Rick

Chuck van Eekelen, post: 41144, member: 2756 wrote: Hey RB,

I would only wonder about this if you plan to play exactly the same set, track for track. THAT, I would consider creative poverty. Some painters have used only a few primary colors their whole life and yet managed to make every painting different, yet distinctively “their” style.

When I was still working my 5-star hotel gigs (4 months on end, 6 nights a week, 6-8 hours – monster set???- a day) in the vinyl days, you know I wasn’t playing a new set every day.

People will know if you play A after B after C after D every night. But A after C might be totally different energetically than A before C. So, don’t worry about the amount of stuff you are gonna play. Look at a) what is my core set, the tracks that are everyone’s favorites that they expect to hear and how can I change their order creatively and b) at some new tracks (trust me, 1-2 an hour can already be plenty in that respect) that you can toss in to keep things fresh. 5 classics/favorites with one new track thrown in then another 5 classics/favorites sounds different than 10 classics/favorites in a row.

And maybe you can research a little and find 10-20 more (semi-)recent tracks that are in line with the general trend of the night. There are so many smart playlists around (in iTunes and Spotify to name two popular ones, but also on the more DJ oriented sites), that with literally 10s to 100s of thousands of tracks per genre, it can’t be too hard to find those 10-20 new and 10-20 “older” tracks.

It’ll be fun preparation just figuring out which of these new tracks in your collection go well with others (harmonic mixing and energy levels should help you a lot with that process). You’ll discover new combinations and mixes and probably can’t wait to try them out live.

Let’s say you find 15 of each. That is 30 tracks. At 1-2 bucks a track, 30-60 dollars to buy them legally and in high quality. Have your friends pay you the 30-60 bucks or part of it (even if you are gonna play for free otherwise). If you play for another 6 hour set, you now have 5! different tracks per hour. That is about 25-30%. So, with those simple 30 tunes, you have brought down your set to be only 70-75% identical, purely based on the tracks you play. Toss those 70-75% in a different order and I doubt anyone will think you are repeating yourself. It will still be a joy of recognition with a few “hey, I haven’t heard that one in a while”, “oh, I had forgotten about that one” and “nice, hadn’t heard that one yet” moments thrown in for good measure.

Don’t sweat it, you are out there doing your thing. Which makes you stand out from literally everybody else present at the party! Just realize that they need you to make the night as much as you need them. For them the alternative to a live DJ for FREE! would be to stick in a mix tape. Not half as much fun :).

Greetinx and break a leg,
C.

Thanks for the reply. Really concise info and a great help!
I know that a 6 – 7 hour set is probably a normal night for lots of DJs however for me it was a little more than I was expecting! Like I said in my post I only ever do this as a hobby, for fun, not to entertain others, just myself! Having said that, every party I have done has gone down a storm, as people have told me so. I only did them as I was asked, not because I wanted to get out there and get a gig (that’s not what I personally ever wanted).
Maybe I am worrying unnecessarily as I like to practice a lot at home and try and find great ways to mix from one to the next and it may be that it is ME that is getting bored of the same tunes !!(Ha Ha!!)
The main difference between what I am used to doing (80 min CD mix) and what was expected at the party was the time on the decks. What I am trying to say is its easier to fit lots of classics when you have limited space (CD), but it becomes a lot more of a challenge when spun out over the night (6-7 hours).

I’ll get on those smart playlist you talk about and also shuffle the sequence a little more (I already do this to some degree anyway as otherwise its pretty pointless DJing in my opinion) I’ll also check for more tunes in my collection I could switch in. Thanks again!

Steelo, post: 24816, member: 1368 wrote: I do have an S4. I have a mid 2010 15″ 2.66ghz i7 8gb ram Macbook Pro. I’m pretty sure I have my S4 latency set to about 8.7ms which is about as low as I can go for rock solid performance. I feel like its all driver related.

Well I know I have a lot lower spec than you, but after adjusting my settings I am pleased with the 10.5 latency I have, and at least the CPU is only reaching around 1/3 to 1/2.
All I can think is that the settings must have changed at some point during the upgrade to 2.5.

Steelo, post: 24738, member: 1368 wrote: Its strange how there used to be much more consistency with performance. Now it seems all over the map. Some peoples improved with 2.5 (for me, the lowest but not as low as 2.0.3) others got worse. I’m intrigued to know why theres so much more variance these days.

Do you have an S4 also? What is your laptop spec? What I find strange is that I can run TP2 without any issues when I have the S4 disconnected.