D-Jam

I still find goodies on BP, but I don’t live on the site.

Traxsource has become my more favorite site. Plenty of great house…plus the idea of putting the Facebook comment system is gold. So I can post a comment as my Facebook page, it posts on my page (content/engagement) and it might also lead to more likes by those who find my comments on Traxsource.

Your page is about promoting yourself as a DJ? Or listing new house music for DJs to check out?

Ok…entering that post into Google Translate, because I’m lost.

Steelo, post: 21771, member: 1368 wrote: I’m surprised anyone is able to find 20+ decent tunes worthy of playing a week. I throw a lot in my cart and after listening a few times would be lucky to walk away with more than a handful. I feel like the quality is in a slump at the moment.

I’m working on a blog post about this…but I tend to think DJs are so oversaturated with music that they tend to get sick of tunes faster than the average person.

I tell many in this slump to play multiple genres and just switch around, or shop less often. I really only shop about once a month for tunes. I just simply can’t spend every day, every other day, or every week looking for music…because I’ll end up hearing loads of similarity and thus get frustrated.

Plenty of creativity out there, but there is just too much and many still believe they can stay on top of it all. It’s impossible.

I tried to define four facets of pop/mainstream music here, but even then I had some debate.

Mainstream is as it says. It’s stuff that’s popular with the regular average people. The radio might play it, but it’s what you hear generally in the trendy spots.

Independent is more the small labels and people who simply decide to not be part of the big label push and even big label image. So imagine a female artist wants to do EDM and she decides not to make poppy electro house or euro dance, and she doesn’t sell herself as a glamour model. Independent can mean many things, but I’d tell you it generally adheres to an idea of keeping small and not buying into the big label marketing machine.

Underground is the opposite of mainstream…and I find it funny how many think underground only means “dark”, techy”, “minimal”, “abstract”. In my book, underground is anything the general masses are not into. Something could have a nice pop, energy, melody, etc…but if the mainstream masses see it as a big “no way”, then in my book it’s in the underground. Part of this though IMHO is that there is some following. So if you have a style of music that you can’t get played in clubs/bars or on the radio, but a show of it gets 50-1000 people out, then it’s underground in many ways.

Obscure is more about abstraction to me. It’s about wanting to venture away from the “norms” of music. Dubstep in its birth is a great example. I know now it’s very mainstream, but when it started, the artists seemingly wanted to get away from “four on the floor” and even other typical sounds/structures of dance music. Aphex Twin has always been “obscure” in my book.

ME…I don’t think about “independent” or “obscure”. Too many seemingly love to use those terms to feel “cutting edge” or “cool”. They want to claim they only buy independent music to appear “ahead”, but I think it’s bollocks. I’ll play what sounds good to me, even if a track happens to end up on Top-40 radio.

I personally have always loved to sit on the dividing line between the mainstream and the underground. I like being the “entry drug” for mainstream folk. So they go out and hear perhaps the typical poppy/mainstream tunes in the club, I’ll hit them with similar sounds that they didn’t hear…take them deeper into the rabbit’s hole. I know die-hard trendy folk do not find it appealing, nor do die-hard underground folk…but my goal is generally to get average people to check out EDM.

I agree. I originally would love to say “F— the high-rollers” and even “F— the wannabes buying bottles”

However, that one tidbit on how most of the club’s revenue comes from these folk, the business side of me kicked in.

Definitely they need to be more careful in booking, and simply accept they cannot have techno, tech house, or deep house acts if they want to please the big spenders.

You all should try out the new Remix Decks in Trakor. It’s like a more solid melding of the DAW thinking with live DJ/performance.

I agree with the notion. In the real world, there is a tiny percentile of non-DJs who really care. Most of the angst/controversy on sync, Live, etc…is from DJs.

I am a personal fan of playing live, but I think it’s not a bad thing to make “megamixes” the way this guy was alluding to. Back when things were only vinyl you would see stuff like that. DJ remix services like X-Mix would include megamixes in their volumes.

I also agree on the time management thing. This is one big reason why I keep my live beatmatching skills sharp. It’s a lot of time to beatmap and tweak up tunes like that, when you can just show up and play when you do things life. I use sync, but I simply go manual when sync fails. I simply want to spend my time seeking out new music as opposed to prepping music to play.

It’s the same reason why I stopped producing when I tried. I found myself spending loads of time to make one track and I’d lose interest…wanting to make a new mix instead. I just decided I’d rather not get famous or known, but do what I love in DJing instead.

In my book there is no completely right or wrong way in DJing…the only decider is the crowd. It’s like gladiators. You win the crowd, and you rule the scene.

Define “workshop”

And I’m from Chicago. So are a few others here.