Does anybody else find this to be a little bit "cheating" in the world of DJing?

Yes it is cheating, but yes most audiences in the right ambient setting will not notice first hand.

However I strongly belief that I bring more energy to an audience that a pre-made mix and that I can turn the tide in situations where he could not. He eventually will end up with a gig outside his safety zone and a more demanding audience and will fail…. I have seen it often enough.

I have often enough been re-hired at a higher rate than before, after I was sacked for that “awesome cool (fake) DJ” that did it for cheap had run into the brick wall of a demanding audience…

Indeed, imagine yourself being stuck on 2nd base for the whole game… 😉

In the old days people like John “Jellybean” Benitez and Ben Liebrand would create remixes of popular dance tracks. They were commercially available, usually as 12″ versions. Typically they’d be much longer, with extra breaks, longer intro’s and outro’s and sometimes other “fx” thrown in (remember these were the days of physically cutting and pasting audio tape and dubbing with multiple tape decks).

Was it cheating to use those remixes instead of the standard (often radio)mix? I don’t think so. Those extended mixes gave a DJ lots of extra creative space. Playing a mixtape by another DJ, which encompassed multiple tracks was an absolute no-no. You’d listen to those mixes in the car, on your walkman or at home. But if you were anywhere near serious about your craft, you’d never play them in public and try to pass them off as your own work.

There is a difference between using a tool like a Sync button (for which cotrect working a lot of prep work is needed, like setting 1st beat, beatgridding and such) and playing a mix someone else made Imho. The first is a choice every DJ has to make for himself. Sometimes I will use Sync sometimes I won’t. I will never play another DJ’s mix though. As said before, a good remix is a different story.

Greetinx,

Chuck

Would personnally get bored being behind the deck for 5 minutes pretendig to mix

I sometime use some mashup things that hype the crowd for like a minute or 2 or longer if I have to leave the deck for a longer time.

Otherwise premixed transition and things like that are kinda lazy.

I think he is not talking about those megamixes that most of the time contain 3-4 songs of the same artist, but of mixes like you sometimes find on Cafe Del Mar or Kontor CDs, which is basically all songs of the CD mixed for a 90min set.

But I also agree on the megamixes, I actually never play any except one occasion:

If you are DJing a wedding and the bathroom is really far away, I put on a megamix to have enough time to get there and back…

I’m just saying everyone has their own workflow.  If someone wants to buy three songs, mix them into one MP3 (even if it sounds like they’re just regularly DJing them) and then play those, it’s their prerogative.

As I said, it’s only risky if you end up with one of the songs clearing the floor or the crowd wanting the music changed.

I could say it’s lazy, but I won’t call it cheating.  If someone played someone else’s mix CD, then it’s cheating.

I say that’s not DJing.  It’s just plain playing music.  Anyone can load a track on a CD player or a laptop or iPod and press play.  All that guy did was blend in pre-recorded mixes.  Heck, he can do the Jesus pose, that is if the crowd continues dancing to the music.  But if the crowd doesn’t really feel the pre-recorded mixes, that guy, who is more of a spinner than a DJ, would be in trouble with empty floors, or worse, empty venues.