Speeding up your DJ prep workflow with Lexicon and a Stream Deck
As an open-format DJ, I always strive to find the latest and most impressive tracks from the range of DJ pools to which I subscribe.
Gone are the days of heading to the local vinyl store to connect with other DJs and listen to snippets of new tracks while bleary-eyed on a Saturday morning. One of the store staff would monitor us, and a simple nod of the head was enough to have a track added to your pile. It was like an auction, except the attendees all looked tired and a bit worse for wear.
Nowadays, we lack opportunities to bond with other DJs at local vinyl stores, which were hubs for connecting. Although we have many new channels like the Zoom sessions hosted by CrateHackers and Evolve DJs, I still wish we had more opportunities to meet face-to-face without the need for a computer screen.
So, where does that leave the modern DJ who has access to pools and pools of music files that can be easily downloaded? Yes, you can jump through the tracks and download them, but now we have to prep them. What do I mean by prepping the music?
- Ensure that you have correctly beat-mapped them (yes, I use beat mapping, but don’t rely on it – you still need to be creative and change things up).
- Categorize them according to your genre coding schema.
- Rate them – do you really think you are going to play this track or be brave enough to discard it?
- Match them according to your playing style – when would you want to play this track? DJ sessions have to transition to move the crowd around, and you want to make sure you are maximizing your appeal.
All of this takes time and can eat up a couple of hours each week. In addition to other work, you need to make sure the process is fast, reliable, and enjoyable.
Prerequisites:
- A set of tracks that need to be organized
- Lexicon subscription
- Joined Lexicon’s Discord channel
- A Stream Deck X
- References to other tools:
- MixedInKey Live
Physical Organization of the Music Files
To begin, I organize my music into directories with the name of the music collection or a reference to the pool, along with the date I downloaded them. The physical layout of the tracks doesn’t matter since we will be constructing playlists that effectively ignore the physical organization of the files.
For example a directory looks something like this:
(Yes, I use a Mac but this should also translate for Windows users.)
So now I have a USB drive with all my music.
Creating an initial hierarchy of the collections
The tool I use to organize and tidy up my tracks is Lexicon (https://www.lexicondj.com/). Over the years, I have used multiple tools to try and organize things, but Lexicon is my current tool of choice. The developer has seemed to think of everything. Every time I ask for a feature, the author just points me to the function that this software already has in place, and I don’t have to compromise on my workflow.
Lexicon also lets me send playlists to multiple solutions. I tend to move around depending on the logistics of a gig. I don’t always want to haul flight cases everywhere, and there might be a need for a particular style of playing. My current setups include Denon DJ, Traktor, and Rekordbox. Lexicon lets me prep my music and push the playlist to where I need them.
The magic of Lexicon is that I can import my music and start organizing it. The first step is to organize the music into crates.my high level organization of the folders on my USB drive into a playlist hierarchy organized by:
- Year (4 digit)
- Month (2 digit)
- Folder name
- Month (2 digit)
This is an example:
Now let the magic begin…
I use a Stream Deck (specifically the Stream Deck Mk.2, available at https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/stream-deck-mk2-black).
The Lexicon development team has integrated the ability to use this USB device with their software.
IMPORTANT: You must be logged into the Discord channel (another amazing resource managed by the software developer) before downloading the plugin.
Follow the instructions to download the Stream Deck plugin and install it from the following link:
https://discuss.lexicondj.com/t/controlling-lexicon-from-your-stream-deck/54
Now you need to setup a page in your Stream Deck with a profile page for Lexicon. Here’s mine:
.Let me walk you through the sections and explain how this setup helps me in my workflow:
The Rating Row:
I use a rating system to gauge how likely I am to play a track. Does it immediately feel like a track that will get everybody dancing and reacting? Is it more laid-back? Is it a track that you don’t really like, but you know someone is going to request it? Or is it a track that you wish you had never heard and should be deleted?
- Rating 5 (or 5 stars) – for “wow amazing tracks”
- Rating 4 (or 4 stars) – Opener or laid back
- Rating 3 (or 3 stars) – Slow songs or you know someone will ask for it.
- Rating 2 (or 2 stars) – I don’t know.
- Rating 1 (1 star) – Please delete me.
The Track Navigation section:
Pretty self explanatory.
To move to the next track, press Next. To go back to the beginning of the track, press Previous. To go back to the prior track, double press Previous.
Tip of the Day:
Each of my profiles has the middle button set to go to the Next page. I have multiple profiles set up on my Stream Deck, and through muscle memory, I know that this button will allow me to quickly skip through the profiles to find the right one.
The Playback control and beat mapping section:
This section is where I doing the listening to determine the rating and the beat mapping.
To be honest, I usually only use the Play Pause toggle. The Play button is hardly ever used.
The Tick button turns the Metronome on and off. If the BPM doesn’t sound right, I sometimes turn off the Metronome and use something like MixedInKey Live to find the correct BPM. After that, I turn the Metronome back on to verify the BPM and proceed with beat mapping. (For guidance on beat mapping, check out the helpful information in the Lexicon knowledge base, and feel free to ask me to create a video on the topic.)
Lexicon Tagging
This is where I add tags to a track to remind myself of when I plan to play it. Please note that these tags are only a guide and not a rule.
- Pool is laid back
- Opener is to get them moving
- Club is the guaranteed winners
- Hard is the heavy duty hard house, trance music.
The trick to get this to work with Lexicon is to use its Tagging functionality.
Here’s how you set it up.
- Select the Tags menu option:
- Pool is laid back
- Opener is to get them moving
- Club is the guaranteed winners
- Hard is the heavy duty hard house, trance music.
The trick to get this to work with Lexicon is to use its Tagging functionality.
Here’s how you set it up.
- Select the Tags menu option:
2. Add a Category
Yes, I could have used the situation, but I wanted a clean slate to start with. However, others might find the software developer’s suggestions more applicable.
I created a new category called Playtime and I added the ‘#’ so that is very visible:
The magic (yes, even more magic) lies in the numbers next to each of these tags. These numbers correspond to the number you specified in the Stream Deck setup. To assign a shortcut number, right-click on the relevant tag.
To assign an activity to a button with Toggle tags in the Stream Deck page, you need to specify the corresponding shortcut number.
The final magical step, Smart Playlists
The final step is to set up some SmartPlaylists to gather your tracks. The great thing about Lexicon is that even if your DJ software does not support playlists, Lexicon will create them as “normal” playlists in your setup.
I create the following SmartLists in Lexicon:
- For each month:
- Anything with 4 or 5 stars for each of my Playtime categories. I control the “freshness” of the SmartList by specifying the start and end dates for when the track was added to the collection to correspond to the month.
A couple of important things to note regarding the name of the Smart playlist setup:
- I use the year and date as a guide for the Smart Playlist name.
- I make sure that I set the Match Rules to All Rules:
I also have a global Smart Playlist for 3, 4 and 5 ratings, as well as the Playtime categories.
Starting a new month
To set up a new month, I simply copy the Smart Playlist and adjust the date range to the appropriate month.
A Sample StreamDeck Profile
To give you a starting point, here’s my profile example
What’s Next
So whats next. I might turn the tagging button to be become multi step actions to assign the tag and change the color of the track as well. (Thank you to DJ Cee B for this suggestion).
Im also thinking about if I could include last time played into my Smart list, but that might be pushing it.
If you like this information, please let me know. Like DJing, feedback from a audience is a empowering and an encouraging feedback loop.
