Customer Reviews

Techno eJay

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I went to CompUSA intending to buy the MTV music generator because I wanted to get started in writing my own techno music and I needed something inexpensive. Well, needless to say, I didn't buy it. I came out of the store with Techno Ejay and I have never regretted the $40 I paid for it! This is an awesome, easy to use program that has many worthy features. I was skeptical about just how good my music could be using a software program - but it was easy to use and very fun to play with. I can write a great sounding song in under 2 hours and then, export it as a wav file and burn my own album! Awesome! And the best part is, if you get tired of the massive 3,000 sound collection, you can import your own wav files! I recommend this product to anyone who wants to be a techno music composer, but can't afford expensive mixing equipment and synthesizers. I recommend buying Data Becker's 10,000 sound clips if you want more wav files to use with Techno Ejay.

This is a simple and easy to use sequencer program, which makes it good for beginners and others who are unfamiliar with electronic dance music and or EDM creation software. That said, I would never recomend this product to anyone who is serious about making music and/or wants do to it professionally (or live). First strike: It uses proprietary ".pxd" files and doesn't import wav files. Cookie cutter dance music is what makes otherwise open minded people hate all electronica. Avoid anything that doesn't work with standard digital media files. (like .wav) Second strike: You can't manipulate their sound files in any meaningful way, mostly just sequence (arrange loops into song patterns). Third strike: it retails, {price] as of this writing. For the same money or a little more you can get software that's a lot more versatile and professional from vendors like Sonic Foundry.

Bottom line, The eJay software is a toy. It's a doinky-simple-casio-keyboard-from-radio-shack of the software world, which there are a lot of. Good for kids or someone for whom it's an amusement, not for someone intent on making serious electronic dance music. (or any other genre for that matter)

I've only had this software for one day, but already I have created some booming techno beats. There is no end to the combinations of sounds and beats that you can create. It's so easy to use and so fun to do, you'll be instantly hooked. Last night my roomate thought there was a rave going on in my bedroom. Almost.

Techno Ejay was my first try at making my own Techno. It'spretty versatile, and easy to get started with. It has all of themajor features that all the various music sequencer software packages do, plus a HUGE library of sounds already included that you can experiment with.

One gripe would be that it doesn't allow you to edit .wav files with zoom-in/out-in-time and cut-and-paste. On the other hand, this thing has so many features, it may just be in there somewhere.

There is also no drum kit, and it doesn't have a filter sweep tool, so you're pretty much stuck with the pre-made samples or the simple melody generator. But, there are so many samples provided that you'll spend days playing with variations before you get to the point where you feel the need to make your own.

All-in-all, this was a good investment in my opinion. Not the whole enchilada, but a great way to get exposed to the technology without spending a lot.

I recommend this program to everyone who asks me how to start making their own Techno music. Techno Ejay has an easy interface that lines up the beats for you in the industry standard 140BPM, color-codes different types of loops, and requires no background in music theory. If you or your teenager are interested in trying your hand at making your own dance mixes, it's cheap enough that you won't have to worry about throwing your cash away on a phase. It may also get your child interested in practicing his/her instrument, for a change, (I did get an email that confirmed as much!)

All of its features are only enhanced by the addition of an experienced musician, and the 3,000 pre-designed loops can be grouped by pitch or saved as wavs for use in other programs.

I didn't start out to make this an ad for my website, but if you'd like to hear some examples of what you can do with Techno Ejay, all of the mixes I make that are labeled "techno" use Techno Ejay to some degree. On the "Yo Way Yo Remix" (on the Lexx Pages) and the "Happy, Happy, Joy Joy Remix", I used Techno EJay exclusively. I have a music theory background and 12 years of piano lessons (and other instruments) to my credit, so I could have written everything myself from scratch, but why do things the hard way if you don't have to?

I gave it only 4 stars because of a few glitches, however. I have found that on reloading a mix, any imported samples copy themselves and fill up my list with duplicates. Deleting them before finishing your mix erases them from your music. Also, occasionally while playing a mix, it will skip or repeat bars. Once mixed down to a wav, this disappears, so it's more annoying than harmful.

(....And if you're worried that Techno is somehow "musically low-brow", it's really just an electronic Fugue, much closer to classical music than rock! If it's good enough for Bach, it should be good enough for you or your children!)

Pet ;D

Techno Ejay is the easiest techno composer I have used thus far. I have tried Cakewalk and Rebirth...both good in their own right, but Techno Ejay sounds great, is the most versitile, and the easiest techno composer made! This is a MUST BUY for those aspiring techno creators.

How much easier can it be to create techno grooves than this? Drag and drop any of 3000 tuned and timed samples on to any of 16 stereo tracks. Cut, copy, and paste with ease. The samples are divided in to various categories (e.g. loop, bass, drums, synthesizer, voice, etc.) Import .wav files with the click of a mouse, time-stretch them if necessary, and drop them anywhere. Record your own samples from CD, DVD (with appropriate hardware) or Microphone. Create your own loops with the 4 measure, 64 note, 500 sample, monophonic, 1 octave Groove Generator (sequencer), or drop in your own samples for "grooving". Drop any sample into the Effects Studio to add reverb, echo, distortion, white noise, filtering, change pitch, etc. Adjust the individual track volumes before saving your mix as a .wav file suitable for burning on to a CD (with appropriate hardware). The sound quality is amazing with the 16/20 bit DSP sound cards commonly available in PCs today. For best results, you'll want the 1/2 gigabyte 5000 sample Dance eJay 2 Mega pack (and other CD-Rom sample collections) as the basic samples grow wearisome after a while. A 1 CD burner + 1 CD/DVD reader setup works best as the original (or backup) program disk is needed to run the program. You'll also want to graduate to high quality computer speakers, such as the Monsoon M-2000, for best results...A 7 minute .wav takes up about 75meg of hard disk space. Let the beat kick...

I checked out a demo of techno ejay and was hooked!!!! Anyone into electronic/club music should get this product. Hours of fun and the mixes sound professional. You could put your mixes on a cd and nobody would know that you created them on your pc.

First off, Techno EJay can use WAV files. Now the functionality of the program is not at a proffesional level, but it does allow almost anyone to be aurally expressive. The volume can become an issue, but there are ways around this. The fact that it has fifteen tracks is amazing allowing for technially detailed songs. One interesting aspect of Techno EJay is that the included sound samples sound more like trance. What makes this even more ironic is the inclusion of a demo for Trance EJay on the disc. The sound loop creation tools are easy to use and very helpful. I would reccomend this product to anyone who likes techno, and anyone who wants to get some experience making electronica for a very [low] price, compared to similar sound loop sequencers.

I had a lot of fun with this program and even have a CD worth of completed songs that have been well liked by all who have listened. Most people think that it is proffesional techno.

A good and incredibly simple to use piece of software. My copy didn't come with a manual or a help file on the CD yet i made a few very nice songs. Though for anyone who really wants to play around and sample and make techno music Sonic Foundry sells much better titles which allow more manipulation and over all compatibility. Being very into music I found this title very limiting and in the end not worth using. However if you don't intend to spend time(5hours) regularly making music this may work for you.