rediscovering the CDJ
Over the past few years, I made the decision to go back to basics with my approach to music. That meant selling my standalone Pioneer controller and abandoning Rekordbox. I also cancelled my Apple Music subscription for reasons I'll explain in more detail another time.
To explain how all this came about, though, we need to rewind to 2016. After discovering my parents' old CD collection full of Beach House and Café del Mar albums, I became hooked on the Balearic sounds they epitomised. I also became fascinated with the medium of the compact disc.
When I'd first got into DJing a couple of years prior to this, I was dismayed to discover that I couldn't use my Apple Music collection to play on my new controller. It was a disappointing Christmas when I realised all the music I'd been collecting was almost useless for my decks. I was at square one.
Then came learning how to manage Rekordbox and organise the music I'd purchased as low-quality MP3 files off iTunes. They were about 99p a pop, and I didn’t know any better at the time. Just for fun, I also bought a disc drive to upload my parents' collection onto my laptop for mixing and leisure listening.
While trying to fill the holes in my inherited compilation series, I found I could buy double-disc compilation albums with 20 tracks off eBay for less than £5 in most cases. Even better, the tracks were in lossless format—super crisp and clean. Many of these albums also introduced me to lesser-known tracks that weren’t—and still aren’t—available on streaming platforms. I wondered why I'd wasted so much money on iTunes all that time.
I spent the next half-decade purchasing CDs and uploading them to iTunes. I’d then transfer them into Rekordbox for analysis before exporting them to a USB to play on Pioneer hardware. The process was far more financially economical, but painstakingly time consuming– it made DJing feel like more of a chore than a way to unwind.
Despite living in a world where technology advances faster every day, it wasn’t until 2023 that I realised taking a step backwards might help me reconnect with my love of playing and mixing tracks. I purchased my first pair of battered and bruised CDJ-1000MK2s and a DJM-400, disaplayed in the featured image for this post. It meant no more analysis and organisation—just the instantaneous and spontaneous playing of discs, which is exactly what the CDJs were built for.
The setup with four CDJs allows for more experimental mixing of vocal samples and ambient textures; something I'm hoping to share in the near future. I was fortunate to pick up the hardware cheaply from eBay. It allowed me to test if this approach would rekindle my enjoyment of DJing, and it didn’t disappoint. What did disappoint, however, was that one of the CDJs became almost unusable six months later due to pre-existing rust damage. I couldn’t use the pitch control or some other DJ features, but I could still listen to my collection in “normal” mode.
Despite the issues, those CDJs completely transformed my relationship with listening to music, so I recently made the decision to trade them in for a lower-spec but newer and more functional set of Pioneer CDJ-800s. It’s a lot harder without beatmatching aids, but it adds an element of chance and spontaneity that modern digital setups lack.
I’m amazed it took me this long to go against the grain of modern technology trends to discover a setup that genuinely works for me and makes playing music enjoyable. I know it's not as skilled as mixing on vinyl, but sometimes you can find a happy medium. Besides, it's always nice to have something to work towards.
My biggest takeaway from all this is that it’s so easy to get sucked into what everyone else is doing or the “industry standard” is. But none of that matters if it doesn’t work for you. Try to focus on doing what makes your experience enjoyable, and the rest will look after itself.