All about DJing and Disco

Welcome to Disco Chap

Welcome to Disco Chap! This is a website all about disco, dance music, the art of DJing, and vinyl culture.

Hi, I’m Tom. I’ve been a hobby and occasional club DJ for over 20 years, and I love music with an absolute passion.

I’ve travelled for music festivals across Europe, I’ve organised club nights, presented radio shows, and back in the day I played to a packed club most weekends.

My goal with Disco Chap is to collect and share my love and knowledge of music and DJ culture. So whether you’re a veteran DJ, or a newbie looking to get started, I hope you find something you like here.

What’s the Disco Chap’s current DJ setup?

My DJ setup hasn’t changed much over the years! Only my mixer has changed a couple of times. If you’re interested, my current setup looks like this in 2021:

  • Turntables: 2 x Technics SL-1200 turntables. I blew my first student loan on these DJ turntables, and despite moving from city to city, they’ve been faithful to me ever since! I love the silver finish and they are simply rock-solid. A classic piece of engineering! (Excuse me while I continue to stroke my chin.)

  • Mixer: MasterSounds Radius 2. This is a gorgeous rotary mixer which I picked up during the lockdowns of 2020. It’s soooo smooth and gives a beautiful sound. I enjoy playing it.

  • Vinyl controller: Traktor Audio 6 with Traktor Pro 3 software on Mac. I like to DJ with vinyl and digital, and my preference is to use a digital vinyl system (DVS). With the Audio 6 + Traktor Pro, I can flip between playing analogue vinyl or digital files, using my Technics turnables as the control surface. Dreamy. The beauty of digital, but analogue!

  • Software: I use Loopback from Rogue Amoeba for macOS which allows me to route audio feeds to different apps (e.g. if I need to stream audio to Twitch)

Where does the name ‘Disco Chap’ come from?

Let me tell you the story of the name Disco Chap.

A few years ago, I was getting ready to play a DJ set at my friends’ wedding. One of the bride’s relatives came up to me and started a conversation.

The man and I had never met before. We quickly got to the classic wedding icebreaker: “So how do you know the bride and groom?” he asked. I replied that I knew both of them from university, and that I was just getting ready to play the wedding disco.

In reply, the kind man said this:

Oh, so you’re the disco chap!

Yes, I was “the disco chap”. And that name stuck, really.

When I started this site, Disco Chap just seemed like the obvious choice for a name. (And fortunately, discochap.com was available!)

So here I am, Tom, aka Disco Chap, at your service.

I hope you enjoy browsing, just as much as I enjoyed creating this site for you!