Nic Fanciulli’s Traktor tips

Nic Fanciulli’s Traktor tips

7 May, 2009 | 8.48PM

• Written by: Industry Boy
• Filed under: Music News: nic fanciulli, nic fanciulli tour, technology, traktor

Nic Fanciulli’s laptop will be by his side for the next 32 days whilst he tours North America.

He’s a fully converted digital DJ and uses Native Instruments’ digital DJ software Traktor for all of his gigs.

But what is it about Traktor that Nic loves so much? How does he use it to improve his DJ sets? What is Nic’s Traktor set up like?

I conducted an audio interview with Nic to find out.

Nic’s Traktor process

1. Nic organises his music first in iTunes. He builds playlists by music genre, and then imports those playlists into Traktor. He also builds playlists by night, anticipating the energy levels of the crowd and the sound that will work best for that room.

2. In iTunes, Nic writes comments on records in order to properly identify them, (eg: ‘big breakdown’, or ‘kicking hi hat’). It’s important to be able to identify music quickly as Nic has over 2500 tracks on his laptop at any one time.

3. Nic analyses music when importing in Traktor. The internal analyzation process helps Traktor to match up beats and FX parameters, especially when using the ‘safety net’ of Traktor’s sync functionality.

4. Nic builds a targeted playlist before a gig with around 50 tracks, 10 of which are key records that he plans to drop in the night. The rest of the tracks in between he plays according to where he feels the crowd wants to go.

5. FX wise, Nic’s FaderFox DX2 controller (see below) is set up to work with Traktor’s inbuilt FX. Nic particularly likes Reverb (for building up atmostphere), Delay, and Beat Repeat (for mashing up beats). Traktor’s internal loop function in particular is useful, as it allows Nic to extend a record indefinitely, or extend a breakdown.

6. Whilst Traktor’s loop functionality allows Nic to extend records and beats he also uses Traktor’s accurate beat grid to jump through a track, for instance, if he feels the crowd doesn’t like a particular cut he can quickly get out of it.

7. Traktor allows for four tracks to be played at once, and whilst Nic is a confessed ‘let the music play’ DJ who likes to mainly use two decks at once, he will sometimes throw loops and added percussion over the top using Deck 3 or Deck 4.

8. The DX2 FaderFox midi controller allows Nic to have hands-off control of Traktor. Not touching the laptop is a blessing for him, and he only ever looks at the computer when he’s browsing for a track to play, or when he needs to see when a record is running out.

9. Saving playlists is another bonus of Traktor. After a gig the next morning, Nic can look back and see exactly what tracks he played enabling him to learn which mixes worked, and which ones didn’t.

10. Back up, back up, back up. On this tour, Nic has double of everything, in case something goes wrong. Two laptops, two soundcards, two controllers, loads of spare wires. He also has a harddrive containing all his music, so if the laptops die, he can plug his harddrive into a new laptop and away he goes.

At a glance: Nic Fanciulli’s FaderFox DX2 Traktor set up

Nic Fanciulli was kind enough to let us steal a look at the blueprints for his custom set up for his DX2 FaderFox controller that allows him to control all the functions of Traktor that matter to him

Check them out below.

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