Do DJs overuse effects and looping?

Since we’re already on the theme “effects and looping”, I was wondering if anyone of you had some great tips on which effects you really love and which you detest and normally stay away from? Concidering myself fresh on DJing and quite unexperienced, I really need tips on this particular theme. I normally stick to three effects while mixing with my Traktor and S4, where Beatmasher and Delay is mostly used for the buildups. I’m not so familliar with the looping except from the fade overs – I love looping a particular part of a song with the particular text that people normally remember or know, so that when I faded the song completely, I go straight into some dope drop of the song so the crowd goes insane. Not used too commonly as they would get tired of this. Same goes with beatmashing and delaying – Doing this about 5-10 sec before the drop of a song goes down really helps me make the crowd go wild!

Dj Freshboi, post: 31381, member: 4419 wrote: Since we’re already on the theme “effects and looping”, I was wondering if anyone of you had some great tips on which effects you really love and which you detest and normally stay away from? Concidering myself fresh on DJing and quite unexperienced, I really need tips on this particular theme. I normally stick to three effects while mixing with my Traktor and S4, where Beatmasher and Delay is mostly used for the buildups. I’m not so familliar with the looping except from the fade overs – I love looping a particular part of a song with the particular text that people normally remember or know, so that when I faded the song completely, I go straight into some dope drop of the song so the crowd goes insane. Not used too commonly as they would get tired of this. Same goes with beatmashing and delaying – Doing this about 5-10 sec before the drop of a song goes down really helps me make the crowd go wild!

Sounds like a good post for your own thread, doesn’t seem to belong on this one 🙂

use as few effects and loops as you can, use as many as you must… feel the music…

Dj Freshboi, post: 31381, member: 4419 wrote: which effects you really love and which you detest and normally stay away from?

I’m on Traktor, I like Delay T, Beatmasher and Reverb.. (to be used sparingly, always, and at exactly the right moment–timing is everything).

anything else is kinda of a slippery slope and requires major skills to pull off… otherwise you end up sounding like a knob.

I think it depends on the DJ.

I personally like looping to help extend breaks, and effects to add an accent point on a dull spot. I usually like to keep my music “pure”, meaning play it the way the artist/remixer originally intended it.

B-H-Y, post: 31541, member: 4231 wrote: Hi D-Jam. That’s making good use of looping and effects, and comes with experience. Some types of music don’t suit lots of effects added, and as you say, are best played the way they were intended. Other tracks suit effects. It’s deciding which is which, that some inexperienced DJs get confused about.

Trance IMHO is a genre you can’t mess with too much. Most of the time added effects will mess up the synths or overdo things that it ruins the original sound.

Personally, I think both the DJs and crowds need to stop thinking the DJ should be “constantly doing stuff”. I’ve gone to play and had a few criticize me that while my set sounded solid and great, I spent too much time going through and finding what I wanted to play next.

It’s ironic that those who first say I sounded great will then believe if I had spent more time FXing or doing Jesus poses, I would have been even “better”…yet much of the time I see DJs doing the same 2-8 FX/loop tricks…and it gets old very fast.

“Oh wow…you flanged things…again”

“Gee whillickers, that loop/reverb thing was great the first time…but now you doing it for the 8th time in your set has more or less killed the coolness of it.”