The deck sections roughly mirror most of the controls that you might find on a good CD turntable, and the mixer is a simple two-channel affair that lets you blend tracks between them.
But he moves memorably inside his listeners, as evidenced in his current CD, "Joe Alterman: Give Me the Simple Life" (mileshighrecords.com) with bassist James Crammach, drummer Herlin Riley and, of course, Mr. Person.