On Djing...

what kind of venue is it?

It's actually a very long but narrow room with booths either side. The strip of hardwood inbetween could be used for dancing, were one so inclined. I'm not sure how London licensing laws about people "swaying rhythmically to a beat" may constrict us, or not.

And did I mention it's in Camden?

call it chalk farm, it sounnds classier.

I really shouold sort out that place for yoink!

Spot on. My description was obviously v. accurate!

First three,

If you can scratch well(or not), here ya go:

1. Start it up with a sexy hip hop joint or a downtempo track. Nothing bangin', just sweet yet attention grabbing. Make it a track that people aren't exactly familiar with but you wanna make them curious. You must scratch/mix something with it you are sure of your abilities though.
2. Mystic Moods' "Cosmic Sea" is a massive cut to ease into as a second song. Flip it and mix/scratch with something comfy.
3. When the ridiculousness goin' off, the crowd should be into it, then really go into funky overdrive with something like "Theme from Blackbelt Jones" or your holy grail blaxploitation of choice. The party should be off to a good start at this point.

Then when they are getting drunk and frisky and ready to dance,"More, More, More" and "White Lines" are never disappointing spins.

try to keep it interesting, that's my only advice.

i opened my last set with the books' "enjoy your worries, you may never have them again" with robert ashley's "in sara, mencken, christ & beethoven..."... tried to keep it fun and strange.

closed with a bird songs record that i was messing with into the long intro to the colette no5 DFA mix of casiotone for the painfully alone's "baby it's you"... for me it's just something that makes my hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

i really want to do this in some form or another and i think i have a potential foothold at an older gay bar in town. i know/am casual friends with the manager and i've asked him a few times about an empty monday night slot. he's been a little cool about it so far but encouraged me to come on a monday and hear what the later guy was playing. i'm not really hip to popular gay classics or anything but i think some italo and etc. disco wouldn't bomb? (crowd is older gay dudes and random hustlers.) the manager is an ex-cattle-showing country guy who probably wouldn't get too excited if i talked to him in playlist-ese, which is how i'm used to talking to people about music. but i really think the bar (one of the oldest landmarks in the city but kind of "uncool" now) might benefit from something a little more interesting than what it plays right now -- bring in a younger crowd, etc., but also keep its current clientele psyched to come out.

really my question is how should i make this happen? (obviously the first step would be to go there on a monday night and check it out and talk to manager; i haven't yet because of the holidays and assorted stress.) any things to say / pitfalls to avoid? i really want to dj somewhere, somehow, and right now this seems like my best bet.

in general though, how pathetic and gauche is it these days to do the mp3jay thing with an ipod? i think at this particular bar no one would really give a shit, but if i want to keep it up / do something else... i need to invest in a turntable and start buying vinyl right?

re general dj-ing advice: what's the best way for someone who likes music a lot and likes watching people enjoy music and has music he thinks people would enjoy to start playing enjoyable music for people in a public (or any kind of) setting? keep in mind i'm not very good w/ people or schmoozing but getting better and i feel like this is necessary for my future uh happiness. thanks

do you have a laptop?

download traktor and use that.

Based on my experience I'd give two general pieces of advice:
1) Get used to people making ridiculous wishes for a tune, and generally not understanding you don't have every record they'd like to hear readily available in your bag.
2) Get used to people trying to hit on you.

I've DJed mostly in university student parties though, maybe your club is a more specialized setting so these things won't happen so often.

I am a rock guy that came to the DJ game pretty late. It's a fucking blast getting to play my records for other people.

Here's a few quick tips:

1) unless you are going to do dance nights, you don't need to learn to beat match, scratch, or show off any other "skills"

2) FLOW is the single most important thing you can provide. Don't fuck with the audience repeatedly, even if you're playing adventurous music. At least use the "punishment/reward" concept if you must satisfy yourself

3) Don't be embarrassed to pick up a really cheap and useful book called "How do Dj Right". I read great reviews of it, and was blown away at how simple and correct its methodology is.

***

Other than that, yeah--don't use mp3s if you can help it. That's gay.

BTW, you don't need to own turntables unless you're going to do a lot of gigs at places that don't already have them. I do recommend investing in your own cartridges though. That will run you around $60 and will save your records from harsh needles on public decks.

Also, in case you didn't get it, my mp3 comment was a joke. I rely heavily on my vinyl collection because I don't beat match or whatever. So I fall back on two things: my great record collection and my immaculate flow.

:)

Oh yeah, one more thing I've learned: the more drunk the crowd, the less adventurous music the probably want to hear. If you're playing at some club centred around certain genre(s) it might be different, but in general clubs people just want to have a bit of fun and not expand their musical horizons too much.

i've got good flow, thanks. gr8080, no laptop :(. do you think a cheap-ish notebook/laptop w/ traktor or whatever is a better investment for all-purpose dance-ish semi-weirdo dj-ing than a turntable in the future?

tuomas, i'm not gonna be too weird. if anything i'm too sensitive to crowd moods--that is, if i take advice from upthread and don't do it drunk.

And Nate is correct about not needing specialized DJ skills: if it's not a dance or hip-hop club, people probably don't care shit about such tricks. Basically you just need to learn to use the crossfader and try not to follow one tune with another one in completely different tempo (no slow r'n'b jams immediately after a fast house tune). The only things people will notice are blatant fuck-ups, like accidentally pressing the pause button. Which leads to one more piece of advice - don't get drunk, even if your drinks are on the house. A few drinks might be good to ease the tension, but if you get too drunk the potentiality of such fuck-ups is very high.

(x-post)

thx tuomas, good advice.

p.s. manager told me cds were the operating media here so i guess that would be best (though i think i can get away w/ an ipod since the mixing "booth" is like above and hidden from anyone and i could probably find a stereo in and bring some jacks). what i really need to do is check out the set-up tomorrow and see how they're mixing em.

i'd stay away from using your ipod and use cds if you can. burn your best sounding files to cd at least.

ok thx

if you're unfamiliar w/ the basics of using a dj mixer (or even if you are familiar but haven't used the specific type the bar has) see if you can drop in before they open and mess around for half an hour or so, so you can get comfortable with the basics of going from one cd deck to the next.

even if you don't plan on beat matching, the more comfortable you can get with compensating for volume variances between different tracks, minimizing dead air between tracks, perfecting your general flow, etc.

also, bring your own headphones if you have a pair with a 1/4" jack.

also, nate otm. at least stop by the book store and spend half an hour thumbing through "how to dj right".

ok. i'm not a total mixer n00b but i'm unfamiliar with dual cd mixers if that's really what they have. this is great advice + making me think about what i haven't actually thought about yet because i'm too self-deluded and arrogant. i'll check out the set-up tomorrow if i can and report back for everyone's reading enjoyment. and i've got to grab that book; it looks really really helpful. thx nate!

dont forget to have fun, too.

dont get too caught up in pre-arranging your music ("i'll play this track and then this track and then this track...") the best part of deejaying, even at a bar w/o a dancefloor, is connecting with the room and seeing where they're at with regard to what you're playing and how that influences your next selection.

if someone makes a request and you have it, play it. if you don't have it, be honest, but use their request as a springboard to a different topic, musical or otherwise. if people are super annoying and complaining about what you're playing or making vague and non-specific requests, tell them that the next deejay plays the kind of stuff they're into and he goes on in an hour.

also don't listen to tuomas; if you get to drink for free take advantage of that shit! its a bar, not a dance club, right?

always play 'you make me feel mighty real' by sylvester.

haha yes! sylvester will not be MIA

yeah gr8080 i just need to check their set-up and make that work w/ what i have +++++ the flexibility axis. this place is definitely NOT a dance place. people are drinking, eyeing other men and occasionally playing pool. some nights the bar just plays an xm radio station. monday is 'oldies' night but god knows what that means (general '70s/'80s). if anything i need to educate myself on some mainstream (gay) shit from that era to keep the crowd alive. and i am NEVER one to turn down a free drink.

I didn't mean you should take any free drinks, just that you shouldn't get too drunk, if you want avoid errors. But if it's just a bar night I guess it doesn't really matter that much.

I think it's always good to know the general age of your audience, because people usually tend to love the music of their youth the most, so you'll know what songs will be guaranteed floorfillers. For example, I usually DJ in student parties where people are in their early twenties, and I've noticed I shouldn't play too many eighties and early nineties tunes, because those youngsters might not be familiar with them at all. One time I was playing "Informer" by Snow, and two girls actually came to ask me what song it is, they'd never heard it before.

x-post haha i'd like fuck you if you played informer.

nah it really does since i won't be familiar with the setup. but you know, i know my alcohol limit for basic motor/mental control etc. this is all riding on future knowledge at this point though so.....

thanks everyone for yore knowledge and responses. i really needed the feedback, if only to get my own juices going for the whole thing. do you ever have something stewing in the back of yr mind for way too long but you just don't have the guts to bring it into a frontal lobe until you mention it to other people? that's me on this thread. thanks bye

I had weekly DJ gig at a Irish pub in Sunnyvale for a couple of months but ended up quitting over some (admittedly) mild drama. The owner wanted Thursday to become a "Rockin' College Party Night" but we ran into a few problems:

1. The bar was totally dead almost every Thursday, not very rockin'
2. When remotely college-aged people showed up they wanted to hear hip-hop
3. Barflys would bitch and moan when I went off the classic rock playbook and tried to play something edgy like The Clash or Talking Heads.

All of this would have been much more tolerable if they ever gave me A DRINK TICKET OR TWO. I stuck it out for a couple months because the pay was decent, which is never a good reason to keep do something you otherwise love. But after some drama with being replaced without notice for a couple weeks by Ronnie the Karaoke DJ I decided to quit.

I've gone back to mobile DJing and private parties and am much, much happier.

anyway.. strongo break a legski!

haha that's not strongo.

the best part of deejaying, even at a bar w/o a dancefloor, is connecting with the room and seeing where they're at with regard to what you're playing and how that influences your next selection.

this is great advice.

strgn u know u better announce ur first gig we'll be there. i don't know shit about djing so carry on.

if you ever want to play vinyl, needles are essential, as not all clubs even have a house pair and you're expected to bring your own...and if they do have a house pair they're usually crap.

Depending on the quality of the dual CD players, you'll likely find it much easier to use than mixing with your ipod, though having the ipod as back-up won't hurt.

If you're going to burn a set of CDs, make 2 copies of each, that way you can mix from one song two another on the same comp.

Use a short fade or do a quick fade on the first song and fade in or even just start the second song from zero. For instance, when you're cueing the second CD you'll start getting used to finding the beat and even when not beatmixing, you can still make for a smoother transaction by starting on beat. You'll also find yourself getting really bored back there and you'll play around with beatmatching in your headphones because there's nothing else to do. That's how I learned to DJ at least.

ok that makes more sense now that i've finally checked out the two-cd deck. the guy who drops it there monday evening (6-9) is gonna school me on the decks next week (hopefully). and in any case i think i've got a night, or something. thanks everyone for the info and encouragement.

p.s. what sounds as good as "inspiration information" by shuggie otis?

eddie kendricks - 'date with the rain' y/n

definitely practice a bit beforehand. it's actually quite scary, even in a bar or something, suddenly being in control of the music that's playing. stuff like volume levels is actually really important too especially if you're using music that's come from bought cds and mp3s etc, just make sure you stay with the lights at the same level on the individual channels and use the gains to help you with this.

it can be sort of embarassing if you are not beatmatching and the track you mix in is way too loud (or way too quiet)

I wouldn't bother using the crossfader, just volumes up and down, it's more logical when you start off.

if you can practice on the soundsystem even for 45 mins or an hour beforehand that's pretty good too. I know it's a bar but some records sound much more manic and loud when you play them on a bigger system: you may have stuff you planned to play early on that is like this and you'll think "oops" when you play it.

if nobody is dancing, don't be afraid to make things more mellow rather than more intense.

i had a recurring and cliched dream where the track is about to finish and for some reason you haven't and can't get the next one going.

we talk about that a lot on a DJ mailing list I'm on. I don't know if it's specifically anxiety about DJing, or just your mind using that as a way to express anxiety in general. I've been DJing for well over 10 years and in every situation possible, and while I still can get a little nervous, I'm pretty comfortable DJing, yet I'm constantly having these dreams where the song is about to end and I don't have my records with me or I have records but they're all the wrong ones or the equipment is working...

i have been teed up to play a party tonight. i'm not actually a dj and i'm out of practice!! is this going to be a disaster???

the party is a 'P'-themed party. i am going to fudge it with paradise garage-y records, ie: the disco and house in my collection

my first thought:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYTEQjwxXzU

So, I'm thinking about buying a CDJ, as I don't intend to stop buying CD's, and as I have/buy a lot of straight up dance albums, which have many a track that it would be nice to be able to mix.

This all makes me nervous, though, since I've always been rubbed the wrong way by CDJ's, and I can't help feel it'll be an affront to my vinyl (I would really hate to start neglecting it as a neglect). Keep in mind I have no intention to, and don't really want to, use this to play burned CD's.

These aren't cheap, even on craigslist, so I have no idea if it'll be worth it?

must admit i've toyed with this idea in the past - and never followed it up due to a) not being a working DJ, b) the cost.

(party refernced upthread was excellent - tho i finished up lost in a k-hole somewhere - then i played another party a couple months later and it was terrible. never again.)

Hmmn. Well I might able to get a good pioneer one for as little as $400 on craigslist, but even still, $400 doesn't just come out of nowhere.

i guess if you already have enough cds with enough music unavailable to you on vinyl then it is definitely worth it

i think once you've made the leap though, it might be difficult to resist the temptation of buying mp3s and burning them to cd-r, and in that case you'd probably be better off with a copy of serato or whatever

Yeah, I'm kind of afraid of that, but I'm kind of weird in my resistance to burning mp3's (see: "lol teenage guilt over stealing music"), most notably in the fact that a week ago I deleted all the mp3's off my computer (backed up of course) to focus on listening to my acquired music more.

It seems like there's all sorts of pressures to move away from vinyl, and I hope this wouldn't be a push in the wrong direction (though having only one would prevent that).

i think once you've made the leap though, it might be difficult to resist the temptation of buying mp3s and burning them to cd-r, and in that case you'd probably be better off with a copy of serato or whatever

This is exactly where I am at right now.

Hmmmn. I see a pioneer CDJ 800 mk1 for $400. The inadvertently nice thing about the mk1 is that it can't play Mp3's (I guess you have to convert tracks to wav's first), which would be an extra barrier against the potential temptation to play mp3's.

To those out there who DJ...do you enjoy having a sparring partner in the booth? Is it a hindrance?

depends on the person. mostly a hindrance imo. i only ever had one setup where i used to come back to dublin once a month and dj with a mate and we did 3 and 3 the first night and it went great so we continued doing that.

it's very hard to find someone whose music complements your own even if you think you have similar tastes, imo.

I love doing it, but it can be a frustrating if with the wrong person.

so i think i'm gonna go full mobile dj in 2021. i know it's early and my hopes are probably high wrt vaccination but still feel like it's looking likely that "events" are back online within a year.

the only thing is i'm gonna have to get some kind of small business loan together for equipment, 5k or so. i can't stop thinking about it. has anyone in the us done this?

You mean, including a PA? Because a controller and a laptop are cheap if you're going that route.

yep, speakers.

and i want to switch from traktor to pioneer, get the xdj-rr or xdj-rx2. though i still haven't totally decided on that yet, it would be a lot cheaper to stick with traktor and upgrade to an s3 or s4. also it might be preferable to bring the laptop to gigs anyway for requests and such.

Ah ok. Last summer I DJed a friend's wedding a borrowed a PA from a lawyer, two Yamaha mains and a sub, and it worked out great. He offered to sell me the whole system + a Mackie powered mixer for $700, so he could upgrade to some Bose tower speakers. Idk, that's all I know about the PA part.

I have these powered PA speakers and love them, but you might need something a little bigger:

https://products.electrovoice.com/ap/en/zlx-12p/

woah nice. i'm looking at new but it's probably smarter just to piece it out from classifieds. i don't really know how hard it is to get a loan for something like this, it's a side gig but i'm somewhat confident i could make it pay $200-$400 a month. sweetwater (i know they're trumpies yuck) sell this mobile dj rig that includes a nice scrim and carrying wagon + qsc mains and subs and pionner xdj-rx2 controller for 4.7k. i'm poor though so maybe i should get the bare minimum used (a sub and some speakers) and go from there.

the tower speaker thingies look nice, ev makes one (evolve 50) that gets very good reviews. i could probably get away with just one of those but it's 1.7k.

xp

love the evs sleeve, 12 is perfect actually

Yes the wagon is the most important part of the PA, this saved my back & my night:
https://www.amazon.com/OnStage-UTC2200-On-Stage-Utility-Cart/dp/B01KQ0X3OS/ref=psdc_490895011_t2_B002TITK8O

nice!

man, I wish I had one of those for record shows

yeah it's funny how after doing it a few times your priorities shift a little from "are my speakers the best" to "how long are my cords, how easy to use is my power strip, i need cases and covers, i need some way to carry this in ONE trip that isn't going to kill me," etc.

if you're going to be a real mobile DJ you'll need some inflatable guitars, funny hats and novelty glasses to pass out

https://www.partypalooza.com/product/InflGuit24.htm

https://www.orientaltrading.com/bulk-adults-fedora-hats-assortment-a2-13937579.fltr

https://www.windycitynovelties.com/neon-billboard-rainbow-pride-sunglasses.html

lol

as far as "making a little money back" goes which is necessary for me at this point it's my best option, since i've decided i don't want to deal with the bullshit of djing at a gay bar, and the trve kvlt dj scene in my area is led by total assholes.

i'm only half-kidding. we have a family friend who is an extremely successful mobile dj. he has been doing it full-time for like 20 years now and owns a mobile dj business with 4-5 other mobile djs as employees. he does big weddings, graduation parties, corporate events and bar mitzvahs all over the ritziest neighborhoods in southern california. and afaict it seems like his success is 99% about his ability to get ppl to participate and have fun w/ props etc vs having any sort of stand-out talent or taste.

yeah it is definitely a proposition of being an entertainer

thanks for sharing that info, interesting.

i'm thinking of tapping into the "gay wedding" market so the pride glasses are a good idea

$4.20 Each

nice

Ah ok. Last summer I DJed a friend's wedding a borrowed a PA from a lawyer, two Yamaha mains and a sub, and it worked out great. He offered to sell me the whole system + a Mackie powered mixer for $700, so he could upgrade to some Bose tower speakers. Idk, that's all I know about the PA part.

― change display name (Jordan), Friday, November 20, 2020 7:12 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Jordan if you come back to this thread, would you mind sharing more info about what you played and stuff, if you did any mc-ing, etc.?

there is a part of me that's worried that if i do this i'm going to have to turn into a human jukebox. i don't mind doing some of that, because i like seeing people smile and dance, but i also want a chance to play some left-of-center stuff sometimes. i guess that's the whole deal though - you gotta be flexible. it's part of why i don't like the trve kvlt djs in my area - they're very focused on playing their "thing" which is often kinda boringly tasteful. the international "star" djs are the only ones i've seen who are both tasteful and electrifying...

i think i would stick to weddings and adults events. definitely don't want to do kid parties, bar mitzvahs and stuff, entertaining kids is very much not my thing and sounds like a nightmare. also have to deal with the whole mormons being 50% of the population here, i'm gonna need to turn down heavily mormon events i get recommended for through family members.

godamn i miss dj-ing even though i kinda hate it sometimes.

hi gonna de-lurk real quick to say a friend & i have a mobile dj company as a side business & we started out renting equipment, then purchasing used equipment on craigslist, and now we've upgraded to all new equipment. on one hand renting equipment can take a large cut of out of your profits & some of our early used systems were pretty bust, so if you can afford to skip those steps you may want to. on the other hand, we were still making money with those systems & if you can't get a loan it's a route you could take. (we never looked into loans ourselves.)

right now we have a pair of Yamaha DXR 10 powered speakers, which we're really happy with. they're only 34 pounds, which is a back saver, and they're louder, have a richer sound & give more punch than the used 12"s we were using previously. they have an onboard mixer on the back panel too, which is very useful if you're doing an event with multiple locations & you don't want to lug the rest of your equipment to each location. the QSC K series is supposed to be very similar to the Yamaha DXRs & they seem pretty popular with other mobile djs.

guitar center will price match online deals, so we went through them to get a better deal & still have the benefit of dealing with a local brick & mortar if we wanted to return, repair or use the warranty on them.

ime subs are not necessary unless you're trying to create a club kind of experience. they're also hella heavy & in our case would just take up too much space in our vehicle.

if you're doing a lot of weddings, you'll want to invest in some good wireless mics too. handhelds are the most useful, but some couples will want lavaliers for their ceremonies. we're still renting lavs when we have to, 'cause a good set is expensive. (note: wireless microphones are setup to work best in specific geographic regions. make sure you're using mics designed for your particular region.)

cool, thanks for sharing!

the last event i did (and really it was also my first "pro" event) was a private party on a ski mountain in february of this year before all the shit hit the fan.

for a first "me doing an event by myself" experience the whole thing was a bit of a shambles and i made it happen by the skin of my teeth, lots of bumps along the way, a lot of stress setting up, etc. i rented the sound system beforehand (you're right that this is a good way to go when starting out, it wasn't that much $ and i definitely recouped the cost). the wireless mic set the sound guy had to set up beforehand using the geo location info you mentioned. i thought i could just turn it on and it would work but it was really a nightmare and wouldn't pick up any sound so the drag queen had to shout at everyone :(. she was like "it happens" though and the party went over pretty well and i got paid a few hundo. got to play "love at first sight" really loud for the drag performance :).

stphone, i'm curious, did you do any marketing or did you just start with some word of mouth?

I'm not a pro, I only got into djing through producing, so I'd generally rather not play than have to please a crowd of civilians. :) Of course this means I don't play out at all now, except for the occasional radio mix. But this was a one-time-only favor to some close friends, and it was actually really fun to put together a set of solid gold radio hits that I could also blend/beatmatch, to make it fun for myself.

Of course most people there didn't notice or care that it was mixed, and had just as much (or more) fun later on in the night when we set up a tablet to play stuff off Spotify. I didn't get on the mic much because I hate being on the mic (although it does seem like 90% of the DJ's job is just to provide PA + mics).

I found the google doc with my track list, here's what I played for a hipster-ish mid-30s white people wedding:

Jackson 5 - I Want You Back (99)
Jay-Z/Radiohead 99 Anthems (94 bpm)
Paper Planes - DFA remix (95 bpm)
Beyonce - Crazy in Love - (99)
Beyonce - Single Ladies? (97)
James Brown - Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul (98/99)
Amerie - 1 thing (100)
Missy - Work It (102)
Beastie Boys - Shake Your Rump (103)
Beastie Boys - Intergalactic (106)
Prince - DMSR (109 - 110)
James Brown - Give It Up or Turn it Loose (115)
Janet Jackson - When I Think of You (116)
Beastie Boys - Brass Monkey (116)
Destiny’s Child - Lose My Breath (119)
The Time - Jungle Love (119 / 120)
Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance With Somebody - 119
Missy - Lose Control (125 / 126)
Cajmere - Percolator - 126
Rod Lee - Get Up On it (130)
Salt n Pepa - Push It (130)
Beyonce - Run the World
Finn - Sometimes the Going Gets a Little Tough
My Boo - 130
Cupid Shuffle (144)
Joy Division/Missy mashup (148)
Outkast - Hey Ya (159)

It was surprisingly fun, but I'm glad I didn't have to play all night or do it every weekend.

nice, that looks like a really fun set!

thanks for sharing :)

to start it was just for friends then friend of friends and then yeah a word of mouth thing. but when we decided to invest in it, we made a website, made some business cards & paid a few hundred to be a vendor at a hip-ish wedding show, which paid for itself shortly after through several gigs we got. if i were doing it again, i'd probably focus first on a solid social media presence. wherever you believe your audience to be. but yeah something you can point potential clients to. i have some past experience with seo, which i've been able to use to build a decent web presence. we now get a lot of gigs through google.

reviews help a lot too. pick a platform you want to focus on (yelp, google business, the knot, etc.) and send clients who were happy with what you did that way. if the event did not go too well, well... maybe don't send them to your review page.

also make friends with other vendors you work with, particularly the planners. they'll get you gigs.

& as to music & type of events you do, i think it all depends on how you market yourself. if you want the most gigs possible, yeah you'll probably want to bust out the party hats & whatnot. but for a side gig, i've found you can make decent money with something more niche too.

ty!!!!!

I have a pair of QSC K12s and they are CRAZY loud, but if you want to play bass-heavy music outdoors, you'll need a sub.

agree that 12s are very loud! i think i'm going to do it like stphone did and rent sound for a while, starting out. especially since last february i rented two qsc 12 mains and a sub for about $100. more than enough sound (it may have been 15 inchers now that i think about it). for that gig i think i charged another $400 (there were extra logistics involved). a year or two of doing that and then i can look at buying my own sound.

i think that realistically, in the next 6 months, i can focus on:
getting my music back. external hd failed. $500 to a recovery service, IF it's technically possible (always back your files up everyone).
upgrade from s2 to s4 (not essential but high-priority)
get a basic web presence, start looking at marketing / ways to get back out there and get those first few gigs.

thanks again stphone for sharing your experience, super helpful.

yall think we'll see events come back by the end of the year? i know ilx is exceedingly sensitive on this subject, but i kind of think it'll happen.

i think so too but who knows

I mean, yeah. There are selfish dumbasses all over, so events are bound to return. There are already Plague Rave DJ's operating now.

i assume map meant non-selfish-dumbass events

ive recently seen a few ads and posts on social media about indoor socially distanced DJ events in my city. although our positivity rate is holding firm in the double digits so im not going anywhere near them to find out how they work or if theyre fun

I've been joking about nurse raves and senior raves for the vaccinated

From a UK perspective, I had been optimistic we would see some sort of outdoor festival activity this summer but I fear the new variant(s) may have torpedoed that.

I remain optimistic some sort of events will be possible and hope dancing is allowed (it wasn't last summer). A massive amount can obviously change between now and the end of the year with the vaccine roll out but I do find it hard to envisage clubs being open here this year. I hope I am wrong.

Nurse raves and senior raves for the vaccinated for the win. Perhaps dealers will move into holding supplies of Sputnik?

haha that would rule

gonna spend my stimmy on a pioneer xdj rx so i can finally get used to cdjs and get off sync mode on the ni kontrol, lol. i was really into key lock. i think the xdj is going to sound better overall though.

very happy with the xdj-rx2 (and i still get to use sync lolz)

looks like i get to do a patio pride set in june.

I got a simple Serato mixer (DJM-S3) and have been buying up stuff on bandcamp to complement my old vinyl from 1996-2002. Now I just need somewhere to play it!

so parties have started happening again in my small city. i'm running into a brick wall where i'm getting passed over for gigs. my dj friends are gatekeepers and i seem to be last in line lol. so i'm realizing if i want to play i need to start my own thing. some combination of the following:

pound the pavement, go out to bars, find one i like and propose a night to the owner
plan / throw my own party at a venue. i've never done this before and i'm broke rn so it's daunting and could easily backfire.
plan / throw my own house parties. i live in a trailer park lol so it would have to be a few close friends, not ideal for getting visibility.
start actually going out to other people's parties. it seems like hanging out and showing enthusiasm for other peoples' nights is a way to get asked to dj? n.b. i can only do this if i like their music, but even then it's hard--i don't drink, like to get up at 6 am and go running, and have a distaste for schmoozing and dj politics.

one nice thing is i feel like i've arrived "my sound" after years of trying to play everything. vocal-heavy, soulful, defected-type stuff, deeper pop remixes. no idea how that's going to play here or how 'cool' it is or isn't but don't care, it feels right for me.

anyway, if anyone has any thoughts about breaking through to gigs, please share.

i would have said start actually going out to other people's parties. it seems like hanging out and showing enthusiasm for other peoples' nights is a way to get asked to dj? would be a good plan but this - i like to get up at 6 am and go running, and have a distaste for schmoozing and dj politics. makes me think this is definitely not the route to go down as it will probably leave you quite jaded, cynical and might actually put you off.

the first two suggestions seem like the best bet to me. i have no idea how long you have been trying to get gigs but would say that i think perseverance and tenacity are key.

or i guess being extremely photogenic and having mad social media skills seems to work for tons of folk now....

ime throwing your own party at a venue can involve almost as much schmoozing and politics as going out to parties for the purposes of trying to get in good w/gatekeepers. if thats where your coming from the best option is #1 imo. finding the right place thats a good fit for what you want to play and also has an owner thats amenable to your idea is as daunting as anything else, but when/if you can find such a place and get a night set up its a nice place to be in.

yeah #1 also seems like the most approachable thing to me. i'll probably try to make it out to other people's parties more as well, at least on weekends.

working on my social media game but i am not naturally good at it.

thanks for your thoughts folks.

I've definitely been wondering about how to approach getting a first gig. I need to get a lot more exposure to the local scene, I barely have any concept of what's happening around here. Several years back I did a live PA at a hookah lounge as part of an Ableton users event, I'd love to do some more lowkey stuff like that just to get my feet wet and have fun.

I feel weird saying this, but I've noticed much more lately that every new-ish popular DJ I come across is either also a model or could easily be one. It's a little intimidating that there are so many super talented people out there who are also super beautiful, while I'm a short, balding, middle aged dude who wants to play some techno.

i am a bearish bodybuilder so that can get me some attention but maybe not the right kind for what i'm trying to do. i.e. the gay clubs here might not be the best fit for what i play.

there is one gay-friendly bar, only a few months old, that i'm going to focus on first i think.

xp i also feel old and awkward.

i have this recurring feeling that a business card would be really useful to have when i'm talking to bar owners, maybe with a qr code to my soundcloud. something to leave them.

that seems like a great idea

a business card seems like a good idea. linktr.ee is useful for consolidating your stuff into one link if you have mixes spread out over different sites

having a few motivated and extroverted friends who want parties to happen is the only thing that worked for me. i think if it were up to me to actually "network" i'd just give up and stick to mixing at my house. i started using instagram to try to increase my "visibility" but that devolved into almost exclusively posting my weird art which is not helpful

lol. yeah, having extroverted and party-oriented friends sounds key. i'm starting to realize this is almost 100% a social project.

put shows on every week with ppl on the regular int'l dj circuit and put your name on the flier

the best advice for this tends to be regional, and there are many diff ways to come up, but you'll find in most places that it's not only social but it's about having a lot of money to burn

to be clear, i don't give a fuck about 'coming up', i just want to play music i like to some people who want to dance to it and get some remuneration for my time.

i can't tell if you're being cheeky bongo, and i don't mean to be rude, but that sounds like a real fast way to fall out of love with djing, from my pov.

yeah lol I'm kidding in the context of your particular quest, but this is generally how people build names for themselves as DJs. Besides what's been said already you can also reach out to radio / online radio people to do guest sets and then mention that when trying to get gigs.

conincidentally, i just did that!

Good luck on this! My personal experience is that people generally don't care about online profile in terms of guest mixes or whatever, it's almost entirely social connections/people booking their friends.

Starting & growing your own night (and booking those gatekeeper DJs on it!) seems like the way to go, if you have the energy for it.

Also maybe just reaching out to those gatekeeper DJ friends and letting them you've been practicing all pandemic and looking to play out more? Can't hurt. I did that once with the people who actually throw events here and burned my cred by playing a noisy live set, so don't do that. I feel like now that I've finally developed some improved DJ sensibilities & skills, I no longer have any connections or opportunities around here, c'est la vie. It's ok though, I'm focusing on making tracks that other DJs play and living vicariously through their sets, which makes for much more reasonable bedtimes.

that's cool! the bedtime thing is so much more of a challenge for me than it used to be, lol.

i have this recurring feeling that a business card would be really useful to have when i'm talking to bar owners, maybe with a qr code to my soundcloud. something to leave them.

― Linda and Jodie Rocco (map)

very good idea, I have separate cards for business and personal, my personals have a nice design and say "Solar Designer/DJ/Pastry Chef" but the Soundcloud QR is a real step up from that

i agree w stirmonster that it is probably down to vibing off people and them vibing off of you, so like, however you can do that.

that’s super unhelpful on a practical level sorry lol but i do think that most great things in life are about shared experiences and feeling connections with people

map if there wasn't an ocean between us I would definitely be going to your party!

awww thx!!! right back atcha.

map, I started my own night. debut on Thursday!

coool... was it hard to find a bar or did you just know someone?

for real though i want to make it over there in a year or two... it really sounds like there are awesome parties happening on every corner in all the uk cities that aren't london that i get mixed up all the time

dog latin tell me all about how you started your night!

I spent a couple years floundering to get gigs then finally started to get popular by throwing my own parties, booking other local and eventually non-local DJs, and chatting up lots and lots of people (not just other DJs and promoters) at both my own and other nights. Once my own thing started popping (which didn't really happen until its second year), then the outside bookings started rolling in. Your own path and results may vary.

nice, thank you for sharing

are you still djing? would love to listen to your mixes if you're on sound/mixcloud.

I thought this was informative: https://www.mixcloud.com/mixcloud/posts/why-mixcloud-doesnt-offer-on-demand-video-vod/

interesting that they mention facebook and amazon but not youtube, which has had a very significant uptick in DJ sets over the past year

one thing I've noticed on recent youtube DJ sets is that the description of the video often contains track details for a portion of the tracks feature, which I assume is used for copyright/royalty purposes, but it usually only covers about 1/4 of the tracks played at most. Not sure how they decide which tracks get mentioned and which do not.

I've wondered about that too, since I've seen mine on there. I think it only applies to tracks already distributed to Youtube through official digital distributors, but I'm unclear whether they ID tracks through algorithms (because it seems like it would be hard to match wavs with blends and changed tempos), or volunteered by the uploader of the set.

I've been Shazaming various tracks from DJ sets lately and have been very surprised at how well it works

i have two little weekday gigs. there's another matt here so the person who holds court in the house scene here suggested i change my dj name from "matt pierce" to "pierce anthony" (my middle name is anthony, and he thought the piers anthony riff was cute). i've never read any piers anthony but it looks like he was a pedophile and a horrible writer and now i hate my new dj name. so i guess i'm going to change it again to 'anthony pierce' but it's annoying to have to explain and change it all again.

anyway, my boyfriend had this idea that i should do a fundraiser night for the first thing i do myself, which is honestly perfect. it will be for a local mutual aid group. i have some people interested in joining on, i'm pretty excited about it.

congrats! yeah that's a bad name, change it - maybe just "DJ Anthony" for a shortened version?

now I kinda wanna brainstorm DJ names for 100 posts

"DJ Multiplus"

(initials)

I am like a month away from resuming my monthly gig but tbh I think we're gonna have to lock down again so I'm keeping my expectations low

I had a whole plan to start checking out a techno night downtown last week and see if there might be opportunities to get booked one week, but quickly realized it might be best to wait it out a bit.

I like DJ Anthony, my grandfather's name was Anthony

he wasn't a DJ, but he did lead an all female concert band before the war: Anthony Bevi and His Ladies of Charm.

now that's a good name imho

yall thank you, "DJ Anthony" is great.

if someone does a weekly, weekday night thing that is a good place to start imo, but yes times are uncertain again right now.

<3

a voice from beyond ilx suggested "manthony" which i mean... definitely

LIKE

That's the one, babe.

THUMBS UP, thx

Matt + Anthony, it's a no-brainer but kudos to the person who came up with it.

so my boyfriend is saying that he originally suggested it but i don't remember lol
vah!d suggested it on facebook.
it's perfect

i remember looking it up and seeing that there are a few manthonys out there but i think that matters to me less now

DJ Man Honey

hahaha

now that i've hijacked this thread and made it completely about me, i might as well say that quitting drinking has probably been the best decision i've made in support of my modest little dj goals. there is no way in hell i could have done a tuesday night set from 11-1:30 and then done a 9 am training the next morning for my actual job with alcohol involved. and it was a lot more fun being totally lucid and present when i finally had a few dancers going at the end. mind you this probably doesn't apply to people who are in control of their drinking and i don't mean to evangelize but after years of struggling i finally feel straight-up relief about it instead of regret.

feeling that, the club soda and cranberry combo is a fave of mine when DJing (after I've had a few drinks, granted, but yr point stands)

Disheartened to learn this about piers Anthony after ignoring his existence after age ~15

That was new to me too (never read those books). Anyway, that's great map!

I got a dm from someone who's planning on playing a new track I released at a festival in MN this weekend, and they're actually in WI and offered to help get me some gigs if I'm interested. So maybe I will actually do that even though I had given up all hope of doing that?

awesome

i hope ppl don't mind too much that i post in here about my djing stuff. it helps to lay some things out here and i've gotten really helpful feedback...

anyway so a party has come together for sep 3. i'm doing a fundraiser for the mutual aid org here. one of the djs is doing the sound and giving me a great deal on it. i'm going pretty bare-bones on the production. sound, ttables, cdjs, that's about it, no lights or anything. bar patio out back, hoping weather cooperates, if not we can move it indoors no prob. the sound guy / dj has worked with the venue many other times and knows all the ins and outs of setting up there. he's djing last, i'm warming up. the middle dj is a big name who just got his tonsils out a few days ago and texted me today to let me know he might not be in shape to do it, though he wants to stay on the bill for now and thinks there's a good chance he'll be up for it.

my sweet boyfriend made a handmade flyer that we took pictures of for the social media graphic :). everyone is pretty psyched for it. i think i'm going to meet / talk to some left-y young people from this which is a big plus, if my social anxiety doesn't sabotage it too much lol.

i'm telling djs to aim for like soulful house with a message. i'm debating whether or not to go full jesus with my selection but will just have to feel it out while it's happening.

i'm going to ask the mutual aid org if they can provide a volunteer to collect $ at the door and work a cash drawer.

i'm having some anxiety about not thinking of everything just because i've never done this before. so i thought i'd just post about it here and see if anyone thinks i'm missing or forgetting anything?

don't forget to enjoy yourself :)

Hi map. Really sorry I didn't reply to you upthread.

I started "DJing" way back in the early mid 2000s, although what I was really doing was putting together often very complicated mixtapes using a pirated version of Acid Pro and then playing them out at parties and the odd club night. People in my little town were new to the idea of digital DJing back then and weren't the wiser, plus it meant I could mash together a very wide range of genres in a creative way, a bit like Soulwax used to do with their 2ManyDJs albums.

Around 2006 I realised it was very possible for me to put on a small night above a pub and get my friends to come down. Often I gave slots to people I knew who had never DJ'd before but still had good taste in music. Because it was only a small town, I couldn't be fussy about remit and so we encouraged a cross-genre blend where we could. The first time I heard dubstep played loud was at one of my own nights.

The night got bigger and we moved to a much larger club. I realised I needed to get live acts involved to draw a crowd, and one time we even got Damo Suzuki and DJ Scotch Egg to play (it ruined me financially but I count it as a lifetime achievement). Various people I knew got involved, including photographers and even a VJ who set up an interactive projection thingy.

By the time we'd moved to yet another venue, the smoking ban had come into place and casual punters were more inclined to go to pub gardens. So we introduced a concept or theme for each night: a Victorian ball, a night where everyone wears their clothes back to front and you have to look at the flyer in a mirror to read it etc...

It was a lot of fun, but by 2012 I was done. It was exhausting me mentally and financially as I rarely broke even and I was working a day job and commuting into London. Still, it was really popular and well known in the local community as a fun, creative night where you didn't know what to expect next.

In 2015 I moved to Bristol, the kind of city where there are tons of venues and everyone is a DJ. I was keen to get involved in the music scene and luckily got introduced very quickly to people who DJ'd and put on nights.

I got invited to play a few pub gigs, nothing big. But soon realised that my "Acid Pro mixtape" trick I'd been getting away with for years just wouldn't wash any more. So I bit the bullet, invested in a Pioneer controller and taught myself how to use Serato. Thankfully the theory of beatmatching and cutting is roughly the same, only you do it in real time and perhaps can't chop beats up in quite the same way.

It took a short amount of time to get to grips with things but still I had a hard time convincing anyone to give me a gig. Because I don't specialise of have a signature sound, it's hard to market myself.

I noticed Bristol didn't really have much in the way of a postpunk night, so I convinced a pub to let me put one on. SCIENCE! (as it was called) had an open remit so long as it was alternative music falling between 1978 and 87.

Had a great few nights of that, with everything from punk to disco to hip hop being played, although I can't say it was a roaring success exactly. Despite plenty of acts, Massive Attack included, having been forged in this era, Bristol audiences seemed to be nonplussed by it. I had to explain to a lot of people what "new wave" meant, which was strange but then I think Bristol is a nineties city at heart, and most people are into D'n'B or whatever bassy dub sound is popular in dance music right now.

SCIENCE! lasted until the pandemic, but it felt like it had run its course. I was running out of new music to play and was getting tired of retrospection.

I got this strange idea for a conceptual nightclub. It wasn't meant to be a real thing, just a daft idea I'd had and started applying to various chill out and Balearic mixes I'd been making for my own listening. At the same time, my friend and I were occasionally playing at this "audiophile" bar on Saturday afternoons, just gentle eclectic stuff for people having lunch or daytime cocktails, but mostly just playing to the barstaff.

Club Stoic (named after a "philosophical nightspot" in the Nintendo RPG Earthbound) evolved from this. I'm still not sure what I'm doing with it exactly, but basically it's an outlet for anything from eclectic/chillout to more housey, dancey sounds. The flyers are always high concept: I recently made an online flyer based on old BBC Micro text adventures.

Over lockdown, to keep myself entertained and to help keep on top of new music, I started livestreaming a show on Friday evenings from my bedroom. Basically me and my partner getting drunk while I span tunes and talked on the mic occasionally. Mostly just for my friends and anyone else who wanted to get involved. It was fun.

Just before lockdown, I started a Facebook community to discuss new music from around the world. Terrain is a Facebook group first and foremost where we discuss and share everything from Afrobeats to K-Pop and Latin bangers and stuff from further afield. Most people on there are artists and DJs so naturally after 18 months of lockdown, I decided to turn that into a night too. It's early days yet, and we have our first not-free entry night taking place in October.

So that's my story. I do this all for fun. I sometimes get paid a few quid to play, and I absolutely love playing out: it's literally my favourite thing to do. At 40 years old, I'm not expecting to make a living from it or even get much recognition, but it keeps me in beer tokens and off the mean streets.

hey, thanks for sharing, that's an interesting journey.

Manthony is good, but ultimately make me think of "Romanthony," which isn't a bad thing.

I want to start DJing again.

I've also been doing live improvisations for the audience of my husband and dogs using this software, and it's been making me feel awesome: https://www.olympianoiseco.com/apps/patterning-2/

that sounds very rewarding, glad it's making you feel good.

i've adopted "bring u up" in my last few sets tbh.

my first party was pretty good! the mutual aid org made more money than they thought they might and the sets were all really good. turnout was better than expected.

already making plans for another one in november. i like the fundraiser model. need to find another good organization and two other djs i like (which is hard here haha, though there are lots of new folks i haven't seen yet).

Glad to hear it went well!

I might try to spend the winter working on music stuff more seriously.

After a long while of feeling underappreciated and underbooked, I suddenly have heaps of gigs coming up, including a monthly residency at one of the cooler pubs in town, a club night I'm putting on, and another little gig in a cocktail bar. All the promotion is hard work, mind you, but as a bonus I seem to be getting much better at design now I'm making all these posters and social banners.

i'm really itching to DJ in public again soon but i'm so terrible at self-promoting and LA is a particularly daunting place to try and get a foot in the door. someone i kinda know is throwing a weekly gay party at a bar with a rotating DJ situation but it seems very Extremely Cool/Fashionable LA Queers and i feel like i'd maybe be out of my element a little? (this is also probably a personal hangup/me projecting for all i know lol)

and anyway before i do that i'm looking to upgrade my tech - currently using a super-basic numark controller that i feel like i've outgrown. not sure i can justify dropping super-fat stacks on CDJs atm so i'm looking into something like pioneer DDJ FLX6 since it works with serato, which is what i use to mix at home - anyone have experience using this controller?

Bring WAY too many tunes - you'll need them because as you play, you'll change your mind about how it's supposed to go and you want to e equipped....watch the crowd....don't play too loud - leave a a bit of headroom for chat. Bring lots of formats (cd/vinyl/mp3/digital) because shit always breaks down when you least expect it...don't let people leave liquids near your set-up....bring a solid center adapater for 45's if needed....bring your own headphones with proper connections for the mixer...

Related, but how do people deal with not being able to practice on CDJs and then all of a sudden using them on a gig, if you're not playing gigs all the time? I have a lot of anxiety about this.

I've definitely wondered what mixing on quality CDJs are like versus my little Pioneer DDJ-400 controller. Actually have had anxiety dreams recently about DJing at a club and having technical issues with the gear even though that is something that is not at all currently in my future.

Haha same

i feel like having a rekordbox-based controller is half the battle. everything important gets moved over to the cdjs - your grids, hotcues, playlists, etc.

i got the xdj-rx2 because i felt like the touchscreen was really going to be useful for beatmatching, but when i figured out you could sync with cdjs now (not sure how long that's been a feature tbh) it was a total godsend. so not sure that the touchscreen is that useful. dr that controller looks ideal for the price point and confidently working with cdjs.

the main things i need to know with the cdjs are track browsing, the "perform" menu (for hot cues) and the sync buttons. also knowing that when the synced track is playing at a different bpm than the track bpm, you have to move the tempo slider to match the playing bpm before you can change it!

what i'd like to get better at technically at this point is mastering a few other types of transitions, doing that thing where you cut the levels on the outgoing track for a beat to "show" the new track coming in, stuff like that.

all the cool kids here are playing vinyl sets. i've been asking one "friend" who "loves" me to dj at one of the many events he throws for a few months now to silence. i don't know if it's because i'm not playing vinyl? no response at all seems super disrespectful to me, like at least give me a reason or some lip service or whatever? i know he likes a certain vein of what i play.

xp the CDJs really don't make that big of a difference! it's all about the mixer. speaking of which, i played recently on a Xone and jesus christ i love the sound on those things. my long-time dj friend who has been playing on pioneer mixers for years sounds really good on them, so i guess i haven't really learned how to sound good on them yet but i am not a big fan of how they sound at the moment.

on a related note, i also asked another dj to play the fundraiser we did and nothing, nada, silence. this to me is so weird! i feel like people who do that show me they aren't worth working with.

dr: ask your friend! just go for it and pretend like you know everything. you know the most important stuff, which is great music.

music people are flaky af in my experience and i try to just let it roll off and not think about it so as to avoid becoming grumpy and resentful, but it's nice when you find people that are dependable. i always respond to direct communication although sometimes people forward just like a cryptic post about an upcoming event and idk what they're saying to me so i ignore it

i haven't played on a controller i liked very much, CDJs just feel way better to me, but that's how i learned so of course i'd say that. vinyl is cool but the association between vinyl and clout and the obvious gatekeeping vibe around playing vinyl is so corny

I picked the DDJ-400 specifically because I felt like working with Rekordbox would be a better choice if I wanted to eventually do gigs. Do any clubs use non-Pioneer decks these days?

using rekordbox to prepare to play on pioneer decks is def the right choice if you want to play out

xxp i agree with all of that. i'm trying hard to get better at detaching from lack of communication and things like that because it was making me really bitter for a few years there. it's also a big part of the reason why i'm starting my own thing now - and god does it feel good to be doing that instead of hitting dead ends and not playing anything for months at a time. i was very close to asking this friend (the one who's silent whenever i ask about djing at one of his events) to dj at our next fundraiser we're going to do, because he plays good music, but i deleted the message at the last minute because i realized that working with him would be a real bummer and a slog. it feels a little weird to be avoiding the guy doing every event in this small city, but i just don't like him, like at all! lol. civil frienemies is the way it's got to go.

on vinyl - yeah, sheesh, it's gotten a little ridiculous. also pressing quality is uniformly shitty for new releases right now, it's expeensive as fuck (another gatekeeping aspect), the shortages are real so artists who want to put stuff out are facing insane backlogs, etc etc. cdjs and uncompressed audio are the way to go imo. though one thing i LOVED about traktor was how flexible the master tempo was - you could transition from 124 bpm to 100 bpm and make it sound really good. that's a bit harder to do on cdjs afaict.

Bring WAY too many tunes - you'll need them because as you play, you'll change your mind about how it's supposed to go and you want to e equipped....watch the crowd....don't play too loud - leave a a bit of headroom for chat. Bring lots of formats (cd/vinyl/mp3/digital) because shit always breaks down when you least expect it...don't let people leave liquids near your set-up....bring a solid center adapater for 45's if needed....bring your own headphones with proper connections for the mixer...

― ^TwIn*InFiNiTiVeS^, Friday, September 10, 2021 1:24 PM

speaking as someone who has DJd on radio and in public for decades, this is A+ advice all around

also, bring tape for running cable connections across a floor with foot traffic

tape, yes!

i used to say bring a flashlight but now that every phone has one...

also, consider bringing scissors to cut the tape if you're as manually challenged as i am

get someone to teach you how to wrap and unwrap cables. i still can't really do it very well.

love all the advice, this is very helpful!

This is a big problem I'm encountering again and again and yet haven't found a real solution for. I use a Pioneer DDJ-SR controller and Mac running Serato at home. Often I'm invited to play at places where I'm expected to bring a USB and plug it into CDJs. As well as not having much experience on these, it's touch and go whether my files will appear with any track information when I plug it in, even if I go through the ballache of analysing the tracks in Rekordbox before I go out. There's even a free program that's supposed to help with this, but I've watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials and I'm still confused about a few things

hmmmm i used to have that problem! tracks would show up in alphabetical order by file name or something like that. no playlist order at all. a real nightmare. i'm pretty sure it eventually started working when i switched to a pc laptop :(. if i remember right, it was something to do with the way the usb key was formatted. but i think i reformatted it as fat32 and it still gave me the same issue.

you know what, now that i think about it, i think what finally solved the problem was getting a new usb drive and formatting it to fat32 right out of the gate. sorry, my memory is kind of fuzzy on this, no idea if it would actually help solve your problem.

my advice would be to try getting a new usb key (if you haven't done that already)

(all my playlist info would be gone and tracks would show up alphabetical by artist name. it happened a few times, so i actually went to the trouble of inserting a number in order before the artist name to designate the order it should show up on the cdjs, replicating the playlist, so now i have a bunch of tracks that are like 48Carl Craig etc. because i'm too lazy to clean anything up)

Yes that's what would happen to me. All in filename order

making some progress i guess. keeping my goal of a gig a month. one in october at the venue i have previously shit-talked on this board. i just straight up asked them on instagram and they straight up gave me an opening spot for l4ur3n l0 sung. idk they're nice kids. what to play on a saturday night before anyone shows up...

trying to put together another party/fundraiser for nov 5. the org is qtbipoc-supporting. still waiting to hear back from the dj we want to feature. it should be interesting. i'm happy with the direction these parties are headed and it feels like it could grow into something really positive and interesting.

sometimes i crave more gigs. looking at the bar scene regulars though, they have it on lock and i don't know that i have a good bar sound down for this city tbh. i've reached out to a few bars but no bites. i wish our two gay bars weren't so abysmal. the one is not interested in anything that isn't lady gaga (barry harris remix) and the other, the 80-year-old owner's boyfriend is the dj every weekend, and i pissed that queen off a long time ago.

anyone else go through a 'i should be playing other stuff' crisis every few months or so? sometimes i just have no idea what i want to play.

I definitely wonder if the stuff I want to play is actually anything that anyone else wants to dance to or if I need to shift towards more trendy stuff

I played my first little residency gig in the pub I mentioned above last Saturday and I'm playing again on Thursday.
My friend joined me as guest DJ. Unfortunately for the first half of the night we didn't realise they'd turned the volume down at the source and the more we tried to crank the sound up to an audible level, the worse it sounded. Luckily we worked it out in the end.
It's also the kind of place where most people just go outside and smoke weed in the back yard area until they close it, so we only really had people getting up and dancing from 11pm and had to finish at 12. So I guess my job is background sounds and then a pre-club warm up.

i hope they're at least paying you

i had a pretty good warmup thing tonight. had some people going for a few tracks. i played this front 242 thing that sounded even better than i imagined but i think it may have cleared the room? i had two different conversations with people about what i played, and like, "indie dance" was mentioned - god i hate that term lol. i think i got negged by the booking manager for playing a disco track. my city is soooo small. there are these huge gaps between like 3 small tribes along dance music genre lines. you get the impression that they're competing for dancers. it's almost like people here are scared of music that might fall outside the lines of their social positioning and it just .. it's all so dispiriting lol. which is the opposite of what dance music and djing is supposed to be. i see people everywhere else being as eclectic as hell? anyway, yeah my city sucks. i don't see how i can keep staggering into that sucky headwind. one day i'll get out of here.

I definitely have this fear that what I want to do doesn't stay strictly enough within genre lines to have an audience. I feel like techno right now is very much about honing in on your very specific micro genre and not deviating from it, and that's just not where my head's at whatsoever. I want to make it eclectic and interesting and full of surprises, and not worry about genre purity.

that's what i love about the djs who post here.. everyone likes to draw from outside those boundaries! and like is it 'indie dance' to play lots of everything? was it 'indie dance' when electrifying mojo played kraftwerk?

there is a lack of the spirit of musical adventure and yet everyone thinks they know what 'good music' is. the tech house people had a party a few years ago that they called 'qu4l1ty c0ntr0l' ffs. nothing says fun like naming your party after a department at work that no one wants to deal with.

the dj who bridged me to the gig last night, sweet kid, was adamant to me about how 'tech house' was bad and over and that he's really into 'deep tech' whatever tf that is. i told him my line that there's a little bit of the good stuff in every microgenre. i mean, he's young, but there's almost like this obsessive attachment to certain sounds that people in a certain stage of development have and i just don't relate to it anymore. give me the universe instead please.

Damn that sounds infuriating.

Amazingly I got a gig here - some kids are starting a club night and they know my music, and hit me up out of nowhere when they found out I lived here. Never thought that would actually happen. I'm fully prepared for no one to be there, but glad to be asked and that that won't my responsibility. :) Looking forward to getting a set together.

xp the trouble is DJs have to figure out how to create atmosphere and find a cohesive flow that builds momentum and while getting the hang of that it's easy to learn the wrong lesson, which is to stick to an already established subgenre as a shortcut to cohesion rather than to form unique and creative connections between tracks that are particular to one's own taste and way of hearing. it's riskier ignoring genre in front of a dancefloor, but the best is when all boundaries cease to exist and the music is all one timeless cosmic soup of rhythm and sound and individual egos and bodies break down into a single amorphous pool of desirous flesh etc

does anyone else here do bar/restaurant gigs where the focus isn't dancing but rather a kind of pleasant background ambience that increases in tempo and intensity as the place fills up, then ramp back down by closing? that type of gig is even more amenable to genre-hopping.

so many mixes right now sound like someone picked a really specific sound and then found every last track that matches that and they just become interchangeable parts in the mix. I get that this is good for giving people a clear, reliable idea of what your "brand" is, creating very smooth mixes that put people in a zone, and not confusing people with things they haven't heard, but it just gets dull to me, especially when I'm mostly just listening at home right now.

I agree with map about each microgenre having a little bit to offer. I look at each one as a different color/mood/personality that can contrast with other moods to tell a story and build some kind of arc full of ups and downs and surprises, but I also get that you need a receptive audience to pull that off, and not a bunch of people who will tell you "that's not real [X]"

does anyone else here do bar/restaurant gigs where the focus isn't dancing but rather a kind of pleasant background ambience that increases in tempo and intensity as the place fills up, then ramp back down by closing? that type of gig is even more amenable to genre-hopping.

― Communist Hockey Goblin (sleeve), Sunday, October 17, 2021 3:10 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this was my regular gig for a couple years. it was fun and i had a lot of freedom, but it did become unsatisfying playing in a setting not really designed for dancing

the dj who bridged me to the gig last night, sweet kid, was adamant to me about how 'tech house' was bad and over and that he's really into 'deep tech' whatever tf that is

This fellow needs reminding, genres are for police informants

saer otm, as usual

haha, great posts everyone :)

Amazingly I got a gig here - some kids are starting a club night and they know my music, and hit me up out of nowhere when they found out I lived here. Never thought that would actually happen. I'm fully prepared for no one to be there, but glad to be asked and that that won't my responsibility. :) Looking forward to getting a set together.

― change display name (Jordan), Sunday, October 17, 2021 8:03 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is really cool! way to go.

and karl otm. that moment where everything melts away into collective ecstasy.

I've been playing out almost once a week recently which is fantastic, although I'm starting to worry I can't rely on the same group of friends to keep coming to my gigs.

I played after an Afrobeat band a couple of weeks ago.

Then it was my first time putting on an actual paid night of dancing with my Terrain group, and that was basically the best night of my life as I got to close the night going back to back with another DJ and we just played nothing but "global bangers" as we put it. I did get pulled up in a half jokey way by a mate afterwards for slipping in a BLACKPINK track in among the harder afro and Latin riddims we were playing, but, (in his words) "you did it with guts and conviction". So maybe that's the key, map, when it comes to playing stuff outside the perceived genre lines: just fucking play it and if people don't like it, act like they are?? I dunno. I'm still getting used to this myself.

Oh and then down the pub the other day I did a nice straight up house and techno bobbins set and that was so much fun. As usual people only really started dancing half an hour before closing time but still... Oh yeah and these two students who had more or less been dancing for quite a while came up towards the end of my 4hr four-in-the-floor dance set and requested Smash Mouth. I never know what to say to those kinds of people really...

In other news, I figured I'd occasionally like to bring a few records out to play as opposed to digital decks so I've just invested in some Ortofon Concorde needles. Bloody hell, so expensive! I really hope I can justify these as it'll take about three pub gigs to pay for them

the genre restriction thing is so weird to me - I started clubbing when the 2ManyDJs style of wilful eclecticism was a big deal, and in Glasgow we've always had the Optimo/Numbers axes of DJing where the approach seems so omnivorous and unrestricted.

I think it just comes down to there being a much larger audience for dance music in the UK and Europe vs a place like SLC. Even here in Austin, which has a large music scene, it's oriented much more around live music than dance stuff.

the genre restriction thing is so weird to me

i dont see how its weird? like theres room for a plurality of approaches to playing records ... some of the most life affirming dancing experiences ive ever had were just like several hours of house music with only slight variations in groove and hi-hat patterns and chordal flourishes ... no shade to people here but i think a more heterogenous approach is a lot harder to pull of well than people think, like there's a difference between having the ability to draw from different genres and styles and reveal emergent connections between seemingly disparate records versus just throwing random shit at the dancefloor and hoping something sticks (yeah i realise this is a bit of an extreme binary but i suck at expressing myself; also just to reiterate again i dont mean this as criticism of anyone posting here because youre all great!)

sorry if that came off as combative

Eclecticism is for agent provocateurs. They try that when the police informants have drawn a blank.

Its the good cop bad cop routine don't fall for it lads

I mean more the idea of a crowd being so "against" hearing something outside narrowly defined parameters. I can't imagine being aghast at going out to hear one type of dance music and the DJ playing something from "outside" it if it made sense.

(I mean, obviously if I went to Berghain and someone was playing EDM remixes of chart pop I'd be disappointed)

oops sorry, guess i wasnt following the convo well enough. im an idiot, time to stop posting

don't be silly!

Will admit that a lot of my impressions about this are based far more on the mixes I come across online vs real life experience, although I strongly suspect there isn't a very diverse scene around here just waiting to be unearthed.

I like most approaches to deejaying, but I think that during my more active clubbing days, I usually went "for" specific genres, and would be turned off by those who strayed. I remember when I used to promote and occasionally spin for an industrial/goth/post-punk night, and while I would sometimes get a little "tech-y" or whatever, one of the other people who would spin occasionally did sets that consisted of mostly Eurodance hits of the early 90s, and i would just be fucking apoplectic at him. You have a crowd full of people who came to cruise and dance to Front 242 and Ministry and shit, please don't play "Big Fun" right now.

That said, because San Francisco is San Francisco, I also saw Optimo and crew DJ a pretty substantial number of times, and I loved every moment of it.

“meaningful eclecticism” is totally cool but “look all at me hop styles, do u see what I did there” and shit like erland oye’s dj kicks usually fucking sucks

omg i have always dreamed about playing slow moody industrial/tech/ebm at a bathhouse or private party tbqfh.

i feel like genre hopping is a very advanced skill i'm still working on? a little bit goes a long way. you've got to know your music. some jumps work very well, some not so much. underground to pop is real tricky imo. it seems kind of imperative that your crowd trusts you at least a little bit.

coincidentally i just played some optimo stuff on saturday! the severed heads dub they did sounded incredible on a big system.

my genre hopping for that set was, like, patrick cowley, a hip house track from ben cenac, the severed heads dub, some wild tech / ebm, some dark disco with hard trance flavors, and then an analog nu disco stormer. we'll see if that ended my association with this venue haha! n.b. they're getting sold for more condos next year anyway.

yeah, I'm not trying to do some crazy Naked City-style mash up of genres. My approach is more like starting off with some mid-tempo, melodic House tracks and gradually ramping up over the course of a couple hours to harder, darker, faster tech stuff, as opposed to, say, playing 100 different hard acid tracks all at 140 BPM.

I think you could totally slip "Big Fun" into a postpunk style set, but yeah you'd have to earn it, maybe put it in about three quarters of the way through when everyone's comfortable with what's going down, maybe play it after a more consolidated banger like Blue Monday or something, and then make sure you get back on piste after

I ran my own new wave / post punk night in a pub a while back and I know for certain that once you start digging out the synth pop bangers it's really hard to come back from them.
Once "Don't You Want Me" comes out and all the people who had turned up but not necessarily to hear Medium Medium start dancing and singing along, you're screwed

I wanna go to one of map's nights

Anyone a member of any DJ pools / MP3 pools? I'm not and never have been but I'm considering it. Not even sure how you go about it. Is it worth it?

I know it's not true, but I really want to believe we are talking about slipping all 4 sides of Miles Davis - Big Fun in the middle of an industrial set because that would be amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzS7zVNgWrg

I ran my own new wave / post punk night in a pub a while back and I know for certain that once you start digging out the synth pop bangers it's really hard to come back from them.
Once "Don't You Want Me" comes out and all the people who had turned up but not necessarily to hear Medium Medium start dancing and singing along, you're screwed

― Urbandn hope all ye who enter here (dog latin), Tuesday, 19 October 2021 00:47 (twelve hours ago) link

lollll

I wanna go to one of map's nights

― Urbandn hope all ye who enter here (dog latin), Tuesday, 19 October 2021 00:48 (twelve hours ago) link

hey thanks! likewise, your sets always sound like a ton of fun.

re: dj pools, i used to be a member of one, i think it was dj city (i remember the red and white interface but not the name), back when i was trying to hack it in a gay bar on saturday nights. it's worth it if you're playing a fair amount from contemporary top 40 or one or two neighborhoods away (i.e. edm or reggaeton). i remember seeing a couple of surprises on the weekly lists though. they have a lot of music. i also used to be more doctrinaire about lossless vs mp3s, but i don't know, all that stuff is produced to sound just fine as an aac or 320 mp3 afaict.

i think most of the pools let you look at what they're putting out before you try them.

this "don't you want me" / "big fun" discussion is giving me serious flashbacks. i can still picture exactly who sang along to 'a little respect' every. fucking. sunday. lmao

my boyfriend at the time (the dj) used to cane "strike it up." he liked anything that had what sounded like drill sergeants in them. went apeshit over purple disco machine - "body funk". his business was making fascist sounding fitness music so it makes sense.

haha, love this

if I'm being real honest, eclecticism to me means mixing in some hard house tracks into my techno set that sound like they were recorded by the d-bags from Jersey Shore

like a good portion of my rave experiences involved sharing space with 'roided up assholes from shitty New England suburbs, and I think some aspect of that is permanently imprinted in my musical taste

I think the reason I mention "Big Fun" in particular is that obviously I love the track, but it really didn't fit with the vibe of the night or the crowd. That club was one of the last times I got the whole party on the floor around midnight with this absolutely exquisite remix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdt8xCenLko

well that and the enormous queer warehouse party where i fucked up my triggers and ended up playing the Treasure Fingers remix of Fergie's "Glamorous" twice, but the crowd went mental when it started over again so I just let it do its thing.

truly miss deejaying.

oh man, that depeche mode remix is ungh

good ungh or bad ungh

it makes a certain type of crowd go ape, but it's also pretty lol in a lot of way.

good ungh, sorry!

i need a little lol or ridiculousness in my dance music to get me smiling you know?

yeah, that's what i thought. i love it, but i have a sort of embarrassing love for Stephan Bodzin. weird bald baby-man making very trancey tech-house.

what's the song? it's showing as unavailable

oof. it's the Bodzin/Huntemann remix of "Everything Counts"

Sounds sick

My dj gig was canceled because 'the club double-booked', oh well. At least I have a fun set ready to go for next time, or if I need to do a radio mix.

I know it's not true, but I really want to believe we are talking about slipping all 4 sides of Miles Davis - Big Fun in the middle of an industrial set because that would be amazing
― Mr. Cacciatore (Moodles), Tuesday, 19 October 2021

not miles davis but Peter brotzmann and 20 different djs playing at once, mixed signals, 4 AM pirate radio signals blending into each other. Requires a dj set to be chopped up into 20 different pieces then sloppily mixed in and out of each other, but it's fun, maximum hooligan plunderphonics. https://soundcloud.com/confccrew/tusk-mix

like a good portion of my rave experiences involved sharing space with 'roided up assholes from shitty New England suburbs, and I think some aspect of that is permanently imprinted in my musical taste
― Mr. Cacciatore (Moodles), Tuesday, 19 October 2021

of course. Dance music without arseholes is just cultural kitsch, instead of deferring to the state orator (der mussolini) it's the freedom to keep banging away, away, and away at the same mediocrity for 30 years, please allow me to pretend I think, sir.

DJ update:

- Yesterday I hired a studio just so I could use their CDJs and get to grips with getting my tracks on a USB in some usable order. It took an hour to wrap my head around the latter, and then an hour of mixing. It's all quite different from the Serato controller I use at home. It was well worth it though and now my anxiety about using club CDJs is calmed.

- Been asked to do an hour long guest mix for a local digital station which is great cos I had a mix of ravey bangers I wanted to make anyway. I'm trying to get better at mixing to different tempos rather than just blithely going up the BPM column as I'm wont to do. It means I have to be a lot more dextrous and creative about what I do each time. Had a go at the mix yesterday and it's actually pretty good but I'm gonna have another crack at it today

I like the idea of testing out the CDJs. Were they Pioneer? What were some things you figured out about them?

I'm trying to get better at mixing to different tempos rather than just blithely going up the BPM column as I'm wont to do.

I'm curious about what you mean by this

i have literally never mixed on CDJs 😮

same

the nice thing about mixing poppy dance music is that you can cut to a different bpm track at the end of a riser/drop and sound good easily. don't know how you do it from one track-y dance thing into another without some clunkiness.

i think maybe i should have gone the vinyl direction sometimes but it is what it is. i sold it all off and don't have the budget for it.

still an uphill slog trying to get gigs but we're moving toward winter now, slc goes to sleep. next thing is another fundraiser 12/3 for a houseless support org. i asked a newish guy to dj, more indie dance, has a good grasp of what makes for fun music imo.

all the cool djs here are playing records. a long-time party-thrower here likes what i play but vinyl is a requirement for their nights.

I guess my position there would be "lossless is ok" but I have also encountered issues where club owners are (justifiably) wary of those 1/8" headphone jacks as laptop outputs into a large house system.

(even with e.g. a Dragonfly, which I have, it still uses a 1/8" stereo cable out)

oh I sorta missed the CDJ part of that, I assume they have their own dedicated outputs w/like RCA cables or similar, so not the same as coming in with a laptop and a hard drive (like I usually do, plus one turntable and a few crates)

iirc even though I had my own mixer, the issue was the 1/8" laptop output, so I ended up playing all vinyl. n.b. this was like 10 years ago but the club is still there

a friend of mine was teaching me to use cdjs in her studio the fall/winter before the pandemic. djed once a few days before nye 2020 at a friends night and it was super fun. really wanna get back at it now that bars are reopening but dancing is still illegal indoors in british columbia (there’s actually a law that you have to have both hands on the table at all times lol). still have 2 usbs on my keychain full of heaters

both hands on the table at all times

:O :O :O

both hands on the table at all times

crazy!

(even with e.g. a Dragonfly, which I have, it still uses a 1/8" stereo cable out

have you had any issues with your Dragonfly?

They are wonderful things but i have had a ridiculously high number of them fail on me. i am speculating that high levels of bass might be blowing out the analogue circuit.

i have literally never mixed on CDJs either. i think i should maybe learn how to use a CDJ-3000 as there are some wild things one can do on them.

high levels of bass as in the vibration the bass creates is blowing them out.

the nice thing about mixing poppy dance music is that you can cut to a different bpm track at the end of a riser/drop and sound good easily. don't know how you do it from one track-y dance thing into another without some clunkiness.

― Linda and Jodie Rocco (map), Saturday, 6 November 2021

hip hop style mixing, meine junge! wack the crossfader und scratch the bit you want to mix in, then spin back first track if you want to. Sasha style mixing is a CIA psyop.

My Pioneer controller has RCA outs, and I have RCA to XLR cables.

The few times I've had to use CDJs I've always been nervous and looked up the manual and dumb tutorial videos to make sure I remember the deal. I've also used a controller/laptop a couple times even when they were an option, but have resolved not to do that in the future. :)

Also you can still twerk with both hands on the table. Well, I can't, but some can.

stir I have not had any issues with my Dragonfly so far, and it's been maybe 4 years or more? fingers crossed I guess.

wow! i have got through 10+ in that time. expensive! i'm starting to think i may have a DAC curse on me.

that is insane, you should talk to the company!

i should.

Unless there's a good reason for it (like it's a vintage music night or whatever) I feel that "strictly vinyl only" is broadly a form of gatekeeping that I'm against. The price of buying decks and mixers to practice on is way out of reach for most people, let alone buying vinyl all the time. Plus a lot of the music I play out has never and will never get released on a hard format.

The other day though I did decide to purchase some needles (even those were mad pricey) as I really fancied playing records at a night I was putting on in a nice cocktail bar. Really enjoyed it. I cant say I'm seasoned enough to mix records together, so it was more about finding nice segues between eclectic styles. But yeah, really vinyl mixing is a very different beast to digital mixing.

The weird thing about some CDJs is they don't accept WAVs, and I don't think hardly any of them play FLACs which is super annoying.

I like the idea of testing out the CDJs. Were they Pioneer? What were some things you figured out about them?

I'm trying to get better at mixing to different tempos rather than just blithely going up the BPM column as I'm wont to do.

I'm curious about what you mean by this

It's not a million miles from the Serato controller/laptop set up I have at home, but the layout is different and there's a slightly different tactility to it. I almost exclusively use hot cues at home and rarely touch the Cue button. The CDJs I were using did have Hot Cues but it's a bit fiddly and so I was mostly getting used to how the Cue works.

The other main thing was really how to get my crates from Serato onto a USB so that the CDJs understand it. So, with a lot of trial and error, here's what I learnt:

- Make sure your USB is formatted to Fat32 - not MacOS or ExFat. It took me ages to work this out.
- you may want to retitle your tracks so the tempo/key information is in there, e.g. "114 4A - Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime", that way the info will be there when it comes to CDJing. Not essential though.
- in Serato, in the File section, copy my crate(s) onto the USB
- use Rekordbuddy2 to analyse them so that my hot cue info is on there (there is a tutorial on YouTube)
- use Rekordbox to analyse the tracks. Can take a while.
- Organise the tracks in tempo order by using the column headers, then (and this is very important) right-click on the track number column header and select Renumber (I think that's right). So what this does is it makes sure your tracks appear in Tempo order when you plug in the stick.
- Now make sure you export the playlist(s) back onto the stick. If you don't do this, nothing will work.

That all took me an hour to work out and I really wish I'd known about it beforehand because for the life of me I couldn't find any sort of online guide to show me and it was all very upsetting.

As for the BPM thing: digital DJing is very handy because it lets you sort your tracks by tempo. This is wonderful, especially when you're starting, because it means you can start slow and gradually up the tempo each time you drop a track. If course tempo isn't everything though: you might have two complementary sounding tracks that are in totally different tempos, so you can't just beatmatch them and do a smooth blend. Also, this thing of just gradually going up the tempos can make for kind of samey transitions and I'm getting a bit bored of this. So I'm trying to teach myself ways to really think about how tunes might fit together well even if they're out of step, and come up with more creative ways to mix them together.

Sorry, maybe I should have split that long post up into three separate ones.

ugh, that's good to know about FLAC since a large portion of my tracks are in that format, looks like I may have to convert them over or re-download in a different format

Yeah. I don't know if it's the case across the board but I think even Rekordbox doesn't support Flac and it's really puzzling

Rekordbox definitely supports FLAC, which is why I'm surprised so many of their CDJs do not

Ah okay. I was sure it would warn me if I had FLACs in a playlist but maybe I'm wrong

It might warn you since they are compatible with other hardware

I feel that "strictly vinyl only" is broadly a form of gatekeeping that I'm against.

do you mean if a night is being promoted as "strictly vinyl only" or if someone happens to be playing just vinyl.

if the former i'm with you 100% but i don't think playing only vinyl is gatekeeping.

Yeah the former. No problem with vinyl DJs or people who want to play vinyl, that's cool. But there's a strain of DJ snobbery that looks down on digital DJing as "not proper DJing" and it sucks. Plus, you know, people are there to dance and hear good music and that's the point

yes, absolutely. i'm pretty sure 99.999999% of people on a dancefloor couldn't care less whether it was vinyl or digital.

It's sometimes fun to have a formal constraint - like I've heard radio shows that are '45s only!' or whatever and it's can be a simple way to nudge people into dusty back alleys of their collections they might have otherwise forgotten about. Though I agree in general, certainly if served up with a side helping of snobbery/elitism. Maybe there should be a 'sourced from Limewire only!!' show or two.

Haha I was joking only the other day that I want to put on a night which is strictly 128kbps and below. Preferably RealAudio rips

There are definitely exceptions to the vinyl rule and I know a few fantastic vinyl only nights. But man, if it's a night of new electronic dance music, don't force everyone to play on vinyl

A couple of times when I was DJ-ing a weekly disco set on vinyl, problems with one of the decks meant that I had to "mix" (hmmm...) between the one good vinyl deck and the emergency backup offline Spotify playlist on my iPhone. I left the same 12" on the malfunctioning deck for the rest of the night, because I thought it looked better. On both occasions, NOBODY noticed or commented - so much for purism!

lmao

ha - i had that exact experience at a club that was very uptight about vinyl/"no computers!", nobody cared. people are too busy dancing to give a shit.

As for the BPM thing: digital DJing is very handy because it lets you sort your tracks by tempo. This is wonderful, especially when you're starting, because it means you can start slow and gradually up the tempo each time you drop a track. If course tempo isn't everything though: you might have two complementary sounding tracks that are in totally different tempos, so you can't just beatmatch them and do a smooth blend. Also, this thing of just gradually going up the tempos can make for kind of samey transitions and I'm getting a bit bored of this. So I'm trying to teach myself ways to really think about how tunes might fit together well even if they're out of step, and come up with more creative ways to mix them together.

― Urbandn hope all ye who enter here (dog latin), Sunday, November 7, 2021 10:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I think my next mix has to be title Carry On Up The BPMs

unpopular opinion time. I have heard so many amazing mixes in a variety of styles (long blends, quick cuts, scratching, bpm defying genre-hopping, etc) that mixing skills no longer impresses me or interests me if they're done on a machine. What excites me is the depth of knowledge of the DJ (are they playing one genre, all current songs, or mixing styles and eras), and admittedly this is superficial and pointless, but I actually care more if the DJ has the music they are playing on vinyl. I'd rather be in a small room with a dj mixing across genres, tempos, and years, with physical copies of the music they're playing. I'm not going out to lose myself in the rhythm and dance for 8hrs anymore. I just want to hear some good tunes, and envy the record collection of the DJ selecting and mixing the music. Yes my opinion is superficial and dumb. Anybody can amass an amazing collection of music on mp3 and mix it brilliantly with a USB controller, and at this point, i don't give a shit about any of those mixes / DJs.

i hear that. i will admit to being one of those "vinyl sounds better" guys, even though i decided to go digital instead for practical purposes. i feel like i've never had the reaction of "cool track but why does it sound like shit" when someone is playing all vinyl. it can be scratchy or have surface noise or whatever but the range is friendly, it never has that piercing mid-high end that echoes on concrete walls and hurts your ears. i still get that from time to time when it's digital. i used to be gung-ho about compression being the source of the problem but i think it's a number of factors, including the room. there's something about the limited range from top to bottom of vinyl that's just friendlier to most spaces imo.

vinyl also makes sense when your city has a decent record store presence. not just new stuff but big stores of old stuff. that becomes part of the fabric, this whole wealth of material access that record stores bring. my city is shit with no real record stores and you're always ordering all of your records online anyway, which is such a slog imo compared to having a good or at least decent record store to go to.

I'm also envious of a nice record collection, but it's simply not financially viable for me to go down that path right now. Being able to do this all digitally opens up so many possibilities for me. I'm able to make the mixes I always dreamed about. Is it easier? Absolutely. But I think simplifying some of the more tedious or expensive aspects is an open invitation to get more creative and do things I wouldn't be able to do on vinyl.

the utter lack of a solid record store is a big issue here as well

xp

I do think there must be tons of unearthed vinyl from the past 30+ years still waiting to be discovered, but I have no idea how to find it

I just want to hear some good tunes, and envy the record collection of the DJ selecting and mixing the music.

but how would you even know? i sometimes play all vinyl, sometimes mostly digital and more often some combination of the two. unless someone was standing right next to me i think it would be almost impossible to know what i was actually playing.

i have approx 60 000 records but probably never take more than around 50 out to a gig. lots of the digital i play is high quality rips of my own records so aren't they still my collection?

Anybody can amass an amazing collection of music on mp3 and mix it brilliantly with a USB controller, and at this point, i don't give a shit about any of those mixes / DJs.

Counterpoint, I'm mostly obsessed with new music, and most of what I like doesn't get pressed to vinyl (nor should it imo). I'd rather hear an mp3 of an edit someone just made or a self-mastered dub than some obscure discogs curio.

Btw I think most/all CDJs should be able to play wavs, BUT I did learn a tough lesson recently that the older ones can't play certain bitrates. I had been accidentally bouncing my tracks down to 32-bit wavs and heard from some djs that they wouldn't load, so I had to re-do them all in 24-bit and it worked.

I think it's pretty simple to see what the DJ is playing. They either have a laptop, CDJ's with a USB stick, or they're using vinyl. Typically it isn't a mystery what format the DJ is playing. I'm admitting my opinion isn't rational, but it's my opinion. I'd rather see you pull out the orange sleeve Looking From A Hilltop 12" than scroll down your playlist and select the file for Looking From A Hilltop. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. Fun nights are fun nights and what format the DJ uses is completely irrelevant to the quality of the night. I'm stating, as one person, what my preference is. You can disagree, and I expect nearly everyone to disagree.

yep i thought it was mostly the bitrate that was the issue xp

They either have a laptop, CDJ's with a USB stick, or they're using vinyl.

most club setups have cjds and turntables though so you have to be a real fact-checkin bro and get up to the booth to verify the source of what is playing. even then though, a table could be spinning but you don't know for sure where the sound is coming from! it is actually really hard to know unless you're in the booth looking at the mixer.

It does suck that file management is such a large part of digital djing, but I prefer that to being a vinyl guy with massive shelves and endless boxes at home.

Fwiw I do think mixing on vinyl is cool and very impressive when done well, though!

FYI, the last 20 - 30 times I DJ'd, I mostly used a laptop and Traktor. It's so much easier, more convenient, and at least my mixing is more reliable / skilled when using a controller / files than when I use vinyl. The last 2 shows I played, I actually packed my turntables and brought two record boxes. Nobody gave a shit that I played vinyl. There were no saddos gawking at my RARE VINYLS. It was more effort to pack, setup and unpack when using vinyl. Refiling records after a show sucks. I get it. I'm just saying, for me personally, perfectly beatmatched, in key mixes, running off a laptop or CDJs do nothing for me.

I don't know, it's pretty simple to see if the DJ is using vinyl or not. Maybe the clubs you're visiting obscure the DJ. BTW, i'm not running in to the show and checking to see what the DJ is using. It's usually obvious if it's vinyl or not, and it's almost never vinyl these days. I'm not going to have a bad time if it's CDJs/Laptop. Just stating a preference. Please keep pointing out minor quibbles with my already stated unpopular opinion, however. It's useful.

yawn.

my 2 c

i don't get the "more work is more 'rewarding'" angle. you're playing your favorite songs ffs, act like it! dance around! be a freak! perform a little bit, you're an entertainer not a "beat matcher". if you don't have to scramble for another record to put on, enjoy the music, not your labor, which whether you're mixing vinyl or sync'ed up digital is still one of the most eye-rollingly boring and easy things to do in the world of music creation, one that literally no one gives a shit about except for yourself and other djs.

anyway i think it's fine to have strong opinions about all this it's what makes the world go round

I do get what brotherlovesdub is saying and map is also right: even at home there's a difference in frequency when playing a record on my turntable than playing an MP3. I just feel more involved with the sound.

Really it's down to the kind of night though, eh? Like, I play a lot of Afrobeats, Soca etc and that stuff isn't released on vinyl. But if it were a funk and soul night, it would be a bit disappointing if it were MP3s being mixed digitally. May as well put a Spotify playlist on

i'll confess to generally enjoying vinyl-centric nights vs digital ones but I'm also not going out to dance & sweat to new electronic music for the most part. which is why i think this debate is a lot of times an apples and oranges thing bc theres so many different kinds of parties & DJ nights.

like n.b. i'm old & tired, but i enjoy it when theres nights that are built around "so and so is a big obsessive collector of rare [niche genre] records and these are the gems of their collection", which is different from saddo oohing and aahing over their discogs stats, but will also mean that person will spin a... certainly not "better" but "different" set from someone putting together a set in that genre put together via files exclusively. its not 'realer' or more authentic or whatever, but imho just that both approaches each have their own unique capacities to bring out different eccentricities of the DJ & their selections.

After a show I played recently, there was a dj using Serato with linked video. It was all digital obv, but he was only playing 80s dancehall WITH all the original videos being projected. I was mildly skeptical when he was setting up but it was fun as hell.

I've been using DVS, which is like the worst of both worlds. No vinyl sound but also no automatic syncing. It's fun though. Auto-sync feels a bit like cheating, but if you're using the extra mental space- to add cool effects or mix more tracks at once or something, that's cool!

that sounds fun xp

Would attend

I stopped bringing my laptop to clubs after CDJs began supporting USB drives and got good search/playlist functions, mainly for two reasons: DJ booths can be dangerous places for laptops, and I eventually it felt dorky to stare at my computer during performance. (Serato face is nagl.)

I hate Pioneer more than Apple. Their pricing and model of planned obsolescence is atrocious. The lack of support for FLAC on any but their most expensive decks is indefensible at this point. Their reps on the forums are dickish about requests for it, likening it to a "premium feature" like you'd find in a BMW. Denon CDJs would be a better industry standard, but Pioneer is what we get.

Vinyl is cool, I'd buy more of it if I still had a lucrative job. I wouldn't say it sounds "better," but I appreciate its characterful sound. Counterintuitively, I'd say the best argument for it is one of its limitations: you can't brickwall things to hell on a vinyl pressing. I'll bring a crate to any gig that has working turntables, but that's increasingly rare.

Shit, gigs out are increasingly rare! It's a footloose situation here in Honolulu. Venues limited to 50% capacity and groups must stay at their tables, prohibited from "intermingling." I hope that ends this month when City & County revisits their COVID response plan.

yeah, numbers just had a huge bump here today. that + approaching winter means less activity than usual.

UK is just back to normal. They don't even ask for a Covid passport, nothing. They've given up. Mind you it does mean a return to dancing but hmmm

so clearly at some point I'll have to convert or re-download all the FLACs that I have if I ever want to use a CDJ system. What file format, bitrate, etc. should I use to get the best combination of sound quality, features, versatility? Note that I am using a Windows PC to manage files, so I don't know if that rules out AIFF or not.

you'll need lots of space but aiff imo. it has a header for metadata, wav doesn't. there are easy to use flac converters out there, i use one called fre:ac. most everything will convert to 16 bit 44.1 khz.i.e. cd quality.

you might want to check the official support for flac on pioneer cdjs though? iirc most of the newer ones do support flac. so it might not be a huge issue depending on where you're thinking about playing.

i would only convert if i knew what i wanted to play on didn't support flac, and then only what i wanted to play for the gig if i were in your shoes, but then i always go for the laziest option when it comes to this kind of thing.

I just use 320kps mp3s. :)))

I'll probably wait on converting files until I know I need it, but I'm definitely going to be downloading more stuff and just want to get whatever is most versatile. It doesn't seem like FLAC is there yet.

like n.b. i'm old & tired, but i enjoy it when theres nights that are built around "so and so is a big obsessive collector of rare [niche genre] records and these are the gems of their collection", which is different from saddo oohing and aahing over their discogs stats, but will also mean that person will spin a... certainly not "better" but "different" set from someone putting together a set in that genre put together via files exclusively. its not 'realer' or more authentic or whatever, but imho just that both approaches each have their own unique capacities to bring out different eccentricities of the DJ & their selections.

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Monday, November 8, 2021 10:13 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have a friend here who used to a do some nights like this here in Philly and let me tell you, this man's record collection is unbelievable, same with his book collection, but that's because that's what he does for a living.

But if it were a funk and soul night, it would be a bit disappointing if it were MP3s being mixed digitally. May as well put a Spotify playlist on
― Urbandn hope all ye who enter here (dog latin), Monday, 8 November 2021

No, just run it through tape saturation and a compressor and you've got pseudo-analog emulation and more.

I definitely can play a few different sets, but I haven't gotten many new records in over ten years, so that's a bit of a funny predicament to be in.

UK is just back to normal. They don't even ask for a Covid passport, nothing. They've given up. Mind you it does mean a return to dancing but hmmm

Uh, England, not UK. Covid passports here in Scotland, and Wales. lots of people getting knocked back from clubs here for not having their vaccine passport. but otherwise, back to normal here too.

I'm talking to a bar about doing a night playing private press soft rock and lounge records! Really excited! Has anyone had any luck replacing the Technics 1200 ground wire? I bought my turntables in '95 and they are troopers but the grounds sometimes cause issues.

yes, i have replaced mine just fine (i didn't do it so can't say how to though).

Relevant to the dJ dIsCoUrSe

honestly one of the best dj sets we ever saw was a single deck, no mixing, bit of tension between each tune, felt like an education

— Boomkat.com (@boomkatonline) November 8, 2021

I appreciate that, I am generally in the long fade minimal mix Levan-esque style myself

same. i once saw jah shaka play on a single deck and it was phenomenal. at one point he was in the middle of rolling a massive spliff when the record finished. he paused for a moment and then took the decision that finishing rolling the joint was more pressing than putting the next record on.

see also david mancuso.

I'd like to know what that set was. Used to enjoy the Jamaican elder who would spin reggae 45s in a pub I grew up near. One table and a cheap keyring sound machine which had been amped up somehow so he could press it while changing the record. It was brill

Hah xpost. It wasn't Jah Shaka. I don't think. Maybe?! But this was Hitchin so probably not

oops sorry I meant Mancuso, thank you!

long day at work lol

does anyone else here actually do live FM radio or am I the only one?

Where can we hear your radio show?

www.kwvaradio.org

on now actually, but not live-in-studio cuz COVID

4-6 PM Pacific time

That's us told

What the fuck is so hard bout djing that u guys need to talk abo t it this fucking much

— fka (@angelplaysmusic) November 8, 2021

lol

Is there something I missed? The whole of my Twitter feed seems to be people talking about people who talk about DJing tonight

I used to have a show on KVRX UT's college station with a friend, it was a blast especially with the calls we would get for requests.

really enjoying your show, sleeve. that bitchin bajas was so good and this 'sky ion' track is right up my street. is the rest of the album as good?

yes!! an obscure fave of mine

https://www.discogs.com/release/1416828-Rupert-Randall-Chappelle-Ozone-Music

he was also in a more minimal synth style 80's duo:
https://www.discogs.com/master/1794607-Arthur-Harrison-Rupert-Chappelle-Jobs-For-America

and has a weird Psychodrama connection as well

thanks. new to me - will investigate further.

this Alice Damon too!!

sleeve, I did college and community radio for years. it was my absolute favorite thing to do and i miss it dearly.

i did a community radio show for a few months in moab ut, it was awesome.

I loved doing radio. Was music director of my college station, WOBC in Oberlin and have done a bunch of guest spots on WFMU AND WNYU. I really miss it. When I make mixes at home I get really precious about it and take forever and only do it when invited by someone. Doing a regular live show is such a different feel and vibe. I’ve been lobbying to get a show on The Lot in NYC but apparently no longer have the caché.

I’ve had invites to contribute to other online stations but I just don’t want to record mixes ahead of time. I have to do it live somehow.

otm. ive been on fm for various stations for a lot of years now. when the pandemic hit at my station we all started prerecording our shows at home, but it was just 1000% less fun and i figured out how to patch in live from my home studio as fast as i could. i mean i love making mixes and stuff too, but its a different animal, being live is its own thing. it definitely makes me a better DJ, not being able to fuss over things and having to focus.

Dan, i was station manager at WOBC when i was there, tho i think we know that about each other.

Yeah, when was that again?

I was there from 93-97. I was "freeform music director" second semester of my first year and Music Director the rest of the time.

it became more of a "thing" when i was there— only juniors and seniors had higher-level staff positions.

i was freeform director my sophomore and part of my junior year, then was station manager from winter term junior year to fall of senior year— I basically ran the station while having a nervous breakdown (occasionally documented on this forum!) that fall, then took senior spring off. my final semester was spent as electronic director.

this was exactly ten years after you were there, 03-07.

speaking of college radio, i'm on air at good ol' KTUH FM Honolulu for the next two hours, raising money for the annual pledge drive.

tune in if y'like: http://ktuh.org

Cheeky plug, but as we're talking radio, and I don't often get to do this, I've got a guest mix playing out tonight at 8pm GMT as part of a show by the Back Room on lovesumerradio.com

Shoot, guess I just missed it. U gonna post it on their Mixcloud?

I think it almost certainly will, and if not I'll post it up myself

Since you asked, here it is: https://www.mixcloud.com/charliestoic/ravey-bangers-mix-for-the-back-room-lovesummerradiocom/

fun mix! That Jon Talabot remix is a recent favorite of mine as well

yes, it's great - i believe it was our very own mount4in g0at who got me into it and i try and drop it every chance i get. cheers davey!

so by throwing these parties and connecting with new people here, i've run across this kid whose disco mix is really freaking good. i don't think he's really "trying to dj" but i'm going to ask if he wants to play at the next party we do. i'm going to post the mix here if people don't mind, it isn't like it hasn't gotten plenty of listens but i think it would be funny if suddenly he got 10 new plays from the uk or whatever.

https://soundcloud.com/sam-armend-riz/disco-shoes-on-vinyl-2020mix

i'm djing tonight for the first time since early march of 2020. Benefit for Good Room in NYC. I'm djing with the italomatic party in the smaller "bad room". I'm going double-masked and feel weird about it. Wish me luck.

good luck, dan. i'm sure once you are in about it all you won't feel so weird about it.

Thanks

You'll have a great time. Hope you enjoy(ed) it

I got called up at last minute last Saturday to play a venue of wanted to play for ages and ages. The booked DJ had pulled out and I ended up doing 5 hour set and had an absolutely blazing time. It was so good to have an audience of people dancing rather than a few people either sitting down drinking or just milling about

that's fantastic

wanna hear how dan's good room experience went

2nd party went great, next one is v day weekend with a disco theme. it's the first one where we're going to charge a cover (novel, i know). also, i'm done warming up for now, going to go second so i can play to dancers. i hope we have enough momentum to pull it off.

v-day disco party is a dream DJ scenario for me! bet it's gonna be great

the weekly party i was DJing at prior to lockdown is apparently coming back in january to a different bar (the old one closed in march 2020 - not due to covid, it had been slated to close that month anyway). the new venue is this kinda fancy bar near my house, which is convenient for me. they had a kinda soft re-open this week that i went to and it's a fairly awkward space for a happy hour, not much bar seating, pretty much no space to dance, and the bar itself is kind of $$$ (even the happy hour selections!), but honestly i just want to get back out there again. keep fantasizing about starting my own thing somewhere, too, have a rough concept for it, just gotta put myself out there.

oh good luck! a v-day disco party with you playing at it is a dream dj experience for me too :). i have a few people in mind locally to ask, but no one who ticks all my boxes tbh.

Good Room was GREAT room.

The place was packed, which was surreal. Almost NOBODY wore masks.

I wore 2, an N95 and a custom Il Disc italo cotton mask, with a filter.

There were maybe 4 other people in the whole club who wore masks.

There were a lot of things going in my favor...as a guest I was treated well, like I had my choice of when I djd. As usual I asked for an early set so I could play some slower stuff and warm up, and a more prime time set. I'm used to the early set starting out to an empty floor but by the time I went on around 11:30, people were already dancing. So I was nervous about killing the floor, but I kept it going and built it and by the time I stopped 50 or so minutes later at the end of that first set I was riding high.

Went back on around 1:30 for another hour and had a blast.

The other DJs were all people I've DJ'd with before over the years and all totally nice dudes, Rok One, Facets and last minute guest Danny White. And it was great playing in a real club, where the equipment more or less worked, the monitors were loud and clear, and they brought back regular buckets of iced bottle water, White Label Club Mate and various beers and liquors, though I only had about 4 bottled waters and one Club Mate. This was all in the Bad Room, which is the smaller of the two spaces, but is still a nice little room, bigger than many bars I've ended up.

I mixed decently for the most part, only picked the needle up off the playing record once, got plenty of fist bumps and accolades, met some folks I hadn't yet, saw some old friends etc.

I had fun being mostly a purist. The party is called italo-matic and it's usually Rok One, Facets and Andi80s, who was off throwing her own party with a live Martial Canteral performance, and they often play a mix of italo and freestyle, ebm, 80s synth stuff, new wave etc. When I normally DJ I certainly mix it up but I had fun really limiting it. I played 1 freestyle track and maybe 2 hi-nrg tracks but everything else was not just italo, but like, 82-83 electro italo.

It was a weird scene, I mean I don't go out so much so anything feels weird, but Brooklyn in 2021, during a pandemic? Really weird. Hosts offered me to go back on and tag team some more after 2:30 but I declined...at that point it felt like it was just weirdos who'd dance to anything! I could've had fun but I was totally spent. I hung out people watching and dancing until 4 figuring it'd shut down then (legally in NY bars/clubs are supposed to close at 4) but when they kept going I ghosted. I'm still barely recovered.

dope

aww map :)

sounds fun as hell dan!

i don't really know very many DJs here, like personally. i wanted to meet the DJ at the thing on thursday (he was also one of the regular DJs at that party pre-panny). i think we have some mutual pals, and i dug his set, but i didn't really get a good window for introducing myself. also i usually feel shy/weird about approaching DJs while they're doing their thing, even though i myself don't mind when people do that so long as they're chill and respectful

social anxiety makes it very hard for me to do cold intros. i compensate somewhat by following up with a message on social media - "i went to your thing it was good sorry i didn't get a chance to say hi". and then it's easier to say hi the next time.

peaking of DJing. I'm going on the Lot Radio tonight at 10pm. I love radio and miss it and am curious how much I'll dig this. Been wanting to do this for a while and relish the idea of not being limited to what might work on a dancefloor at any given moment...but also get nervous about the freedom that allows, which has always been an issue with years of DJing listening parties and such. Basically I have an eclectic batch of records and will play from them all, but always get inside my head that somebody will tune in and hear something weird, then turn it off before it gets to whatever would float their boat. Also just the fun but relative difficulty of moving in and out of clubby stuff in a short time. As usually I'm just gonna play it be ear and try to have some fun.

gonna be doing my first live radio show since early March of 2020, this afternoon

I can't imagine this is gonna last very long but I'm gonna enjoy it while I can

Good luck and enjoy it sleeve!

Would it be crazy to buy a new pair of Technics SL 1200-MK7 turntables (in black)? The published reviews I've read enumerate various design improvements and generally praise the product, but the word on the street is that it isn't as solid as Mk5's or Mk2's, frowning upon the digital pitch slider and lighter weight. Do any ILXors have any recommendations/warnings/advice they could share? I'm for the culture and am more inclined toward Technics, but I've heard that Reloop decks are very good and only half the price.

I might have an answer now. Reloop's taken a very big lead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtDn8dVZHHQ

hooooly shit I just bought two Reloop RP-7000Mk2's, a PLAYdifferently Model 1 and a Mastersounds FX unit :D :D :D

i've not used the reloop but have disliked the MK7 whenever i've used it.

there’s a little cheat i do sometimes to nudge a record, where i hold down the current speed button and tap the other speed button.
if it’s at 45 i hold down 45 and tap 33 with the other hand, which will arrest it very briefly to get it back on beat (ish). and vice versa. obviously you can’t do this with very melodic strings or something, because you’ll hear it, but it works with choppy beats. i’m sure this would be frowned upon. anyway i mention it because i bet that a non-technics wouldn’t allow this trick! (“good” comes the chorus okay i know i know)

not a dj at all, but i have that exact same reloop deck and it is every bit as solid and hefty as the guy in that video says. only downside is that you have to buy the lid separately (fifty flipping quid!) but that might not be something you particularly care about

I was wondering about that... I think I'm just gonna keep the whole setup covered with one of my trusty Khmer kroma. (I never travel without a kroma, they have a million uses.)

Also, heh, I called the vendor back and upgraded my order to the 8000Mk2, because *checks notes* Serato doesn't make standalone interfaces anymore, I don't want to spend >$2,000 on CDJs, and all standalone DVS interfaces have shitty phono pre-amps anyway.

XP to Tracer: I'm more comfortable pushing or pulling the record's label with an index finger but I'm keen to give that a try :)

Those look pretty cool but seems weird to be tapping buttons on a turntable.

i totally agree! but i think it'll be fun

i've been chatting with the owner of the new gay bar in town and we're going to try a tea dance party on saturday afternoons starting in march :)

I'm DJing three nights in a row at the end of the week! Yikes!!

hell yes! tell us about what the nights are like. different crowds i’m guessing?

One of the most fun things about DJing is you'll drop like some obscure Franco-Algerian pop tune and the bouncer will come up and shake your hand and say "I'm from Marseille, I know the guy who made this!" and it'll really make your night.

It happened again tonight, I played a ridiculous 80s samba-pop song I really like and someone came up all beaming and smiling "I KNOW THIS ONE!!" and you're like "YES MATE!"

It goes to show: treat your audience like the most intelligent listeners in the world and they'll appreciate it.

Tracer Hand -
Thursday was my monthly pub gig where I generally play to a sit down audience, so it's funk and soul, disco etc and then a bit of world music for the first half, then as people liven up I move more into house and adjacent sstuff

Friday was more of a bar venue with a really good sound system, youngish crowd student to 30. I started with funk and Motown and things like Stand On The Word etc, moved to RNB, Afrobeats then into more electronic dance stuff. People in Bristol love bass music but I'm not really into jungle and DnB so I play a lot of breaks and bassy techno etc

The Saturday was my friends' night which I've been wanting to play at for years. Went B2B with one of my best friends who's a regular there. Oh man I had more fun than anything ever. It's in this little basement with a booming system. We played first, 10-12.30 but people were dancing from the jump. We played Soca, Afrobeats, Dancehall. I even dropped some Amapiano and I was astounded by the response. 6 months ago it would have cleared the floor but I actually heard cheers - it's literally mental how a niche style can blow up in popularity in a small amount of time

I will be playing on the radio for the first time ever on Friday. I've not played outside of my flat for about ten years and I can't lie, I'm mildly terrified. My beatmatching is super rusty so don't expect any of that.

Also I believe that I will be the world's first aromantic, asexual, nonbinary DJ

Radio Buena Vida online at 1pm UK time on Friday for those that are interested. I will mostly be playing ambient/chill post-punk/artists that sound like CS + Kreme. I also plan on playing some Kraftwerk because I fucking love Kraftwerk but you never hear them on the radio or in mixes. I'll be playing something from World Of Echo for the same reasons

Nice one paolo. Bump the thread before you hop on to remind me to tune in

excellent! boxedboyf has been doing irregular shows for them too but theyve offered him a scheduled bi-monthly show

YES TO MOAR KRAFTWERK

And paolo, radio is such a fun venue for DJing (as long as you have the privilege of programming the music selections yourself). It should be a lovely time if you can get past the jitters. Please lmk if there's any kind of advice that you think might to calm your nerves. I have quite a bit of noncommercial radio experience.

Thanks! I can't think of anything off the top of my head. My main concern was timing, whenever I've been DJing before I haven't had to stick to a time limit so I was worried I might have say one minute left and I'd need to either leave a bit of silence or play just one minute of a track (which would be a bit rubbish), but I went to meet one of the folk who runs the station and he told me not to stress about it. So that's good. I guess if you have any generic bits of radio DJing advice that'd be helpful :)

Generic bits of radio DJing advice:

– Don't be shy, baby: talk to your listeners! The format calls for a host's consistent presence—and not just through their track selection. Even the super obnoxious, over-the-top, nonstop-frantic fellow DJ who I can't stand maintains a strong and dedicated listenership. I eventually stopped using prerecorded station IDs, drops and sweepers in favor of checking in personally.
— You can hardly give your listeners too many reminders of what station they're hearing. (Although if you're doing it after every song or two, you might like to use those prerecorded carts for variety's sake.)
– Don't back announce your selections, except perhaps the last song you played. People are tuning in and out all the time, and you will lose many of them if you talk about stuff they didn't hear. Tell them what's coming instead of what's passed.
– Conversely, it's nice to tease what's coming up in the show. Keep 'em anticipating.
– It's good to address your audience in the first person, as "you," "dear listener" etc. Using things lie "everybody," "all y'all," "my audience" &c. has an impersonal quality that's subtly off-putting.
– Remember that the microphone amplifies your vocal performance in a similar way to how a close-up shot magnifies an actor's facial expressions. My preference is to pot up the volume enough that I can speak like the listener is standing right beside me. It can work just as well the other way, keeping the fader down and bringing up the energy in your voice. Remember to watch the levels if those are not squashed by processing to tame loudness and boost quiet speech.
– As for timing, it depends how strict your station enforces its scheduled traffic. Assuming you're not at a commercial station that programs their broadcasts to the second (which must be set up with software), it shouldn't be difficult to set yourself up for a smooth finish. Around 15-20 minutes before the end of the show, check what's left to be played and give yourself a few options to plan the last leg to time. It's fine to give the last track the ol' "gentlemans fade," or play an extra cart to fill the last minute or so if you're too short on time for the erstwhile last track.
— Dead air is the bane of radio, and in my opinion, unless you're a talk show or doing the news, speaking for more than a handful of seconds without music playing under you is almost dead.
– There's an art to judging the right time to get on the mic as a track begins or ends.
– For music shows, I find it's best to make frequent announcements and keep them short but sweet.
– Keep a selection of "beds" (unobtrusive music for talking breaks) ready to play when you have longer announcements to deliver. Keeping beds at the ready is a good use for a third CD deck or other media player, which every station oughta have.
– Mind the levels if there's not a talkover processor to automatically duck the volume of everything else that's playing when you're on the mic. It took me quite a while to understand how far I need to turn the music down when I'm announcing. It should be probably a quarter of the volume of your voice, especially when you're saying more than the station ID, last track, and what's coming up now.
— Don't worry if you fuck up and stammer or misspeak. This is normal. It's not helpful to call attention to minor errors in speech. Correct factual errors when necessary and plow forward.
— Generally, but especially for less widely familiar material, I think it's important to mention bits about where the music came from, why it's worth our time or why I value it personally. I'm not sure how much my listeners care about the artists and song titles of the more underground and obscure stuff that I air, but I suspect the interest is fairly low.

Ok wow, hopefully that's not too much info. Remember that, barring some egregious transgression, the listeners are on your side. They want to like you because they're already listening to you. You're gonna do great.

PS. Not keeping it all about the music is a thing too. Give yourself the liberty to go off randomly, snark, charm, surprise. And if someone calls to harass you, the best script I can recommend is: "Got it. Thanks. Goodbye." Click.

interesting, I don't do some of those things (30 years on live FM, remote since COVID) but that's solid advice in general, I don't ever bother with beds and just talk, if I have things to say abt a record it's definitely gonna be before I play it and not after

yr right, beds aren't a must. being an engaging announcer's much more important

– Don't back announce your selections, except perhaps the last song you played. People are tuning in and out all the time, and you will lose many of them if you talk about stuff they didn't hear. Tell them what's coming instead of what's passed.

i wish someone had told me this years ago as i am the worst for doing this. i shall change!

That is an amazing advice post, but I've definitely found myself dying for a track ID and counting the number of tracks after it, hoping the DJ will back-announce and I'll be able to figure it out.

After many years, back-announcing is a very hard habit for me to break and it stills feels weird when I dont do it. These days, my approach is that I still think its good to do if I'm going out over FM, since at least some portion of your audience is likely to be in a vehicle or otherwise not in front of a screen. But if I'm exclusively online I figure ppl have access to live playlists & whatnot on whatever device theyre using to listen, so theres no need to bother with it (unless you have something really relevant/interesting to say about what you played.)

I haven't been on air in years, but as a listener I often appreciate the back-announce, as long as it's very brief (the song or at most two songs prior to the current one, and nothing other than artist/title.) No one is able to keep track of a seven song back announce, it's why websites with playlists were invented.

yes I run through them very quickly on the backannounce if there's more than 3 or 4, I usually also remind people that they can go to Spinitron for more info/playlists

Yes, stations these days ought to be logging everything in real time via their website or Spinitron or w/e. When I'm playing underground weirdo shit, I'll mostly refer the listeners there and announce track info only sporadically.

Probably everyone has been in the same spot as Jordan, where they wish they'd known what that song was. Lol maybe the DJ did back-announce it right after they had to stop listening and switched off the radio, ahah. I've also gotten confused and missed the info even when the DJ gave it, where the announcement included more than a few of the last plays and I lost track the order of what I heard, counting backwards—or did the DJ say it was chronological?—probably while I was driving. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Several of the better recommendations from my earlier post were passed on to me in a workshop my station hosted. I forget the name of the guest who came in, but it was over a decade ago. Her advice stuck! I think my show got a good bit better as a result.

heh, so tonight i'm going in to train to DJ and host at a strip club here in Honolulu town. i spent the whole week digging for music, making playlists and doing lots of research via YouTube and podcasts. i am ready. time to check this off of the bucket list.

i will not use the strip club DJ puke voice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie0qwD2FYmA

tell us how it goes. do the dancers have their own entrance songs?

I was wondering the same. Asked a few of the entertainers if they had a theme song and none had an answer on the spot. IDK what mine would be, either, to be fair... Thinking about it makes me want to collaborate with individual performers who might be open to developing up their acts, work to broaden the scope of programming beyond the industry-standard tvrnt/ratchet domain... Put the SHOW back in Show Club, y'know? But first I'll need to get more than just my foot in the door.

Anyway, tonight was chill. I've done a ton of research and taken copious notes, and I think I'm ready to handle DJ duties (80% of which are ops and stage management) on my own, now. If I didn't fuck it up tonight, then I'll soon (happily) be there on the slow nights of Sunday and Monday. Fingers crossed. This spot is the only titty bar in town where I'd be glad to DJ—clean, high ceilings, minimal-to-zero sleazy/creepy/scary elements. Fuck going back to the software/tech industry.

I made my radio debut yesterday and it was a lot of fun. Was super anxious beforehand (and had an anxiety dream the night before involving not being able to find my records before leaving my flat, missing the bus, calling a taxi and it getting lost etc etc) but was fine when I started, as predicted by the folk that run the station

The main thing that surprised me was how bloody difficult it is to speak on the mic. I had planned on amiably chatting away to my listeners, dispensing fascinating wee observations about the music in the style of John Peel, when it came to it I was more like 'so erm, this one's by Arthur Russell, erm yeah, I really like it'. Getting super self-conscious even though there was probably only about five people listening. So DJs who can chat on the mic and make it sound easy and natural have gone WAY up in my estimation

For me it got easier after the first 10 shows. It's best not to think about what you're going to say while you're on the air and just talk, but that's hard enough!

Where can we listen to your show?

Congrats on yr debut, paolo! Speaking to an unknown set of listeners who you can't see, who can't respond (without calling you) and aren't even in the room with you... it takes a while to get used to it. It's much easier with a co-host, too. It takes courage just to get on the mic at all. Give y'self a pat on the back.

I forget whether you mentioned if this is gonna be a regular thing, but if I could offer any more advice for future shows, then I'd recommend listening to yr show's recordings for the talking breaks, and remember to just be yourself. Yr something special, be yourself!

Thanks folks! I'll stick the audio up in the DJs post your mixes thread when it's on Soundcloud

I've been pondering putting together a few 30 minute excerpts of my mixes that are more stylistically focused as a way to give booking agents something compact to check out that will give them a good idea of what to expect from me. I already have a solid House sampler:

https://soundcloud.com/moodlesmix/trip-house-excerpt/

I'm considering adding another for Tech House and Melodic Techno, and one that covers Hard Techno and Trance.

Is this a good idea? What is the best way to focus these to grab someone's attention? I don't really have a good idea of what a booking agent is listening for or what they want to hear.

Is the SoundCloud mix you posted set to private? I'm getting a 404.

As I understand it, the top 3 considerations for ppl booking talent are: 1) will they draw a crowd, 2) how well will the crowd receive them, and 3) are they reliable/professional/trustworthy?

You can get a foot in the door if the people doing the booking are confident about at least two of the three. A mix can help with #2—they'd be listening to see if your sound is a good fit for them—but it can be hard to get 'em to listen to it in the first place.

The common wisdom is that you should include demos in an electronic press kit (EPK), along with a bio, photos, videos, etc. Making one is a pain in the ass, but it can make a good impression and help you be more convincing about #1 and #3.

I updated the name and link and created a set of genre-specific short mixes:

https://soundcloud.com/moodlesmix/sets/sample-dj-sets-by-genre

I definitely will need to consider how to get some kind of real press kit together, but that will probably take a while to heppen.

3rd party last night. the best one yet. we actually made a little bit of money.

i took the 2nd set this time and honestly knocked it out of the park. i got a lot of compliments. i haven't rocked a night like that in .. 3 years? felt great.

getting better with fx. still do a high pass filter a little too much, it's a tic. need one or two other go-tos. even low pass / drop-outs or something.

local king of the mountain dj / frienemy who is difficult to work with came. i can't stress how unfriendly and up his own ass the guy is. but he's a scene fixture (missing stair) and has been for 20 years so everyone has to work around him if they aren't lucky enough to fall in his favor (which only lasts for a year or two at most anyway, he's a fickle one).

not sure what to do next. i have it in mind that i'd like to get someone from out of town to headline one of these, chrissy comes to mind, but that's a few parties down the line i think. i've been pursuing a weekly gig with a gay bar, but the owner is being flaky about it. i thought a sunday afternoon tea dance type thing might be a hit but now it feels like a gamble. i have to talk to him tomorrow.

i dragged my poor boyfriend into working the door, so i'm going to treat him to dinner tonight (he refused to be paid). honestly just super happy it went off. such a special feeling on the floor. took a gamble and went emotional for a track or two but enough to cleanse and then brought back the party energy. i made the warm-up dj's year pretty much, he's just starting out. he kept thanking me over and over. it was really sweet.

oh, and the featured dj we had is this guy who has only lived here for a year or two but had quite the career in l.a. has opened up for the likes of tony humphries. connected with dave aju, lots of california people. international gigs etc. really nice guy. brought two l.a. friends in the "industry" whatever that means lmao. played an amazing set of true cult disco, the kind of thing where every song is an incredible jam you've never heard before. "real soul" type stuff, beautiful. poor guy was on my xdj-rx2, called it a unicycle lmao. he really needed turntables for his set but yknow my shit is still pretty bare-bones.

that’s awesome your party was a smash map! woulda gone for sure if i’d been in town :)

missing stair - glad to know there’s a term for this kind of personality, i have a hard time dealing w/ ppl like that and usually just avoid them if i can, it’s such a pain when they’re someone you sorta have to deal with

looks like i may be DJing again in early march at that happy hour i used to DJ for pre-panny, which is happening at a fairly bourgie spanish restaurant just up the street from my house. the new venue is honestly worse than the previous one - hardly any room to stand and mingle with other ppl let alone dance. plus I’m DJing inside, which I’m fine with but nearly all of my friends here are still too fidgety about doing any kind of indoor activity so i probably won’t have too big a turnout. still, i’m just happy to get back out there and do a thing! mixes at home are fine but i miss in-person energy hugely

that's great news. anything is better than nothing. best of luck.

really enjoying these updates

Yeah same. It's been really fun hearing ppl share their experiences.

I just took my first gig since prepanedmic spinning after some bands at a small club in a couple weeks. In normal times this is one of my favorite kinds of gigs bc its low-pressure (ppl arent there to see you) but still a nice crowd, and people are lubed up from drinking during the show, plus I can get a sense of the crowd over the course of the evening and guess at what they might be into, if they'll want to keep partying or wind down, etc. Over the last 9 months I've been extremely careful, other than going to the (mostly empty) movies a few times I dont think I've done any kind of open-to-the-public indoor activity whatsoever, so I've definitely got some anxiety about that aspect of it, but it seems like a good chance to experiment with stepping out of my comfort zone and see how it goes (gig will be vaxxed-only and fully masked, so I'm sure it'll be fine.) Despite the mild covid-worry, I'm looking forward to it, I think it'll be really good for my soul & mental health to get out & share some records with people again.

that sounds ideal. glad to hear you're going to try it.

finally DJ'd a small party a couple weeks ago at a friend's house and had so much fun. several people mixed, including a guy who i didn't even know could mix who played a really fun freestyle set for an hour. then a couple of my buds went b2b playing acid, one of whom i always encouraged b/c i knew he could but he was always cagey about actually putting together some music and playing it out, but he sounded great! then we had a deepish house set, then some 90's house and techno, and then i went on from 3am and closed it out in a nice foggy living room full of friends. it was so cool having a bunch of people play a variety of music, just a lovely night all around

Sounds perfect

whew, things heating up a little bit in small lake city. i got asked to do the same slopeside gig i did in 2020 right before shit hit the fan, this saturday. complicated setup but i've done it before so should be easier this time and they're paying me a decent amount.

i staked a claim for pride friday in june at the bar we are doing my parties at. lo and behold i get a message saying the local kings of the mountain want that friday and saturday at the bar. so i talked to them and was like that's fine if i can dj and they said i could have a decent slot and i don't have to do the setup work myself. i will be eye rolly if they drop me into a warmup. they make me uneasy, lots of ego at their functions, not ideal for my dj-ing where i'd rather be relaxed and kind of running the show even if it's more low-key. but i guess i'll try it again and see how it goes.

after the above happened i rescheduled our party for early may.

and now i've got to start working on this tea dance weekly starting in late march.

feeling a little tired tbh, but satisfied that things are happening.

Nice work map!

after almost a 2 year hiatus I will be returning to my monthly restaurant/bar gig on Sunday March 6th, I am psyched

$1 oysters y'all

Yessss

This thread makes me want to spin again. The last time I played, a gallery opening way pre-Covid, ended with dancers stripping to their skivvies (in a gallery!) so you can see where I might want to return.

I have now built up a healthy collection of dance 12"s in the 125-140bpm range and I'm keen to mix them together at some point. Being more of a digital DJ, I know the theory but I have very little practice of spinning vinyl. Can't really get my head around accounting for that split second of speed-up/slow-down when you let the platter go. I'm going to practice on my housemate's decks soon though

do u know how to slip-cue? that takes care of a lot of that

(just enough pressure on the record to keep it stationary, while the turntable still revolves under it)

not really. i don't have much experience of vinyl decks at all really. I've done sets on them before, but it tends to be more ecelctic stuff that doesn't really involve much beatmatching

just practice a bit! it's pretty easy to figure out and the record starts instantly with no speedup intro

(I learned it in radio but it comes in really handy for me if I need to cue up a track where there's no gap beforehand, I don't beat match)

just make sure you have a slipmat!

oh yes, lol, good point

I think that with all half-decent decks the turntable should still revolve while the record stays still, you just have to press down gently on the record. It takes practise to learn how to give the record a little push when you let go so that it starts at the speed you want it to, but it doesn't take that long to learn

$1 oysters y'all

did my first gig in 2.5 years last weekend, spinning after bands at a club. was extremely strange being back in a room full of sweaty unmasked people hearing loud music, but it felt almost normal, and i didnt get covid, so yay. set was a bit disappointing in that i expected to be spinning for an hour or more of afterparty, but the club announced last call after about 15 minutes - people (& venue staff) in my town still arent used to staying out as late as they used to. i'm curious about how that will evolve.

an interesting thing though: i noticed one dude was conspicuously loving everything i played, & he eventually introduced himself to me as a big collector of the very-specific niche of records that i was playing. he was from europe & had been stranded stateside for the last 3 months due to omicron, and was flying back the following night. i tried to quickly clock whether he was a weirdo or creep, guessed he seemed legit, and took a chance inviting him over to my place for coffee the next day. he only had an hour to spare, but he brought a bunch of records and we had a great time gabbing and frantically trading records like two kids trading baseball cards. i ended up with some amazing & obscure european stuff that i never would have discovered on my own and hope to keep in touch. so that was really cool.

after missing gigs for so long, I had kind of forgotten that stuff like that can happen, and it was really pleasant to rediscover how, aside from the gig going good or bad, so much of the pleasure & fun of DJing just comes from the social connections you can make when you share what you love out in public. so, a good time overall.

what is the very specific niche?

yeah, forced social activity is such a great part of it. it pulls you in deeper.

xp yes I am curious about that as well! great story.

I did essentially my first live radio show in 2 years last Monday, it felt pretty good! I am back live for the foreseeable future.

i was spinning like 50s/early 60s mambo & rhumba-influenced r&b on 45, doo wop groups doing 'exotica' riffs, stuff like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNwdtirJUIo

(its not my main thing but its what i brought that night, figuring (correctly) that people weren't going to be looking for a big sweaty northern soul dance party. and apparently i met the one person in my town that night who absolutely lives & breathes that stuff.)

fuckin' rad

<3 <3 <3 !!!

I would totally come to this DJ night!

aw thanks sleeve & Dan. yeah i like the way that stuff sounds for certain spaces & crowds where like, theyre either done with dancing or havent gotten loose enough for it yet, but they still want to vibe

do you have any mixes of this stuff online at all?

apparently i used that track on this mix here, although the whole mix kind of oscillates between stuff with that sound & more traditional 60s latin jazz & boogaloo kinda stuff

thank you.

SO the sunday tea dance party i'm starting...

the bar has guaranteed i can use one active 12" speaker, maybe two. no subwoofer. i think this will be ok for the first few weeks as i doubt we will have more than 20 people out there at a time. if it's a runaway success we will obviously need more sound.

i am looking at purchasing a turbosound speaker on credit, the kind with a small sub and vertical tower line array. around a grand. BUT my plan is, see how this goes for a few weeks and make sure the income stream starts to flow ($100 for four hours every week, which is ridiculously low but i've got to start somewhere).

it is unclear if the bar speakers will be in use by the indoor drag brunch performers when we start at 4 pm. so i will be arriving before the drag show on 4/3 and moving at least one speaker out to the patio.

said patio is pretty cool! it is fairly small but comfortable and has pleasant seating and a nice view of the city. best of all, no concrete walls turning the sound into soupy garbage.

last of all, i need a name for this. i thought of 69th Ward Tea Dance (the ward thing is a play on mormon ward dances, the 69 refers to you know what (69, a sexual act)). is this too abstruse? the only other option i can think of is simply Sunday Tea Dance. your feedback on this matter is appreciated.

69th Ward ftw imo

it's so wild how quickly crowd noise can overtake a sound system when you start in a quiet space at what seems like a decent volume

$30-40 per hour seems like going rate so yeah I would also take $100 for 4 hrs

oops, meant to add - as a "foot in the door" starting wage kinda thing

cool, thanks for the feedback!

it really is crazy how fast the sound can get drowned out by people.

i started the tea dance gig yesterday. i really thought no one would show up, but that was not the case :). i caught this bug to dj unicorn club music at a gay bar almost four years ago and i am FINALLY back to it. it's going to be a fun spring and summer.

Congrats!

ty

2nd sunday in the bucket. another cold day but people turned up again. bar owner said afterwards he liked what i was playing and asked if i could play a night next weekend in addition to sunday. someone from local pride org wants me to do their retro party next month. i am happy and getting a little extra $. badly need a case for my controller and more hd space.

getting lots of compliments and smiles so yeah. lately feel like this is my calling tbh.

That’s awesome, map!

Love it. No djing on the horizon for me, but the Bl3ss3d M@donna played my new single at a big festival in Brazil and it "obliterated", so that's all I need. Much easier than going places and staying up late. :)

A week on Friday, after a gap of 25 months, I get my weekly vintage disco/funk/soul residency back at the bar up the road. Having sold off my vinyl during lockdown, I’ve gone digital - which, given the state of the floorboards, will significantly reduce my stress levels - and I’ll be swapping the much loved £12.99 Lidl disco ball for a proper lighting rig with strobes and lasers and shit. I’m now spending every available waking hour punching bar markers into Serato and wishing that click tracks had been invented a decade earlier.

(actually, punching bar markers into Rodgers/Edwards comp/prods kinda feels like desecration)

(and I have become all the more fondly disposed towards Dave Lee ZR remixes and Reflex revisions, even if they still kinda feel like cheating)

congrats Mike + Jordan!

Oh and map too! :)

Holy shit@Jordan! Which track? Link pls.

That is rad J.

Mike: feel you on the dave lee / reflex reliance.

Heh I posted it to two threads already and have been feeling bad for self-promo, but it's this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBM1bZwjbbA

Dope

thanks!

a new record store just opened up in my neighborhood, and they put out a call on their IG for DJs to do weekend in-store sets. i volunteered to do one and they got back to me today, offered me potential dates, and said they'd prefer it if i had a crew or friends who wanted to dj with me because they want to create a cool hangout spot vibe for the store. which i get, but the problem is...i honestly don't really know very many DJs? like i have maybe one or two people i could ask but i'm still relatively new to doing this and i don't have a ton of connections let alone a "crew." but i volunteered for a slot anyway so i have about three weeks to think of something lol. still, i'm excited to branch out beyond the happy hour i've been doing!

if i were you i'd ask some friends if they wanted to hang out while i mix and they can put some records on if they want, who cares if they actually dj

Last week's relaunch of my Friday night bar residency went so, so well (and the bar's pleased, because they had post-lockdown record takings). My new lighting rig, which replaces the much loved £12.99 Lidl desktop mirror ball, illuminated both the main room and the upstairs mezzanine, which was cool. Swapping from vinyl to digital made for a bigger dancefloor, with no needle-jump red zones to police, also aided by the bar removing some of the seating for the night. The bar has also been refurbed, so the whole place felt different, and better.

As it was my first public outing using digital, I played a pre-planned set, mostly consisting of tried and tested favourites from the pre-pandemic era, which I'd fine-tuned and practiced many times over, so there were no fuck-ups on some of the more complicated transitions. Although massively nervous beforehand, I quickly got into a calm state of focus, and so was able to fully appreciate and enjoy what was happening around me.

The track which first got the floor full was, to my surprise, The Doobie Brothers "Long Train Runnin". The night is advertised as "vintage disco, funk and dance from the 1970s onwards", which in practice means very little after 2000, but I took a punt on "Inspector Norse". It was the only track to lose most of the floor, but plenty of bystanders were into it, so what the hell.

As usual, it was a very diverse crowd: mostly early 20s to mid-50s, but two of my best dancers were well into their 70s, which I loved. Loads of friends turned up, plenty of regulars from the old days resurfaced, and there were a lot of new faces. Warm and friendly atmosphere, smiles all round, no bad vibes from anyone. It really couldn't have gone better.

Nice one! I am shocked that Inspector Norse would lose most of the dancers, no matter where you're playing

it is 8 years(!) since I last heard Inspector Norse played to a dancefloor when Mr. Terje played it live. The crowd reaction was one of the wildest I have ever seen as can be witnessed in this video. The sound quality is awful but the energy is a delight. Skip to the last minute for an unalloyed distillation of pure joy -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tgK5tfG9ps

ps - very happy to hear it went so well Mike.

Man, my co-DJ dropped Inspector Norse just the other week while we were going back to back and everyone loved it