Warsuit
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Warsuit
ParticipantI get the feeling I don’t do what you do. I play heavyweight material. Really heavy. But I do f with many different genres in each set. So maybe this helps you? I don’t know…
I use Virtual DJ, which let’s you build Virtual Folders (like crates in Serrato I guess?). So what I do, I get my new tracks every day. After downloading that day I open VDJ and I peruse them once again, this time dragging them into the Virtual Folders they belong in (my folder names are somewhat…esoteric…but they make sense to me). I also have a folder I call “New Toys” that I clear after each session where I use that folder. Anything I want to use for a new mixtape has it’s own Virtual Folder, one for each type of mixtape I might want to make. I also have a folder for things I know I’ll want to play out soon, so I don’t have to sort through each genre folder to find the new weight…because each genre folder is fat; fat like hundreds and hundreds of tunes fat. If I get into a bit of set where I’m in that particular groove, it’s nice to haev that much weight at my fingertips. If not, I go to the New Toy folder, or the “play this soon” type folders I’ve set up.
All of those New sort of folders get cleared at least twice a month if not more.
If you’re playing more go-to standards, mainstream type stuff, maybe try making folders that are exactly that go-to material? Anthems. Rockers. Sing-alongs. Common requests. Crowd Favorites. YOUR faovirites (because you have to have fun too). Etcetera.
Etcetera.
May 23, 2014 at 9:04 pm in reply to: Trap, Festival Trap, Twerk, Electro House, Dutch House, Uk Hardcore Etc. #2033496ParticipantI am thoroughly enjoying Loaded so far. I like large bass so trap (not the festival stuff as much, but it isn’t hoirrible) has a place in my heart. Props.
ParticipantWhy thank you. That’s some praise right there. Glad you enjoyed it.
ParticipantI want very badly to agree with you, but I can’t. If you were seeing a great live DJ, then it would be pretty cool to see them live. If you were seeing a great live PA, then it would be pretty cool to see them live. With most of these guys though you aren’t seeing either of those things; their DJing is limp and they aren’t actually playing the song live on keyboards or anything…so what are you paying for? To look at them? That, to me, seems…weird. There are notable exceptions even in the uppermost echelons…people who are really big and also either really good DJs or really talented musicians. But they’re exceptions. Most of them are personalities at best and I’m against anyone getting over simply based on marketing and a cult of personality surrounding them.
That being said, I come from a time when the DJ wasn’t even seen, he was just there to play records. Times have changed, I was there and watched them change, and with things as they are now your opinion is actually more valid than mine on the subject of whether it is cool to go see someone like Avicii. Leaving their (lack of) DJing kills aside, we could still argue all day about the quality of the big players production output (how many tunes that go boom boom boom boom boom boom boom SNARE do we *really* need?) but at the end of that argument no one will be right because there’s no accounting for taste.
ParticipantFurther to what I said earlier though…I’m just as guilty as anyone else of not always putting a tracklist on a mixtape online. For one, I can’t be bothered sometimes. I have to copy it from a text file that VDJ saves, paste it into the window in Mixcrate, edit out all the time stamps…sheesh, what, am I made of time? That’s 5 minutes I could have my headphones on sorting tracks. That and I really wish more people would just listen to a mixtape for what it is…one long continuous thing to be taken in in one sitting, greater than the sum of it’s parts. But, sadly, most people want tracklists so they can bite my style/source a good tune they can’t identify and so I went back to giving them to them. Life is hard.
Participant“If you are continously reinventing yourself, by the time others catch up to you, you have moved on and they will always be watery copies of the original.”
This. If someone wants to do what I did last week, let them. It takes me up to three hours a day just to go through all the new music that gets sent to me and decide what to keep and what not to keep. I have a small handful of old faves, but I play fresh material almost always. So if someone wants to know what a track is, they can have it. I’m spoiled for choice.
Participant^What he said. Satire keeps art honest. The more jackhats get called out the more people will realize they’ve been duped. If some pablum gets someone into it, more the better for the rest of us if those people decide to dig deeper and find the real deal. There’s an advantage to all the huge festival rocking types that put little effort in for maximum return; all the people who are in it for the wrong reason are in one big place and easily identified.
ParticipantBar Liva was easy to listen to. I was moderately into it….and then you had me at Hideaway.
ParticipantI just finished listening to your mix as well, and I’m glad GroovePunk was able to give you some tips. Any time that big room sound is in my ears I have a hard time getting past it to think critically about the skills being used. I have a strong bias against that sound; lot’s of people love it and I’m not a hater. Just really biased. LOL.
More on this though:
“- The transistions between tracks are very close together in a lot of cases. While this can create drama and excitement in a mix, it can also be quite tiring to listen to and frustrating if you’re just starting to get into a tune and then it vanishes! It’s a great skill to be able to move quickly between multiple tracks, but perhaps use it sparingly.”I do this a LOT when I’m mixing but I play in a style that supports it. Since I play things that are either a bit minimal/more basic in their structure or the opposite, really heavy and distorted and layered, I can usually pull it off and the drama and tension GroovePunk mentioned comes across. If you have your heart set on the big room style and want to move quickly between songs then you should spend some time looking at the waveforms and imagining them superimposed over each other. Visualize your music. These types of tracks, viewed instead of heard, are a totally different color on the palette than what I play for example. The tunes I play get to the point fast, drop hard, and drop long; so the building of said tension and drama falls to the DJ and how he uses that particular bit of ammo. They spend the majority of their length in the groove whereas this big room stuff is the opposite; it spends most of it’s time creating tension and drama through build up and breakdown and build up again. The actual meat of the track (as I see it) is usually in two very small sections. Let those sections breath. Mix in key and learn to mix looong instead of short, like Sasha and Digweed did back in the dayo. Master your EQ and weave those parts together because you’ve chosen a sound that demands that.
“Utility bangers” can be mashed up, double dropped, beat juggled, and otherwise manhandled because they’re essentially produced to be just that…ammo, colors to be mixed into something else. The big room anthem stuff isn’t…it’s more musical and elaborate and needs to be manipulated differently.
ParticipantThe techno mix was my favorite. I love me some house, but that techno mix was nice. The EDM mix was put together well, but I just have a really hard time getting my head into that big room EDM sound. It makes my teeth hurt. LOL. That techno mix though….I’ll be listening to that again.
ParticipantEdit: should say four on the fly sample buttons on the N4…I accidentally typed three because I only use three of them andmy brain just ignores the other…long story as to why. Anyway….
ParticipantI use loops and samples a lot in VDJ with my N4. Using 4 decks, I would far prefer to use a loop played off one of the decks than the sampler. With the sampler you only have control over the volume of the sample (along with whether it loops or is a one shot, whether it syncs or not, etc). I prefer playing loops and samples right off the decks so I can manipulate them on the fly, apply EQ, see the waveform, etc. The only things I load to the sampler are three commonly used phrases I put in almost every mix. The N4 only has three on-the-fly sample buttons and I don’t like using a keyboard to access the sampler to play the others…far easier to load the “sample” to a deck and use it like a scratch phrase. That’s just my preference though.
Terry is right when he mentions above upgrading to the full Pro version if you’re going to make extensive use of the sample feature. On an LE version you can’t save the samples to the database file, so you have to reload all your samples each time you launch the program…in the Pro version you can save them to the database. (You mentioned you use Pro, so this is more a comment for anyone else who reads this thread). Depending on what controller you’re using though, you’ll still only have push-button-access to a few of your samples.
To answer your main question though, you can use any audio file your software will play to load to a sample slot in VDJ. You can even record them on the fly, though I personally think that’s the sort of thing that should be set up well in advance to ensure perfection. Given how easy the on the fly loop system is in VDJ, add to that four decks of control, and you can achieve the same thing much easier (again, just my opinion and workflow/method…I still use a lot of vinyl habits when mixing digitally because it’s just ho I came up) by using two decks to play tracks and two decks to play loops, samples. A sample phrase put together in a wave editor with accurate cue points just feels far more reliable to me…I only use the sampler for verbal one shots. It’s easier to get the levels right as well because of the EQ control and peak meter. The how-to’s of recording samples to the sample bank (over writing the built ins) is in the VDJ user manual, but the short of it is this: load the sample to a deck, hit PFL for that deck, hit record on the sampler while the portion you want to sample plays. If you have that portion of the track looped, VDJ will record it as a continuous sample. If it isn’t looped it will capture it as a one-shot, starting and stopping where you hit record and stop respectively.
ParticipantSo I’m playing Space Quest 1 and listening to this. It’s nice and deep and moody so far. Really enjoying it.
ParticipantDid it
ParticipantJust because I haven’t done it in a long time I’m going to make up a mixtape that is all the artists I mentioned in my first post and drop a link for you in the Music section of this site.
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