Beat Link Trigger: Clojure for DJ shows

You might have seen James’ Afterglow demo at the Meetup in 2016, now you can see what has devoured his spare time since then. At that meetup James mentioned he’d started to reverse-engineer the protocol used by Pioneer DJ pro gear so he could sync light shows to it. That spawned its own set of projects which have blown up, and he’s been contacted by several artists who feature prominently in his own music collection for help using the software in their tours and streams, and even tricked Deadmau5 into learning a little Clojure.

This presentation will explore how DJ performances work today, give highlights of the degree to which we can now tap into the hardware over the network, and demonstrate some of the cool tricks this enables. Clojure has been the glue that allowed James to accidentally create an integration environment for performances, in response to interesting ideas from club resident techs, touring performers, and their front-of-house tech crews.