Who Says You Have To DJ Live To Be Hot ?

Very cool indeed. Open the windows, blast the speakers, and you take “mobile dj” to a whole new level.

On a side note, I cannot STAND the type music he is being played. To each their own but…yuck!

There’s a difference between being forced not to DJ by health, or choosing not to having done it before, and never having played live in your life. DJing is done in public; but it’s also true that once you have that experience you can pick and choose (including choosing not to do it live at all for whatever reason).

Phil Morse, post: 5087 wrote: There’s a difference between being forced not to DJ by health, or choosing not to having done it before, and never having played live in your life. DJing is done in public; but it’s also true that once you have that experience you can pick and choose (including choosing not to do it live at all for whatever reason).

Exactly. In my case, I’ve been there and done that. I’ve played in big clubs, small clubs, and raves/parties of all sizes. My choosing not to actively seek live gigs anymore came simply because I was tired of having little control in how I wanted to do the live gigs. You get sick and tired of being booked to come out and play trance or deep house, but then the promoter filled the venue with trixies wanting pop music and thus you’re forced to change.

I look at things as there’s loads of hungry guys who are willing to play and claim to love the Chicken Dance to have that gig. So let them go through that and I’ll be one less DJ they have to compete with. I’m not unwilling to play live anymore, but I’d rather stay a bedroom nobody at this stage of my life and occasionally play gigs (even for nothing) that I think are cool and fun, rather than to spend week after week hating DJing as I’m stuck playing craptastic music to people who only want garbage.

It took over 10 years of playing and even throwing/promoting events for me to figure out where I’d be happy in DJing. Even now I get excited about making more Remembering the Rave or Looking Back mixes as well as new stuff I want to put into more modern sets, and I get excited about a promo I get and post on my Tumblr page. I like sharing my experiences on these boards and in the blogs just even to hopefully help you all avoid the hell I went through.

I’ll tell any DJ to play live a few times and then decide if you want to be a working DJ or a bedroom DJ. Get out there, give demos, network, promote, play, deal with requests, trixies, douchebags, shady promoters, etc…and then you’ll see if you love it or hate it. Who knows? You might get lucky and never face the BS I did. You might one day be in the DJ Mag Top 10 and barely have any horror stories to tell.

In your case Emma, you have a very valid reason. Plus I’d be careful on many videos people post talking about what it takes to be a DJ. I tend to see a lot of them are from vinyl purists and misguided folk.

To me, it’s about the love and the drive to get better at it.

Live or bedroom. It’s about wanting to get better and expand yourself more musically.

I think my writing skills came about mainly from spending years doing it. I was blogging before the term existed, and in the past attempted to make a guide to Chicago clubs and the culture.

I guess when you do anything long enough; be it writing, cooking, running, or even DJing; doing it well just comes naturally.

Emma to answer your last question I am pretty sure these djs not changing cds are using premade cds created the way I do incase my lappy crashes 🙂 … Either a twin cds with all tracks or say track 1 3 5 7 9 on say cd 1 and 2 4 6 8 10 on cd 2

Or these people are using sd cards… Or even a hidden laptop 🙂

Id say its the latter then 🙂 lots of djs are using sd cards or usb drives and will have there collection either duplicated on these or have a cable linking the two (this works on the newish pioneer cdj2000’s), I know james zabelia is using this format and it looks like the way forward, there was an interview over on djtechtools where he was saying he fits his whole setlist for the night onto an sd card so it saves having to have cd wallets and then find the song he wants, just use the browser on the cdj.

But yes it would be a bit disapointing if they did the first suggestion of playing in order, I would only do this with not so common songs in case of a software or laptop fail, just so I can keep music playing in the backround :), either that or use djay on my ipad to mix untill im up and running 🙂

Kyle_G, post: 5264 wrote: I’ve actually done something very similar to this, where my friend would plug in an 1/4″ plug into his car and connect it to his Kontrol S4, you can DJ on the go!

Me and my mates used to do this quite a lot, with traktor 1 it took a lot of changing setting for audiocards (have a small usb one for travel) but now with traktor 2 out I have t1 setup specially for this with a simplified screen and keyboard mapping for full control.

Also used djay on the ipad a few times which worked nice 🙂