Seth Shannon
Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
Seth Shannon
ParticipantYeah I also tried to map one of my DJ controller to “learn” how to manage the key tone, but this is a real pain in the ass… And when you start playing with the key button to match harmonically with your next track, you can get lost and lose your crowd. It’s a really amazing trick but to handle carefully….
Cheers from Beijing
Seth
ParticipantExactly,
Most of the time, I use harmonic mixing to create live mashups during my sets and put some energy for the crowd. But I realized that I got kind of “addicted” to build my set according to the MiK keys. Like origanising playlist by keys, from 1 to 12.
But this is a bad habit, because you often got kinda stuck. Like when you wanna play 2 amazing tracks, but one is 1B and the other is like 7A. So you forget your basics (when you played on vinyls for example) and you don’t mix those tracks because you’re getting afraid that the result will be not good, not harmonic, or drop the energy of your set, making the crowd getting bored because of the loss of energy.
That’s a very tricky thing, and now i try more and more not to take care about the MiK keys and be more creative, cause, even if think that this software has really been a revolution in DJing, it can also addict you and make you lose creativity.
That’s only my point of view 😉
Buy the way, there’s an excellent article about how to boost your harmonic mixing by playing with the key knob (on traktor), so you get more liberty. But even if this is a really great article, when you try it in club, don’t make the same mistake I did last night, like forgetting to reset to 0 you key knob haha 😉
Cheers,
Seth Shannon
ParticipantHi,
You were almost right, it’s ni hao ä½ å¥½ 😉
ParticipantI’m maybe a bit late on this topic, but what I can tell you is unfortunately, we are in 2014, not in the 70′ anymore.
I mean, now DJ’s are CONSIDERED, they are SUPERSTARS. Before, they just were the guy in the dark playing records that customers wanted to hear. DJ for Disc Jockey. A human jukebox.
From my point you should consider yourself as a company, with everything that it involves and comes with it. Nowadays there is way too many DJ’s everywhere, competition is really hard. That’s why you have to be different, market yourself, work hard (i mean really hard) every day of the week, even 20 hours a day if necessary. Find the right friends in the industry, get social, even if you need to pretend you’re important.
Choose your logo, your music style, your equipment, even your clothes with attention, network and network again. NEVER make an opinion on someone according to the way he/she looks or his/her job. Take all the numbers, facebooks, tweeters and so on. Because maybe one day, this guy you found so funny in a club, who was unemployed and gave you his contact is now someone incredibly important and can help you.
I could write pages and pages about that. But I think the articles on this website and a lot of other experienced DJs will do a better job than me.
Finally: never let it go.
Cheers,
Seth Shannon
ParticipantPersonnaly I never take care of energy level from MiK. Not that the algorythm is not good, I wouldn’t doubt about that, but because I think YOU give the energy in your set.
The way you’re gonna play, the kind of crowd, club fully packed or quite empty, do you warm up, mainstage or finish, and especially the sound system. There’s SO MANY parameters that will make you memorable or will make you want just to hide behind the booth pretending you’re searching for something (you see what I mean)… So don’t focus too much on EL. That’s is just my point of view.
I tried used the EL by playing the EXACT same playlist on 2 nights in a row. The first night “wow you were amazing tonight” and the second night “are you tired ? did you change your sound or whatsoever ?”.
And you know what, it’s like when you listen to this huge (at least you “think” is huge) track when your at home dancing half naked in your kitchen (this last part is personnal, don’t tell anybody), and then you play the following night this track thinking you’re gonna rock the club and take a jesus pose when the break starts and realize that… nothing happen…
We all have experienced that right 😉
Cheers,
Seth Shannon
ParticipantHaha Deathy, I take that for a very nice compliment. It could be an idea but English is not my native language, so I’m afraid not to be able to explain perfectly my thoughts sometimes.
You’re gonna tell me “bro your english is fine”. But I realize that it is not when I watch a non-subtitled movie and more especially when the movie is not about 2 hours of pure action. 😉
But maybe I could effectly write some articles, as the manner of a little blog on this website, like “How DJing can be totally different depending of where you live” (or anything like this).
Like most of you guys, I have a quite rock-solid experience, but trust me, here, I felt so many times like a beginner and still even now that I FINALLY got a residency, I have some nights I cannot eat anything, need several drinks to relax, change of t-shirts 2 times and look at my shaking hand when I’m about to push the play button in the booth.
However, I found it can sometimes be a good exercise. It reminds you that, no my bro, it’s not because you have your DJ name on the huge screen, that the MC introduce you like a superstar (typically Chinese style) and you even made your own DJ Intro that you are a Tiesto, and that you still have to manage the pressure every single night, and most of all, nothing is never won in advance.
Cheers
Seth Shannon
ParticipantHi Vintage & Deathy,
I posted in this forum because there is so many things to tell about Chinese club scene that I got lost about where writing my post 😉
I read all the DJ Tips that I find extremely useful and clever. So many DJ’s should read that. But I’m reading them while laying on my bed in BEIJING, not in Paris (from I come) or Berlin or any western country. And, no offense of course, but a lot of those precious advice are perfect when you play in Europe or US, but not so much when you DJ in China.
This country is a world. You can get amazed one day and totally disgusted the next one.
When I first arrived in China, it was a kind of road trip with my Chinese wife and my 2 best friends. Almost 17 months ago, we decided to go to Shanghai and give a try at the clubbing scene there for some days, before continuing to Hong Kong and Macau.
You can’t imagine how hard is the competition between clubs here. They are all more huge and luxuous than the other etc… I remember in Paris, you get into the VIP line (as a customer) when you book a table with 1 or 2 bottles. Here, you’re just nobody if you just get your gold card from your pocket and ask to the guy the same thing.
Here you are VVVVVVVVVVIP or nothing. People can pay up to sometimes 500.000 RMB (about 65.000 US$) JUST to HAVE a table. Then, to show that they are important, they need at least to have 30 people at their table (famous people) and between 50 and 150 bottles of Champagne. At THIS point, they consider someone.
Some of them even rent some guys to drive ALL of their luxury cars, commonly about 10 Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin… Just to show off. So you see 10 cars costing millions arriving in lines driven by some men in black and parking right in front of the entrance.
This is just to give you an appetizer.
I will soon write you how I spent 1 year before being booked seriously here, how I got the most miserable DJ salary of my whole life and how Chinese in general think about clubbing and especially music. I think you will just fall on your ass like I did so many times lol 😉
Cheers
Seth Shannon
-
AuthorPosts