D-Jam

Pick their favorite artist and ask them how they would feel if he/she came on Facebook and publicly quit…stating the vast amount of piracy and lost money led them to give up on music.

Easiest way to put it. They can rationalize to death on how much more money they make in touring and such, but just like that they could decide to quit altogether, or stop producing and just run services to make money off other producers where those guys lose on piracy, but not him.

I think there are plenty of free and legal resources for music now that even the broke DJs have no excuse to pirate.

My only debate I have on media rights are when I am told what I can or can’t do with it. If I decide to re-edit a tune for myself and use it…I should not be sued UNLESS I’m giving it away or selling it. When I say “re-edit”, I mean when the tune hasn’t changed much, but I might have rearranged it to lengthen a break or shorten the tune.

In terms of movies, I get mad when it’s suddenly “illegal” to take a DVD I bought legally and rip/convert it for my own personal use on a mobile device. It’s gouging customers to tell them if they want to play a movie they legally bought on DVD on a mobile device, that they have to shell out more money for the digital file. It’s the same when I decide to change the ID3 tags or file name to suit my needs on a music file.

I figure as long as I’m not giving it out to everyone, I should be able to do whatever I want with what I legally paid for.

shr3dder, post: 14945, member: 1473 wrote: Daft Punk and The Chems have both won grammies yeah? So not always true.

Nooooo…I meant even before that.

Before they gave Frankie Knuckles a Grammy they would nominate things like Cindi Lauper or Cher for some dance remix they had on their new single. Actual EDM artists, even Daft Punk (before the robot helmets) were left in the cold.

Nowadays we may not like everyone nominated or winning based on our tastes, but I’ll say most of them deserve to be there. I’d rather see Skrillex win a Grammy as opposed to it going to Celine Dion for a dance tune she might have made or something like that.

Sumir, post: 14556, member: 1335 wrote: I think you should understand , I started getting gigs in 1990. I first touched vinyl 2-3 years before that, and spent that time learning to mix. It’s an insult and a joke when someone has the audacity to over simplify , and take the passion out of what my generation, and those before me worked our asses off to build.

I started buying vinyl in 1990 when I wanted some house music tracks I could not get on cassette. I was playing vinyl records on my parent’s stereo for years before that. It wasn’t until 1992 that I bought a used paid of Technics 100s, and then upgraded to 1200s a year later. I played vinyl up until 2004 when I moved to CDJs, and then moved fully to midi a few years ago.

I know about the passion, and what WE all worked to build. I did that too. Passion is how you define it. For me, it’s about the music. Not how it’s brought, but how it sounds. To this day I still am passionate about what I play…which is why I choose to be a bedroom DJ and blogger. I didn’t want to just play the usual tunes to please average people…but craft sets the way I feel they should sound.

Never assume every DJ who walked away from vinyl (or never used vinyl) does not know that passion or what it means to build a scene.

Sumir, post: 14556, member: 1335 wrote: There is no meaning left in ti what so ever, no message. The only concern I see from today’s wanna be DJ’s , is for themselves. We did it to bring people together (I don’t know about you, your message seems to float in some other direction..but who knows), unity and an open place to get away from our society built lives. No need to put “old school DJ’s” in all caps, and accentuate yourself there. I’ll never agree with the approach today’s generation takes. I do not see any heart or soul or depth behind it.

I respect your feelings, but for me, this attitude a lot of the “wannabes” take is nothing new to me. I remember in 1996 when there was no Final Scratch, and a laptop was nowhere to be found in a booth, I’d see loads of kids buy used 1200s and pick up every hardhouse/booty house record Bad Boy Bill played. They would show up to play 10-15 minute slapped together sets with no sense of unity or melodic harmony. Transitions would be a mess and you would hear the same 10 tunes played over and over all night. They only thought about how many tunes they could cram into 10 minutes, if they could scratch, and what “nasty words” can come out to make women howl and shake their butts like putanas.

Fast forward to 2001. I’m watching eurotrash with egos who live on limewire, downloading everything and anything they can get their hands on…then pressing them to CDs and heading off to the clubs. I see them put CDs out for sale in local stores and cash in on stealing music. Again…no DVS was out there yet. No sync. Some of them would run their tunes through a DAW and fix all the BPM speeds to be equal. We would laugh at those who came in and never moved their pitch controls on the CDJs. Many more would get a tune and immediately chop it up into a quick homogenized DJ friendly version of short intro, main part, repeat main part, then short outro…so they wouldn’t have to think or be creative.

I also saw plenty of local rave DJs who didn’t own any gear or vinyl. They learned off their friends and constantly borrowed music from friends to go out and play with. I’d see some get paid money playing borrowed records and then spending that money on drugs and booze…while talented guys still couldn’t get gigs. These wannabes landed gigs because they were “popular” and folks came out for them.

My big point here is all this political crap has been happening long before sync ever existed. You don’t have to agree with the approach the newblood takes, and frankly I don’t agree with everything they do either.

What you have to do though is ACCEPT IT. It’s not going away. That and redefine how you judge a good DJ. Don’t be quick to dismiss him because he presses a sync button. Dismiss him when he can’t even blend with a sync, or he can’t do anything creative in his set. Especially dismiss him when he can’t do a manual blend when his sync fails.

That’s the passion, heart, and soul we all need to push. Push them to be better, and especially to widen the musical landscape. We can agree to disagree…but I just want you to understand that as much as you want to hate sync…it’s not going away.

OK…I thought I posted a reply here, but I guess I didn’t.

I think it’s important for any DJ who wants to be professional to have a website. It’s not about if you’ve played a certain number of years or not, but more about when you’re going to hit up promoters and such for gigs. It’s a piece of marketing material…like your press kit, demo CD, and business cards.

I’ve heard many who believe a social media page is all you need. I disagree. A marketing campaign now is like an octopus. Each tentacle is an arm of that. So the flyers you made are one. The decals you gave out are another. The mixes you posted on mixcloud are another. Your Facebook page is another. Your demo CDs are another. You get the point.

The “central spot” though is where you want all those tentacles to pull people into. That’s your website. The website is where you will send people to when you want them to download your mix, find your other social media connections, read your blog (if you have one), find out where you’re playing, and how to contact you. No matter how much you think you can, you just won’t get all that on social media pages.

I still tell any DJ when you think about your name, go on dotster.com and look to see how easily you can get a domain name for it. I got lucky with d-jam.com, but I bought it back in 2000. Nowadays it’s getting harder.

For hosting I have two recommendations. Hostpebble.com is a local guy I work with. He’s solid and very open…so you won’t have him give you flack when you post MP3s and share them with people. I’m talking about mixes here. A lot of hosts now give you bandwidth limits and other restrictions. So you post a few mixes and suddenly your site is locked down.

1and1.com is my other recommendation. They’re a bigger company and also very solid.

As for building, you can go the DIY route and perhaps use Coffee Cup HTML with GIMP. I would tell you though if you don’t know anything about HTML that you should try a 3rd Party setup like WordPress. It’s so easy and customizable within reason. Yeah your site won’t be “over the top” looking cool, but it will look good for your needs.

You can pay dotster.com $15 a year for a domain and $4 a month for hosting. Not a big price point for all you end up with.

Wow…just found a girl who will do a dry DJ drop for $25.

http://femaledjdrops.com/

Best part…she’s got an English accent….get that whole Radio 1 kind of drop.

I think most DJs need to realize the mixer is a CONTROLLER. It controls the sound.

I’ve gone to events where things are a total mess. I’ll see a turntablist mixer being used for normal play…mixers with a 2-band EQ on each channel (bass and treble). I’ve see guys with expensive Pioneer mixers, but the channel volumes are at 3, gains at 2, master at 3, and they wonder why things are so maxed out.

I don’t know if “my way” of doing things is the best, but here’s how I approach gain and levels. Let’s say I’m the one setting up the gear for a party or event and all levels and such have a 1-10 range:

1. Set all the channel volumes to 8, the gains and EQs to 5 (the middle spot), and the Master to 8.
2. Put something on to play. Pick something that plays loud.
3. Raise the volumes on the amp until you hit the “loudest” you think it should ever get both in terms of what people can handle and what won’t distort.
4. Take moments to toy with a few tracks and see if you need to tweak the individual EQs.

Just because they’re all at the middle, it doesn’t mean the speakers are balanced. The stack or setup could have loads of woofers and thus you find everything is bassey. Again. Use the mixer as your control to adjust that. Also be a tyrant if guest DJs simply want to crank the bass up to insane levels just to look cool. It shows how unprofessional they really are.

Now you have things set at the max, but it doesn’t mean you have to start there. The settings I suggested give you leeway to play around. So it’s early in the night you might have the master at 4 and then slowly raise things as they go up.

The gains IMHO should only be raised or lowered if the track is competing. So you have that really well-mastered but very loud tune overpowering your more normally mastered stuff…you’ll want to lower the gain on that one. Same deal with raising if the tune you’re playing is quieter. You want to maintain a balance of volume…not have too many ups and downs.

I set the channel volumes also at 8 because it gives you plenty of slide room if you’re fading in and out, but also some leeway in case you need to move a track to 9 or 10.

That to me is how I think it should be done. A good DJ should also get out of the booth a few times in the night to walk around and see how things sound to the audience. Your monitor might sound “fine”, but you’ll find out things aren’t that way on the floor.

Now if you’re doing a quick quest spot…then you have to fix as you go. So if the mixer volumes are all at 3 and things are very loud…turn down the amp then if you can. If not, then deal with it. If you’re only playing an hour and can’t do walkarounds, then turn off the monitor and try to adjust there.

Forget bitrates and that garbage…because I know most of you wouldn’t play crappy sounding tunes. Just worry about making a clean clear balanced sound from the monitor. It’s not about “THUMP THUMP THUMP” but about atmosphere.