Hračka nebo...

Yamaha DJX II je opravdu taková milá hračka, kterou v komunitě profesionálů nebude brát vážně. Jenže... má to filtry, efekty, sampler, groovebox, synth a klaviaturu. Takže je to opravdu hračka? Nemyslím si. Začátečník se s tím může naučit chápat a prakticky vyzkoušet principy. Tento nástroj mám v mém nahrávacím studiu Sunteem records.

Yup, 100% DJ-oriented keyboard

It takes guts to label a keyboard as a "DJ" product. DJs at the time used mainly turntables or CDJs, so labelling a keyboard as a "DJ" product is very odd to say the least. The only other product I know that was labelled as such was the Roland DJ-70 Sampling Workstation which I also happened to own at some point.

Well it definitely has some "DJ-like" features that allows to play in sync with other audio devices using MIDI, it also has a filter with easily reachable Cutoff and Resonance controls, you can mix parts by turning them on or off... So these terms are familiar to DJ aficionados and have an heritage that can be traced back to other producing tools available at the time like Roland SP series products. So in this respect, it was kind of in line with what other options were available at the time.

I guess when I bought this, I thought it would help me understand DJ tools and allow me to produce tracks. I think it was a biased view of what this was and what its place was in a DJ setup. I did not understand that it was not a be-all-end-all DJ solution, having been blinded by the onboard speakers. Looking back after years of DJing in clubs, here's what I understand it is and its best use:

It's a complement to a standard DJ setup that already has either 2x turntables/CDJs or more, and a mixer. Its use case would be for fills between songs, adding pads, playing one shot samples or loops, adding drums etc... so it's really meant to be used as a tool to add little touches to live mixes. Keyboard allows to play live piano, leads, pads, bass on top of this.

It is fun to play with for sure, but it's not something you buy for learning how to DJ, despite it being a 100% DJ-oriented tool. Fortunately nowadays, live production tools are plenty and there is no reason to buy something like the DJX-II; think Native Instruments Maschine controller and software or Maschine+, Akai MPC One, Ableton Push controller and Live software, Elektron Digitakt and Octatrack etc. All of these were made with live production in mind so you can sample and resample, live loop, add effects, timestretch audio, play pads, leads or bass lines...

DJX-II can be remembered as a classic "Blast from the past" unit, which once was a daring try of Yamaha into the techno/rave-era DJ market.