Nicko D.

Ya, one of the interesting facts about the rise of EDM scene was when the gay club was starting to fill up with straight men and women of all ages that were going there because there was no other place playing that kind of music.

One of my worse stories is from when I was DJ’ing in Greece. First a little background:

In Greece military service is not volunteer like here in the States. You simply get drafted when you turn 18 unless you have a pass from a major Greek university. So everyone is dreading getting in to do their 18 months but (most importantly) looks forward to getting out.

So up to my booth strolls this one drunk dude. He manages to explain that he is finally done with his military service and he is getting ready to go home in a couple of weeks. After a bunch of “cheers mate!” (or “yassou!” in Greek) I play for him a rather popular song at the time that we used to play when we had military members in the club that were about to go home. Everyone was happy and I moved on with my set.

About 15 minutes later he comes up to me and asks for the song again. I politely decline. After 5 minutes he comes up with a drink that he bought for me (or whatever was left in the glass since his balance was not the greatest at the time) and asks for the song. I decline again stating club policy. After 10 minutes he comes back and asks for the song but this time you can tell he is going into drunk rage. I say “let me play some more songs and I’ll try to get to it” to keep the peace. That worked for another 20 minutes.

At that point he comes up to my booth, grabs one of the club’s ashtrays, and swings it at me. Thankfully I was able to dodge it and it smashed behind me. Security was on him so fast that but the time I recovered from ducking out of the way I saw him half way across the club as he was being dragged by the bouncers.

The kicker: The club called the military police that came and picked him up. His punishment, as I learned later, was 9 months in jail. If you are in the military that means you serve at the same camp you are posted for your jail term and then also your remaining time. So his two weeks essentially became 9 months and 2 weeks all because he wanted to listen to a stupid song over and over again.

It still amazes me how many people don’t understand the different between a DJ and their iPods (or Discman at the time this story took place).

Well if you were forcing me to make an educated guess with limited information and taking my personal bias into consideration I would recommend you looking into the Mixtrack Pro. Again, I am not sure what your comment about effects has to do with the controller but I would think that for a house party situation you would get a lot from that gear.

I am confused. The effects are usually software controlled. Are you looking for a Launchpad perhaps?

And please…for the love of all that is Holy….don’t simply play the podcast. If you want to play the songs then buy and play the actual songs. There’s nothing more embarrassing than zoning out to some awesome beats only to hear from the bar speakers “YOU ARE IN THE STATE OF TRANCE WITH ARMIN VAN BUUREN”. It is the one for sure way to never be taken again seriously even if you were responsible for 95% of the rest of the set.

Basically if you use booth monitors you are at a place that’s pretty isolated from the main dance floor. So if you were trying to listen to you earphones and match it up to the set it would be “off”. Not really sure how to describe it more elequently and English is my second language (I’m Greek) so I apologize in advance. 🙂

So having the ability to have an input mapped to your booth monitors enables you to really listen to what’s going on out there.

If the mixing area is not really that isolated then you probably won’t need it though. In that case I’d make sure that your earphones are comfortable enough to really glue to your ear. I usually have one ear to the earphone, leaning my head so my shoulder is pressing the cup that is in turn pressing against my ear and listening to what’s out there with my other ear instead of wearing both cups and using the cue mix knob.

Additionally, remember that most clubs are set up so the main monitors are pointing towards the crowd. Unless you have a weird setup where you are in the middle of the dance floor (I’ve seen it like that in a club in Greece and it was pretty weird) you will not be right smack in the middle of the decibels.

Again, my apologies if it’s not clear enough. I think the point I am trying to get to is that unless you are going to have a jet taking off near your setup I highly doubt you have anything to worry about. 🙂

Oh and BTW, CONGRATS ON GETTING THE SET!

I count to 4 x 4 times since in trance music something different always happens on 16 beats. 🙂 I’d love to also get credit for proper music instruction (that I did have at a young age) but I honestly just do it because I noticed the trance pattern.