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Hi, this is Matt Black and I'm going to give you a quick run-through of the set that we're using for
the Journeys by the VJ Coldcut show. And that is, basically, around - 4 turntables, a mixer and 3 Mac laptops
running Virtual DJ and a bunch of other toys.
We're going to have a quick run-through those now. The basis of this system is Virtual DJ, which is this quite
cool French software by Atomics being licensed by Numark Virtual DJ.
And it has 2 virtual turntables that can play mp3s, but I can also play videos, so what we've got are a bunch of
ColdCut backing tracks in beats and pieces, and the cool thing is that I can play this with a sound, with a video,
I can mix those 2 videos, 2 streams together.
OK, as I move the cross-fader backwards and forwards it mixes between. Rather then having to do it in software,
I can actually use this mixer as a controller and I can use these turntables as a controller as well.
So the mixer has a cross-fader, and that output is MIDI, and that is looped through, connected through to the
control of cross-fader Virtual DJ. And the nice bit of these
time-coded vinyls here, which is the system first originated
by the Final Scratch, I believe, and now with Serato and Virtual Vinyl - very solid systems.
This has a time-code signal on this vinyl, and when we
play the vinyl, it sends the control signal through a sound
box into the computer, so this is not making any noise of the track,
the track is all coming from within the software,
but they just provide the control signal.
So, as I stop the record, it stops the video and the sound playing backwards. That is what a typically
baby-scratch, and then we're using the mixer to cut in the sound and the visual for that track as well,
so it's a bit like a hip-hop DJ's scratching that sound.
So that's time-coded vinyl scratching audiovisual tracks. This is an AKAI trigger pad, similar to the pads
found in hip-hop machines such as an MPC2000. And what we've got here is these pads
are assigned to cue points within the track. Now let me just quickly
demonstrate the MPC functions, having a bit of a jump-around.
Something like that. So, let's move over here. That is the basic 2 turntable set-up with Virtual DJ and
drum controllers. Video is fed into this V-4 video mixer, and then it comes
to the other half of the set-up, which is my man - Raj Pannu.
And he also has same software: Virtual DJ running on a Mac, runs on PC as well, 2 turntables with
time-coded vinyl, and the video output from the Mac coming into the video mixer here.
Raj's Vestax DJ mixer is a special one which we've customized to have MIDI output from it, similar to
the Pioneer there, but being a proper scratch DJ, Raj prefers to have the nice and fluid
cross-fader which you only get on these DJ mixers,
so we've customized it by putting a little circuit inside, which outputs MIDI from that cross-fader, that MIDI
comes out and controls the V-4. So, actually let's give a quick demo of that, Raj.
So, that shows the basic 4-deck audiovisual mixing. So Raj can have 2 audiovisual pieces playing at the same time,
and I can have 2 as well, so we can have altogether 4 tracks of audiovisual playing at the same time.
But, in fact, usually I'm playing one and Raj is playing one, too.
And it's a couple of other tricks that we use to composite those layers on top of each other, there're
various ways in which the strings can be mixed. This is... What's this guy's name? Gonzo. Gonzo!
Gonzo on the Crazy Smoke drum-kit and he is on the blue background there, and using the chroma key
function on the V-4, I will turn that on, and you see that the blue background has disappeared, and
Gonzo is nicely and cleanly keyed on top of my backing track. Let me show you that.
Here I've got a camera, which when Raj is doing his turntable extravaganzas I can mix the camera action
into the screen as well, so people can actually see in the audience that he's directly manipulating that sound.
So here are the bits and pieces, which we are breaking down, and Juice says we're going to show
you that what you see is what you hear. And that's when we focus in breaking track down, so there's
less going on, and it's easier to see what Raj is actually doing.
Raj has these AKAI trigger pads. In fact he's got 2 pads, one for each turntable. So, again this is his kind of
combination half MPC half turntable, two set-ups of controlling audiovisual materials.
There is one, and again one is over here.
Those are controlling cue points, which we've programmed into the tracks like this
Rage against the Machines' track Raj seems to know and love. So Raj can use that combination of instruments
triggering different cue points and cutting the track up in the propulsive style and also scratching those
parts of the track using the turntable.
Ok, I think that's pretty much it. Thank you Juice for filming it. Ohm. Peace. �