any good free dj software?

[jwd4444]

hay guys my friends have been mixing a wile we kind of want to see how good i am any good free software that can teach me the basics?

P.S. my friends use Ableton


<3 u guys (no homo)

[something awesome]

Virtual DJ Free is great.

[theworldisdaft]

Ableton is 'free'

[Fundave]

Ableton is 'free'

Everything is free L0L

Ableton is the best program for live use.

[something awesome]

Everything is free L0L

Ableton is the best program for live use.

Well yes but its...moneyful.

JKS

[Poor Bison]

Ableton is the best program for live use.

In a way, yeah... but it really depends on what you want to do with it. It suits people like Daft Punk and deadmau5 because they play several different layers at once and send their MIDI out to external hardware during their shows and it suits Feed Me because his Teeth lighting rig responds to MIDI that Ableton sends to it (through custom-made software) to change the visuals and lights according to what Feed Me does.

Also, people who DJ with Ableton don't use skills like beatmatching, scratching, cueing and other things you usually associate with DJ. Ableton is literally as easy as clicking play on a track, and (providing your warp-markers are aligned) it will drop the track, right on the beat, with no beatmatching required on your part at all. Ableton is great though if you plan out your sets and need them either synced to lighting, or if you can't DJ traditionally but still need to do a set. Alot of people use Ableton for this, and many of them come from a background of using CDJs/turntables, so it's obviously a choice they have made and that's fine - I'm not knocking it.

But if your friends claim to be top DJs and then admit to using Ableton, then they haven't set much of a standard - you could probably impress them quite a bit if you did a set in Virtual DJ, with actual beatmatching and rearranging tracks on-the-fly using cuepoints.

On that note, I'd go with something awesome and try Virtual DJ home. It's very much like higher-end editions, except for the fact that you can't use an external MIDI controller. You can assign all the controls to your keyboard though, and then use the mouse for things like crossfading and EQ. Integrates with iTunes so you can drag tracks in, it calculates the bpm for you (of course you can make final adjustments to this if it screws it up) and you can then freely assign cuepoints and mix it with other tracks.

Also if you plan on getting into DJing it'll be a good way to learn the basics before upgrading to CDJs if you ever planned on that. Ableton isn't necessarily the definitive software for live use - CDJs will always have a place. Wolfgang Gartner uses them, Feed Me uses them for his non-Teeth shows. Most DJs still use them.

If course if you get super famous and have a massive lighting rig with visuals that require perfect synchronisation with your tracks then you should probably consider Ableton.

[something awesome]

^^everything he said.
Once you learn everything there is to know about VDJ home/free/light, buy a USB controller like Numark's Mixtrack Pro or something. Since you already know how to work the software, it's basically as easy as picking up and playing the mixtrack. That's what it was like for me, anyway.

[Crank729]

Yeah, VDJ is great for beginners. Once you get used to the layout and the controls, you can do some good stuff.

[something awesome]

I know some one in particular who loves it.... *wink wink*

[scutheotaku]

I definitely wouldn't ever DJ with Ableton Live...I don't know, maybe I would, it just seems like DJ-centric software like Virtual DJ, Serato, Traktor, Deckadance, etc... are so much easier to DJ with. And I love Ableton Live for producing and for "producer-style" live stuff.

I'd recommend going with Virtual DJ Home (the free version) to start out with. It's fun to use and easy to get into -perfect for a beginner!

Mixx is another one to look into. It's completely free and apparently has a lot of the features that the expensive commercial ones have. http://mixxx.org/