Don't Do What I Did

Well I was playing a high school prom tonight and I faded into silence. I checked and my channel faders were up and crossfader in the middle. Immediately I thought my Xponent froze so I restarted it. No luck. Then I figured Traktor must have crashed so I restarted and had like 5 mins of silence as it updated and loaded all my tracks.

Then I remembered I had just used the TT effect to do a vinyl brake. The reason the deck was silent was because I forgot to turn it off...

As of today 99% of my problems with Traktor have been user errors.

 

this has tricked me once as well

Sometimes I think that this particular effect should have a more "mecanical" emulation, showing the waveform stopped for example, or perhaps a "color flashing" on the deck on which effect is applied .

 

I sometimes forget my delay or filter and wonder why the sound is so bad.

Also not pretty...

 

The most frequent "user mistake" I do during gigs is to forget to turn the bass back on a channel after a mix... then when I play next track on that channel I'm all like "where did all my low ends disappear"

 

I did this last night. Just slam it back on at the start of a chorus to make it sound you did it on purpose.

 

Lolz. Or leaving the line fader up because you let your last track play out. Sticking your headphones on to monitor your cueing (because the venue has no monitors). And wondering why people are staring at you as you cue up the next track.

 

Any DJ that says he hasnt done that is a liar. I still do it.
Especially when i manually load a track into a deck and hit the cue button which is an old CD player habit ive never dropped.

 

I have had so many things like this in the past:

A while ago I did not bring the Timecode CD's but the Installer CD's (god, they look alike..)

Other things that slow you down during a performance (unfortunately this all happened)

-Forgot the USB cable
-Forgot my laptop charger
-Forgot my laptop (that was the worst..)

 

- Play the timecode signal instead of TSP's output.

I guess every has done that, too. What a hell of a noise

 

I've forgotten my charger twice and a mic once.

Luckily two of the times my girlfriend picked the stuff up and brought it to me. Once I just had to drive home

What I've done now is create a setup that stays in my dj bag. I've also got backups on me at all times now.

 

I have been meaning to start a checklist and publish it on my website, so that I can keep checking it on the go and I get this wierd feeling that something is missing. Did anyone else create a checklist yet?

In the same vain, a debug checklist when the sound goes away or screws up might also be useful. Something to give sane guidance when panik breaks out.

 

My Checklist:

Xone 4D
Powercable
Macbook Pro
Charger
Usb Cable
Laptopstand
Headphones
Timecode CD's
Promo CD's
Flyers
Business cards
Earplugs
Cookies

Or did I forget something?

 

I was mid set Saturday and left the freeze on, hit the on button to add some reverb and SILENCE still no one really noticed apart from the mrs.

I always panic when driving to work if I have been rushing an start thinking have I packed everything and stop and check.

 

Vast quantities of alcoholic beverages.

 

I stopped drinking while playing since I use 4 decks and FX.

Way too confusing.
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I stopped drinking while playing since I use 4 decks and FX.

Way too confusing.

But I know that one of our mods uses colors on his keyboard to make intoxicated playing easier...

 

Ahem... no Marc its so i can see the keys in low light conditions...

*hic*

Did i spill that or you...?

 

one of my main problems when playin intoxicated.. the Font size in the file lists

 

That can be changed

 

Filters. I have panicked more than once as one track flashed red and I had no sound on the upcoming track because my filters were all the way up. Easy mistake to make, even with a control surface.

 

I get VERY INTOXICATED :lol:

no actually the mix between font size, backlighting and vscan on a laptop makes it sometimes very hard to read (don't ask with what kind of intoxicant).

I'm using artwork a lot now with home made visuals and color codes to help search and enlarge font size up to 16