DJ Tech Tools VCI-100SE Arcade... this and my two front teeth are all I want for Christmas.

If you’ve checked out df.com lately, you’ve already seen over the last 48 hours we decorated the site for the Holiday Season. Groucho the Cat has kindly offered to reprise his role as Groucho Clause once again. If you load df.com in Mozilla Firefox you’ll even get little snow flakes falling on your screen. It doesn’t work in Microsoft Internet Explorer for several really nerdy reasons that you’re not going to be interested in either way. So… if you like snow go with Firefox. If you don’t, load up IE. Problem solved.

Work on “digitalflood Pirate Radio Vol. 5 Ep. 4” has started and we’re on target 100% for a release this Saturday (12/19/09). I grazed through the set very quickly and it honestly sounds great. The final production version you’ll hear will be even better.

This afternoon J Diddy showed me a new DJ controller he saw on the G4 Channel’s “Attack of The Show”  the other day called the VCI-100SE Arcade. It’s made by a company called DJ Tech Tools and I have to say that I was completely blown away. The Arcade is a custom built remodeled variant of the original VCI-100SE USB DJ controller that includes arcade gaming style buttons in lieu of the traditional “brick style” trigger buttons found on most controllers. The design was engineered by electrical engineer, musician visionary, and WordPress web guru Ean Golden who is part of the “Controllerism” DJ mixing style. Controllerism is basically using mapped sample cue points in mp3 DJ mixing software (such as the Traktor Pro software used by Ean) to remix/rebuild an existing song or in some cases create an entirely brand new mashed up song. The style is notable for its quickly triggered samples that in turn require a highly sensitive USB controller. Hence the arcade style buttons that offer low latency, high durability, better tactile feedback, and less wear/tear on your hands than the aforementioned traditional controller. You can watch the video of Ean mixing live for a real quick introduction to his DJ style. He’s pretty darn nifty at DJing in my not so humble opinion.

MIDI Fighter DIY Kit - This week on "This Old Controller" Norm builds a sampler.

This got me thinking about my “Cut Like Crack” style of mixing and how I can actually incorporate this into my mixing technique. I used some different software for my production (VirtualDJ, Acid Pro, and Sound Forge) and a different USB controller (M-Audio X-Session Pro), but the underlying concept is the same. In fact, many DJs are using M-Audio’s controllers with retrofitted custom arcade button configurations similar to how Ean rebuilt the VCI. I am thinking though that I can harness the same tricks through remapping my existing controller input knobs, wheels, and buttons to both a custom effects mapping setup and a custom cue mapping arrangement. The result should be very similar. I can then work backward to incorporate it into my existing methodology to hash out my own bastardized variant (Cut Like Crack In Control anyone?). I’m going to experiment during downtime between production, but if something develops you can be sure as heck to expect to see it turn up in a future Pirate Radio mix session. I’ll let you know how it goes either way.

I’m also eying the DIY MIDI Fighter kit. You need to add 24 arcade buttons and the whole thing prices out to about $200 in material with shipping. If I find something compelling in my aforementioned Controllerism experimentation this could be any easy option that allows me to not have to purchase the VCI. Ideally I’d like to keep using my M-Audio X-Session Pro (which I arguably absolutely love because of its underlying smoothness and ease of use) in conjunction with the MIDI Fighter to pull the whole Controllerism DJ setup off without having to foot the whole cost associated with $1k for a VCI. I’d actually end up better off because then I would have 24 sample/cue triggers plus my existing mixing controller’s setup and $800 in savings. Since the style is cue based I’m not losing anything in the end. Again, I’ll have to see how things play out; but I see the whole thing as a viable option.