Are you mixing only oldskool are are you gonna be buying new records?. I ask this because you will get into the enevitable mess of 'too much vinyl syndrome'. This is a deadly disease and is uncurable without the sad medication of having to sell your lovingly crafted collection one day.
I have been a bedroom dj for a 7 or so years (on and off) and the amount of vinyl is starting to bend my floor - seriously-, and it costs you a fair lot in vinyl money too. I was doing a quick calc on my collection and say I have roughly 4000 records under lock and key (inc retro/house/happyhardcore/prog house/trance/goa etc) at an average baught price of £4.00 a record is £16000. Frig Me!.
Dont get me wrong, I have and still enjoy mixing and all that, but be sure you have the longterm funds and room etc for your new found passion. I have only played out on three occasions and theres no feeling like doing a good mix and the folk 'in the know' are going mental to it!. Once you get into it, its awesome.
If you do go ahead, old skool is probably the hardest (in my opinion) to mix together because the tempos range so much and the combo of raging hardcore stabs directly into lush pianos is a bit trickey to gell stuff together sometimes, so dont get dispondant straight away - it takes some folks a bit of time to master.
I practiced mixing two similar records at first - play the first one at a random speed and match the other one to it, not altering the first one then second one then first one again if you know what I mean cos youll just lose the plot.
I never baught technics straight away - there is two ways of looking at it.....I didnt have the money so I got some cheap ones with varispeed pitch, which 12 months later were fooked, so I had to buy another set of cheapy ones to replace them. This is fine if you just wanna give it all a whirl, but if youre very serious about it and have the money then you may as well get tecnics or something as its probably cheaper in the long run. Try out some of yer mate's first or perhaps get some good second hand ones.
Oh, and whoever it was who said you have to play what the crowd wants is spot on. Being a bedroom jock is one thing, just mixing up all yer fave tunes and tapes for yer mates etc etc but playing out a venue is a whole different ball game as not everyone likes the same stuff as you do.
RicherSounds and Ads in the back of DJ Magazine usually give some good prices on package deals. On the MP3 mixing lark, I have tried a few different progz and by far the best so far IMO is NativeInstruments' 'Traktor'. What do you guys think?....Its a good idea to give mp3 mixing a go (although queing records with a mouse is very wierd). Get one of those free ones.....
Dont mean to sound like a prophet of doom or anything and put a right royal dampener on it, its just that it can quite easily spiral out of control. I am beginning to be very aware of that....
Good luck if you go ahead, its good fun.
See ya,
sirius.
by the hundred!)
