Transcription
Hello, welcome. This is Tuesday tips from Digital DJ Tips. Our Tuesday live lesson where we talk about something in the world of DJing that DJs are struggling with right now. We've got a good one for you today because lots and lots of DJs have been asking us one question here at the school over the last couple of weeks. How do I record my DJ set when my DJ software tells me I'm not allowed to?
I will give you free, like literally, you don't have to pay a penny uh ways of doing this on your Mac and on your Windows computer if you're a laptop DJ. I'll also talk you through some of the equipment that you can use, you can buy out there and how it works and what might be right for you to give you a different set of ways of doing it. But first, we want to talk about why this is happening now and what the issue is.
So, the reason it's happening now is basically because Apple Music and Spotify have both got into the DJ world. They've both said, you know what, we're going to we're going to get in there now. Whether they want your data so that they can build software that auto DJs, who knows? But far bit for me to speculate. But ultimately, if you want to DJ with Apple Music, if you want to DJ with Spotify inside Serato and Record Box and other platforms, you can now. And of course, that brings a whole set of users to DJing who maybe haven't tried it before and they quite rightfully get tripped up because they go to their DJ software and they go to click the record button to record their DJ sets and it's grayed out. The reason it's grayed out is that the licensing with those streaming services says you're not allowed to record the streaming service. So, you can't record them on anything like on your phone or whatever. You kind of get it because they don't want you just streaming the world's music and recording every track and nicking it, but ultimately DJs need to record their sets to get better. Could you imagine a painter never looking at their paintings or a writer never never editing their own work. Um, or a musician never recording their guitar playing so they could listen back to it. It's just ridiculous. You need to be able to record your sets to get better. And as a DJ school, we will defend your right to do that for personal use forever.
So, look, how can you get around this restriction? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. As I say, I'm going to give you free versions of some software that can do it for you. I'm going to give you paid for versions, including what we use, and I'm going to talk you through some of the hardware. Now, as ever, this what you're watching here and everything you see on the Digital DJ Tips website is 100% funded by our students. No money has changed hand. No one is giving us cash to push their products or anything. and we talk about it because it's going to help you. Right? Let's begin.
So, how do you do it when your software will stop you? Well, if you think about it, you see lots of DJs live streaming their DJ sets, don't you? How do they do it? How do they get the audio out of their software in order to live stream it? Because if we can do what they do, but instead of live streaming it, record it. And actually, you can hit record in the same software you can live stream. One example is uh Open Broadcast Software, OBS to give it its title that everyone knows it by. But you can also hit recording quick time on a Mac or any any recorder software that comes with your Windows computer or whatever, right? Anything that can record what's going on on your computer um can can do this, right? But it's just that live streamers will tend to put it into live streaming software. How do they get that music from their DJ equipment into the laptop so that they can live stream it? If we can do that, then we can hit record on anything in our computer. And that is the first way I'm going to show you. It's using software that will let you do this.
So, if you're a Mac user, one free piece of software that will let you do this is called Blackhole. It's from a company called existential.audio. And you will find that at existential.audio/blackhole. It is a piece of software that will let you route your audio as if you had a cable going from your DJ software in your computer to your recording software in your computer. They're called virtual cables or yeah, virtual audio cable software. Indeed. The other one that I want to show you for free which is for Windows computers is from VB Audio and it's called Voice Meter Virtual Audio Mixer and this will do it on Windows computers and there is a free version of this as well. So you can go grab the either of those. This one is at vb-audio.com/voicemeter.me. By the way, there's an article underneath that goes through all this with all the links, so don't worry about this stuff. Uh there's a lot of information in this video. You don't have to take notes about it all. All right.
So, there's two free pieces of software that will essentially give you a virtual cable within your computer that will take the audio that comes from your DJ unit, as long as you're using a laptop DJ controller. and it will take that audio and it will let you plug it in within the computer to any software. Quick time on a Mac, whatever you've got on your Windows computer that can record. Audacity is another good piece of software to do this. Or indeed, if you're dabbling with live streaming, Open Broadcast Software. All free. Everything I've just mentioned is free, including the recording software. Right? So now you can record your DJ sets. Now you can listen back to them. It doesn't matter if you're using Spotify, Apple Music, local music, any mix of them. you're good, right?
Okay. What about the paid versions of these before we move on to look at some of this hardware I've assembled and some other ways of doing it. Okay. So, the first paid version is the one I use. It's this one here for Mac. It's called Loop Back. I've had it for many, many, many years. It's just really nice. It'll let you take anything that's playing on your Mac and route it to anything else. And there's lots of other things it can do as well. So, Loop Back, which is at a strange company called Rogue Aie, rogue ammoeibba.com. But if you just search for loop back Mac on your search engine, you will find it. And for Windows, there is another piece of software that's been around for an awful long time called Virtual Audio Cable or VAC, which is a they'll give you a trial of it to test out, but essentially it's a paid package as well that does exactly the same thing. Maybe not quite as pretty, but you're going to get the same result, which of course is the only thing we're interested in here.
All right. So, that is the software way of doing it. But you might not want to do it the software way for all kinds of reasons. It could be that your DJ gear is separate. It could be you want to record a whole DJ set, including someone else playing on records and stuff, nowhere near a laptop. There's traditional ways of recording. Now, back in my day, we would plug a cassette deck into the back of our mixer, hit record on a TDK D90 or something, and we would record our DJ sets the old way. And you can still do that. Of course, you don't need to use a cassette nowadays or even a miniis player or a DAT or anything like that because you can do it on something like this. This is a again, these have been around for many, many years. This is a um let's get a zoom in on it for you there. It's a Tascam DR5 dictation machine. Really, this is like a corporate machine that people use in boardrooms and stuff. It's got microphones on it, but essentially it also has a input here where you can plug in the output from your DJ controller. So if your DJ controller has a booth output or a second out second master output even or any output that you can plug into there, uh then that is a good way of hitting record and recording straight to an SD card uh plugged into this unit here. Right? So, that's the modern way of just recording onto uh an SD card, which you can then plug into your computer, drag the file off, tidy it up, uh, and you're good to go. There is a recording of your DJ set. Not quite as easy as recording directly in the software, but it gets you the result, right?
So, that's one way of doing it. Another way of doing it is to use a standard audio interface. Now, there's thousands and thousands of audio interfaces out there. Musicians use them all the time. It's essentially a way of plugging any analog audio. So the output from a DJ controller or a mixer into a little box which is plugged into your computer and the box will convert that analog signal into a digital signal and it will then let your computer record it on any recording software like the types we were just talking about earlier. So this little box here uh is from Evermix. Get my head out the way and show you this one. Uh this is the latest version of the Evermix box. It's one designed for DJs. So it's got a few features. We're going to review this very shortly actually. It's got a few features added just for DJs, but essentially it is a two-in audio interface. Two-in means it can send two audio signals into your computer. In other words, the left and the right channel from the mixer or DJ controller. Right? So, any audio interface that is two-in or more or above will let you do this. Plug it into your computer, select it as the input on your computer, hit record, plug the other end into your DJ gear, you're good to go. It will record everything including all your streaming services.
So, there's another piece of kit which combines these two which is quite interesting. It is uh it'll cost you a little bit. It's this one here. It's called the Howler Box. Again, let me just zoom in on this to try and give you a closer look at it. The Howler Box is a a little piece of kit which does both those things I just showed you. So, this will record because you can plug an SD card into it and record directly onto the box, but also it will let you just stream anything you plug into it directly to your computer. So, you can plug your computer into this as well. You plug your computer in here and it will essentially do what the EverMix box will do as well. So, it's your choice. It's your choice whether you just hit record on it and it'll record directly to the SD card like this one will or whether you record directly on your computer on an app and it depends on your situation which one you might want to do. What's also interesting about this one is it's got an output. So you can plug your DJ controller in here, do those things I said, record to your computer or hit the record button on it and record to the SD card. But then you can take the same audio out and send it off to the speakers as if you hadn't plugged this box in at all. And that can be very useful if your DJ controller is a cheaper one like well this is a very popular cheaper DJ controller where at the back of it it's only got one set of outputs. So if you think about it, if your one set of outputs is tied up with one of these units here, then how are you going to uh plug in easily uh your speakers as well as your recording device, right? So that solves that problem as well.
So there's hardware, three different hardware ways of doing it and two different uh methods recording directly to an SD card, the modern way of recording essentially like a cassette deck or whatever, and also just streaming into your computer. And a lot of people who live stream their DJ sets will have a second computer to do that. So they have their first computer set up just to use as a DJ computer and their second one set up to live stream from where you could also record. But hey, you can do it all on one computer if you want.
So, there are all the ways that you can record your DJ set even though you're using the streaming services, the subscription music services that will immediately uh stop you being able to do so officially if you like by pressing the button on standalone gear or by pressing the record button on your software because they will be grayed out. And it's really annoying because even if you are using mainly your own music, you just want to play one streaming song, it means the whole DJ set will it will stop you loading that streaming song until you hit stop on the recording. We need to get around that for learning purposes, of course, and for personal use. So that is how to do it. And that's your lesson for today. Again, underneath is a whole article which goes through all of these things. But now, just as always, I just want to grab a few of your live comments because we are live. Live is what we do here at the school. And so I know that we're going to have uh some feedback and some uh maybe even some alternatives and maybe some stories about how this has tripped you up because you're always very open with sharing with me about this stuff. So let's do that now for the last five or 10 minutes here. Thank you everyone who's with us live on YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook as we record this. Mixmaster G, hello. Hello to Kesher. Hello to the Ruckus and Richard and to Peter Fisher in Chicago. I'm heading to Chicago for your marathon uh in April, Peter. Hello to Easy DJ. Hello to Katherine Catz Grooves. Uh good morning to you. Big up digital DJ tips. Thank you for that. DJ Beltter, greetings folks and to you. It's been a while since I've been here live, says Killer Strong. Well, good to have you here, Killer Strong. On this topic, says Ian. I'm considering a Babyface Pro audio interface for recording and mainly to boost my audio quality. I have many 24-bit 96 kilobit uh 96k files. Oh well, good on you. Any audio interface though will do this. That howler is a godsend for recording streamed music. Uh says the ruckus and uh Charlie I'm in. Uh says yes, I'm in. Hello to my main man, the goat Phil. Oh, hello Charlie. Good to have you here. Uh right, I'm loving the new Spotify record box integration, says DJ Belta. So this cast is solid gold to me. I need to know how to do this. It's uh great that Audacity is on the list, says Easy DJ. Yep, Audacity is a great way to record and it's also free. We do a lot of work with that with students here at the school, of course. Uh so, root your input audio as your controller and use photo booth to record with a webcam, says DJ Miyagi. Thank you for that. Never thought of using photo booth to do that. Hello, Tesno. Pezo over there on Twitch. Uh, so, uh, go to settings, audio input, and set it to your controller or mixer. Yes, it sometimes works. Doesn't always work though, and that's where the, uh, the routing software that I talked about will help you out. Thank you for that. Virtual audio cables, says Mixmaster G, are definitely the way to go, but they can be a nightmare to set up, and they're most likely not working on. Insert latest version of Mac audio uh, um, drivers here. In other words, if you've updated your Mac to the latest operating system, it will probably break some of these third-party bits of software. It's just how Macs work. So, just wait or do what I do and wait till they release a new OS before you upgrade to the old one. Anyway, uh so thank you for that for that word of warning there, Mixmaster G. Uh Katherine says, "I smashed my finger yesterday, so please forgive me for my typos." We forgive you. We forgive you. Uh right. Okay. I made good money selling 90-minute cassettes of my DJ sets back in the day, says Jack. So did I, Jack. Um, so um, in fact, there's so many of you saying they did that, too. Benny did that as well back in the 80s and 90s. Wonderful. Angel or Anal says, "Amazing content. Not glad to have helped you with some of this content." Uh, right. So, what else have we got? What happened to the black cube you were going to do a review of a few months ago? Very good question, Stevie. It's still on our list. Um, and I'll tell you more about that when we get around to it. It's a a special way of recording professionally what you do on your DJ gear, but it still won't record streaming sets, unfortunately. Anyway, I'll get to it. Um, right. Okay. What else have we got? Talking about this wonderful people. So busy typing away to each other, you're kind of forgetting I'm in the room, and that's what I like to see. What a community. Paul says, "For me, I usually look back at a log of what I played after the gig. I then cherry pick out what worked at the dance floor and what didn't work. And then I build and build with the floor fill as I played. Each night is different though." That's fantastic. And having a history in your DJ software is a great way of looking back at what you've done. But to have that in addition to an audio recording is what we're really looking for. But because of course a lot of the time we're just practicing. We just want to hear what our DJ sets sound like as if we're not playing them. And so if you record your DJ set, this is the advice we always give to people. It's in our book. It's what we talk about in all our DJ courses. The only person in the world who doesn't hear your DJing how it really is is you because you're too busy doing it. So to be able to record your set and listen back a day later or whatever is absolutely priceless because suddenly you're your own listener, right? So yes, having a history in your DJ software that can show you what you played and you can look back and review is essential as well, but it's not a replacement for recording your DJ sets.
I'm going to stop here. Uh, thank you very much everyone. Short and sweet today. I hope you've enjoyed this. We're going to get back now to our very cen transmixing masterass editing and building the course which we're going to be launching within the next couple of weeks. We're very very excited about that because it's full circle for me. I I started my club career as a DJ uh when our club that I was uh I was part of took off in the early in the late 90s trance kind of uh first wave. And guess who was the most re producer at the time? It was Ferry of course. So to to have got to work with Ferry in the last few weeks filming a DJ course has been absolutely fantastic. By the way, I'll leave you with this. Um, I've just put a article live on digital DJ tips, memories of DJing and promoting at a trans club in the 1990s. And this is literally my memories. That is the club I used to DJ at. You can see there. And there's some fun photos down in this as well. So, I'm not going to scroll any further. If you're interested, you're going to have to go to Digital DJ Tips, click on the news section at the top, and have a look for yourself. A real trip down memory lane there. All right, this is it. Thank you for watching. I will see our students and our course owners on Thursday for your student live in our private group. Uh and everyone else I will be back next Tuesday. So till then get good, get out there, make the moments. Bye now.