D Homei

SimBa, post: 40054, member: 5184 wrote: I’d like to know what your initial reactions are . . . Looking forward to hearing peoples opinions on this, so discuss!

Interesting question, and I sense the responses are going off-topic. I bet every DJ in this forum over the age of 25 has lost some hearing!!! However, most of us are a long ways from being deaf.

I’ve heard that Deaf people can actually hear or feel loud booms. Sort of like when you turn a filter sweep to deep muffle. So the Deaf’s perceptions of music not as limited as most people with normal hearing (like me) think.

Assuming this is what a Deaf DJ (DDJ – hope this isn’t an offensive term) would be working with, my reaction is that a DDJ would come at DJing from a completely different angle. And coming at things from a radically different angle is often the source of amazing creativity and breakthroughs.

I think only hearing or sensing the booms would connect DDJs on a primal, raw level with the rhythmic side of the music. I also think DDJs would read crowd reactions much better and be finely attuned to the social aspects of music. That combination could be very extremely powerful.

But I might be stretching things in an attempt to be fair-minded. I don’t think muffled booms are the most interesting part of dance music. To me, the art and craft of DJing is putting the intricacies of the full spectrum of music together. I could also see all sorts of key clashes and musical mismatches happening.

Even though digital software could minimize many sonic clashes, it creates a problem that plagues DJ’s with normal hearing. Another DJ who’s going on top10 lists and software suggestions, instead of feeling the spirit of the music.

But does that matter for the people you’re trying to help? I sense your motivation isn’t to turn DDJ’s into the next Ritchie Hawtin, but expand their horizons. That’s a good thing.

A quick side note: apparently there’s a DDJ out there who’s famous enough to be the star of a national US commercial I saw a year ago.

DJ Homei, post: 40006, member: 5649 wrote: Switch to match “if ANY are true” and you’ll get that classic songs list you’re after.

I WAS WRONG!!

Turns out you need to do a little trick – hold down the option key to make “Any” apply to a smaller group of conditions (like certain artists), while “all” conditions being true (list of artists, year) apply to the list as a whole. See my screen captures for examples of correct and incorrect results:

Chuck van Eekelen, post: 39778, member: 2756 wrote: You know when you can sense the crowd is on the edge ….

I DJ’ed a hip-hop club the weekend after the 90’s LA riots over the Rodney King verdicts. No Public Enemy that night for sure!

Robby Luca, post: 39500, member: 9512 wrote: I don’t think you can compare lmao He doesn’t own the cars, and they’re worth A LOT more than your DJing services.

Every DJ should spin like their mixes are Lamborghinis!!

Somewhere on this forum is a video of a DJ who stopped the music to tell a really annoying drunk to go F herself. The crowd started cheering. I never did this myself, but was tempted to many times.

The bars I’ve DJ’ed have always told me absolutely never stop the music, even if there was a problem like a fight or medical issue. There were lots of fights at one club. The reason I heard was that it would call attention to the problem and make it worse.

So what’s better? Stop if there’s an outside problem/emergency? or keep playing?

I’d run into this occasionally in my old vinyl mixing days. With the sync button and custom computer setups there can be an additional layer to troubleshoot. However, some rooms will just have funny echos. In one case it was so bad that I had to put on both headphones and actively ignore what was happening outside them.

Thanks everyone. I’m starting to discover I don’t like what I describe as “endurance” songs, but what may actually be called “trance”. Songs that sound like you should be driving down the autobahn at night at a constant speed…forever. Or songs that make me feel like I should be staring at one of those screensavers where you are shooting forward through outer space. They seem to have no “drops” or structure and they all pretty much sound alike (to me, anyway). I get so bored listening to that music and I can’t even imagine trying to dance to it for an hour straight.

I might be interpreting what you say incorrectly, but don’t forget there’s good and bad songs for every genre of music out there. I generally don’t like guitar-based rock and roll, but I love the Beatles. It sounds like you might be confusing the two. So even though you prefer EDM with drops and builds (sounds like Progressive House to me) and want to avoid EDM that stays in ‘drone’ mode (sounds like Minimal Techno or Deep House to me) you may still find Progressive House that’s disappointing and Minimal Techno that pleasantly surprises you. Sometimes those ‘exception’ songs are the best ones and lead you to new areas of discovery.

Personally I think EDM genres are effectively meaningless, but that’s a whole ‘nutha post and/or thread I don’t have time to write about!