Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of Vestax

March 17th, 2009 – There is a lot of great DJ software out there that allows the modern DJ to leave the record crates at home. Unfortunately, while there are great time-coded vinyl solutions on the market, DJ MIDI controllers have not previously been good for much more than controlling FX, and straight up mixing. But what about the turntablists and scratch DJ’s out there?

If you had wanted to do turntablist-type things with a DJ controller previously, you had to be creative. Ean Golden’s DJ Tech Tools is a great resource for this new school style of “controllerism”, as he calls it. Recently though, some great products have come along that may actually work well enough for traditional scratch DJ’s that want a portable controller solution.

One of those products is the Vestax VCI-300. After seeing Ean Golden tearing up a VCI-100 with his unique style of controllerism, I was heavily leaning towards picking it up, however I was hesitant because the VCI-300 is integrated with Serato Itch and is therefore a performance bargain when you consider that the VCI-100 needs something like Traktor Pro to take full advantage of it. I also like that the Itch and the VCI-300 are designed to work with each other, and therefore are probably more solid for a pro set. Anyways, I still like the idea of controllerism so I’m probably still going for a VCI-100 and a Monome, but I found this video of DeezNotes rocking a VCI-300 that has got me all hot and bothered. Why must I obsess so?

Vestax VCI-300 Product Page