Alex Moschopoulos

I dunno. I’d tell you to skip the pools and just learn good techniques for finding music as well as seeking out good sources to hear new tunes.

Depends on the crowd. Look at the folks who go to see Girl Talk or 2ManyDJs.

Take a chance…see if the crowd goes ballistic or hate your guts. Lord knows more DJs need to take chances nowadays. 🙂

I have chosen to beatmatch my ear and avoid using the sync function. My reason for this is that as I’ve found out, sync does not always work and I was spending too much time adjusting down beats and not knowing where I was in the track.

Smart man. I’ve not held back that I used sync and love it…but I’ll never fully trust it. Even now on an old school rave mix I’m working on, there are tunes that simply do not align well, so I go old school and manual it. It’s a great skill to know.

I will say though not to fall into the “sync is cheating” trap. It’s merely a tool to make your life easier, which is the goal of any technology. Go at it any way you want, but don’t feel you “must” go manual.

I now know before bringing the next track in whether or not it’s bang in time or drifting after a while. If it’s drifting a little I set it so the left deck I will alway slow and the right speed up. That way I’m always on the outside of the jog wheel. Whether this is how you pro’s do it I don’t know but it works great for me.

There is no right or wrong. You do what works best for you. Some like to ride the pitch, others use the side of the jogwheel, and others use the + and – pitch bend buttons. I think it’s great to have options.

I never knew about Beatport Pro. Is it only for Mac?

I’d also toss in getting a free Spotify account, setting up playlists of tunes you really like (based on genre or something) and then listen to the “radio” they will make based on your picks.

I like Platinum Notes for when I rip vinyl and freebies I get from bedroom producers.

I agree though I don’t use it on purchased MP3s from sites like Beatport and Traxsource.

http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2012/02/dj-drops-guide/

I only like to use name drops on radio/online mix shows. I usually don’t use them on mixes I place online to download.

Even with my experience, I’m still working on tweaking the raw audio into a more polished sound.

Great job. Here’s some opinions/tips…which you’re free to dismiss if you wish.

What I liked:

You picked tunes that are not all the same. You put some variety in so it’s not one monotonous mix of similar-sounding tunes.

You have ENERGY…which in my book is what trance is all about. I hate when I click on a trance mix and it’s some sedated progressive house mix.

What I would suggest to work on:

Try putting some tunes with vocals into your mixes. I used to be all instrumental/synth in my trance, but found tossing in a vocal tune every 3-4 tracks will break things up even more, and bring the listener “down to Earth”.

Try not to blend melody on melody. You didn’t do this on all your blends, but some I notice you had clashing melodies because you wanted to not have your mix drag out. I’d suggest doing as Armin and the other big names do. Edit your tunes so they’re shorter, but you get nice clean intros/outros. I’ll usually mix in long form, then edit the tunes down in post-production, since a lot of trance is usually one buildup, big epic breakdown, climax, then down to basics before doing it a second time. You could cut things down in that “middle” so you could have tunes play shorter (as I assumed you want), but make things more fluid.

Again, great job. Please don’t take my comments personal. Just want to see you grow. 🙂