Words by Morgan Page

Recently I had the chance to tour with Delerium, where we played theaters and ballrooms across the US and Canada rather than the usual DJ booths in clubs. It was a refreshing change, but also an important reminder that you need to keep your live shows fresh and interesting. Crowds want to see a compelling performance—watching some well-coiffed chubster spinning on a pair of CDJs really isn’t that exciting. The beauty of the software world, when paired with a hardware controller, is that you can change your setup to suit your tastes. You’re not married to the effects on your DJ mixer, and you can piece together your dream mixer from scratch—making changes on the plane or in the hotel room minutes before a gig. Everyone does it differently, and most people immediately take off the preset overlay and stash it with the manual, so I wanted to share some tips and techniques on how to spice up your rig.

My DJ setup consists of an Allen & Heath Xone 3D mixer and Ableton Live 7 software. Make the jump for some ways I set things up for my shows…

Drop the Faders
Cap everything at -6 or -4dB, even the effects, and keep the master at unity to ensure good gain staging so you don’t clip the internal mix bus. You can crank the main mix on the DJ mixer (in my case the Xone 3D) or the house mixer—which is usually a DJM-800. As always, try to avoid clipping at all stages of the mix.

Choose Your Effects Carefully
Try to think what effects are really going to make a difference and excite the crowd. My bread and butter effects are beat repeat, delays, filters and reverb. These help to build anticipation and tension throughout the set. Experiment with combining different chains of effects—this is where software really triumphs over hardware mixers.

Multi-Assign
One of the biggest advantages of hardware MIDI assignable controllers are the creative possibilities of twisting two or more controllers simultaneously, liberating you from the constraints of a single mouse click. Additionally, you can create massive control chains in Ableton Live by assigning several values to one knob. I use the various knobs on the Xone 3D to control different values of beat repeat, changing the note divisions and timbre of the sound. It sounds simple, but this really brings a performance aspect to your DJing and turns your controller into more of an instrument than a simple mixer. More importantly, you liberate yourself from staring at the computer screen and can focus your eye contact and energy on the DJ mixer and the crowd in front of you.

Tactile vs. Smooth Touch
I really like having tactile response when I press a button, but many Ableton Live users prefer controllers like the Lemur that have a more visual display, but instead provide a smooth flat surface. Find which one you like and run with it. The best setup is probably a combination of both worlds, as one of the problems with the Xone 3D and other controllers is that you can’t see the current values and active assigned controllers without shuffling around on the computer screen.

Hopefully these tips will jump start your journey into the world of digital DJing and MIDI controllers. The technology has come a long way—now it’s up to you to take the ideas in your head and translate those to the dancefloor. Good luck and have fun!

Morgan Page’s full-length album Elevate is out now on Nettwerk Records.