Yesterday I was greeted by a package containing nothing else than the book for my new religion: The Traktor Pro Bible! Been reading ever since, with skipping chapter 5, I am already deep into chapter 6. Did not learn too much new stuff yet. But especially chapter 6 is helping me a lot with my quest. Making the DJTT MIDI mapping even better. Further inspired by a very nifty alternative TSI created my Misa, I set forth on this quest. Stop one was using the crossfader together with the shift button as a deck focus selector. Here I ran into a bit of trouble as I was following the Bible. After making a nice screencast to illustrating the issue and sending off an email to the prophet Rainer, aka author of the Bible, only to include the wrong URL to the screencast and not mentioning the mixer I was using, the proppet still managed to send me on the right track. He just asked me what mixer I was using and dang magic hit me: I need to adjust the crossfader curve settings on the back of my VCI-100. Voila, all is well. Sweet.
Next up I fixed a bug in the DJTT TSI mapping, where the gater and mullholland drive effects where mixed up in the EQ FX mode. Took a bit of searching, but not a lot of skill. Another issue, that the deck pitch would only move a teeny bit, was also easily fixed with the instructions on the DJTT forums.
The next stage in my quest was adding keylock support, since I just love messing around with quickly enabling and disabling keylock. With the deck focus select done, I now just needed a single button to enable keylock for the focused deck. Thankfully close by the shift buttons are still two buttons that can be double assigned. I choose the snap button. So now I can use my left hand on the crossfader, while pressing shift to select the deck focus with my right index finger and then while keeping shift pressed quickly hit the snap button with the right middle finger. This way I can quickly enable/disable keylock on an of the deck's in quick alteration. Awesome! Mental note: find something useful to enable on the deck in focus with the quant button or maybe also follow Misa and do some master tempo adjustments.
Now next up was adding preview support. Quite easy with all these previous challenges already mastered. The idea also wasn't my idea, since its taking straight from Misa's alternative TSI, though with a slightly different ordering of the buttons. Pressing shift and the top FX ON button loads the current select track into preview. Shift and the button below toggles play/pause for preview and the two buttons below together with shift seek forward and backward in the preview.
Well I thought, time to grasp the holy grail itself, adding access to the hotcues 5-8 for deck A/C. My idea was that when the juggle knob is enabled and I hold the juggle on button it would swap hotcues 1-4 for deck B/D out for hotcues 5-8 for deck A/C. While trying to master the beast, I noticed a pretty nasty issue in the current solution. Pressing the juggle on button, while the juggle knob is enabled, disables the juggle mode. So the button is no longer lid and the juggle knob is still set to enabled. But the hotcues are no longer mapped. Not nice. After a short scrimmage, I have for now retreated, but I shall be back this weekend. Tomorrow evening I will be playing some more Ultimate Frisbee, hoping that my knee will hold up, so that I can have a chance to play the Windmill Cup in Amsterdam next week.