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backtothefront
ParticipantI love DJing in bars, one of my favourite residencies was weekly in a bar, really, really enjoyed it. Gives you a chance to play for 4 hours+ and try out different tracks, which for me is part of the attraction, I love DJing long sets. I mainly play Soulful & Deep House which tends to sit easier on the ears in a bar, but also works very well in a club environment as well of course!
I also agree with much said above, it’s not an easy gig either, you’re not there to fill a floor necessarily but you are there to entertain and build the evening, even educate I would say. You will get a lot more requests, so be polite and if you have said track, I would suggest playing said request from time to time. It depends on the bar but I was lucky that it was known for playing house and a more clued up customer, so no real top40 requests. Also watch the volume, people still want to talk without screaming at each other, you’re there to add atmosphere, not to rinse out the jesus’ pose.
ParticipantI see it slightly differently; ‘EDM’ is a recent construct, more a sub genre of dance music as a whole, I’d never heard of the term until a few years ago when Guetta, SHM, Skrillex starting entering the US mainstream Top40.
With regard to the OP’s point on newness, for me it’s always been about mixing up the old with the new, a track doesn’t stop being great after 1 month. There’s a good 25 years of House music to choose from.
D-Jam, I hear what you’re saying however I do miss the chasing down of limited quantities of tracks on vinyl, the visits to record shops, building a rapport with the guys behind the counter etc etc – it was also a great way to get gigs and meet others in the local scene; it was part of the DJing experience for me. The advent of digital DJing has seriously reduced my expenditure which is a good thing however there is an awful lot of tracks being released, most of which are mediocre at best. I do find it a little soulless scrolling through various sites, clicking and listening to samples sometimes.
ParticipantTerry_42, post: 28015, member: 1843 wrote: Currently there seems to be a lot of problems going on with USB 3.0 and DJ controllers, especially with Windows drivers and even with many modern controllers.
I tried to compile a list which work and which do not, but it is nearly impossible, because you also get a lot of different reports about the same controller…. so the best thing it prolly to simply grab your laptop and go to a DJ store and try some controllers on it or use a internet retailer that offers money back if it does not work for you.Terry’s spot on here. There is a fairly wide problem with audio cards via USB3.0 and despite being ‘backwards compatible’ there is quite a difference between the two standards. This affects all OS including Mac OS. There has been extensive investigations by the NI Traktor Forum members to find workarounds, some include uninstalling USB3.0 drivers and forcing USB2.0 drivers to be installed for the ports as well already mentioned using a powered USB2.0 hub. Some work, some don’t but the general picture seems to be it’s the group behind USB3.0 who are responsible as opposed to the manufacturers of soundcards (NI for example) as the suggestion is there is an inherent stumbling block with audio via USB3.0. I’m not sure about this myself, but hey I’m no expert. A solution must be found as more and more laptops/PCs coming to market will be USB3.0 only.
ParticipantDj Neonglass (NL), post: 27388, member: 1183 wrote: If you missed the documentary on Channel 4 last Friday about “How Clubbing Changed The World” then you can watch again here:
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Actor and international DJ Idris Elba counts down the defining moments of the greatest cultural phenomenon of our generation in a programme featuring some of the biggest names in dance music.
Twenty-five years after the birth of rave, a new generation of British DJs and producers are at the forefront of a global musical revolution.
From trance to dubstep, the sound of British producers has now become the most sought-after commodity for the biggest pop stars on the planet.
Reaching far beyond the sweaty dance floors of the Hacienda and the Ministry of Sound, this programme reveals how British nightclubbing transformed our nation and influenced societies across the world.
With personal insights and club-raising anecdotes from David Guetta, Armand van Helden, Paul Oakenfold, will.i.am, Nile Rodgers, Goldie, Pete Tong, Katy B, Skream and former Home Secretary Michael Howard, amongst many more, this entertaining and thought-provoking film celebrates the British success story that has conquered the world.
From sun-kissed holidays on the party island of Ibiza to the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, and from illegal warehouse raves to Labour’s 1992 adoption of D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better, clubbing has touched everyone’s life whether they know it or not.
This is an international story, going beyond the music to look at clubbing’s influence on everything from real estate to drug use, fashion, politics and the drinks industry.
How Clubbing Changed the World explores how clubbing went from a counter-cultural movement that defined a generation to a multi-billion-pound business, and reveals how, 25 years on, Great Britain is still king of the underground.
I thought it was a very good documentary over 2 hours and did a good job considering the wealth of historical information available from the last 25 years of modern dance music. I must admit I did enjoy the quote about dance music being the greatest export to the world from the UK – we get knocked and knock ourselves a lot, but the UK does do a bloody good job when it comes to music.
Participantljstevens, post: 26463, member: 3022 wrote: Hi back to the front!
It was great wasn’t it! It was scary how much the British clubbing scene has brought to the world today!! Are you based in the UK?
Hey ljstevens, was v gd indeed! 🙂 I am in the UK. Quite a few flashbacks for me when watching the program too 😉
ParticipantKristjanKaluza, post: 24231, member: 2733 wrote: Big time Djs all use cdjs, because they have learned to dj on them. There were no controllers, when they started to dj.
But time is changing. I bet in 5 years there will be more Djs who will use laptops, than djs who will use cdjs. Even new Cdjs can controll traktor pro or serato scratch :p
Time is changing….I’d actually say most of the big name, established DJ’s learnt on vinyl, then moved to CDJs – although the transition wasn’t over night, there was a very similar dismissiveness to CDJs when they appeared on the market. In some scenes vinyl is still king.
ParticipantJust watched the 2 hour ‘How Clubbing Changed The World’, superb documentary, highly recommend everyone to watch it. ‘Dance music is the greatest export to the World from the UK’, loved that quote 🙂
Participantsketosomania, post: 26300, member: 2642 wrote: When in a bar or club do you prepare your set and then thrown in a mix or perform it totally live?
For Ex I cannot play tracks untill I have prepared a set for myself and know when to mix and drop.I can certainly mix but I tend to use many edits in a track to make my set better. Ex dropping when the main vocals hit etc.Is it wrong to pre-prepare and then mix ?
Also I know I can’t take requests when I am preparedEveryone is different, so whatever work flow works for you is fine IMHO. However I don’t really plan/prepare sets or pre analyse tracks in Traktor etc. I have a folder which acts as my current crate and swap tunes in/out every couple of weeks. I tend to know what the first 2 tunes will be, then the rest of the set is on the fly, it allows flexibility to adjust to the crowd, previous/next DJ etc. The trick is to know your tunes fairly well.
As an aside, I DJ’d at a festival last weekend and decided to take some vinyl as a backup in case any thing went wrong with Traktor/S4; I had to chuckle, it took a good few hours to get all the digital kit prepared, check cables, check laptop, ensure TP2.5.1. was still stable, copy across tunes etc etc. Picking a box of 50 tunes on vinyl took 10 minutes!! 😉
ParticipantInteresting topic, in the last few months I’ve had no end of problems with iTunes tracks being corrupted after download. I’ve found that if the track is taking a long time to download i.e. several minutes, it is likely it will be playable in iTunes but not in mediaplayer or Traktor, others which download in a few seconds are fine. It appears to be random in terms of which cause problems. I’ve re-downloaded tracks on the laptop and on iPhone and have the same problem but it’s not always the same tracks which are corrupt. I’ve been through the usual checks, latest iTunes version, broadband connection is a steady 8mbps, even tried different devices; all with the same, random results. I’ve emailed Apple about this and simply got the tracks put back in the download queue, which mostly seems to fix things but as usual no real explanation of the cause just a lot of apologetic text.
August 17, 2012 at 8:27 am in reply to: Name one good thing and one bad thing about your DJ headphones #1009859ParticipantTechnics RPDJ1200’s
Good: 1 pair: gigged constantly for 17 years and still going strong.
Bad: The rotary mechanism on the right cup is broken and is taped up plus the cups are well worn. 😉ParticipantBeedle, post: 26055, member: 651 wrote: Yeah i think most of us would have a foot in both camps, i also started in the mid-90’s (horrendous Citronic Belt-Drive decks with a mind of their own tempo-wise!) and probably like most of us here i spent months and months train-wrecking before finally starting to grasp certain techniques that worked, (counting bars, dropping the first beat at the start of the bar etc etc blah blah 🙂 ) and i pretty much did it all with no outside help, but that said, its a totally different world now and if people want to ask for help the internets the place to do it, and it can probably get people mixing and playing out in much less time (again, not always a good thing, haha), but i do agree with the OP in that some of the questions being asked just seem SO basic, with so little understanding of the music itself, that IMO some people just ‘want to be DJ’s’, rather than getting into it because you just cant get enough of the music, which should really be the only reason you get into the whole thing!
I’m probably coming across as a bit of a purist, which i’m honestly not, use the tools at hand to get better by all means, but dont just ask people basically ‘how do i DJ?!!!!!!!’ Practice for hours coz ya love it!
Well put, agree def. I similarly remember starting out on Soundlab Belt drive TT’s and it was only when I saw a mate a few months later that it finally clicked. I’d already grasped the phrasing of dance music and mixing in general from listening to mixtapes, but the actual transition from hearing to doing was the bit I struggled with. I recall it being a revelation when it happened! 🙂
Participantlongmover, post: 25962, member: 1361 wrote: One thing ive found about this site is the amount of questions asked on the musical aspect of Dj’ing: what track to start a mix, how to mix techno, how to fininsh a set, how to progaremme a mix, what to play for what crowd
whatever happended to learning all this stuff yourself?
I know the modern media we have gives instant access to all the answears at the click of a button but the amount of dj’s out that have gained knowledge from being told how to do things rather than learning it for themselves is for me very disheartening. This is why i beleive the crop of djs that started before the internet gained mass appeal to be a lot better than now. (massive generalisation I know)
its can be daunting stepping into the world of dj’ing but please have that pioneering spirit guys try things for yourselves before asking, you could suprise yourselves.
I tend to agree with this and I’m certainly not out to criticise new DJ’s just coming on board but it does seem there is a general lack of a bit of effort to search out for yourself, self learning if you like. Of course there’s nothing wrong with asking questions, it part of this learning process but before the internet it was a case of watching other DJ’s play, listen to mixtapes, go to your local record shop; and that was pretty much all you had to go on, the rest was up to you. In a wider context the net is a superb tool clearly, but I think on the whole we’ve become too accustomed to simply rely on it and not experiment/learn/play on our own.
ParticipantPropellerhead’s Recycle – been around for years but is superb for creating loops. Mostly used for creating REX files for use in Reason (DAW) but outputs WAV too and is brilliantly easy to use and effective for very tight loops/samples.
August 13, 2012 at 7:02 am in reply to: Mixed in Key 5.0 (is it worth the money 4 beginner dj's) #1009607ParticipantDean Logan, post: 25759, member: 2944 wrote: Hey.
Well I have been DJ’n since about Christmas so im a little bit more advanced than a beginner. I wanted 2 take my mixing to th next level now and really nail it and this seemed to be th programme for it. I thought mixing was all about harmonic mixing etc, Im sure a Adele song wont mix in well with Slipknot (thats an extreme example).
I just think its alot of money for something that I could get for free. Why all th cost?
Greetings and welcome on board. Just a couple of points, glad you’re progressing well, but 8 months is still relatively a short time in terms of learning how to DJ, in fact, the learning process doesn’t really stop – you sort of suggest as much if you think ‘mixing is all about harmonic mixing’ – one element of a vast array of techniques/styles. Secondly I’m confused, why do you think you should get some software for free that people have spent time, expertise and money to create a product such as MiK, do you extend this to DJing software or music?!
This is not meant to be critical but you’ve received some good advice in the posts above but of course it’s up to you if you choose to take it onboard.
Cheers.
ParticipantKnowledge magazine is really good. I’d also seriously suggest BBC 1Xtra’s shows: D&B shows with Bailey and Crissy Criss, very, in fact, incredibly upfront D&B tunage on both their shows, just expect a long wait for some of the tunes, but really you could do a lot worse than check them out.
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