Game Of Life's setup(s)

Long time lurker first time poster.

I don't have a lot of pictures from back when I first started. When I first started I didn't believe there were any clubs where I lived that played EDM. But there were a lot of DJs I really enjoyed so I bought an M-Audio X-Session Pro and 49 key keyboard with some best buy gift cards I had and I started to mix music in Torq 1.0. Later I discovered MixMeister through a video broadcast and learned a lot of my technical understanding of mixing from that(At this point I still had no idea how to learn to DJ as I didn't know anyone).

I ended up adding a few things along the way like the NanoKontrol and the NanoPad and I got a really good deal on an Alesis iPod Dock mixer. I ended up getting into Ableton so I picked up a Launchpad too. At this point I started to DJ out of Ableton.



I also picked up one of these old things off of craigslist and fixed it to use for getting some unique sounds... And I never used it once...



I finally discovered EDM music in my city! I started to promote one of the evening s and discovered there were actually quite a few people here into EDM. I finally got my first gig. I ended up using the Nano's, the Launchpad and the XSession with the intention of using Ableton and last minute I lost confidence and went back to MixMeister. Which doesn't surprise me now as I hadn't been DJing for a full year at that point.



I had a laptop failure using Ableton a year later later and I borrowed a friends G4 Mac Laptop whatever they were called and I started to have doubts about Ableton. I bought one of these used at a music-go-round.



And then I returned it a weekend later. It wasn't really that bad... I just figured my money would be better spent elsewhere. After that though I gave up on Ableton completely and started to just bring USB drives to gigs and play off other peoples gear. Which was fantastic when I told the guy at Mozaik I had never used a CDJ before. The look on his face was priceless and I had a rudimentary understanding of how they worked and I did fine. Mixing by ear isn't that hard so I really have never understood the sync button debate from either side(nor do I care to now).

Anyways I saw a Mixdeck Universal iPod Dock at a huge hotel event and decided that I wanted one of those because I could use it with Traktor which I was convinced was the software for me. But they were completely sold out everywhere.

I then stopped DJing for about 2 years completely in order to take a break so I would have time to get completely shit faced every day and ruin my entire life. Every once in a while I would open MixMeister and throw something together just to scratch the itch. The itch outgrew the scratch. So on black Friday I went out to SamAsh and bought a Mixdeck Quad(iPod Dock Free) with exactly no research on the modern state of DJing... So when I discovered Traktor remix decks which had not existed when I DJed last I was so happy because thats exactly how I wanted everything to work. So I added 2 Kontrol F1s and a NanoKontrol 2 for the FX section. Plus a FZGSMIXDECKGTBL and some NPMK5 monitors.





So yep probably more money than sense but oh well...

P.S. I like to add iPod Dock to the name of everything that has an iPod Dock to remind everyone how fucking stupid that era of musical gear was.