SCHIES

In my opinion, what I found most important in pursuing my passion is surrounding myself with people who believe in what I do and give me the support that I need to keep pushing forward. Without them I don’t know where I’d be. So I found it helpful to team up and collaborate with other people who share the same beliefs, so that we can all work together to become successful.

I can definitely relate with what you are going through. It’s hard, especially when you have a lot going on and find it difficult to set aside time to work on your passion. I had many setbacks along the way where I would feel discouraged and even doubted myself whether or not it was all worth it. The most important thing to remember is your reason why you started DJ’ing in the first place. Knowing that, will help motivate you towards your dreams regardless of all the obstacles you might face. “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you will be successful.” – Eric Thomas.

What I found that has helped me in creating my mixtapes is to always have a notebook next to you where you can jot down notes. This is especially useful when you are practicing and you happen to mix two songs that really mix well together or songs that are in the same key. Write those two songs down and build your set list from there, grouping those songs into groups of 3’s that mix well into each other and you will gradually have a whole list of songs to choose from.

Then what you can do from that list is to go through it and take out along the way what you feel doesn’t sound right to you. Like what others have said, it also helps to have an overall theme in mind where you can revolve your set list around and continue to come up with new ideas for your mixtape.

Hesseldunk.dj said: ↑
[INDENT=1]Looks great to me! I found using tumblr for my blog was really great, although I personally wanted to keep my blog and my website a bit separated. But your take on using it as a website is interesting and I like it![/INDENT]

Hesseldunk, your website is very well done and I appreciate your feedback!

Hi Matt,

To be honest, I’ve been DJ’ing for a little over a year now and I still sometimes find myself having trouble trying to figure out unique ways to mix two songs together. A resource that has helped me a lot in developing my skills was when I recently discovered this Ebook: http://www.mixedinkey.com/Book/ It goes into detail about Harmonic Mixing and explains different approaches when mixing.

Another helpful tip would be to set various hot cue points: one on the first kickdrum of a tune, the next for when the vocals kick in, the start of the breakdown, and one for the peak of the tune so you can always easily switch between the cue points to add a little something extra to your mixes. If there is a vocal right before it I always like to have a hotcue sitting there (ie. when one song is just about to go mental I immediately crossfade and hit the hot cue that will start the “drop” of another track that is in the same key and mixes well with the previous track.)

Don’t give up, keep working at it…hope this helps! =]

MixedInKey has a great ebook that has recently been released which might help you improve your mixes.
The ebook can be found online for free here: http://www.mixedinkey.com/Book/

What my business cards look like, used photoshop along with overprints.com