Hey, listen

themikeroth: Any tips for someone that would like to start DJing but is currently lacks any funding to buy any equipment or any formal training?

(tumblr wouldn’t let me publish this :s)

I started out making mixtapes of songs I liked for friends, piecing them together with audio software that I uh, obtained. I used Sony Vegas which is pretty horrible unless you’re making tapes of progressive house stuff that is all 128bpm. Ableton Live is the preferred option if you can.
Virtual DJ is another piece of software which is free and gives you a bit of an idea of how things work, but it’s practically impossible to use with any efficiency unless you have a controller.

A big part of it that often gets overlooked is track selection and programming. If you’re at a party and get an opportunity to choose the music (don’t try to force your way into this position though) - play a relatively popular song that you like and see how people react to it. If it doesn’t go down too well, try a different artist or genre (though don’t swap songs halfway through what you were already playing). Play 2 or 3 songs that people know, then drop something that they haven’t heard but might like according to what you’ve already played. Rinse, lather, repeat. I don’t recommend playing mixtapes at parties unless it’s just background music early in the night. Sets should never be fully planned out unless they’re super short for a competition or something — play according to the crowd.

Other places I looked at for information when I was starting out were Ellaskins on youtube, digitaldjtips and a few other small sites I found through google. DJTechTools is a good resource once you have gear, specifically a Traktor controller as well as stuff like Maschine controllers. Ean Golden is a really good tutor.

That’s about it I think. After awhile of this I’d definitely recommend getting a decent set of equipment though, especially if you want to make mashups.

DJ Competition this Saturday. So fucking excited but scared at the same time.

I decided my old set on mixcloud wasn’t quite up to scratch, so I’ve thrown out about 50% and decided I need to tweak it.

This isn’t too great when the comp is two days away, since I’m not nearly as prepared as I should be.

But on the plus side — I’ve been downloading a bunch of acapellas of decent pop songs that the audience is bound to know, and suddenly I’m finding crazy good mashups that I’m sure will go down pretty well. I’ll probably put some up on soundcloud in the future, just not until after the comp. Don’t want any of my rivals getting sneaky and stealing the ideas, however unlikely that may be.

If you missed my old set when I posted it, you can still listen to it here.

I’m doing a competition DJ set in about 3 weeks’ time and I’m trying to come up with a good sounding intro by sampling a tune for ~30 seconds before the 4/4 bass drum kicks in. So if you have any songs that are

• roughly 128bpm (this doesn’t matter toooo much, but it helps
• aren’t too recognisable
• have about 30 seconds or more at the start with semi-ambiance, no drums

Then please hit up my ask box.

Thanks! :D

Fucking A. Let’s take a 

quick… look…

a

holy fuck

last name on the list, too. I’m wondering if that’s because I was selected last and only just made the cut in which case hoooooly fuuuuuck

Looking up and down the list, there’s actually a fair few entries that I really liked which didn’t make it. And then on the other end of the spectrum, some mixes which were super-fucking-simple and pretty boring which made the cut in their place. So yeah, feeling pretty lucky.

Good.

There’s a DJ competition in my area going on next month, and the deadline for submissions is next Friday. So naturally I’m working on a mix when I should be doing uni study instead. Oh well~

There’s a bunch of good talent I’ve heard already, but I think it’ll be fun to give it a shot. 

One of the judging criteria is creativity, which has made messing around pretty fun so far. Sometimes all you have to do is lay one random song over another and you’ll find something  that sounds fantastic, even though it shouldn’t. I think finding this stuff and hearing the unique discoveries of other DJs excites me the most about this thing heh

Managed to import ~1000 of my best tunes into Traktor this evening and I finally got M4As to work properly, but Traktor is still making these really dumb popping/crackling noises every 30 seconds or so. :S

Disabling Multi-Core Processor Support helped a bunch initially, but nothing else I’ve tried has fixed the problem completely. I’ve disabled wifi, changed the sample rate and latency - nothing.

Some people have said stuff about this being a problem with Traktor and nvidia graphics cards — but none of the solutions I’ve seen for this have helped so far. :(

Waiting on the judging of this mixing competition right now. This is the second time I’ve entered; last time I came 10th out of 33 entrants so I’m hoping I can at least improve my placing a little bit. Especially since there’s only 22 entries this month. hm