DJing Tutorial Vids
Just mental cue’s for me when using vinyl. Counting beats, bars & phrases can be a nightmare when you’re running out of record. I think I’m way to fussy to be honest.
baggers44 All in your head mate. Thats what ‘knowing your tunes’ is really all about. Knowing what will and won’t work, knowing where the phrases and percussions change, knowing that the esoteric floaty breaks track you love really, really, really won’t mix into the Rotterdam techno track you also love…
What you will find a lot of DJs do to negate some of these issues is to play very narrow genre selections, so, you go and see a ‘chicago house DJ’, they will probably play just chicago house, 100% of their tracks will be chicago house and 70% of those tracks will work perfectly well into each other, they may have a few vocal clashes they need to avoid, but otherwise it will all work quite well and they can make it up as they go along. When I used to play six hours etc, i’d break it down into smaller sets with tunes that I know worked together.
it’s important to remember that with vinyl and before every track/set was immediately available on the internet, djs typically played the same records very regularly before they went out of rotation. music wasn’t as disposable. being able to play the same tracks allowed you learn those tracks better. there’s a lot of downside to the over abundance of available music now.
exactly, it’s too accessible now and we’ve all become adhd with new music. i think that’s why we (or maybe it’s just my aging perspective) see less new ‘classic’ records across genres. we don’t take enough time to really get to know and love the individual records and there’s too much average or worse music being released every day.
i can’t count how many old albums i love now, that i didn’t on the first listen. it took 10 times through to really click. now if i listen to an album once and it doesn’t immediately grab me, i probably don’t give it a second chance.
303abuser Totally mate.
I loved how similar some of the Glastonbury 2003 and Creamfields 2003 sets were.
Today I definitely feel a positive pressure to play something new because there IS so much great new music but I actually need to shift a strange feeling I get now when I play something that is 2+ months old. It’s totally unnecessary and music really isn’t that disposable.
If I’ve got the music in the first place its for a reason.
…its context tho innit? It’s totally reasonable to showcase upfront music in a limited format, monthly mix/livestream or even radio show.
I like to think that if i was playing at a party or a club/afters though I’d dig a little deeper and not be limited to the releases of the previous couple of months.
- Edited
that’s true too, context is important. there’s a difference between streaming/live just as there is between showing up to a gig with a usb stick vs. 4000 lbs of records. bottom line though is that we only have so much bandwidth for new information, so listening to 10x the tracks lends to learning less about each one.
…yep, and therefore (IMO) organisation of music becomes super-important. Picking tunes for an occasion is almost a forgotten skill, because with the volume of music you carry now, having '‘all-bases-covered’ has taken over… it doesn’t necessarily mean you will pick the right tracks to play though
303abuser I think this is why I usually programmed my mixes to be around an hour long (which meant around 10-12 tracks per). I’m ok with marathon mixes, but it gets to a point where you just say “eh…”
deathbysmurf yep all about finding an approach that works. i was never able to program anything ahead of time, i had to keep it spontaneous or i got bored, which meant learning tracks inside out (or playing more minimal) otherwise it sounded like garbage with tracks out of place.