- So Algoriddim just launched the
latest version of its djay app for iOS.
It brings a new streamlined
interface that's
made specifically for touchscreens
if you sign up for the djay
Pro monthly subscription.
It costs $4.99 a month and you get
great stuff like the new looper interface
MIDI learn and MIDI controller mapping
you get video mixing as well
as advanced AI auto mixing.
In this First Look video we'll take a
brief tour of the new DJ interface.
Then we'll check out the looper and
see what it can do.
Let's dive right in.
Right now, what we're seeing
is the classic mode of djay.
You've got your two graphic
turntables over there
and you've got your
track load buttons here
on the upper left and the upper right
and I can do that simply
just by pressing on them
and right now I'm seeing
songs that I have in my iPad.
These are my iTunes library music so I can
load something from, say,
this playlist over here
("Africa" by Toto)
Yeah, so "Africa" by Toto.
So I've got that in there,
and what I can also do is
I can load tracks from Spotify
and to do that just press
the track load button.
And then I go back
press on this dropdown over here
then I go to Spotify
and then now I got access to
all my Spotify playlists over here.
So let's say I want to go to my
throwbacks playlist which I've made
and I want to play this one by Robyn.
So that loads over on the
deck easy peasy no problem.
Again, you're going to need
an internet connection and
a Spotify Premium account
in order to do this.
So you still have the normal stuff in here
you've still got your
transport controls at
the bottom, pitch faders on either side,
you've got your turntable
platter graphic over here
just like that, and you
can opt to change this
like if you want to see
the mixer in the middle
just press that tab, you're going to get
your volume faders and your
filtering knobs over there.
You can also choose to see the
waveforms in a vertical manner.
Just like that.
Also good for scratching
and if you press this one
you can now access the looper from
within the classic mode screen
and we're going to take
a look at looper later on
but basically what this does is
it lets you launch clips whether those are
samples like one shots
or they're music loops.
In this case, you've got
like a kick music loop
going on in here and a clap.
And these basically sync to any music that
you are playing on the
decks which is pretty handy.
let's just stop that.
And if you want to access
the old school sampler
which are basically just one shot effects
those are still good.
Alright so let's take a look at the
other interfaces and
screens that djay has.
So in order to do that, I just need to
press that Djay icon over here at the top
and now, I'm going to be showing all the
different menus that are available.
So you've got seven in total.
Classic mode, which is what we just saw.
You've got auto mix which is
the AI auto mixing feature.
You've got two decks mode which is
it shows you basically your library in the
lower half of the screen as well as the
waveforms over at the top.
You've got looper which is a
six by eight grid of loops,
clips which you can trigger
four decks which is four decks mode
single deck mode which is used more for
preparation as well as video mode which
lets you do all of your video mixing
now we're going to take
a look at them one by one
so we're already done with classic mode
let's take a look at the auto mix screen.
Now this is where you can load songs in a
playlist and you can ask djay to
sort of mix them one after the other.
It's pretty easy to do, just press the
play button, load the
songs in the playlist
and then when you want to do
a transition to the next song
just press the forward
button or the next button
and it will automatically
mix the songs for you.
So this is pretty handy if say, you're a
mobile DJ, you're doing a function
and then you don't actually have to spin
let's say it's background
music during a dinner
so instead of just filling
up an iTunes playlist
and letting one song play after another
with little gaps in between
or poorly mixed songs
you can have djay do all
of the mixing for you
and this sounds particularly good if you are
playing music that is dance
or has a nice steady beat.
It even works pretty well
with pop tunes or maybe
even some instrumentals
like classical stuff.
Just don't expect any
beat matched symphonies on
Beethoven and Mozart, that kind of thing.
But yeah, great for background music
especially if you're a mobile
DJ who likes some functions.
And the cool thing about AI
auto mixing in djay pro is
you get access to different
types of mixing styles
so if you press that
little dropdown over here
well, it's more of a
drop up than a dropdown
you can take a look at different types of
transitions in here
and then you've also got the duration
you can set for how long
the mixes are going to be
and you've also got the
tempo adjust in there
so you can have a variety of options that
you can change depending on the style of
auto mixing that you want.
Pretty cool.
Okay, so let's go to the
next screen which is two decks mode.
And as I mentioned earlier, this is
basically what it does is it
splits the screen into two, so you've
got your waveforms and deck in this space
over here at the top
and you've got your
library here at the bottom.
This is something that will
look a little bit more
familiar for DJs who are
used to spinning with laptop software.
Similar to Rekordbox DJ,
or say Serato DJ if you've
got your stacked waveforms
over there in the top
so you've got your transport controls here
looping and all that other good stuff,
pitch controls, and then you've
got your waveforms placed,
now over here at the bottom
you are able to access your library
so yes, you can view
whether you want to look at
stuff that's stored on your
iPad or your iOS device
you've got your Spotify stuff in here,
all of your playlists,
and if you've got any
videos that are loaded, you can
also access them through here.
So basically this gives
you a clear view of
the stuff that you've
already got in your library
as well as what's currently
playing in your decks
and DJs who, again, are
more experienced with
they've spent more time spinning with
laptop DJ software they're going to
want to prefer using this
compared to a classic mode
which basically is a
little bit more simplified
but at the same time,
this one just gives you
so much more information
in a single screen.
I really love what Algoriddim's done here.
Now apart from viewing your
library on the lower half,
you can also take a look
at the mixer just by
pressing the mixer icon,
so again you've got your
volume faders in there, filtering knobs,
crossfader here at the bottom,
your transport controls move over here,
and now you've got access to effects
and these are X-Y pad
effects that you can meddle
and mess around with using your fingers
very very cool for when
you're playing at the gig
and you can also access
the looper over here
as well as the sampler.
Currently what we're seeing is the sampler
Bam, got all of these effects
And then if you press the button
over here on the lower
right, you will be able to
access the looper and you can
access different packs,
whatever you've got loaded
over onto your installation of djay pro.
So again, whenever
you're playing something
over here on the decks, the loops that you
trigger over here in the
looper sync in time with them.
So let's try that right now
this one so currently, that's the BPM
let's play something over here
("Konichiwa Bitches" by Robyn)
And automatically,
you're going to hear that
it sounds in time and in sync
with whatever's happening.
Claps
("Konichiwa Bitches" by Robyn)
Just like that.
So again, lots of
creative possibilities for
when you are out gigging and performing
you want to do some live
remixing while you're spinning
I think this is the screen, or this is
the interface in djay pro that lets you
do it pretty conveniently and
at the same time pretty intuitively.
You don't have to go skipping to like,
different menus or having
to go to a different screen
you know, you're going to
lose whatever you're spinning
and it's easy to just get lost with
a piece of software that's
quite robust, right?
What Algoriddim has done
really really well here is
they've basically made
it so easy to do and
the graphics are just really great.
I think like, this is
the most intuitive and
best looking piece of software that
you can find on iOS at the moment.
So that is two decks
mode and since we've been
playing around with looper already
might as well take a look at the
looper screen which is,
this time this is the
dedicated looper screen so now
you've got all eight columns of the
looper arranged over
here and at the bottom
you've got eight volume faders
so that lets you mix in and mix out
any of these individual
loops that you're triggering
and it's just really easy to do because
all of these sync up with
whatever you're playing
so let's try loading
a different track here
going to go to like, lo-fi house
and let's say I want to play a track by
DJ Seinfeld, okay.
("What Kind of Sandwich
is This?" by DJ Seinfeld)
So let's say you've got this going
128 BPM
Anything that you trigger here now will
then sync up with whatever you've
got loaded over here at the top.
So let's say I want to add some hi hats.
You can see the tempo
over here in the looper
automatically syncs up with
what you've got playing on the deck.
And now if you want to set a loop
just loop it like that
and then you can add claps
It's kind of fun
and then, you know
you can stop that, and
then suddenly you've got
this nice hi hat and clap loop going
and then you can start
playing kick drums under it
you can start playing
basslines just like this
and you know, you can
have an entire song going
that was basically an
offshoot of a track that
you just played earlier.
So this kind of live remixing
lends itself really well to
this kind of touch interface.
But again, the cool thing
about the new djay pro is that
its advantage of the USB-C
connection that's found in the
newer iPad, so you can plug in any kind of
MIDI Class Compliant Controller.
So let's say you've got something
like a Novation Grid Pad.
You can plug that in,
and instead of having to
press any of these icons
on screen, you can just
map them over onto the Launchpad
and while you're DJing, you can just
press those pads on your grid controller
and automatically, you're
going to be able to
launch those clips, one
shots, loops and samples
and I think that's really awesome.
Algoriddim has just made it so easy to
come up with a live remixing solution
and at the moment I'm currently using
the deep house pack, this one
comes with the installation
and you can go to the online store
and you can download others in here
so let's say I want to get Ambient House.
Let's try Analogue Techno,
just randomly downloading stuff here.
And then now let's say I
want to switch packs from
Deep House and I want to
go to Ambient House one
just press that one.
And then now I've got like,
a new fresh set of loops
that I can jam out to
so let's try that.
(house beat)
Cool, and I can mess around with this.
Want to remove them, just like that.
And when I want to bring them back in,
Easy peasy.
Okay, so that's it for looper.
Now let's take look at
the other screens in here
you've got four decks
and four decks mode, you are going to see
as the name suggests, four decks
so you can load more tracks in there
and you can sync them all up
and you can play them all at
the same time if you want to
you can assign them to which
crossfader they respond to
or which channel on the crossfader just by
pressing this button over here.
You can also set it to through so
basically what this means is, they are
not going to be crossfader dependent
and what's going to happen is, you need to
use the volume faders in order to
let them fade in or fade out of the mix
so, always better to
just put them in their
default crossfader assignment just to
make things a lot easier.
So there you go, that's four decks mode.
You've got the other stuff in here
You've got single deck mode
as I said earlier, this is more for
preparing your tracks, maybe adding
hot cue points and all that good stuff.
So this looks pretty similar to
what you'd find in
RekordBox's export mode.
You're basically going
to see like one track
or one song at the top deck,
and then you've got all of your
metadata, editing controls over here
you can add your cue points,
you've got hot cues over there.
You can add or delete them if you want
and you can also set cue
points and that kind of thing.
And also, this is also reminiscent of
Serato DJ's preparation mode
which basically shows up when
you don't have anything connected
so you're going to get that
single deck at the top of your screen.
And this also makes it a lot easier to
manage your libraries from within the
app itself, because you've got a
larger view of your library browser
over here at the lower
half of the screen or
I should say the lower 2/3 of the screen.
So that's what single
deck use is good for.
Again, you're only going to
be able to access this if
you are a djay pro subscriber.
If you're using the free version,
you're not going to see
this over on the interface.
Okay now lastly, let's
take a look at video mode.
Now this lets you mix video and
the cool thing about this is
again, it just functions similar to
the decks over here in djay
and you can scratch with them if you like
you've got the waveform
display here at the top
and over here in the middle this is
basically what is being
output to the main monitors
as I mentioned earlier if
you're using one of the
newer iPad pros that has
just come out you can
use the USB-C connection in order to
connect an external display.
You can use a HDMI dongle
or something like that.
And then, when you've
plugged that in there
this is basically what is
going to be shown over on the screen.
So if you're a VJ, you're
DJing and you do a lot of
pub gigs, sports bars
and that kind of thing
they've always got screens, right?
So you can just plug into them and then
you can mix the set.
And the cool thing about this is
apart from having these built in visuals
that you can see at the top of the screen,
you also have access to the
looper feature set over here on the
lower half of the screen.
Now this basically lets you
trigger these visual loops
and when you press them
just like that, let's say
playing a loop
they all show up on
screen as well, so it's
easy to come up with some
really zany really crazy
out of this world, cool animations.
(dance music)
So that's it for this
First Look talkthrough.
If you've got an iPhone or iPad,
I highly recommend that you try it out.
Again, it's free to
download, but if you want to
access the advanced stuff like looper,
you'll need to sign up for
the monthly subscription.
Don't forget to like, share and subscribe.
Now get good, get out
there and make the moments.
