make a solid playlist.

If I was you: with no intention of being a dj, why not use something reallly simple like itunes bpm, taptempo or even a stopwatch to get an idea of the bpm of a song, then arrange your flow based on song key/lyric content. You can build your vibe with songs around the same speed.

If you are going to go big, traktor is okay, especially since it has gain controls for each channel. It's a helpful feature if you have mp3s of all different sound levels, but remember, you won't be able to use it to it's full potential without the hardware box for multiple inputs.
posted by stachemaster at 10:36 PM on September 2, 2008

Traktor doesn't do measure matching. I'm not sure about askthedj.

Honestly, I'd avoid auto bpm matching for the reasons stachemaster said. If the beats line up and the measures don't, it'll sound very very bad to anyone paying attention. Like, the sort of bad that might stop people mid sentence. This goes up exponentially for the musicians at the party.

If you REALLY want to do this, don't get caught up in beat matching. You're way better off just playing songs by feel. Old-radio style fader swaps sound better than improperly mixed songs.

Sorry, there aren't really any shortcuts here.
posted by onedarkride at 3:25 AM on September 3, 2008

What onedarkride said. Also, PC equivalent of BPM finding/tagging is Mixmeister BPM Analyzer.
posted by softlord at 5:54 AM on September 3, 2008