Tribe XR with the New CDJ3000 DJM900NX2 Virtual Reality DJ at It's Best!

0:00 Oh, dude, how you doing?

Okay, so here we go. We're on. Now, again, this is pre-recorded, but listen, ladies and gentlemen, once again, welcome to Tribe with a very good friend of mine, Ozan, who is all the way in California again, my friend. Oh, dude, how you doing? It's been too long. Oh, it has. It's been a long time. I mean, this has been a bit of a... Well, it's been a hell of a journey for you, a bit of a journey for me, but... Okay, this on, well it's going to be the first time on Ellaskins where you have the new Nexus setup from Pioneer. Yeah? That's right, that's right, that's right. Let me, I'm going to bring that down. So tell me about it now. Tell me what we've got here and what people can expect to use if they jump into TribeXR.

What we have here are the latest and greatest Pioneer equipment virtualized inside of TribeXR. We've got the CDJ-3000, we've got the DJM-900 Nexus 2, fully functional. So all the physical controls are represented in this virtual representation. We've got all the color effects, we've got all the beat effects, and of course, you know, all the stuff. We even have the X-Pad, which is really cool. You can drop in these effects. Let's see here. Wow. We've got the X-Pad, we've got all the controls that you'd expect to see on the CDJ-3000 too like the beat jump, the beat loop. Wow. So I can create like an auto loop here and then drop in. Let me get to this echo I like. I like the echo layer. You know, and then do that in combination. Nice. And the post effects too which is real nice. So yeah, kind of the full Monty basically.

And the cool thing is that you can learn all the flows that you expect to learn on the physical equipment. So like just how to use hot cues. If I were to load up one of these sample tracks really quickly to get the ball rolling here. So you can use the hot cues as well, so dropping in... A hot cue, and now you've got your hot cue recorder and you can just use it. You're just off to the races. Nice. You can keep kind of firing it off. You've got all the beat sync functionality as well. You can switch between vinyl and CDJ mode. Oh, another thing that's real nice is that we kind of also updated the jog wheel so that you have the top and the side functionality. Oh, that's cool. So you can use the sides. Oh, sweet. The way you would in real life. But if you want, you can grab the top and treat it like a vinyl deck. That is sweet. I like, yeah, that is so good.

Yeah. And then, yeah, so let's get this hot cue going here. We also added a tempo range too, so you can really increase and decrease the size of the pitch fader, master tempo, all the goodies. Wow. I've got to admit, Ozan, since the last time I used this kit, it's gone from like, my analogy is like driving, you know, a 1.4 diesel to like we're now in a Ferrari here, aren't we? That's right. You know, I'm not saying that the old diesel car wasn't any good. It still got you from A to B, but now this is like, I mean, this is like in a spaceship now, dude. Yeah, there's just so many features, so many buttons and so many controls. But I have to say that, you know, at the core of it though are the lessons that you taught, that you teach.

It's the essential music choices, it's the beatmatching, it's the feel, the energy you create. So no matter what equipment you have, you can still deliver that core thing. Now you just have more toys to play with, more tools. I guess there are some quality of life issues that are pretty darn important. For example, with the beat effects, we also have the frequency selector so you can apply the beat effects to particular frequencies. To me, that makes a big difference because if you don't want to... If you don't want to apply it to the lows, you can just deselect the lows and apply the beat effect to the highs, which gives you all the joy of the effect without undermining the core of the bassline. Yeah, no, I get you. You know? Which again, it's exactly like the 900 Nexus. Yeah, the 900. Brilliant. Basically all the physical stuff is still here, essentially. I know, I mean...

You know, you're now, I mean, what's this sort of association with Pioneer like now? Because I know you can officially say that, you know, you've been endorsed by Pioneer, yeah? Yeah, yeah, it's official. We're official partners with Pioneer. We're their VR partner, essentially. That is amazing. Yeah, so we're starting with top-of-the-line kit and, you know, hopefully if things go well, we'll roll out the additional controllers and maybe some vinyl and the sampler and the RMX unit. Like, that's the hope. But we want to kind of see how people respond to this kit initially, you know, inside of VR. Hopefully good things will come of it and then we can kind of continue our relationship with Pioneer. Okay. But so far they've just been, you know, very positive, very supportive. You know, they're a wonderful company from my experience so far. They are very careful about protecting their product, right? Their brand. Oh, hell yeah. Because they've built this incredible brand.

6:23 It was a long process, wasn't it?

And it's global, it's synonymous with high quality, top of the line, pro everything. And so they want to make sure that whatever associations they have also meet that same standard and I get that. And hopefully we've met that standard, you know, hopefully we're also... I think you have. I mean let's be honest, you know, for anyone watching this now... It was a long process, wasn't it? It was a long process. I mean, it was like many years in the making kind of thing. Sure. And a lot of it started with you initially introducing the idea with your context of Pioneer. So it's been, yeah, it's been a long conversation. But here we are. I mean, this is so cool. And again, my mind's always trying to think that even though there are a lot of people who've seen me in VR in the past, there will be people who are watching this video now going, what the heck is this? What the hell is going on? So if you can explain in a couple of minutes about TribeXR, what it is...

How much it costs, how people can get involved. Again, I will put a link in the description where you can go directly to TribeXR. Maybe you can talk a little bit about Discord as well. The community where people can, like-minded people, can talk with each other and exchange ideas. So, you know, go for it Ozan. Yeah, for sure. So just a baseline thing is that we're inside virtual reality right now, which may be a little bit mystifying to some people that have never done virtual reality. But I have a virtual reality headset on my head right now and then I have these hand controllers in my hand, as do you. You have the hand controller. And the headset is tracking my head movement.

The hand controllers are tracking my hand movement. And that's what gives us this ability to participate inside of VR. And plus I'm seeing everything in like virtual reality. Like I'm just completely immersed in this 3D space as are you. And the other thing that's quite amazing about it is that you are in the UK right now and I'm in California right now. And despite that, we're able to connect over like a telephone type of experience, like a telephone on steroids. Early evening here and it's sort of late morning for you. Is that right?

That's right, yeah. But we jumped into this shared room and now we're as if we're back to back. I'm seeing you, you're seeing me. We're able to see the same equipment and able to DJ as if we were in a physical room together which is pretty amazing in and of itself. So that's the VR-ness of it all. And then yeah, we've built this simulation of DJ gear. And so basically the interactions are very simple. Like you have these hand controllers, as I mentioned in your hands. You've got these little buttons on the hand controllers that you can use to trigger things. And when you intersect with objects inside of the space, you can grab them and move them up and down just like this. Yeah. You get the crossfader left and right. You can also twist things. So here's the knob as an example. You grab it and twist. You can apply the effects.

And I'm just using my hand controllers, clicking and just doing a simple action. Yeah, yeah. And that basically gives you this simulation like a flight simulator for DJing. And that way you can learn all the techniques that you need to know to play on physical equipment so that when you apply it, when you figure out the spatial layout and you figure out the flows, you can then jump behind physical equipment and do exactly the same thing and it will work. So that's the power and the beauty of it. But this, I mean like... Let's be honest, 900 mixer, nearly $2,000. The CDJ-3000, I mean, these are like about 2,000. So two, four, six, eight, you know, you've got close to 12 grand's worth of kit here. And I mean, what does it cost someone to say, you know what? I want to jump in, you know, I've got my VR, I've got my Oculus setup.

With what we've got right now? Well, the app itself is $30. Yeah. So $29.99. And in euros, I'm not exactly sure what that translates to, but it's roughly the same. In pounds, it's roughly the same. Probably it's going to be $35, something like that. Pounds, euros. Something like that. Yeah, so around $30. So if you already have VR, you can get this on the stores. You can get it on the Oculus Store, you can get it on the Steam Store, and it's going to be $30, which gives you access to the kit. If you don't have VR, you can buy the latest headset is the Quest 2, the Oculus Quest 2. That's the one that I do recommend. It's $299 for the headset. So coming in cold, $299 plus $30 and you get all this gear. But if you already have the headset, it's a mere $30. The only thing, the one thing I will say though to represent Pioneer as well is that everything that's happening right now is virtual, which again is amazing. It's like being on a telephone.

But it doesn't compare to be the real thing. It doesn't compare to playing in real life in front of real people. The point isn't to replace real-life performances. The point is to prepare you for those real-life or amplify the real-life things. It would be better if you and I could be in the same room together DJing in front of real people. The beautiful thing. But in the meantime, since we can't right now because of all these reasons, we can get a virtual experience that gives us all the preparation we need for that moment that happens. So yeah, so it's really affordable and accessible, 30 bucks. But the idea is that eventually you're going to build up confidence and then you're going to get maybe an entry-level controller on the Pioneer like the DDJ-200 or the 400. Or maybe get some of the higher-end controllers. And then if you're really feeling ambitious...

12:47 Yeah, so I mean that's what we're a little bit experimenting with

You can level up to the CDJs. I know, yeah. Thousands of dollars a year, yeah. Crazy, man. But this is it. I mean, you know, 30 bucks and look what you've got. And again, what I like about Tribe is if you're limited on space and you don't have, you know, well, yeah, you know, you haven't got the space to put hardware. Jump in. And you've got, you've sort of got the virtual hardware in front of you within a click of a mouse, haven't you? Yeah, I mean, some of the advantages of the digital flow is that it gives you access to things that you couldn't easily do in real life. Like we also have a bunch of tools to trick out the visuals so you can project really great visuals onto the back wall. You can also replace the environments and do crazy things like that.

Yeah, you got like the visuals. And just like that, which in real life would be expensive and difficult and cumbersome. You can also stream. Let me get a mix going here. Yeah. Excuse me. You can also stream more easily from within here because in real life, you need to have like a webcam and you have a green screen and all kinds of stuff to be able to stream out. But in here, you just throw on the headset and you've got like a full production studio that you can use to stream. Yeah, so I mean that's what we're a little bit experimenting with. I mean to look forward to what we're planning on doing. The things that have happened recently since the last time we talked and hung out is we have our partnership with Pioneer so we have all this Pioneer kit which is great. We also have our subscription service which gives you access to premium content so like educational content, immersive lessons, you get access to all the DLC.

You get access to skins and trackpacks. You know, our friends, we have several producers that we're working with that have given us trackpacks. So folks like Cryder, Cryoman, Dusty, they've all donated trackpacks. And now recently On The Mic with Revesta Records, they've donated a bunch of tracks that we can share with our community. Nice. And so we got the subscription service. But the big thing that I'm pretty excited about is we have this... Video streaming technology built into Tribe now, so you can stream directly from Tribe out into the world. Wow. Even onto YouTube as well, without OBS? Yeah, we're halfway to that scenario where you can click a button and stream to YouTube. What we have right now is to be able to stream from Tribe to Tribe. Yep, gotcha. So what we're working on now, that should be ready in the next couple of weeks, is you can stream from Tribe to like a webpage browser.

So you could jump in, click a button and invite your friends to this link and everyone can hang out with you. And I can show you some like, you know, some prototypes of what that looks like. But yeah, so yeah, that video streaming technology, we're going to be adding more equipment. We're working on a vinyl player right now. Nice. And we're going to do a sampler. We're going to do like an effects unit. And then lastly, we are doing a rhythm based experience that has kind of dance stuff going on. So anyway, those are a few things that are on our roadmap. Ozan, it's crazy, man. It's crazy, man. It's crazy. It's all good. I mean, you know, I've been crazy. I remember back in the day when we first hooked up, maybe two, three years ago. It's got to be, you know, and even then.

You know but i i didn't know much about sort of well virtual reality at all you know for me virtual reality was like shoot them ups you know and then you said listen jonathan check out the djing side and i mean even then i was like my my head was exploding but now with all this that's going on it's like it's insane i mean you know this here the the even the visual looking you know looking at it visually It's clearer, there's something about it. I mean, have you sort of maybe upgraded how it looks as well? It's just, it's phenomenal. Well, the new model, I mean, yeah, our artist Thomas Moral, who's actually an artist at Weta Studios, he built this equipment for us just sort of in his spare time as a favorite to us essentially. And yeah, I mean, it looks amazing, the details. Yeah, the detail, exactly, that's it, yeah. The reflective property is really, really good. Yeah, I mean, the thing that is...

I guess I'm so grateful for is our community and our team, essentially. The team is just really committed to doing awesome stuff in music and our community is incredibly encouraging. They're so passionate about music and they're so passionate about DJing. That brings out the best in people. You really see the best side of somebody when they connect over something that's so meaningful and beautiful. Yeah, I encourage anybody who's watching to join us on our Discord server. It's discord.gg slash tribeXR and you can link to it from our website. That will be in the description as well. Yeah, you can drop a link. But basically, if you haven't used Discord, it's a community chat. Channel essentially where you can join and just meet the rest of the community. I'm on there, you're on there. We can all kind of hang out and just share tips and tricks and ask questions and also send notifications. If you like go live or something, you can drop a link and we will jump on there and support you. I'll get this uploaded sort of, we're on Saturday so I'll get this uploaded either today or tomorrow.

But how about, you know, provisionally we hook up next week sometime and we, you know, we do a live stream maybe one evening. You know, my time five or six o'clock in the evening, your time that would be eight or nine, nine or ten in the morning. You bet. Yeah, I'm game. The only question is what genre, what music are we going to play? Are we going to do disco vibes? Should we do the thumbs up, thumbs down game? Why don't we do that? Yeah, that's it. Wasn't that fun? That was good. Okay, this is the plan. You're going to choose 12 tunes. I'll choose 12 tunes. And yeah, we do that thumbs up, thumbs down. So if you don't know, again, some people will, some people won't. Basically what we do... With thumbs up, thumbs down is I get a bunch of tunes, Ozan does. We've both never heard them before and we play them and Ozan plays his and I say, is it good? Is it bad? But also because it's a live stream, you get involved as well. You're allowed to say, it's good, I like it, I dislike it or whatever. So yeah, but we get to choose good tracks, don't we? And I don't think there's been many times when

Either of us have chosen tunes and we've gone, we don't like them. I think it's okay not to say if you don't resonate with a particular track because everyone has their own style. For the most part, they're pretty much good. It's fun. The thing that I'm trying to figure out is when you evaluate a track, if you have to think about it, it's probably a thumbs down. If it doesn't hit you immediately, it's got to go boom. Yeah, that's it. It's got to go boom. If you've got to be like, well, maybe filler, maybe if I do this, it's probably... Because you like your camel fat, don't you? I do like my camel fat. I'm liking this. This is, yeah, some disco vibes. I wanted to pick something I think you'd like. Yeah. Yeah, let me load up another track for you. We can play a couple of mixes here. See, what's happening now as well is I've got in front of me my screen.

20:29 Yeah, and you even have the virtual headphones

And I'm able to go through settings, camera settings, invite people and so on. Also now I'm going and looking through the tracks I've got and Ozan is able to do that his side with his settings as well. So we can both dip into our own settings. Let's have a look, see what we've got in the track. I'm gonna go here, let's have a look. I did load one up for you by the way. Oh cool.

25:03 You know what I find about music as well?

And again, as well, if you're not brilliant at beatmatching, you've got the sync functionality here as well, haven't you? So you can get them all synced together, which is exactly like the full sort of Nexus setup. Yeah, and you even have the virtual headphones. Nice. Which helps a lot. Yeah, that's right. So you can preview the song before you actually go live. I just wanted to make sure the song didn't suck. But it seems like it's okay. The BPM's a little bit... This is nice. It's got that mellow soulful feel, you know? Mellow, soulful. Yeah. Some beautiful vocals. A little bit romantic. This is kind of like if you've got a girl on a dance floor, this is kind of... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Some pop sensibilities in there. Let's see what we can find here. I gotta wait for the drop before I bring in my mix, I think. Okay.

33:34 You're not going to believe this, Ozan

This one's a little bit too heavy for... Now what I'm doing here as well, I'm just moving the... There's like a virtual camera, but if we do side, shoulder, front, pop down. Okay. It's getting a bit more heavy. It's getting a bit more heavy. Get a bit of late night. Get some ping pong effects here. This is where we're just doing a random kind of thing now guys, ad-libbing and having a bit of fun, but... You know what I find about music as well? Is sometimes I like think, you know, I'm going to play a couple of tunes and you turn the decks on and you play a few tunes and then like two hours later you go, okay, I've been here for two hours now. You know what I mean? You have like a blackout session, you know? Oh man, yeah. It's like a siren song. Yeah, you just get lost in it. Just time you the mast. Come on now.

Do you know, an old school... You're not going to believe this, Ozan. Right, you get ready for this. I percolate. Yeah. For the caffeine freaks out there. This started off, guys, with just... And now we're just jamming. We're percolating, brother. Finding a bit more disco-y. So it's okay. And we're just like having a mashup. Ozan's on deck one and two, I'm on three and four. And again... What you can do is, you know, I can cue up and listen to a track separately to when Ozan is queuing up and listening to a track. So it's almost as though in a way we're playing, right in saying Ozan, we're playing on the same kit but it's almost like we've got our own kit we're playing on but we're playing on the same kit at the same time. Does that make sense? Well, I mean, it's like we're playing on the same kit. We just have four decks. Yeah.

And it's really like we have our own virtual headphone. Yeah, that's it. Yes, you got it. So, you know, Ozan can cue in his tracks and if you were on a normal set of decks, you'd have to wait for that one DJ to finish for you to cue up the tracks. But then we can do it at the same time, which is great. Yeah. Trying to find some good disco vibes. Yeah, same, same.

Yeah, maybe I need to get to the full folder. Let's have a look and see what we've got here.

51:51 Yeah, I've got it slightly off that, but there you go, never mind

All we come to see is them girls. I'm liking this. Disco. This is my, this is, oh yeah, this is my vibe. Good soulful uplifting. Irresistible. Say again, sorry? Have you played with the CDJ 3000s in real life? No, I haven't, no, no, no, I haven't. So this is your first time on the 3000s? Yeah. Can I think of it? Yeah. Isn't it amazing? It is, yeah. Yeah, the touchscreen is actually, I don't know if that's true on the previous model, but you have the touchscreen now too, so the needle search is on the touchscreen. You can set your beat jump intervals here. Isn't that quite bizarre though, how we're in virtual reality and when you've got the hardware, you use the touchscreen, but now we're on virtual reality using a touchscreen in virtual reality. Yeah, yeah, very meta. It is, yeah, it's crazy, dude. Old school. Let's have a look.

Yeah. Remember Orbital Chime? Yeah, I've got it slightly off that, but there you go, never mind. Oh yeah, got you, got you. Again, it's quite funny what Ozan said earlier on, is that this is actually the first time I'm touching and using the 3000 and it's in virtual reality. Yeah, it's crazy man, it's crazy. And as well, it's funny how they... They call it the CDJ when you can't put CDs in anyway. You can't, you know? It's just legacy. Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. It's just DJ at this point. Yeah. I just love the fact that you're in Wales too and that we can do this. The internet, your internet is so fast. These data packets, these network packets are traveling across the Atlantic Ocean from the United States to Wales and then back to the United States. It's crazy, isn't it?

Yeah, it's crazy. Actually, that's one thing I'm very pleased about. The web connection here is pretty fast, dude. Yeah. Wasn't sure what to expect. Moody though. Try this. My files on these decks, even though you're over there and vice versa. It's just like... It's really cool. It's crazy, man. Yeah. And there's no lag. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing engineering. And also the latest version is going to be even better because right now what has to happen is when you load a track, it has to sort of transfer to me first so that it can do all the analysis and synchronize everything. In the next version, it won't have to transfer all the way. It can stream. So immediately I'll be able to hear and immediately I'll be able to start playing with it. Wow. Yeah. Sorry. I'm sorry to embarrass you, Ozan, but you didn't floss this morning, mate. Yeah, I got a little bit of tobacco stain in my teeth. Yeah, you didn't floss, dude. Oh, loving it. Well, wait, it's not... My breath isn't bad. It's just that...

We've each got to get 12 tracks. Now, the rules are 12 tracks each. They've got to be completely new. So you haven't even heard them before. So when I say you haven't heard them, you listen to them, you like them, but not from your collection. These have got to be new tracks. You haven't played them. You haven't played them before. That's it. You've got it. So this is what we'll do. We'll get them. But what we've got to do is we've got to think of what the other person will... I'm going to try and get into your mind. I've got to think disco, camel fat, bassline, and you've got to think how maybe I'd think. So this is the key here. Soulful disco. You know that shit, man. Yeah, that's the thing. Do you like Beatport Link by any chance? No, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go on Zip DJ. Get my way. Zip DJ, okay, cool. I'll do the same. Okay.

All right. All right, man. Cheers. It's been a pleasure, man. Big man hug. It's been a pleasure. Big hug. Big hug. Oh, dude, love you, brother. All right. I'll grab this. Oops. So again, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching. Hopefully we won't get any copyright issues with YouTube, but generally now it's just like they put adverts on the video. Let me do front. But listen, a big shout out. Thank you for watching. Don't forget, check out the description. There will be a link. To TribeXR, also to the Discord channel. Hook up and again for 35 bucks. Look what you get, man. This is insane, yeah? Absolutely insane. And would you like to finish with the immortal words of that? Yes, I would. I would like to recommend to everybody out there to do two things. Practice and enjoy. Thank you, brother.

Lovely. Thank you. Alright my friend, talk to you.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.