yeasterday , here in france, i was in a disco-club with a friend who had to do some pictures about it for job.
the dj mixed some trax: house, r'n'b, pop. i was not curious about his style, but i wanted to see nearer his equpement. he had 2 technics 1200, 2 pioneer cdj, 1 mac...and an sp-404. "what a dj war!" i thougth to myself...
...unfortunately the man used the sp-404 only to send 2 one shot samples at every end/beginning of a track...everytime the same 2 samples...s**t, i thougth, what a pity...a very good machine used just for that thing...and what about the technics 1200? used only for little scratch , sometimes, every 10 minutes...the whole thing was pre-mixed with the mac, i suppose.
i'm not surprised about that, i saw situation like this other times...but to see the sp-404 used like that, well, was not a great spectacle...

yea thats probably how most dj's use them... probably just throw a dub horn on their or "dj dj dj dj spinz mageeeeee".

i personally cannot stand any dj that isnt also a producer. just because you've got the money to buy lots of records doesn't make you a musician. now, djs that spin their own stuff with people they like....thats the shit right there.

And let's be honest...90% of the people on the dancefloor aren't gonna care if a track is properly beatmatched.

Yeah true, turntablists are a different story tho...whoa!!
I dj a little, like through together little mixtapes.....I wanna do a cool soul or reggea one next, depends what turns up in the crates..
I cant cut tho...otherwise id have volenteered for niq names

anyone else spin?

yea scratching and drumming is a different story. anybody can beatmatch songs within 5 bpm of eachother though

The construction of a mixtape is an art tho, making it flow etc, giving it a theme...

lol damn i thought this thread was you giving away free gear..

ahahah
i will i ask the dj of that disco-club to give them for nothing to you, beacuse i think he doesen't need them!

I bought my SP-404 6 weeks ago just because I wanted some FX to plug into the send/return on my PMC05 PRO. I found mine new for $300 and it seems like a damn good deal even if it is used for just FX or one shots. Is there cheaper options that do the same thing with out windows/mac os?

I just found this forum today as I was doing some research on this 404 and decided to join. It looks like there's a wealth of information and new ideas for me here.

What's up all!

is a vestax?
it's good to use the sp, all the sp, for the fx thing.
anyway wellcome!

i feel like the term producer is thrown around alot now that people are more into making electronic music.. being a producer or a dj never means that you are necessarily a musician to begin with. take it back to the beginings of those terms and i think you'd find that most dj's are in fact not musicians or producers! as well a record producer may just know alot about the sounds of instruments but not really be able to play them. i think a better way to say that is dj's who arent producing their own tracks as well shouldnt act like they are musicians, although they do have talent its not the same as playing an instrument

Yes, Vestax. The problem I have with using FX on it is that it does not have Pre-fader sends, which means I can't get 100% wet FX for things like slicer, bpm looper, c. canceler ... etc. An important feature of the 404 for me was the ability to record the samples and loop them to use those FX.

@dman5000

im just saying i'd rather here a dj spin songs he made plus ones he likes, rather than just cater to the audience. when they cater to the audience its more like hearing a businessman get down on decks rather than someone who appreciates music. dj-ing is getting to the point (in electronic music specifically) where the ability to craft something new out of a previously recorded song is more than a possibility.
loopers, fx, ableton, serato scratch (limitless samples for scratching hasnt even been fully developped), and sequencers are going to blur the line between producers and dj's. because when a producer plays a show guess what they have to do: dj.
since they have a background of manipulating audio to simply play and beatmatch songs isn't enough, they got to put their own flavor on it. true creating mixes and matching song colors is good, but in a club atmosphere you have to play similar styled songs within 5 bpm not including ambient breaks. doing it by the formula really doesnt leave much room to be creative and really isnt that exciting to listen to anymore. but this doesnt include hip hop and scratching which is a world of its own, you cant really improve a song with rapping on it as much as you could, say, a minimal tech song.

but yea a "dj" came from radios and "producer" came from record label managers and engineers but the meanings have changed over time. what would you rather call a producer? a beatmaker? audio slicer? audio-jigsaw puzzler?

Yeah,

most DJs should be called "worthless parasitic human jukebox that doesn't do the job as well as a computer would"

then theres the people who deserve the title of DJ.

i guess im just jaded cause i see those kids who twist the bassknob like they are giving the entire crowd a blowjob while us kids who try to build something new on stage are sweating our asses off