On Djing...

i have this recurring feeling that a business card would be really useful to have when i'm talking to bar owners, maybe with a qr code to my soundcloud. something to leave them.

― Linda and Jodie Rocco (map)

very good idea, I have separate cards for business and personal, my personals have a nice design and say "Solar Designer/DJ/Pastry Chef" but the Soundcloud QR is a real step up from that

i agree w stirmonster that it is probably down to vibing off people and them vibing off of you, so like, however you can do that.

that’s super unhelpful on a practical level sorry lol but i do think that most great things in life are about shared experiences and feeling connections with people

map if there wasn't an ocean between us I would definitely be going to your party!

awww thx!!! right back atcha.

map, I started my own night. debut on Thursday!

coool... was it hard to find a bar or did you just know someone?

for real though i want to make it over there in a year or two... it really sounds like there are awesome parties happening on every corner in all the uk cities that aren't london that i get mixed up all the time

dog latin tell me all about how you started your night!

I spent a couple years floundering to get gigs then finally started to get popular by throwing my own parties, booking other local and eventually non-local DJs, and chatting up lots and lots of people (not just other DJs and promoters) at both my own and other nights. Once my own thing started popping (which didn't really happen until its second year), then the outside bookings started rolling in. Your own path and results may vary.

nice, thank you for sharing

are you still djing? would love to listen to your mixes if you're on sound/mixcloud.

I thought this was informative: https://www.mixcloud.com/mixcloud/posts/why-mixcloud-doesnt-offer-on-demand-video-vod/

interesting that they mention facebook and amazon but not youtube, which has had a very significant uptick in DJ sets over the past year

one thing I've noticed on recent youtube DJ sets is that the description of the video often contains track details for a portion of the tracks feature, which I assume is used for copyright/royalty purposes, but it usually only covers about 1/4 of the tracks played at most. Not sure how they decide which tracks get mentioned and which do not.

I've wondered about that too, since I've seen mine on there. I think it only applies to tracks already distributed to Youtube through official digital distributors, but I'm unclear whether they ID tracks through algorithms (because it seems like it would be hard to match wavs with blends and changed tempos), or volunteered by the uploader of the set.

I've been Shazaming various tracks from DJ sets lately and have been very surprised at how well it works

i have two little weekday gigs. there's another matt here so the person who holds court in the house scene here suggested i change my dj name from "matt pierce" to "pierce anthony" (my middle name is anthony, and he thought the piers anthony riff was cute). i've never read any piers anthony but it looks like he was a pedophile and a horrible writer and now i hate my new dj name. so i guess i'm going to change it again to 'anthony pierce' but it's annoying to have to explain and change it all again.

anyway, my boyfriend had this idea that i should do a fundraiser night for the first thing i do myself, which is honestly perfect. it will be for a local mutual aid group. i have some people interested in joining on, i'm pretty excited about it.

congrats! yeah that's a bad name, change it - maybe just "DJ Anthony" for a shortened version?

now I kinda wanna brainstorm DJ names for 100 posts

"DJ Multiplus"

(initials)

I am like a month away from resuming my monthly gig but tbh I think we're gonna have to lock down again so I'm keeping my expectations low

I had a whole plan to start checking out a techno night downtown last week and see if there might be opportunities to get booked one week, but quickly realized it might be best to wait it out a bit.

I like DJ Anthony, my grandfather's name was Anthony

he wasn't a DJ, but he did lead an all female concert band before the war: Anthony Bevi and His Ladies of Charm.

now that's a good name imho

yall thank you, "DJ Anthony" is great.

if someone does a weekly, weekday night thing that is a good place to start imo, but yes times are uncertain again right now.

<3

a voice from beyond ilx suggested "manthony" which i mean... definitely

LIKE

That's the one, babe.

THUMBS UP, thx

Matt + Anthony, it's a no-brainer but kudos to the person who came up with it.

so my boyfriend is saying that he originally suggested it but i don't remember lol
vah!d suggested it on facebook.
it's perfect

i remember looking it up and seeing that there are a few manthonys out there but i think that matters to me less now

DJ Man Honey

hahaha

now that i've hijacked this thread and made it completely about me, i might as well say that quitting drinking has probably been the best decision i've made in support of my modest little dj goals. there is no way in hell i could have done a tuesday night set from 11-1:30 and then done a 9 am training the next morning for my actual job with alcohol involved. and it was a lot more fun being totally lucid and present when i finally had a few dancers going at the end. mind you this probably doesn't apply to people who are in control of their drinking and i don't mean to evangelize but after years of struggling i finally feel straight-up relief about it instead of regret.

feeling that, the club soda and cranberry combo is a fave of mine when DJing (after I've had a few drinks, granted, but yr point stands)

Disheartened to learn this about piers Anthony after ignoring his existence after age ~15

That was new to me too (never read those books). Anyway, that's great map!

I got a dm from someone who's planning on playing a new track I released at a festival in MN this weekend, and they're actually in WI and offered to help get me some gigs if I'm interested. So maybe I will actually do that even though I had given up all hope of doing that?

awesome

i hope ppl don't mind too much that i post in here about my djing stuff. it helps to lay some things out here and i've gotten really helpful feedback...

anyway so a party has come together for sep 3. i'm doing a fundraiser for the mutual aid org here. one of the djs is doing the sound and giving me a great deal on it. i'm going pretty bare-bones on the production. sound, ttables, cdjs, that's about it, no lights or anything. bar patio out back, hoping weather cooperates, if not we can move it indoors no prob. the sound guy / dj has worked with the venue many other times and knows all the ins and outs of setting up there. he's djing last, i'm warming up. the middle dj is a big name who just got his tonsils out a few days ago and texted me today to let me know he might not be in shape to do it, though he wants to stay on the bill for now and thinks there's a good chance he'll be up for it.

my sweet boyfriend made a handmade flyer that we took pictures of for the social media graphic :). everyone is pretty psyched for it. i think i'm going to meet / talk to some left-y young people from this which is a big plus, if my social anxiety doesn't sabotage it too much lol.

i'm telling djs to aim for like soulful house with a message. i'm debating whether or not to go full jesus with my selection but will just have to feel it out while it's happening.

i'm going to ask the mutual aid org if they can provide a volunteer to collect $ at the door and work a cash drawer.

i'm having some anxiety about not thinking of everything just because i've never done this before. so i thought i'd just post about it here and see if anyone thinks i'm missing or forgetting anything?

don't forget to enjoy yourself :)

Hi map. Really sorry I didn't reply to you upthread.

I started "DJing" way back in the early mid 2000s, although what I was really doing was putting together often very complicated mixtapes using a pirated version of Acid Pro and then playing them out at parties and the odd club night. People in my little town were new to the idea of digital DJing back then and weren't the wiser, plus it meant I could mash together a very wide range of genres in a creative way, a bit like Soulwax used to do with their 2ManyDJs albums.

Around 2006 I realised it was very possible for me to put on a small night above a pub and get my friends to come down. Often I gave slots to people I knew who had never DJ'd before but still had good taste in music. Because it was only a small town, I couldn't be fussy about remit and so we encouraged a cross-genre blend where we could. The first time I heard dubstep played loud was at one of my own nights.

The night got bigger and we moved to a much larger club. I realised I needed to get live acts involved to draw a crowd, and one time we even got Damo Suzuki and DJ Scotch Egg to play (it ruined me financially but I count it as a lifetime achievement). Various people I knew got involved, including photographers and even a VJ who set up an interactive projection thingy.

By the time we'd moved to yet another venue, the smoking ban had come into place and casual punters were more inclined to go to pub gardens. So we introduced a concept or theme for each night: a Victorian ball, a night where everyone wears their clothes back to front and you have to look at the flyer in a mirror to read it etc...

It was a lot of fun, but by 2012 I was done. It was exhausting me mentally and financially as I rarely broke even and I was working a day job and commuting into London. Still, it was really popular and well known in the local community as a fun, creative night where you didn't know what to expect next.

In 2015 I moved to Bristol, the kind of city where there are tons of venues and everyone is a DJ. I was keen to get involved in the music scene and luckily got introduced very quickly to people who DJ'd and put on nights.

I got invited to play a few pub gigs, nothing big. But soon realised that my "Acid Pro mixtape" trick I'd been getting away with for years just wouldn't wash any more. So I bit the bullet, invested in a Pioneer controller and taught myself how to use Serato. Thankfully the theory of beatmatching and cutting is roughly the same, only you do it in real time and perhaps can't chop beats up in quite the same way.

It took a short amount of time to get to grips with things but still I had a hard time convincing anyone to give me a gig. Because I don't specialise of have a signature sound, it's hard to market myself.

I noticed Bristol didn't really have much in the way of a postpunk night, so I convinced a pub to let me put one on. SCIENCE! (as it was called) had an open remit so long as it was alternative music falling between 1978 and 87.

Had a great few nights of that, with everything from punk to disco to hip hop being played, although I can't say it was a roaring success exactly. Despite plenty of acts, Massive Attack included, having been forged in this era, Bristol audiences seemed to be nonplussed by it. I had to explain to a lot of people what "new wave" meant, which was strange but then I think Bristol is a nineties city at heart, and most people are into D'n'B or whatever bassy dub sound is popular in dance music right now.

SCIENCE! lasted until the pandemic, but it felt like it had run its course. I was running out of new music to play and was getting tired of retrospection.

I got this strange idea for a conceptual nightclub. It wasn't meant to be a real thing, just a daft idea I'd had and started applying to various chill out and Balearic mixes I'd been making for my own listening. At the same time, my friend and I were occasionally playing at this "audiophile" bar on Saturday afternoons, just gentle eclectic stuff for people having lunch or daytime cocktails, but mostly just playing to the barstaff.

Club Stoic (named after a "philosophical nightspot" in the Nintendo RPG Earthbound) evolved from this. I'm still not sure what I'm doing with it exactly, but basically it's an outlet for anything from eclectic/chillout to more housey, dancey sounds. The flyers are always high concept: I recently made an online flyer based on old BBC Micro text adventures.

Over lockdown, to keep myself entertained and to help keep on top of new music, I started livestreaming a show on Friday evenings from my bedroom. Basically me and my partner getting drunk while I span tunes and talked on the mic occasionally. Mostly just for my friends and anyone else who wanted to get involved. It was fun.

Just before lockdown, I started a Facebook community to discuss new music from around the world. Terrain is a Facebook group first and foremost where we discuss and share everything from Afrobeats to K-Pop and Latin bangers and stuff from further afield. Most people on there are artists and DJs so naturally after 18 months of lockdown, I decided to turn that into a night too. It's early days yet, and we have our first not-free entry night taking place in October.

So that's my story. I do this all for fun. I sometimes get paid a few quid to play, and I absolutely love playing out: it's literally my favourite thing to do. At 40 years old, I'm not expecting to make a living from it or even get much recognition, but it keeps me in beer tokens and off the mean streets.

hey, thanks for sharing, that's an interesting journey.

Manthony is good, but ultimately make me think of "Romanthony," which isn't a bad thing.

I want to start DJing again.

I've also been doing live improvisations for the audience of my husband and dogs using this software, and it's been making me feel awesome: https://www.olympianoiseco.com/apps/patterning-2/

that sounds very rewarding, glad it's making you feel good.

i've adopted "bring u up" in my last few sets tbh.

my first party was pretty good! the mutual aid org made more money than they thought they might and the sets were all really good. turnout was better than expected.

already making plans for another one in november. i like the fundraiser model. need to find another good organization and two other djs i like (which is hard here haha, though there are lots of new folks i haven't seen yet).

Glad to hear it went well!

I might try to spend the winter working on music stuff more seriously.