?!

If the tobacco smell is not there.....................

It's taken me several years of Ableton and most of this year just to work out my filing systems. And I'm still not happy with them!

I treat my digital collection (which, as I buy everything apart from promos, is not huge ... say a pool of 800 tracks collected since 2005) the same as my previous vinyl collection. There is one Central folder for everything, and from within iTunes I can scan the whole lot pretty quickly, placing tracks into a "record bag" for the upcoming set. The record bag is then re-scanned and sub-divided into 3 sections: Rolling, Peaking and Banging. Self explanatory really. there are a couple of miscellaneous folders like Weirdness, Classic and Loops; but the bulk of my set is played from the first three sub-folders of the record bag.

On thing I did learn (from the Ableton days) was to delete the folders on Sunday. That way, as you pick up new tracks and build the collection you are forced to re-evaluate everything prior to your next gig. No playing from the same bag so-to-speak.

As for the software / physical format debate ... go with whatever you feel happy with. I enjoy long sets, long mixes, 4 deck overdubs and layering plus re-looping and re-arrangement of tracks and plenty of samples and loops with a few spot effects ... Impossible on vinyl, difficult on CDJ but straight forward on laptop once you set everything up.

Also, platforms like Ableton allow you to be even more creative but at the expense of 'winging it' .. Live is too perfect and to be honest after a couple years it had killed my love of DJing .. Every mix was perfect, nothing ever went wrong, you had to spend quite a lot of time preparing files in advance .... it was boring.

With Traktor (or Serrato & Torq for that matter) you can just throw tracks in, no preparation required, and mix manually OR you can do hours of prep and have the machine take over completely. I like to work somewhere in the middle. Let the program do some of the mundane stuff while I get on and do something else.

holy crap, i just watched the video.  hilarious!