Level, Click on, Combine: The Mouse That Thought It Was a DJ Controller

There are unhealthy concepts, there are genuinely horrible concepts, after which there are concepts so magnificently misguided that they transcend criticism fully and arrive someplace near efficiency artwork. The DJ Mouse, launched by DJ-Tech in August 2009, sits firmly in that final class.

Solid your thoughts again to 2009. Serato was tightening its grip on the skilled market, Native Devices’ Traktor was profitable converts by the thousand, and controller tradition was simply starting its inexorable march towards the CDJ-shaped future we now inhabit. It was, briefly, a second that demanded daring considering. DJ-Tech duly obliged. Their reply to the query no one was asking was a 120-gram USB mouse with a built-in jog wheel, blue LED illumination, and a scratch pad that the corporate described, with admirable confidence, as being “optimised for scratch efficiency.”

Reader, it was a mouse mat.

To be honest to DJ-Tech, the ambition right here was not fully with out logic. DJs had been already looking at laptop computer screens. They had been already reaching for a mouse to navigate software program. Why not, the considering presumably went, put a jog wheel on the aspect of 1 and name it a revolution? It’s the form of reasoning that sounds completely cheap at two within the morning after a protracted session, and somewhat much less so while you write it on a product transient the next day.

The spec sheet, translated from what Future Music diplomatically described as “damaged English,” was genuinely fairly one thing. The DJ Mouse promised real-time mixing and scratching with digital information, six results with X and Y management pads, Auto BPM, Auto Combine, scratch direct entry reminiscence, and one thing referred to as “aluminum really feel.” Not precise aluminium, you perceive. The texture of aluminium. The aspiration of aluminium. A mouse that had clearly been watching plenty of MacBook unboxing movies.

It shipped bundled with Deckadance LE, Picture-Line’s DJ software program, which on the time was a wonderfully respectable piece of package. One somewhat suspects that Deckadance didn’t take into account this specific {hardware} partnership its proudest second. As Future Music famous on the time, the Picture-Line model “kinda takes successful on this one.”

The jog wheel, which DJ-Tech referred to as a “digital vertical wheel,” was positioned on the mouse in a means that required you to function it whereas concurrently making an attempt to maneuver the mouse, triggering results, and presumably sustaining some semblance of musical style. The wheel may deal with rewind and quick ahead, fader and knob management, and playlist scrolling. So may, it bears noting, a laptop computer’s trackpad. Or a finger. Or the mouse that already got here together with your laptop.

There was additionally the small matter of the scratch mat. Turntable-themed, naturally. DJ-Tech inspired customers to not get enthusiastic about it, which was sporting of them. In follow, scratching on a mouse with a jog wheel whereas looking at a laptop computer display produced one thing that resembled DJing in roughly the identical means that air guitar resembles enjoying a Les Paul. The spirit is current. The end result is considerably totally different.

To be clear, this was not fully with out precedent. The trade has a protracted and honourable custom of peripheral controllers that promised to bridge the hole between conventional DJing and software program, and most of them failed as a result of the hole in query was somewhat extra philosophical than bodily. What DJs truly wished was the tactile suggestions of {hardware} that felt like the actual factor, not a pc peripheral that had been given concepts above its station. The DJ Mouse sat on the flawed finish of that argument, and it sat there with appreciable conviction.

What makes the DJ Mouse genuinely loveable, looking back, is the sheer optimism of it. This was a product constructed on the idea that the DJ neighborhood would embrace a paradigm shift in how they interacted with their software program, and that this paradigm shift could be mouse-shaped. That perception turned out to be spectacularly flawed, however you can’t fault the dedication. The blue LED illumination alone speaks of a crew that cared, even when what they cared about was, structurally talking, a rodent.

The DJ Mouse pale from view with the quiet dignity of a product that by no means fairly discovered its crowd. You’ll be able to nonetheless discover the occasional itemizing for one on-line, often at a worth that means the vendor has both a way of humour or a really optimistic view of classic collectibles. It was, by any cheap measure, a failure. But it surely was a failure that deserved to exist, if solely to remind us that the historical past of DJ expertise is affected by the wreckage of completely honest ambitions, and that generally the flawed concept on the flawed second remains to be a greater story than no concept in any respect.

The DJ Mouse had six results, a scratch mat, and the soul of a dreamer. It deserved higher than a world that was not prepared for it. Then once more, the world was fully prepared for it. It simply selected to not trouble.