DJ Mixstation 4/Virtual Sounds (PC), eJay

Sep 4 2008 By Ross Hawkes

IT'S fair to say that I’m more Judge Judy than Judge Jools when it comes to the world of DJing.

In fact, the closest I’ve probably come to the decks is boogying along to Agadoo at an uncle’s birthday.

But there’s plenty of software on the market which claims to bring the art of the wheels of steel to the masses.

One such program is eJay’s DJ Mixstation 4.

Once you get past what looks like an overly complex screen layout, the software is relatively easy to get to grips with and allows you to mash up your tracks and create a whole new world of music sounds (some of them, you’ll probably want to delete pretty soon after you’ve created them!).

But as with any creative programmes, the key to all of this is that practice makes perfect – well, half-decent at least.

There’s all the usual tools you’d expect including pitch bend and tempo alteration, together with a nifty bit of BPM matching to make sure you don’t get too out of time.

The virtual decks also allow you to scratch tunes as if you’d got the old vinyl out of the loft once more.

And don’t worry about having to upload all of your tracks again to play with them, because Mixstation 4 is compatible with iTunes libraries.

As well as mixing the tunes of others, the eJay Virtual Sounds add-ons also offer thousands of royalty-free samples to allow you even more creativity as you create next summer’s must have anthem.

Now, where did I leave those glo-sticks...

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