Guy Hagen

I don’t think this movie will make even a small dent in the number of people who want to be DJs. If it had come out five years ago, maybe. But EVERYONE is a DJ now. There’s nobody left to convert.

I’ll speak as a patron of beer bars and beer halls, not as a DJ. I go to beer bars to relax, drink a bit, and hang out- not to dance. The places with the best vibes are the ones where the music is appropriate in energy and quiet enough to stay in the background.

BIG beer halls tend to be European (German, Polish, Czech), so the best music to play there would be traditional German music or the Polka, or anything else that sounds traditional and European. I’ve heard indie rock and Top 40 at big halls and they’re mood killers.
Small, intimate places vary more in their moods and atmospheres. If it’s a low-key place where people just relax and unwind, smooth, saxophone-y jazz works great. If it’s a sleek, sexy kind of bar, Deep House might be appropriate, but stay away from Nu Disco or anything too “feel-good.” I once went to a very dimly lit, swanky bar that had a great interior, and was about to sit down when loud Disco music started playing. My girlfriend and I walked out immediately. I LOVE disco music, but it was absolutely the wrong thing to hear in that environment.

So the important thing, like DJ Vintage said, is to know the environment you’ll be playing in. Visit the place and hang out for a while. Have a beer and get a feel for the place. There’s no magic formula that will work everywhere you go.

Dude, all the practice in the world won’t help to get rid of jealousy. People who are overly jealous if they aren’t as good as someone else are the same type of people who become overly cocky dickbags as soon as they DO become better than someone else. So jealousy isn’t what you need to deal with- it’s yourself. The more experiences you have and the more you succeed and fail, the more perspective you’ll gain, and you’ll (hopefully) just grow out of it. It takes way more energy to be jealous of someone’s success than to be happy for them.

I think in this situation you’re in the right. They sprung this on you last minute, so that’s on them. HOWEVER- imagine if you ALREADY HAD salsa music with you that you were familiar with. You’d get tons of props. It’s definitely worth getting and familiarizing yourself with various types of latin music (salsa, bachata, bossa nova, tango). Doesn’t have to as in-depth as your EDM collection obviously, maybe 2-3 hours worth. The same holds true for jazz, classical, and various “ethnic” music styles. I have a CD of french accordion music that I pretty much never ever play, but it’s there for those very rare occasions. I think I’ve played it in front of people only once- it was a small, cozy setting and it was the PERFECT thing to play. I don’t know if I’ll ever play it again but I’ll always have it with me.

If you’re unprepared for these kinds of curve-balls that’s fine. You weren’t hired to play Salsa so expecting you to wouldn’t be fair. But being able to deliver in these situations will certainly leave good impressions with people. And if you search for salsa or tango or whatever on your own and get what YOU like, you’ll be more likely to have fun with it.

A general idea is to do some math and figure out how much the gig is going to cost YOU (transportation, rentals, any gear you’ve recently invested in) and then add an hourly rate for yourself on top of that. The total will be the price you charge

Good for you man, nobody needs that kind of crap. There are some people that just need to be phased out

The absolute WORST was when I forgot to configure the latency settings of my soundcard. They were much too low so when I hit play, the sound was COMPLETELY destroyed. I’m talking everything- the bass was gone, and the mids/highs were all scrambled. And I didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late. I went on to a packed dancefloor, and after five minutes it was empty.

Have you ever had that “I wish I could melt into the floor” feeling? Those were the longest five minutes of my life.

The only way I know of to tell if your AIFF file is identical to the original master is to get a copy of the track that you’re 100 PERECNT SURE is full-quality, put them both into audacity (or any other DAW), line them up perfectly, and invert the phase of one of the tracks. If they’re identical, they’ll cancel out and you won’t hear anything. If they’re slightly different, that difference will be heard. It’ll just sound like a quiet, high-frequency, distorted version of the track.

However, that probably isn’t much use to you since you only have the one AIFF file.
To be honest there is no other way to really tell- you just need to buy from reputable sellers like DJ Vintage said. And even THEN you can’t be sure, as I’ve heard of labels screwing up and submitting mp3s converted to wavs to stores like beatport.

Have you considered the possibility that your files ARE full-quality, just that they’re poorly mixed or mastered? I think that’s what’s most likely going on. If it’s old music, also consider the possibility that it might be converted from vinyl. Not even in the sense of it being a bootleg- studios do it all the time.