Although I've DJ'd and produced for nearly 20 years on and off, I'm new to the MP3 DJ thang (records burnt in fire). What are your tips for creating a new library. I'm planning on going through each track with Gain control, editing intros and outros for quicker mixing, song slicing to check phrase and tempo. Is that what I should be doing? Anything else?

Hey SciFunk,

See a few times you mentioned that you lost your vinyl in a fire. It happened to a club I worked in over 25yrs ago. Weird but I never kept my records in that club because I had another club I worked in as well. The weekend Jock was not so lucky though. It pretty much put him out of the business. But don’t give up.

When I started with MixMeister and collecting MP3’s I also purchased a book that really helped. The Newest edition is “Joel Whitburn Presents, The Billboard Hot 100 Annual 1955-2005. It breaks things down very easy. No bull-crap, no history, just any song that was in the top 100 each year. Note: I did not say, “The top 100 of each year” because that would only be 100 songs. No, this book gives you anything that entered the top 100.

I started collecting in the top ten of each year and then went back to expand over and over again.

You can put all your music through many filters and washing machines but I like to use “CDex” for converting music to MP3. Then I like to use “MP3Gain” to set the gain of each song to balance out your collection at the same time it will cut any dead air at the beginning and end of your tunes. Each of these is free (Donations welcome) and here are their links:
CDex: http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/
MP3Gain: http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/download.php


As for using MixMeister for you music, remember… what ever you do in MixMeister stays in MixMeister. Meaning if you edit tunes, sure you can record them but you really can’t us that raw edit elsewhere. In this case I use another music program that edits a little better than MixMeister. It is not that is so much better than that it does more for editing a song or even two songs together. Yeup, for those who try to get those two songs to become one in MixMeister and can not, well here is the answer: WavePad Sound Editor or better known as NCH. http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/index.html?gclid=CLu1oPWZj5YCFQObFQodFB_PDg
I have the full version but there is a free one as well. I can not tell you how deeply it will work compared to the full version. I can tell you that you will be able to edit with the free version.

OK, that should be enough to get you going SciFunk.

Let me know if you have questions and always remember, these are only my suggestions. Others have other ways of doing things. So do as I do and give things a try and go with what you like best.

Banter


PS: it only took me three years to get everything up and running but I wanted to do it old school and have it set so "Almost" every song mixed beat to beat.

Hey SciFunk,

Forget about the WavePad Sound Editor.
Over the last couple weeks I have been checking out and testing some editors and you might want to check out this thread in BeatMixing.com

Forget wavepad, I now recommend “Audacity” for editing music:
http://community.beatmixing.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/495605445/m/2161041372

However CDex and MP3Gain still come highly recommended.

Banter