DJing Tutorial Vids

Mad_Cyril

Current fave is this one, largely due to the boutros related ‘sniffles’ 😁

Dan

Seems pretty charged on his vids…knows his stuff.

NasserAlazzawi

Ellaskins! What a guy. It never fails to amaze me how well his channel does and yet his room/background is always a massive MESS compared with the slick/polished channels.

He does give great tips though.

baggers44

NasserAlazzawi the scary thing is that it makes you think that if you are going to be really good you have to plan each transition in a long set in this way instead of having a little look at the waveform and doing a rough mix on the fly. Doing it on vinyl all those years ago made you have to read the grooves and listen out for transition points and remember them although I do think that audiences were less judgmental about dodgy mixing back then. These days I CBA with all that - it wd take me a week to plan a vinyl mix and i wd need to write it all down !

Amps

NasserAlazzawi Until you start diving in the pool at the end of every stream, you can’t say anything. Massive missed opportunity imo.

Amps

baggers44 Used to regularly do six hour sets; knowing your records was by far the most important aspect. Would fume when I missed a cue etc.

baggers44

Amps and would you just remember a cue or make notes?! I know silly question! i always found it difficult to know where in the incoming track the right phrase was - knowing that really helps build the energy in a mix - safer bet for me was always mixing in the flat terrain of the last 2 mins and the first 2 mins although it does give your mix a stop/start feel energy wise. Maybe overthinking it!

vinnyt77

baggers44 If putting a promo type mix together, I’ll make notes. If just having a spin, or at a gig, more likely to wing it.

Amps

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.

Dubman

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.

303abuser

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.

Dubman

303abuser
When you’re paying over £5 per track you can’t really afford to play brand new music every week unless you’re on promo lists. So you soon learn to know the tracks you have.

SM001

303abuser 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

Can you tell Sasha that?

NasserAlazzawi

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.

303abuser

SM001 i don’t think i’ve listened to a full (new) sasha set in 10 years and there’s probably a reason for that.

303abuser

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.

Unbroken1

…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.

303abuser

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.

deathbysmurf

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…”

Unbroken1

…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

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.