DJ Menno

It’s a good read but I feel the guy doesn’t leave any options for the future, he just closes the doors but doesn’t bring a new solution… Very realistic though, I as a DJ completely feel the lack of good songs this year. In 2011 summer we’ve had huge songs but this year… it’s a little dry… although the underground scene is raising the game a little more.

I was thrown to the lions as a DJ 🙂 I was expected to animate karaoke and the owner told me “you’re DJ tonight, no karaoke…Didn’t I tell you ?”. I had no material whatsoever, just an iphone and a macbook with music on it. Not even a DJ software, I was with Itunes… However, I was able to animate the evening and have people dancing. I’ve since bought a controller, took DJ lessons with a local DJ, and skilled up as quick as i can. Today (it’s been 2 years) I’m quite relaxed in front of a crowd, know beatmatching, eqing, effects, transitions, and I’m starting to learn to scratch.

But it all started from three truths :
– i love music (therefore I dig nice songs, try to be original, and spend time making nice playlists)
– I love people (therefore I’m tolerant, patient, l talk to them and listen to them during the evening)
– I love to party (therefore I throw energy on the dancefloor, dance, sing, and party behind the booth)

I don’t need a controller to do these things. The rest is technicity, and is only pleasing another DJ’s ears… People will not even be able to hear it when the DJ is trainwrecking, let alone hear a delay, beatmash or scratch you would do during your set (was that part of the song or did the guy just do that ?)

This said, beatmatching should be learned very quickly and one should spend time perfecting the art if he’s gonna be serious about Dj’ing…

What I do have problems with when i go to an evening is a technical DJ that chooses aggressive, repetitive and dark songs and tweaks them so much that it all becomes electronic sounds and the emotion is thrown out of the music. I need emotion and fun on a dancefloor, and that’s what I try to provide to the crowd when I work. The rest is a cherry on the cake 🙂

Much said already, I would just add this : a very important thing about mixing is when you end the song and when you throw the next one.

A good mix needs breaks, melodic lines without bass, double drumming (throw the first beat on the upbeat of the playing song). The songs themselves and the way you blend them can already add a lot to your mixing.

When using effects, I generally use echo for beautifull female voices, a little dose of flanger just before throwing a beat everybody knows and is expecting, and loops to get out of a song when I see no exit door 🙂

I use short transitions a lot. Wait for the break of the first song to end, slam the main melody of the second song, and filter the first song away. Not to be overdone, cause it’s stressing for the crowd, but it seems to work for those “unfriendly” tracks.

Or I just wait for the end of the song, and start the new one 16 measures before the end, fading from one to another…simple but efficient.

I think it’s a bit harsh to say they’re uneducated in music. I love jazz, and nobody listens to jazz, cause it’s too complex for the ear and requires much concentration to follow the harmonic moves. Cheesy mainstream music is exactly the opposite : relax easy to listen to music. And that’s what people wanna hear, and that’s what I play, cause the owner pays me to entertain these people, not to educate their ears. Otherwise I would play jazz, swing, rockabillies, maybe even dubstep or harsh electro…

They may well be musicians or play in a symphonic orchestra for what you know. But they’re in that bar / club to have fun and listen to cheesy songs cause they’ve had their 08 hours of work and want to relax.

I guess you’re looking for an underground scence indeed. I for one cannot play there because I don’t like the atmosphere in these venues.

I would say learn the chords. As a guitarist and singer, I’ve learnt to play the chords to sing along while I play guitar, and that has been an eye-opener (should I say ear-opener ? 🙂 ). I have a Am chord, what comes next ? In my head I know how Dm, C or G are gonna sound versus an Am. It’s intuitive. And I think that’s the “easiest” way to approach music writing with a keyboard. Don’t even bother to learn all the chords and tonalities, just keep it in the C tonality. Ableton can transpose it for you nowadays. But knowing which type of harmony sounds good with another is a precious tool for composing.

Don’t wanna boast, but very often I think a song mixes good with another one, load it, only to find out that it has the same tonality. My intuition does that for me, because it recognises the harmony and makes me wanna hear a song that matches this harmony, without me being really conscious about it.

Maybe start looking for chords of songs you like, and play them on a midi keyboard. The basic chords fingering on a piano is easy to learn on any solfegis website, and in EDM and commercial music the chords are not Mozart-like, they’re very simple (unless you’re into jazz…hih)i. It’s always gonna be around the Am, C, G and F chords, which is the basic of rock / blues and folkloric music.

Thinking of it, Solfegis is an excellent software for learning music, if you’ve got time to spend, and something like 20 bucks on your credit card, go for it, that’ll get you a long way.

Good luck, keep the passion burning 🙂

I’ve had a bartender asking me once if I could lend him my hard disk for him to leave it on shuffle… He didn’t realize that the atmosphere was due to me building funk then rock then dance music, he thought having my music collection on random play would do the trick. It’s about building, knowing your crowd, and no playlist made in advance can improvise on the crowd present in the bar, that’s no DJ to me…without even considering beatmatching or not.

I use sync when I’m mixing house or electro. It is right most of the time and allows to mix more than two song and play around with the effects for smoother transitions.

On all style, and specially “man-drummed” songs, I beatmatch per ear, and forget about the effects. Just trying to keep them in time and count my 16 measures correctly for a nice melody transition 🙂