Your advice is good advice and the stuff about layering/eqing is 100% true. Thank you my mate, good pointers and it is very much what you’re saying, not that any of this will deter me, only make my passion grow. But definitely good to get the insight of others for sure.
Dealing with people who don't produce
HAYDYN
#42
Do a lot of you have formal training in your music studies? Im self taught but did a year in pretty much beginner stuff in college. I’d self taught for 3 years before that and 4 years since.
FMB
#43
I chose to do it at uni yeah but i didnt really feel like i learnt much. They definitely dont sit down with you and show you how to EQ and make mint sounds like i thought they might haha
I dont actually layer anything at all. I try my best to make/pick/rob sounds that SOUND good. Thats it. I make a good kick drum sound and if i find out later it doesnt work as well as it could ill make/find another. I dont layer any chords, any bass any anything! I used about 10 channels and make them all count. I try and make patterns where the different sounds dont step on each other toes too much… i never really let it get in the way of what i want to do though. Thats my favoured way of doing things. Im not too bothered how good it sounds in the end though tbh. I keep that stuff in mind to steer it in the right direction.
White_Noise
#44
That’s pretty much how I work too. I think most people say it’s a bit less polished than mainstream stuff, but I listen to my own music around 50% of my free listening time, so at least I like it.
relic
#45
The bummer about a lot of the music I like these days is its very much a technical excercise and I think it sound so much better a little raw.
And my concern is how do I play my own tracks next those? Maybe just using the volume knob on my dj mixer is enough
FMB
#48
Ive gained more and more respect for what it can mean to be a good DJ in the last 6 months or so. It seems theres a lot to consider and it can take so much time and effort to plan things out maybe? I think it depends who the audience is and what the situation is, but more importantly how brave are you and whay are you trying to do?! If you dont want to play a track that might lack in certain frequencies, or the mix, or its just old and not up to modern mixing practices and its quiet with lots of dymamics… then theres your answer! If the set is pretty level and then you play something that stands out as lacking then maybe leave it out. OR work on your track until it will fit in acceptably.
If, alternatively, you are moving around quite a bit with music from different time periods and tempos thats gonna give you a lot more room to play with anyway and your audience will get that and be more forgiving/open.
You know what youre doing anyway man thats probably quite patronising from a guy like me who is making it up as i go along.
Anyway i bought a record recently that was a repress of a track from 1990. It stuck with me enough that i felt i needed to get a long lasting copy. Do you think you could play this along recent dance music?
It sounds fuckin great to me but its different
relic
#49
Not patronizing at all. I think everything you said is spot on. I don’t plan sets out song for song, I just practice mixing a set of like…50-70 tracks and then do what it takes to get the job done for the gig. Last year the biggest challenge was playing re-works of disco and funk records and I ended up having to do it on an iPad and a controller and it came off great, but I had massaged those tracks a 100 times up until then.
It is always a mix of crowd response, the vibe of the event, and what you are brave enough to try and pull off. There is defo a place and crowd who wouldn’t care as much about production differences and in another other places it would be a disaster.
I mean, really the end goal is for my own tunes to live up to modern production standards. I mean, if I’m going to play a certain kind of music and that’s kind of my thing, I feel like my own tracks should be near that standard if I’m going to play them out.
Mixing all kinds of different tunes with all kinds of different production is a bit beyond me at this point. And I really wish more DJs did that. I have to say even most of my favorite DJs, in general, do pretty “safe” mixes most of the time. But really all you need to do is get the crowd to trust you.
I dig that track man, and from what I’m hearing production wise it would mix well into a set. It sounds a little dated? Like I in instantly know that has to be a 90’s track w/o looking it up. I’m not against dropping some old school flavor, I do it all the time fucking around or at house parties. But like the pros I tend to go a little “safer” at a legit gig.
Its a weird business. Doing like an all old school set isn’t something a lot of DJs do. Adam X did it at an after party at DEMF last year and he blew my fucking tits off, but it was like in this hellish basement venue even though he is/was a huge name.
bfk
#50
I don’t talk about it in real life because most people I know only care about sports, money, partying like a 20 year old even though they are 40ish, sex, relationships, and are more concerned with other life priorities…me personally kinda don’t see the point in getting wasted anymore…but that’s beside the point art to me is just a passing thing yea I dabble myself but I don’t place such a high value on it anymore…it is what it is…
bfk
#52
that is true
but for me maybe it has to do with my own personal upbringing, or it could be because being that i’m able to somewhat properly translate the music in my head into actuality music for me kinda has lost its wonder eh…it happens i guess;
but hey do you, people have free will, its not my business what others do in their free time as long as nobody gets hurt, to each their own I say,
besides art and sports is a better outlet than hitting up bars and getting drunk constantly for no reason, or binge watching some stuff on netfllix,
without art or sports as an outlet people would be at odds with each other for no good reason
(also i’m not looking to put anyone down…or be patronizing, just merely trying to offer the other side of things)
