If you want to create a DJ mix to upload to the internet, that generally means having to sit in front of your decks and record it live. Mess up a transition? Time to start it over again. That is unless you’re preparing your set in some kind of software. This idea has been around for a while as producers and DJs have been piecing together ‘mixes’ inside DAWs like Ableton for years. While this is possible, it’s not what these systems were designed for, and they could often be fiddly and frustrating, especially with things like beat alignment and tempo adjustments.
The new DJ Studio, however, claims to be the first ‘DAW for DJs, and it brings with it a range of smart new features, especially designed with DJs in mind. It’s not just DJ sets you can make either, as it also comes with the power to craft edits, mashups and more. We’re breaking bown some of its key features and showing five ways it will change how you prepare both your live and recorded DJ sets.
1. Auto-Mixing
We know that the idea of ‘auto-mixing’ probably won’t appeal to most DJs. But for times when you just need to put together a quick mix together from a playlist for a function or party, it’s very capable. It certainly sounds infinitely better than the Spotify automix feature.
When you input your tracks into DJ Studio, it will intelligently come up with a playlist order and make some basic transitions.
You can pick out the tracks you want, and the DJ studio will automatically figure out the best way to mix between them. It can even come up with an order for them that makes sure the transitions are as smooth as possible.
However, you still get some level of control over though mixes. Once DJ Studio has made its first version of the set based on your initial settings, you can go in and tweak the transitions to your heart’s content. You’re able to pick from several different preset transition types, including options for smooth fades or quicker cuts. Then, if you want, you can adjust all the different elements of the mix, including the effects, EQ and stems controls to create a perfect blend.
2. Creating Setlists
Creating a setlist has never been this intuitive. You can pull tracks from your local files or even Spotify playlists. Just drag, drop, and reorder to your heart’s content. Don’t know what should go where? Hit the ‘AutoMix’ button, and DJ Studio will calculate the best sequence for a harmonic journey through your tracks. It’s like having a co-pilot who actually knows what they’re doing
If you’ve put together a set using the auto-mix feature, DJ Studio will have made sure that the tracks are already in the right order in terms of BPM and key signature so they work together in a coherent and smooth way.
You can then export this mix into rekordbox. There, you’ll find a new playlist with all the tracks in the order that DJ Studio has decided works as the best harmonic journey through the tracks.
When exporting your playlist, you also get the option to add in memory and hot cues.
3. Custom Edits – Perfect Intros, Outros, and More
Lots of tracks come with special ‘club edits’ or other DJ-friendly versions specifically designed for mixing. These tend to include extended intros and outros with instrumental portions or looping drums that make mixing in or out of that track easier. However, not every track comes with one of these edits, especially for genres outside of dance or electronic, such as pop and R&B.
DJ Studio comes with the power to easily put together these edits yourself. With its inbuilt stem separation, you can isolate a specific elements of the track to create a more stripped-back new section that works well as an intro or outro.
For tracks that don’t have extended instrumental sections, copying either the instrumental or drums and bass can easily create them.
Once you’ve made these edited versions of tracks inside DJ studio, you can then export them and they’ll work just like any other tune. That means you can play these edits outside of the DJ Studio software and bring them into another DJ software like rekordbox or play them on CDJs.
4. Making Mashups
Mashups are a fun way to add a unique twist to your sets, but now, thanks to DJ Studio, you don’t have to be constrained by whatever someone on Soundcloud has dreamed up – it’s now super simple to make your own mashups!
Again, this makes use of DJ Studio’s powerful stem isolation tools. You can extract the vocals from one track to create a new acapella version and then pitch it up or down so it fits in with the other track.
Then, you drag this acapella across to the section of the other track. From here, you can press the MS (mute stem) button on the acapella sample, and the vocal will automatically be muted out of the other track.
5. Transition Tracks
If you’re doing a mixed format set, transitioning between different genres, especially with a big BPM difference, can be a real challenge. There are some tricks for mixing between genres, but one foolproof method is to create a transition track beforehand.
For our example, we took a couple of different edits of the same track in completely different genres – house and DnB. The jump in tempo from 130 to 170 BPM would be normally be tricky to manage, but DJ Studio’s automix can make things much easier.
Just line up the two tracks’ drops, set the transition window and Automix will put together a basic transition for you. The beats will all be lined up perfectly and the tempo will adjust during this transition window. This should sound ok, but we’d recommend digging deeper and making some more tweaks to make sure it sounds better.
You can open up the Stems control for each of the tracks, which gives you the power to manually adjust the level of each element of the track. That means you can fade in the drum part of the new track before bringing in the vocals, or vice versa.
Having individual control over the stems allows you to make more creative transitions than you might be able to on traditional DJ gear.
Is DJ Studio Worth It?
There are a few different versions of DJ Studio available. The entry-level tier, Studio (£99), offers all the basic features but is limited in that it only works with MP3 files and doesn’t allow you to manually edit automations and transitions.
That’s why we’d recommend at least taking the step up to the Pro tier (£149). This comes with the ability to tweak and customise your transitions, use the sample track and remove the Mixplayer branding on export. All of these are pretty essential to creating a mix that’s worth uploading anywhere. With this tier you can also export your mix to Ableton, complete with all the tempo adjustments, EQ changes and fades.
If you want to make use of the stems features, you’ll need to get Pro + Stems (£179). For DJs who’d rather pay a monthly subscription rather than a one-off fee, you can also get Pro + Stems for £29/month. There’s also an Ultimate tier (£219), which lets you use third-party VSTs and create a video visualisation for your mix.
Overall, DJ Studio is a really powerful tool, and it represents a big step forward in terms of this technology. Preparing DJ sets in software is nothing new, but this feels like a more competent and streamlined option than anything that’s come before. Traditional DAWs like Ableton felt a lot more clunky and time-consuming, whereas this is obviously designed with the needs of DJs in mind. The closest competitor at the moment is probably Density, which is similarly designed around creating DJ sets. That software is quite a bit more basic, however, and doesn’t have the automation or extra features like stems isolation.
We appreciate that some aspects of DJ Studio won’t be for everyone. Automatic mixing isn’t something that will necessarily be to most DJs’ tastes, but it’s a useful tool for getting a starting point for tweaking your own transitions. Even the idea of creating a DJ mix in software rather than recording it live will frustrate many purists – but they’re not the target market. For any DJ who wants a way to craft mixes and showcase their selections on sites like Mixcloud, this is perfect. Throw in the power to create edits and mashups super easily, and DJ Studio quickly becomes a very valuable bit of software.
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