JBrown

Daryl Northrop, post: 35449, member: 2350 wrote: Great question, J Brown! I’ll admit, I use the sync button quite a bit. My fav part of DJ’ing is playing new and exciting tracks, or presenting old tracks in a new setting. Make me more of a “selector” DJ, vs a beat-jockey.

Same here! I’ll also admit that I love the prep work before trying to do a practice live set. Listening to tracks over and over, going over beat grids in Serato (I’m all about the sync button as well, I see it as a reward for proper prep – a shortcut back to the work I did earlier, which allows me to focus on things like EQ and phrasing), finding good mix-in/mix-out points, etc. And getting a feel for things like energy level, rhythm, and even lyrics to try to find connections between songs, or groups of songs. I too would like to think that track selection and programming is my strongest suit – making those connections based on the feel and content of songs.

I did a bit of improv comedy for a number of years, and I’m always struck by how similar it is to DJing. The ideal relationship between practice and performance are pretty much the same. You practice to get the principles down, to get a feel for how the elements work together, etc, even though you might not be using the material you create in practice in a performance. It’s the principles you’re trying to refine, the way your brain works, not necessarily the exact content. And that’s another art form where so much importance is placed on “authenticity” – of performing in the moment, not faking it.

I use a Twitch too, and I picked up the Namba Lil Remix backpack, which I LOVE:

http://nambagear.com/lil-namba-remix-backpack/

It fits the Twitch with a Decksaver on it (killer protection, I never have to worry about anything being crushed) plus my 13″ Macbook with a shell case pretty easily in the large pocket. It gets a little tight when I add in my Crane laptop stand back there, but still closes and feels secure. The front pocket holds a plethora of cables plus headphones, pens, business cards, etc easily, and with a lot of specialized pockets. It feels safe and protective, and, bonus, it fits under airplane seats. I picked it up after reading Phil’s review here, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Not too expensive on some websites right now either.

I just played a wedding on Sunday, actually. I’ll first say this so that Phil and crew don’t have to: you might consider purchasing their How-To course on being a wedding DJ. I did, and while it might not have been a revelation or anything, it was really helpful in making me feel like I had a handle on what to expect, plus some great recommendations for best practices. Definitely worth the $47, in my opinion.

Back to this weekend: I played in a band for years and we did a ton of weddings, so I knew a bit of what to expect, but I was still pretty apprehensive going in, and had enough music ready to play a full three-hour set of just soul/funk, just disco, just 80s, just 90s/00s pop, etc. Of course, I was going to mix it up, but I wanted to be prepared in case I needed more of a certain type of music. Because it’s really all about keeping folks on the dance floor. That’s really all that matters – that’s what the bride and groom are paying you for, and that’s what’s going to make her happy (and what’s going to make you happy too).

Can’t underline this enough: don’t be afraid to drop the hits. These aren’t people who’ve come to a club looking for a night of dancing and hearing hot new tracks and stuff they’ve never even heard before. They’re here for the couple, and the dancing is incidental, as far as they’re concerned. So you have to reach out to those people, get them to want to get up and be part of the party, and I found that that means giving them stuff they know. Even though I was going in 100% expecting to play well-known hits from various eras, it was still a bit of a shock to see how effective stuff like “Build Me Up Buttercup” is when it comes to getting people dancing. I would have thought that, like me, people would maybe groan a bit when that song came on, but I played it anyway, and it made the people dancing happy while getting new people up on the dance floor. Drunk people, singing along, happy, definitely a high point of the night. So don’t be afraid to drop the well-known hits. Again, it’ll keep the kids and parents dancing, and the bride and groom happy.

I found myself, in preparing for the gig, happy to toss out the window ideas of playing cool rare stuff, and concentrated more on programming familiar tracks in a way that felt new and exciting to me. I wasn’t the first DJ to drop “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” at the start of a wedding set and “Don’t Stop Believin'” at the end, but traveling through eras and moods to get there in a unique way using songs people know (mostly – not always, as I did have a few secret weapons in there) was a fun and interesting challenge. And I’m sure you could find some fun ways to mash up well-known tracks to appeal to your DJ sense.

A couple recommendations of things that I found to work, even just in this one gig:

– I would say you should move, generally, from older stuff to newer stuff. I started out with a bunch of soul/funk, moved to disco and hip-hop, and then on to 80s pop and modern pop by the end of the night. I still dropped a few things from each era at various points (the Janelle Monae’s “Tightrope” in the first hour, “I Will Survive” in the last), but you’ll find that old folks will dance early and fade and the night goes on while young folks will stay up the whole time.

– Think about playing pockets of similar tracks. If you’re playing a few hip-hop tracks and then drop “Boogie Shoes,” you’ll likely get a bunch of old folks who weren’t dancing before out on the dance floor. Going from there to a Rihanna track, though, will have them sitting down again. Better to give them a few 70s cuts in a row to keep them happy before dropping some contemporary pop and letting them go back to the bar.

Have fun!

I owned a VCI-300 MKii for a very short time–ended up returning it, actually, since I was within the return period–but the reason I returned it didn’t have anything to do with the quality. The jogs were excellent, as were all the controls and the sound output – I never ran into anything like what you’re describing. My problem with it was that it’s a bit limited in what it can do by today’s standards. If all you’re looking to do is beatmatch, mix two tracks together, maybe play around with a couple loops and cue points in a very limited manner, it gets the job done as well as any controller (and pretty cheaply these days, as they’ve been greatly marked down – you can usually find a new one for under $400). But I realized that I wanted a bit more control over creative looping and cutting, as well as effects, and the VCI-300 is a bit dated and sorely lacking in this respect. With the Serato DJ update on the horizon, I just felt like I wanted something with a few more options on board. I have yet to see how much I’m really going to use the capabilities of a more involved controller, but I’d rather at least have the option than to be working with a VCI-300 and not even be able to find out.

Anyway, to answer your question, I think a lot of people are unloading them because they’re a bit dated at this point (it’s effectively a controller from 2008, built for what ITCH could do back then), and with Serato DJ coming, one would likely want a 380 or 400, the Novation Twitch, or any of a number of other ITCH or DJ Intro controllers to really be able to take advantage of what the present and upcoming Serato software is capable of. I honestly doubt that it has anything to do with build quality – again, for the time I was using mine, I really found it to be top-notch where build is concerned. I’d be interested to hear if this is what other people think, though.