Depends on the style, I mix tech house/minimal generally and sometimes long 2-3 minute mixes are perfect, I'm from a more "traditional" background and was brought up with long outro-intro mixing. I generally don't like when a DJ is cutting, doing short mixes, throwing effects all over the top of a tune, tends to piss me off in 99% of the cases (James Zabiela is a perfect example, technically brilliant, but annoying as hell to watch) Look at DJs like Digweed, Burridge, Villalobos, Derrick May etc etc you never hear them mashing tunes up, it's just a different style. not right or wrong. Certainly not a sign of a bad/boring DJ. It's gotta be done right though, on the 32/64 bar, in key etc etc.
I hear what the OP is saying. My 1-hour sets are usually about 20-23 songs depending on the genre, which is usually house, breaks, or dubstep. I don't like to let tracks go on to the point that the crowd gets bored, however, I tend to let newer songs that I like and want to be heard run a little longer than usual.
I felt inclined to share this. I was out this weekend in Philly and was out at a completely packed club. The DJ was using SSL/1200s/Pio mixer/ I saw him tweeking a few EQs here and there, but sware he played most of the night in Internal mode. No beatmatching/No mixing ..just slammed from song to song on the "1" Internally I was so frustrated and couldn't even enjoy myself until I started to look around at this over capacity club with everyone jamming out and now fully understand how song selection >>>> mixing. Not that I advocate this style, but it's not about showing off to the 3 other DJs in the room as much as keeping the other 300 people dancing/drinking.
I agree with all these points. I'd go even further add that DJs who simply hit the sync button going from one drum intro to the next are little more than glorified jukeboxes in today's auto-sync age. I'm not a beat mix purist, but if you're going to mix this lazily, what's the point? Now I'm a little confused. Since most EDM tracks are about 6-9 minutes, that's a pretty substantial edit. I've noticed EDM intros have gotten much longer since the nineties. 16/32 bar intros were the norm but now 64 seems standard. The buildups are also much longer. I'm even setting my first real musical cue point 2-3 minutes into the song now and then. Maybe the lazier DJ's are following this trend?
Exactly this!!! If I have a song that i think is just totally Banging...or its a brand new track that got released a week ago i do let it play out...but usually only from the first buildup to the beginning of the Outro then start mixing new stuff in.
It is actually very genre specific these days. Trance/Progressive usually have very long intro outtros and are on average of 7 minutes long Electro/Fidget/Breaks are usually around 5:30 mark...with the intro being 1 minute and the outtro being 1 minute. A lot of the main stream commercial music follows the same pattern. You will notice a lot of radio edits are 3:30 long...which is pretty much the whole song except the intro and outtro House(eurohouse not club house)/Deephouse/Techhouse have the similar pattern but vary in song lenth...5:30-9minutes
