mr_john

Music is over regulated and artists are over compensated for it. Money should not even be a factor, but the wonderful system of capitalism saw to that. Personally I would feel pretty damn good about life if my album was the top downloaded thing on pirate bay. Do I have to make a living? Yes, and there will be people that buy albums sure. But that’s not how you make a living as an artist. TOURS are how you break even. And it’s never the “up-and-coming” artists whose albums get pirated. It’s the enormous names who have more money than they know what to do with.

What brings in more profits? Album sales or album exposure? If you can spread your music around 10 people at 5 bucks an album great. If you can spread your album to 100 people for free isn’t that better? Don’t you create a larger fan base who then buys merchandise, goes to shows, tells their friends, and buys albums later?

The thing holding these “fringe” artists back isn’t album sales, it’s exposure. Half the reason the sales even matter is because they are what the charts are based on.

Whoever owns that place is an idiot for hiring him. I can’t decide if you should sell yourself on being able to blow him out of the water or what. Maybe they know him. How you come to own a club without knowing what DJ is… I can’t even imagine. Yes you should go to management and say “your DJ is a joke, hire me” Provided he’s not someone’s son or something.

I’ve never in my life seen a “DJ” do this. Even the guy who did the children’s parties and the music for the skating rink put at least a little thought into it. The closest I can get to this is house parties where some jerk puts on his ipod and plays the same 20 songs, of course pausing it while he stares stupidly at the screen to look for a new song.

wooooooooooooooww.. This is incredible! Must contact promoters to give them this idea!

I think something off eco’s album m(you)sic would fit nicely. Not technically anything about space in there but I think it fits the mood. There’s the killers with spaceman, and a trance classic oceanlabs “Satellite.” Shogun has Space Odyssey. Daft punk’s one more time would fit, you could maybe do something funky with Trains drops of jupiter, owl city has a few “spacey” songs. LBLs Leave the world behind. If you play dubstep there’s dark side dub by Zeds Dead with star wars sounds in it.

Smart playlists are a lot of work at first, but they “pay for themselves” really quickly. I now religiously tag everything new I add and it sorts itself out over the course of my listening, commenting, and rating it.

Ultimately I’d say it’s personal decision, pick whatever clicks with you. Just take it a little more in depth. For example I use my itunes for both personal use and DJing, so I have it organized via playlist names. I use numbers for DJing, makes it easy because it’s right there at the top. 1 chill, 2 comin up, 4 mids, 5 highs, 6 comedowns, 7 big bangers, 8 mix crate. Then I have either-or playlists “Best of: house, trance, dubstep, electro, etc.”

I have about 15 different genres of playable stuff. I try to keep it as simple as possible, and I classify them according to my standards. What’s house to someone else isn’t house to me and vice versa. But I know where to find everything, well most of the time.

I started from the genres and worked my way up. It took some time to go through my whole library, but my stuff eventually got organized. Most of the time, I consider an entire artist trance, or house, or whatever. Only in extreme cases will I individually classify a song. Once I had the genres in order, I started making folders to filter songs in via my ratings and other things. So now if I’m listening to music and I think “this would mix really well with….” I can just pop into itunes, add “mix with ….” in the comments and it filters into my mix crate playlist.

I don’t know if I can pin it down on one thing. I was interested in production long before DJing. I got interested in DJing as a “must know how to do to be successful as an EDM producer” thing. But the more I learned about it, the more interested I became in it. Now I tend to split my time between the 2 rather unproductively.

I have to give credit to ellaskins. Before I had my mixer, before I really knew much of anything about it I was just browsing youtube for DJ tutorials and random information. I happened across one of his videos and thought it was great. He made the topic extremely accessible. I have a somewhat musical background, I understood what beatmatching was, and knew how to count music. But I knew next to nothing about what DJing actually meant. He made it all make sense, but more importantly made it fun and interesting. I still find his videos very inspirational.

I love reason. It doesn’t feel like a stand-alone program to me though. I use it in conjunction with ableton. But this may just be because I know ableton better than reason. Learning curves pretty steep though. Throw something like the thor synth at a new guy and you’ll have no idea where to even begin. If you’re willing to read and watch tutorials though you’ll figure it out.

deadmau5 takes his synths with him, if he passes out on stage the show stops. I’ve been to 2 of his shows and you could tell he was playing live. As for his unplugged sets who can say, but he doesn’t even classify himself as a DJ. Seen his light show recently? Pretty technical if you ask me. You can still plan a set without miming it.

I don’t go to shows to see awesome visuals, they are a bonus. The first time I saw deadmau5 there was nothing more than a few tv screens with some basic patterns flashing on them. That remains the best show I’ve ever been to. I also saw Paul Van Dyk a few years ago, considering his level of fame the stage should have been incredible. Nope, 3 TVs and a few LED strips. I’ve since been to shows with lasers, flame cannons, massive screens, all manner of visual trickery. That’s cool and all, but I’m there for the music first everything else second.

I’ve never bought the lighting excuse. Rock bands have had pyrotechnics for years. They don’t mime it just so the lights flash at the right time. I don’t understand why DJing has to be any different.