mr_john

Good people skills. So you can talk to club owners, sell yourself, leave them with a good impression.

I like the general idea. But I can’t really make the name out. Maybe tweak the D a little?

I just dove right in with only a little bit of screwing around with garageband under my belt. I followed the tutorials, picked up the basics, watched some videos on youtube, and screwed around with it for a while before I felt confident actually working with it (ableton).

I strongly recommend “the dance music manual” by rick snoman. It explains exactly what everything is and does. Compressors, filters, oscillators, etc.

I like whanging something in randomly, yet to the beat. That’s partly why dubstep is my favorite genre to mix. Be going along in a nice song and then at a peak or a downbeat I’ll throw the fader and make my own drop. It’s one of my favorite tricks to hear other DJ’s use as well. The more “out of place” it seems, the more I like the idea of it.
I also like to tease the song in. Fade the chorus or a well know bar in randomly throughout the current song to get some reactions, and to get their “music mind” on the same page as mine.
Sometimes there’s the overcompensate pitch slide technique. Take the pitch much further down than you need to and give it the dramatic slowdown effect, then take it up to where you need it to mix. The dramatic shift makes the difference harder to keep track of. Not something I like to use often though. It rarely sounds that good to me.

Good transition songs are the best method though. I’ve stumbled upon most of mine entirely by accident just by throwing a random track in A and a random one in B and seeing how they work together.

Dubstep is on the way out. But that doesn’t mean it will go away. Apparently Basshunter is making a dubstep song and if that doesn’t kill it, idk what will.

Deadmau5’s popularity is actually quite confusing to me. He has his songs that get played on the radio as singles and whatnot. But the majority of his stuff is not something I would think the mainstream would like. Repetitive, a little bit strange, not exactly what I would call “for the general public.” But what do I know…
As much as I don’t like hip house, I suppose I should be thankful for it as it gives me something I can at least sort of enjoy at clubs. David Guetta is better than regular old hip-hop any day.

The new dubstep seems to be electro. I’m throwing my 5 bucks in the music trend pool behind it.

I suppose I’m lacking in this department. But a local DJ around here makes his own shirts. He throws them out at shows and sells them for like 3-5 bucks. I’ve always thought that was pretty cool. You can’t really do that at a club though haha

IMO I wouldn’t sell yourself on your difference. Although I’m not exactly sure what you mean by branching out?? Integrating karaoke with a DJ set?

the “I’m on tour a lot” excuse doesn’t do it for me. A lot of shows say either “Live” or “DJ set” somewhere in their information. For example deadmau5 who plays his music live, also does his unplugged shows where it’s just djing. Same with nero. And I wouldn’t expect either of them to just pop on a CD and play solitaire for 2 hours while bobbing their head. If it’s going to be a DJ set, that’s fine, but don’t lie about it. I feel no sympathy for the guys spinning off the same tracks gig after gig. If they can’t handle mixing live every show, then I think they’re in the wrong business. DJ’s have more musical freedom than any other musician. You think the foo fighters don’t get tired of playing the same songs at every show? As a DJ, and especially as an international star DJ, you can spin something totally random in on a whim. If you’re bored by your set, that’s your own fault.

It’s this sort of behavior that makes no one take digital DJing seriously. I can’t even imagine playing a recorded set. It would take all the fun and passion out of it. If I step on a frayed cable in a puddle of beer get electrocuted and die, I want the crowd to know it within a short period of time.:cool: