D.J.Manhattan – Learning Journal

Middle of November already and for me it’s a start of a new chapter!

I guess I should do a bit of a review of my adventure so far. Man it feels like a long journey but at the same time the time flew by so quickly… here are a couple of my new mixes while you read the wall of text
http://soundcloud.com/arthurvega/arthur-vega-electro-mix
http://soundcloud.com/arthurvega/tech-house-tribal-mix

My first time at the turn tables was at my friends house On V7’s and some mixer he had. I had a ton of fun mixing at his place when we would chill but I never thought of it as anything more than just hanging out. I didint know anything about Djing at the time and just loved or hated the way people would mix at clubs. I just enjoyed the music and sometimes the show, but most of the time I wasent at the club for the music but for the girls. Me mixing at his place was really very rare once every few months when we had time to chill but each time I couldent let go and always got lost in the music. Then a few hours before New Years of 2011 we were chilling at his getting prepared when he suggested that I play before his main event at the bar. A little dumbfounded but super excited I said yea. When we got there he set up his mobile gear which was a VCI Typhoon and his mac and started the show. Roughly 30mins into it he told me to step up and play until actual new years. This was a major changing point for me. My nerves were skyhigh but it felt more like excitement than anything else. There was about 30-50 people at that moment and I loved it. There was so much joy in me I can’t even describe. I didin’t want to let go I wanted to keep playing for the rest of the night but it was his show and only 10minutes left before midnight. I acted as MC for the rest of the night and at time would play short periods so that he can take a break. I left that night not being able to talk about anything else. He even gave me the typhoon for the week so that I could practice at home. My life would not be the same after this.

I am a man of passion. So when i fall in love with something i fully commit. and I’ve never, ever been so passionate about something in my life… I’ve done alot of things… I did ballroom dancing for 8years, travelled to thailand, learned social dynamics to pick-up girls… and none of it felt this rewarding. I spent that week djing everynight for 3 or more hours just getting lost in Djing. I did crazy amounts of research and found this site. I consulted with my friend about which controller i should get and a week later I had a numark NS6 with 2 speakers, and some kick ass Technic’s headphones. I do most of my djing at home and at the time i didint have a table so my entire set up was on my bed (which luckly is very high 1.5m). Every night I would set up and then put everything away, set up and pack up, set up and pack up, until i bought a table. Then I landed a kick ass girlfriend and playing music of my DJ set definately helped me get with her that night :). I played alot during my nights after working 11 hour shifts I would come back and play then maybe spend sometime with the GF… Then I burnt out.
I spend a month and a half without djing… I kept working my 11hour shifts and then the rest of the time was spent with the gf. Slowly it started to fade until one day I had nothing to do and decided to turn on my gear and spin for a bit, and I ended up playing music long into the night. I remebered what I wanted. I promiced myself never to burn out again. I started to learn balance and that ment sacrifice. I had to focus on playing less but on a more consistant basis and let me tell you it sucked! My work kept occuping my time… It kept stressing me out… I hated my job… even though it paid for everything i own I hated it with a passion… it was none stop work monday – friday 11 hours a day then some weekend times. It made it that much harder to focus because I had this new passion in my life that I wanted to dedicate myself too and I couldent. So I started using my free time at work to learn as much as i can about djing, music, and the club scene. I would spend hours filling my head with information then I would come back and mix. I had a friend design biz cards for me, we made a logo, and I slowly started focusing on getting better at actual mixing so that I could play out. My life became more balanced but there was still not enough time to get good.

With practice I started to realize more and more that I wanted to play out and not be a bedroom DJ. I wanted that feeling of playing infront of a crowd. I got a crew together and found a place. We talked the small time club into letting us play and set up a facebook event group, a flyer, and our line up. The event was a total disaster. 3 people showed up at most. One of the my ‘crew’ memebers dissapeared completely and the other had a last minute gig to set up for. I ended up being the only one after my friend who had a gig plugged everything in. I was alone if anythign went wrong… oh and I forgot my headphones… oh and i ran out of music (thank god my friend lent me his top40 usb). I left devistated and didint play for two weeks with my hope for everything dj lost. Slowly i recovered and started mixing at home again. I played a couple of short test sets at my friends friday night bar residency and then got lucky when the owner asked me to play their saturday nights.

Things definately turned around more for the positive then. My first night was super nervewrecking… I pluged my main wires into the wrong sound out and nothing would play once i figured out what happened my nerves were so shot that i couldent mix for the life of me. After about an hour i got back into the groove and it went pretty well. I got paid and left. I was back on track and my excitment shot back up… I love playing infront of others :). Weeks passed by and I had good and bad nights. One thing i learned quickly is that you should have a good variety of music if you are a resident dj otherwise it becomes boring for you and the customers especially the regulars. Another good thing i learned is that you should adjust to your surroundings and know what kind of music people like at the venue. I’ve adjusted to the venue so well that now i can get people dancing at the club with not much of a worry its great! This bar also has a basement where they hold events and its 99% electro/house. It’s run by a couple of girls and for weeks i’ve been talking wtih them to book a spot. Last week I played there and it was epic the crowd downstairs was going crazy to the stuff i played… it was so much more rewarding because i got to play mostly the music that i want to play. I will definately be talking with them for another spot to come. There was a harsh lesson that night though. Everyone who I invited no one showed up. My networking sucks and I can’t seem to invite anyone i know to come out (most of the time) for the events that matter. Maybe I just do not know enough people.

The start of my new chapter begun with me quitting my job. I finally do not work there… I found something that will keep paying the rent but has alot more free time and that is alot more valueble for me right now. There was a topic about balance somewhere on this forum and I have one thing to say about it. Balance is great when you have many things that you value in life and want to keep all of them. But to get somewhere great and to follow something that you want and love to do there must be alot of sacrifice. to become great in one thing you must give up antoher. Some people just do not have that choice, but i do and I’ve taken it there is no turning back now. I’d like to beleive that most people who are famous gave up alot to get to where they are and to maintain it takes massive amounts of work no matter who you are.

What am I going to do now? Work, Work, Work and some more work… I am going full blast and going to use my time as efficiantly as i can without burning myself out. I have a graphic artist working on a new logo for me, i have biz cards in the making, I have my full mix to finish, CD’s to burn, ableton, lightroom, photoshop to learn, jump into the club photography scene, and my most importaint… network. I need to build my fan base.

I hope this wasent to much to read and the spelling mistakes dont hurt your head 🙂 Peace out there will be alot more of me to come around… oh and there is a new name… No longer DJ manhattan, its all about Arthur Vega now.

Thank you both! It’s so rewarding that others are tuning in and I am able to help some people out with choices when it comes to their DJ / music careers.

I haven’t updated in a while 🙂 TO be honest i’ve been loafting alot and in a bit of a depression slum but im coming back stronger then ever with the start of a Video Blog along side this and some cool news aswell 🙂 il be posting at the end of the month 😀

Happy Djing

Get ready first vid blog comming and total update of what i’ve been up to coming this monday 4th!

Bam! I’m back… A day late… ops! I bought the new galaxy s III phone that night after work and was all like “ooooo” and like “aahhhhh” and like “Wwwoooaaaahhh!”

Year 2 mufakas! And I am rolling hard! and this is what I’ve been up to for the past month…

I’ve been playing out every saturday at this bar called Crown and Tiger and its been pretty epic. I’ve learned alot and still much to take away from it, but now I want to mainly focus on my own events and building a name for myself in the big city of Toronto Canada out of nothing pretty much. I started doing this by scoring the basement at said bar once a month it belongs to me and whoever I invite to DJ with me. I had my first event at the end of Jan and it was pretty good, not a big turn out with my crowd but the actual bar was packed and ppl started going downstairs then it picked up. I had girls dancing pretty much all night long which is awesome 🙂 especially because it was mainly my choice of music (I played a bit of top40 at the start of the night to get some ppl to dance then switched over to EDM). This is one of 3 areas of focus in year two of DJing… To build a following. So follow me on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/Vegapartynation and check out my live mixes here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/vega-party-nation <— I stream live every wednesday at 8pm – 10pm EST

I’ve also been studying my ass of for the past two weeks in ableton! seriously like 3-5 hours of watching tutorials and messing around with the software. I did take a day or two off in between to recover a bit from all the information but let me just say this… The learning curve is well worth it! And I will definately be investing in the Ableton Push as soon as it comes out… I am sorry to say that yes i am using a “non legal” version of ableton right now, but I promise that its temperary until live 9 comes out… I will drop a grand on it 🙂 I think its worth it! You can check out my 2 tunes on soundcloud here! (please dont be too harsh as I only had a week or two with the software with no knowledge of anything production): https://soundcloud.com/arthurvega
This is my second area of focus this year to produce… By the end of this year i want to have the core basics down solid to create a tune. fine tuning will come with time… I study for this like someone would for an exam… its difficult but I am definately enjoying it alot more than Highschool 🙂

Thirdly… I have officially posted and started my Youtube channel, here is the first vid: [media=youtube]TgQsCPNvJn8[/media]

I will be uploading these every two weeks if not more. I have learned that I am camera shy and that simple vid took me a full 2 days of recording… my second one (which is in the works right now) was a bit faster in the terms of hours. I am a perfectionist at heart.
Third focus for this year is to play more venues, I definately want to Book the biggest club this year which is Guv 🙂 (one of their rooms anyways.)

final mentions 🙂 I will try to update this once a week again… I know ive been loafting in this but its honestly because I’ve been so busy or caught up in actual music. I will try to make them more constructive and like a breakdown of my week. A song that i’ve had on repeate for the past two weeks has been “I could be the one – by avicii and nicky romano” I fucking love it! Another really good song mention is “Sovereign light cafe – remixed by afrojack” sick tune!

One last thing I made a shout out on craiglist about finding other DJ’s to work with and the response has been crazy! on my first day i had about 10 local DJ’s and producers who contacted me. I’ve got to know a couple of them and hopefully something works out in the future. I find that ppl are afraid to reach out, but respond well to someone who tried to reach out. Remeber other DJ’s are not the enemy they will help you in your future. unless they are assholes and have a crazy ego… then fuck em. 🙂

See you all next week. Any feedback would be great! + anyone know how to photoshop or draw that cam help me out a bit :)?