Hammond Music

Posts Tagged ‘dj equipment’

Working as a mobile disk jockey (DJ) presents a number of challenges that the resident club DJ doesn’t have.One of the biggest issues is the need to carry all of that essential DJ equipment wherever we go.

I’ve worked as a DJ onboard cruise liners, in a hospital, on the radio and in various clubs but these days I make my money as a mobile DJ. Each week I get to visit new locations and meet a whole new crowd of people. I’ve gigged in stately homes, onboard ships and yachts, on a private jet and even one night in a well known London museum. It’s the variety that I particularly like about this work, but lets get back to the challenges.

One of the biggest problems that us mobile DJs must overcome is the need to carry all of our equipment to every gig. The club DJ only has to carry his tunes, maybe as records or CDs, whereas I need a medium sized van to carry all of my gear.

These days I can afford to take along an assistant who helps me to setup and break down my sound and lighting systems at each gig. But only a few short years ago, before I started to charge a decent fee, I had to carry all of this equipment myself. The key to selecting equipment for mobile use is compactness. It must be compact and as light as possible.

The DJ speakers that I use are the powered variety. This means that I don’t need power amplifiers and my system setup is much simpler. There are far fewer cables to worry about and less that can go wrong. For the past two years I’ve been using an excellent pair of active JBL PA speakers and they have proved to be a fantastic choice.

Another important consideration for us mobile DJs is the lighting system. Club DJs don’t usually need to worry about club lighting systems as these are often already in place and may have their own dedicated operators. For us mobile DJs we’ve got to do it all ourselves. But luckily these days there are some compact DJ lights that use LEDs making them relatively lightweight, low power and cool.

But probably the most essential piece of mobile DJ gear is the music. That’s not equipment I hear you say, and you’re right. But I’m really referring to the medium which can be vinyl records, CDs, DVDs and MP3 files. This means I need to carry turntables, CD players, a DVD player and some sort of MP3 player. I tend to stick to just one CD player, a pair of Technics decks and my laptop computer. I route all of these through my excellent DJ mixer and I’m just about ready for any requests, from Mantovani to the Wombles.

Starting your search for DJ equipment cases can be difficult. There are so many different types and styles out there that it may be hard to know where to start. The first step is to determine which pieces of equipment need cases. Cases are usually made for particular types of equipment. Make sure you know the measurements for the equipment since cases come in a variety of sizes.

Think about the type of use that the equipment regularly sees. If you have a laptop for example a soft case will be fine for local travel but a hard case will be better if you will be shipping it. For greater durability you may want to look for DJ equipment cases that come with ATA certification. This means the meet the quality standards of the Airline Transport Association and are eligible for airline insurance if you need it.

Some DJ’s like to use a projector while they are working. Projector cases are usually built to work with certain kinds of projectors. Usually you can use it with any projector with particular dimensions but occasionally they will have foam cutouts which only work with certain models. To order these you will need the make and models number for your projector.

There are many things to think about when it comes to rack cases. The technical requirements of your equipment and your personal preference will be the most important things to look at. Most standard rack cases with have the same width and height. They do however change in terms of depth. Think about how deep your equipment will go, how you use your equipment, and how much protection your equipment needs when picking rack cases.

There will be a power strip built into some rack cases that you can plug all your components into. This makes it easy to setup on location since you just plug this strip into one outlet. It is also possible to order custom built rack cases to handle whatever DJ equipment you need to carry.

It’s not just guitar hero that’s doing a good job of getting regular non-musical people back into the world of writing and recording their own tracks. The hugely successful game may have inspired countless wannabe rockstars to pick up a guitar and start rocking out but with so much new technology available to budding musicians, it seems the cutting edge of new music is becoming less Gibson and more… Gameboy?? No, you haven’t heard that wrong. As musicians try to come up with more and more ways to keep their sound fresh and new people are discovering musical gold in all kinds of unexpected places, from state of the art mobile phones to old toys and retro games consoles. Here are a few of the more innovative and unusual uses for modern technology in music that we’ve found:

Old Nintendo Gameboys – perhaps one of the strangest musical creations around, DJ Scotch Egg doesn’t actually use any normal DJ equipment but produces his tracks entirely using sound effects and software from gameboys. But they’re not the new, shiny, slick consoles we’re used to nowadays – they’re all the old chunky grey ones you remember from the early 90s. This unusual approach not only works surprisingly well (he even manages to pull it off live and gives a very energetic performance) but it’s also a a bit of a trip down memory lane as you pick out the sounds you recognise from the games of your childhood!

iPhones – Due to play a series of shows at Wembley Stadium in the summer supporting Take That, Gary Go’s set is something a bit different to what you’d usually expect to see at a pop concert. He doesn’t play any instruments live, and he doesn’t have a band – he just does everything on his trusty iPhone. In fact, he wrote, played and recorded his album purely using iPhone software apps he had downloaded. It should be an interesting gig to see, provided his mum doesn’t decide to give him a call while he’s on stage!

Laptops – OK so maybe this one’s not quite so weird and wonderful, it’s not exactly unusual to see a laptop being used onstage during a show. But what makes the laptop such an important part of making your own music is that if you have one you literally don’t need anything else to write, play and record tracks. With so many different programs for musicians out there, able to recreate the sound of any instrument almost perfectly, and then record and mix your tracks, it’s just a case of picking the right DJ software and going for it. Gone are the days when you could use excuses like ‘but I don’t know how to play the guitar’ and ‘I don’t know the first thing about recording music’, nowadays it seems anyone can make it as a rockstar.