On Djing...

I have an opportunity to do a DJ gig at a local biergarten in June or July, but I'm a bit hesitant to send the promoter a bunch of material and tax forms until I scope the place out. I have a fear with this type of gig that I'll show up and find I play totally the wrong type of music. I don't want to be difficult in this type of situation because I'm not in a position to be real choosy, but it isn't worth it to me if people are going to be annoyed by thumping rave music while they try to drink beer and eat sausages. Is this reasonable?

hey moodles, i might think about playing some of the stuff you have that's on the deeper / more colorful side, my quick take is that it wouldn't be out of place at a biergarten. does the promoter know generally what you play?

i'd try to have a face-to-face with both the promoter and the manager if they aren't the same person, and i'd definitely go there and check it out at least once, maybe even twice. you want to have initial conversations so you at least know who's who and then check out the booth, the equipment and the power situation.

and thanks for the input moodles and stirmonster.

and congrats moodles, that sounds like a good gig

thanks for the advice, I think you are right, I definitely need to scope out the whole situation before committing to anything. I can definitely do something a bit more on the melodic/house end of the spectrum, but I only want to go so far in that direction. As much as I want to be open to whatever gig I can get, I need to also make sure I can play music that fits with my overall approach.

do i: promote on my accounts and show up one more time...

...and show up with an empty briefcase and demand to be paid in cash before performing, a la Chuck Berry.

lol

i'd go for #3 and then if he doesn't pay / continues to ghost go for a very emphatic #2 next.

agree w/this fwiw

yeah i think confronting him in-person will make it harder for him to weasel out.

went to the new happy hour venue for a tech run-through last night - the bar has a real actual DJ setup, CDJs, DJM-900NXS2 mixer and turntables. excited to not have to lug a laptop and bulky stand to the venue, but i also don’t have much CDJ experience so will have to play around with it a bit before the night starts to get my bearing. also need to figure out the whole rekordbox/USB business lol. pretty jazzed about this tho! think it’ll be a fun night.

be extra careful if you have a lot of FLAC files as that is often not supported by CDJs

CDJ2000NXS2 & XDJ1000mk2 support FLAC, the older ones don’t.

these are CDJ-3000s which do support FLAC - was worried about that too since that’s a big chunk of my digital library

sounds awesome! do you have a laptop/pc? if so you can always do all your prepwork on that and export to a usb key, if you don't want to bring your laptop with you.

*cough* cdjs have a sync feature you just have to make sure your beat grids are all lined up *cough*

i can beatmatch on cdjs i promise, i just like having one less thing to worry about.

yeah map, gonna get everything prepped this week and bring a USB stick. the laptop i use for DJing is the same one i use for WFH and also everything else in my life, and is 10+ years old to boot, so i'm always nervous something's going to happen to it if i bring it out to a bar

ha, on my controller i usually will beatmatch but i'll hit sync if the pitch controls are being ornery or i'm just tired lol

excited to hear how it goes!

i hope it's not too forward to share here, but one of my favorite djs, ilxor boxedjoy, is going to be playing out with another one of my favorite djs, ilxor c0lin (i forget his dn), at the end of the month in glasgow, at c0lin's tea dance monthly. can we be tea dance sisters? i'm going to insist lol.

so my drama has been resolved, bar owner paid me for last week and this week (he said their venmo account was locked for 4 days), and things were a little busier yesterday than they have been. i had this cool thing happen where a group of twenty somethings from out of town passed by the bar, heard the music, and came in to listen and hang for an hour or two. this really beautiful woman (i'm not creeping, i promise, she was just really beautiful) was very enthusiastic about house music with me for a minute. it was great.

an idle gear thought lately, after using this pioneer controller for a year, i miss the traktor ecosystem tbh, it was more reliable and generally just always sounded "good" no matter what you were playing.

map, glad your bar drama resolved in your favor! also that you’re getting more of a crowd. i love when random ppl get really into it with you. one of my favorite recent DJ moments was when a woman came up to me as i was playing “where is my man?” by eartha kitt, she knew every word and the two of us just sang along to the whole thing

boxedjoy/c0l1n double bill sounds dreamy tbh!

so tonight i went in cold on those CDJs and omg it was so nerve-wracking at first - i actually had to ask the house chef (who also DJs there occasionally) to help me out with some very basic shit, luckily he was very kind about it. played it low and slow at first but built my way up eventually and mostly felt comfortable with it by the end of the night. def need to spend some time w/ that equipment though. i actually booked some studio space the night before in order to practice mixing on pioneer CDJs but i brought a wrongly formatted USB stick so it turned out to be a bust, lol

i was playing “where is my man?” by eartha kitt, she knew every word and the two of us just sang along to the whole thing

hahaa purrfect

i was very nervous my first few times on cdjs and butchered a few transitions, but no one really cares that much ime (except other djs lol) unless you're doing like 30 seconds of trainwreck mixing between each track. a quick fade is totally respectable imo. i can hear your excitement about the new situation, glad to hear you're enjoying it :)

Aww map! If it falls out just hard cut and don't sweat it. Most of the great DJs I know can be a little wobbly on the blends sometimes, it's totally normal. If you've been going for two hours especially, be patient with yourself!

So great to hear too donna, but glad to hear too that it inspired you to want to learn. Hope it goes well!!

this thread is great and inspiring <3

It's always such a weird dilemma for the digital DJ starting out...CDJs are expensive and you don't get the chance to practice on them at home, but it's not cool to use a laptop/controller in a club with CDJs. Not that it's rocket science, but the little things can trip you up in a high pressure situation.

I might actually have the possibility of a couple gigs in the fall, and already that's the part that's stressing me out (pretty much just that).

one of the first times i used the nicer cdjs i took out the wrong usb stick to put mine in and cut the music entirely (no emergency loop function at the time.) the music resumed quickly and it was early warm up hours so no one really noticed but i still found it mortifying

Re clunky mixing/beatmatching fails - I saw Hieroglyphic Being play once and I have never heard a DJ clang so many mixes but because his selection was so good it didn't matter at all

I was at a wee night a couple of months ago and Fergus Clark of 12th Isle (fairly well known DJ in Glasgow) was playing b2b with another guy. As far as I remember they weren't actually mixing, just playing records from start to finish, including dance tunes that would normally be mixed. Worked out fine for them

Does Hieroglyphic Being still play out on iPads? I remember hearing about his iPad dj setup (or maybe it was live/dj hybrid) years ago and it sounded kinda genius.

Dunno about that but he'd do a thing where he'd play acid tunes and then play them backwards on the CDJs (I think). It was wild!

not saying it's any less cool now, but ron hardy was doing that in the 80s, but with vinyl :D

Yeah, hen I saw Jamal Moss was DJing quite a bit a decade ago he talked a lot about channeling Rob Hardy’s style of DJing and purposfully NOT beatmatching and instead trying to hit a mood.

*(w)hen

I never saw Moss do a DJ set, but christ I saw him do a live hardware set in 2013 and it was unfuckingbelievable, my husband and I were losing our minds.

Dam-Funk I’ve seen DJ several times, about a decade or so ago, and I swear that guy just doesn’t know how to best match because it’s clear that he’s trying but every set was trainwreck after trainwreck

I’ve only had the pleasure of seeing Moss live once, perhaps about 5 years ago, and he had the dual-iPad set up then – it was absolutely incredible, raw, acidy, and also upbeat with catchy italo-esque hooks going through the mangler.

not saying it's any less cool now, but ron hardy was doing that in the 80s, but with vinyl :D

― RYMsnitch, Sunday, 22 May 2022 10:16 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Crikey. How would that work? Do you get turntables that play backwards or would he just do it by hand?

I don’t know if Rob Hardy used this technique of putting the record upside down, but Claude Young used to do a bit of showboating this way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7UzXsz8J4U

IIRC Ron Hardy also used reel-to-reel tapes which would play backwards much easier?

Nice, according to this youtube description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEobDkQzgc0 - the technique shown in that video above seems to be how he'd have done it

A Ron Hardy trademark was playing records backwards. He did this by mounting the turntable headshell upside down to the tone-arm, placing a cylinder on the platter, putting the record on the cylinder and by removing the tone-arm weight, pushing the now upside-down needle into the underside of the record. The platter spun normal, but the record played backwards.Many have said this never happened,but here it is.Track starts around 3.20.

I remember hosting a basement party in Boston in 93/94 where someone did this. Pretty rad.

just found out the pride retro party i'm djing tomorrow night is sponsored by a defense contractor 🤦. the bar is also kinda douchey.

not going to back out now but kind of a bummer. i love disco and it's the perfect excuse to play it. hope the vibes aren't too off.

i got asked by another gay bar to do their thursday nights! the manager is very sharp and i've always wanted to dj there, so excited about that.

tomorrow i'm djing for 8+ hours 😅, 2 separate gigs.

this week i have gigs thursday, friday, saturday and sunday. i'm just going to do my best and ride it out but it's a little overwhelming i guess.

also gotta manage anxiety about my day job.

just found out the pride retro party i'm djing tomorrow night is sponsored by a defense contractor 🤦

i think this explains why the ut4h pr1de c3nter has been so weird about marketing it + not including me in the promo.

feels like you have to eat a little shit starting out if you want to do this. true of just about any job i guess.

this is all so awesome, congrats map

I've had a few gigs hijacked by sponsors that didn't want an LGBTQIA2S+ person top billing something they were paying for. Totally understand. I'd tell them to eat shit at this stage in my life but don't blame you for wanting to break through if you can.

thanks sleeve. xii yeah i mean it's explicitly a gay party so that part is ok thankfully otherwise i'd really be uncomfortable.

if it makes you feel any better, i was once asked to work a book event for a famous author and said yes since it was double pay— basically 50/hr, 3 hrs. Guess who had to hand books to Madeleine fucking Albright to sign for an hour?

(I didn’t know it was her before going in, and I certainly wasn’t smiling and joking with her during the signing)

holy shit tabes

how’d your gigs go map??

omg tabes that is wild!

thanks for asking dr, u know i was gonna go on about it itt any way ;)

my afternoon tea dance was one of the better ones. we had to move inside into this grimy basement room because of the weather but maybe 20-25 people came through, a success in my book.

the retro party was a success overall i think? it might be the biggest party i've done and was kinda stressful but i didn't make any big mistakes and kept the energy up as best as i could. people seemed to be having a good time. maybe 100-150 people in the room at the peak? big moment of everyone dancing to "rhythm of the night". requests for 90s hip hop i had to turn down because i didn't have any except for "shoop".

for a number of reasons though the party was kind of ill-begotten - lots of boring details involved. the defense contractor aspect wasn't visible at all. but the venue is just one of these that is in it to rake in as much money as possible and has a really corporate vibe.

around 11 pm i hear this guy yelling at me from my side up in the booth, "what are you doing? you need to play something else, you need to switch it up." he has a staff shirt on and says he's the bar manager. i say "i'm sorry, this is what i have, i don't know what else to play." he's like "no no no, you need to pick things up, this is not working." i look at him for a second and something clicks in me. n.b. i'm playing disco remixes, stuff like joey negro's remix of thelma houston "i'm here again" and people on the floor are loving it. so i yell back at this guy "get out of my face! what are you going to do, fire me? do you want me to stop playing music, is that what you want?" he has this shocked look on his face and steps down from the booth without saying anything! still kinda feeling the adrenaline from that lol.

so yeah, people seemed to really enjoy the music but i was a bit of an anxious mess during the whole thing even though i was performing as best as i could. i hope there's no drama about the above exchange resulting in them not wanting to pay me. overall really bad communication between the venue and the pride organization putting on the party - everything really felt "left to the wolves" so to speak. people i put on the list were not on the list, stuff like that. going to avoid playing at this place again and i'm sure they will be avoiding me as well.

on to next weekend when i have gigs 4 days in a row, i really really hope none of them are as stressful as last night.

the other thing i experienced last night was dj worshipping young men. there were two dudes up in the front for an hour who did a lot of staring at me with admiring expressions and whenever i would mix into a new song they were like enthralled, like "you're killing it" vibes. which was cool but a little weird honestly!!! haha. like they had these hungry looks on their faces? just a young dude bro into djs vibe that i can roll with but isn't like my bread and butter i guess, idk if i'm describing this adequately.

getting so much vicarious thrill from you shutting down that prick bar manager

the whole cult of mixing thing is so funny to me, like it's got to be one of the least demanding "musical performance" skills out there, it is SO EASY and just takes a basic understanding of song phrasing, i'm talking digital djing here, you don't need to manually beat match any more, just do some preparation beforehand, and then squeeze in / squeeze out the eqs. people are always like "how did you learn?" and "i'd like to learn how to do that" and i always say it's the easiest thing in the world, the only real challenge / art is knowing your music and knowing when to play it.

xp haha! i'm glad! i'm pretty proud of myself honestly :). like, you don't own me, i will yell back at you you jerkoff!!!

totally, it feels funny when people are fascinated by the DJ and stare at you and ask questions about the actual mixing b/c it's like people watching a magic show and they can't stop looking at the distraction from the sleight of hand that is actually just having developed your taste and understanding how to play the right thing for the time and place

yessss way to stand up to that manager!!

lol i have never had adoring young men observe me behind the decks but i’m so fascinated by that behavior. it kinda reminds me of this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umarell