Dizzle

Generally, I don’t encourage requests. If someone is keen and they come up to talk and ask in a reasonable manner I try to accommodate them, especially if their request is within the vibe I’m playing that night. But Friday night passed, I did a small bar full of international backpackers and had the same wanker come up half the night demanding that I play Macklemore “NOW” because “Everyone will dance to it, trust me”. He even sent up his friends to ask as well. I told him from the first request that I didn’t have it and he tried to demand that I play it from youtube instead. Eventually, I had to offer a thinly veiled threat to get him to leave me alone.

Fuxxwiddit, post: 29242, member: 2604 wrote: Its different and definitely a more experimental sound especially among young people here in Philadelphia.

Where do you normally play in Philly? I’ll be visiting the in-laws there probably in August. I play on the underground (ie. Bass heavy genres) scene here in Bangkok but will be moving to NYC at the end of August. Would love to catch some cool UK funky sets / play a set or two in Philly while I’m there!

Mitch Hambling, post: 41078, member: 7942 wrote: about beatmatching. What is the point of beat matching songs when you have a sync button? I know there has been a lot of controversy over this topic, but honestly, if you have a sync button, why not use it? Ive never really beatmatched songs before. besides songs that are beat gridded wrong

I play reggae, hip hop, soul & funk for my ‘work gigs’ (I also host Bass culture music nights as well) and most of the music isn’t created within a DAW so the bpm drifts making manual beat matching essential. I mix with a Vestax VCI-380, which does have sync, but the only times it’s been activated have been when I missed the cue button. I definitely used sync when I first started out learning but beat matching is essential to calling yourself a Dj. Even if you never use it playing out it’s a skill you need to master before playing out before a crowd.

Like you mentioned, if the beat grid is inaccurate your mix will trainwreck if you can’t beatmatch. Or, what if your midi controller fails and you have to use DVS or CDJ w/Serato/tracktor? It is difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it, your mixing will sound much better.

Over here the electric sockets suck. practically all outlets are ungrounded and use the round 2 pin design that 9 times out of 10 will fall out of a wall socket at the slightest provocation. That being said, I always bring a ‘power bar’ (extension cord w/6 outlets) that has a fuse built in. The flat pins tend to stay in the outlet much more securely and I have a small fuse to protect my gear from any power spikes.

My gear bag basically stays packed, I keep a separate set of chords for practicing at home so that when I need to prepare I just put my controller & laptop in the gear bag and know that all the cables & adapters I need (plus a few extra) are already good to go.

Born and raised in Bermuda
Spent 7 years living in Toronto, Canada
Have lived in Bangkok Thailand for almost 4 years and have been djing here for 2.

reason808, post: 12934, member: 831 wrote: I’m an American expat in Hong Kong. They have a huge scene out here. DJs get more publicity in the local press than bands. Its like New York City – no closing time and some nights go all night and into the next morning! Clubs regularly bring in big name DJs.

I haven’t had much time to go out dancing, but the one time I did, they were playing really cool house that wasn’t exactly underground, but certainly not commercial crap either. It was in a big club in the main district called Lan Kwai Fong that’s filled with bars, crowds and booming music everywhere. People are literally dancing in the streets.

Perspective is everything…

I’ve lived in Bangkok for almost 4 years and found the clubbing scene in HK..especially on Lan Kwai Fong to be a little disappointing. It was indeed busy every night I went, with people in the streets drinking. But, the music left much to be asked. I walked from one empty club into another to find the exact same electro/progressive house track playing. The scene there definitely wasn’t music driven I found one bar just off LKF that seemed to be the underground bar, hosting acts such as Goldie and Bicep. We went on their Trap/Dubstep/Moobahton night to find that the music policy was only followed until the pub crawl folks arrive when the music changed to primarily chart toppers. We went further up the hill on the next night to find a live band act and had a great chat with a canadian expat who had lived in HK for 10+ years who felt that HK night life lacked culture. The only ‘club’ I could find that featured hip hop was a basement spot with no liquor license almost a 20min walk from the LKF strip. Lan Kwai Fong reminded me of Bangkok’s notorious Khao San road…minus the smelly backpackers haha.

http://DizzletheDj.com
has links to all of the sites I post tracks and mixes to

http://Facebook.com/DizzletheDJ
is the facebook page

I’m making my way through the 8 pages of posts now…it might take a while haha

D-Jam, post: 40511, member: 3 wrote:

I will say though DJs seeking gigs should just put up with this. It’s how you’ll know what’s going on in the scene and where to network for gigs.

It’s what worked for me! Becoming a regular at the events in the genres I play keeps me playing out almost every week.

D-Jam, post: 40477, member: 3 wrote: I honestly hate when people do that. I even make a point to remove myself immediately. I wish groups would be by request, like a friend request.

In the end, I should have the initial and final say on what messages I want to hear, and I go out of my way to ban messages I don’t want to hear. I’ll do “report spam” on those who inbox me, I’ll unfriend people I am not friends with who simply friended me to spam my wall, and I’ll take myself out of groups I don’t want to follow.

NOW…how could you ward off people like me and get me to stay? Engage me. Give me something. Entertain and enlighten me. I’ll follow groups who give me info on music, or gear, or techniques, etc. I’ll block people who have nothing to say other than “come to my event this weekend”.

It all becomes like this:

[media=youtube]FmazTEI_3fE[/media]

It’s true that having unsolicited spam can be very annoying, I’m often given cause to mute certain ‘friends’ after their 8th notification hits my feed from them posting in all of the bangkok expat groups.

I’m assuming the scene you operate in is very crowded based on the youtube video you chose. But, here in Bangkok the Bass culture scene is pretty small: eg. Skream & Benga just performed at the premier venue for quality underground and house electronic music in a room with maybe 200 capacity…it was one of the few occasions they’ve had to open the mezzanine floor. Even Skrillex & 12th Planet only pulled about 1000 heads.

In my experience, we’ve experienced the best returns from our promotion with a combination of:
– direct marketing (going to parties with similar or complimentary music policies and talking to the ‘heads’)
– Facebook page event advertising (the most we’ve spent is $20 when we booked an international act)
– cultivation of a organically growing facebook group (the 5 of us added all of our friends/fans/followers in the Bangkok area that already frequent the nightlife scene and since then we have people requesting to join the group on a regular basis as there aren’t many other options for staying up to date on what Bass EDM parties are going on that weekend.)
[INDENT=1]The only things we post are music, pics related to the theme for our upcoming monthly event, and a pinned link to the next facebook event. We allow all group members to post their events, tracks and pics from the last event. It seems to work quite well as after only 3 parties the group is at 2200 and growing.[/INDENT]
[INDENT=1] [/INDENT]
As I said before, if abused the group can be just as annoying, if not more-so than an event invite for something that’s not even close to the same country you’re in. But, in todays saturated social media verse the auto-add feature of the facebook group is a potent tool -when used to selectively target appropriate individuals from your friend’s list – to increase awareness amongst your friends and acquaintances.

The upset members you can potentially lose for adding them without their permission is far outweighed by those who will completely miss your post’s short blip on their feed and might enjoy having your brand of entertainment brought to their attention…if used correctly of course.