On Djing...

Dan, that sounds utterly awesome! map, that’s a great development. The one thing I can’t do at the bar is create an immersive, hypnotic club-like vibe, but occasionally I do see people lose themselves in a track as opposed to hollering along to the chorus; it happened last night during a sequence that went: Push The Feeling On, Closer Than Close, Where Love Lives, A Deeper Love, Soulsearcher “Can’t Get Enough” (Dr Packer remix), Make The World Go Round.

this is the most active DJ thread so I just wanted to post this recent radio show playlist I did that I am very proud of, totally improvised and on the fly and it captured a certain shimmering summer vibe

https://spinitron.com/m/playlist/view/17661983

whoops sorry, here it is
https://spinitron.com/KWVA/pl/17661983/The-Forest-Of-No-Return

featuring two ILXor bands!

there were voiceover breaks where I gave track info, but that doesn't show so you can't really get a sense of the set flow, mostly 15-20 minute blocks

that looks fab. i love the feeling of making something that feels good on the fly.

thursday night was another in a string of good nights for me. no requests again. had 15-20 people dancing for a while there. i was feeling soulful, blissful stuff. i played the two vocal round one-five tracks, "i'm your brother" and "new day", for the first time in a long time. wonderful classics. they sound amazing of course but they're kind of tricky to mix in with more current brickwalled stuff. you sort of have to turn down the bass imo (heresy probably lol).

My Friday was fairly quiet compared to recent weeks, which is odd for the end of the month. I think people were cashing in their pay cheques for Barbenheimer.

Five and half years in, my Friday night bar residency seems to have exploded in popularity; it’s been immense for weeks now.

uh, holy shit!! go mike!

meanwhile i've backed away from the vocal-heavy dance pop i used to play more of and i'm indulging in my taste for weirder, darker, heavier dahnce, kompakt-adjacent stuff, dark disco, stuff released by the likes of *ahem* optimo.

whoa that's huge!!! and reeeaaaally great to hear

Haven’t djd in ages but my next gig is pretty exciting. A good friend rented out the El Dorado bumper car space in Coney Island for his 40th bday.

ok, i love the shit outta this thread rn

a few weeks ago I was drinking with friends, and one of my pals texted her cousin nominating me to do a night DJing in the pub her cousin runs. Her cousin was very enthusiastic and, fuelled by gin and the good time I was having, I agreed I would do it. Two days later I was in a blind panic, as I have never DJ'd in public before, only at afterparties with friends in my own home or pre-recorded mixes for the radio show. And this pub is a great place to go but it's a very traditional place - you're much more likely to hear Brown Eyed Girl and Sweet Caroline than the kind of disco and house I love. But, I got a group of pals to agree to come along and I prepared a set that was still full of crowd-pleasers but more aligned with my own tastes: contemporary r&b, disco, vocal house and dance-pop hits. The cousin had also sent a few requests - nothing too "difficult" but definitely stuff a little bit unexpected and from the less populist end of dance music.

I had the BEST time. I was a bit worried because in the first hour a woman came up to me and said "play more 80s! I thought this was an 80s night!" but I also knew that what she really meant was, "go full school disco and play only the songs from The Wedding Singer soundtrack that I like" so I kinda brushed her off and anyway ten mins later she was up dancing to Shakira. I have no idea where she got the idea it would be an 80s night from either.

I don't think everything went perfectly. I've played the Frankie Knuckles remix of "Unbreak My Heart" and had people absolutely love it, but it didn't do a lot on Friday night. And I've seen the pub go wild to someone (ie me) singing "You Spin Me Round" at karaoke but it felt a bit more muted when I played it. But I had a big singalong to the Purple Disco Machine remix of Lizzo, and people running to the dancefloor for "Gypsy Woman" and "One Night In Heaven." Best of all was when I played Boys Town Gang "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and people were actually standing on chairs and tables shouting along to the main riff.

My main worry was that people wouldn't enjoy it, and I would end up chasing away more people than I had managed to bring with me, and that the pub would suffer if I couldn't convince people to stay out. One of the barmaids told me that she heard some people actively saying they were planning to leave earlier but they were having a good night, and everyone I convinced to come along stayed til the lights came on. I said I was happy to do it as a trial night and just take payment in the form of a few free drinks but they paid me - a lot more than I would have expected - and I've been asked if I would want to make it a monthly event. So I am considering the whole thing a total victory for now!

also I want to thank people on ILM who have encouraged me since I started doing this as a bedroom hobby and sharing mixes on the DJs Post Etc thread, and I specifically want to thank map and mike-t-diva whose contributions to this thread made me think about my approach to what I did on Friday night, which I found really inspiring and helpful.

hahahaha congrats on your new gig!!! <3

Sounds like you had an awesome time :)

That is SO good to hear, congratulations!

yayyy boxedjoy that is so awesome

I’ve had that reaction to Boys Town Gang as well. There was a UK hit about three years ago that quoted it, which might have helped.

I think if this does turn into a regular gig, the biggest difficulty I'm going to have is trying to find the balance of pleasing a crowd with not losing my own voice. I don't want to be just another Chartpop & Nostalgia guy who you can find in any pub but I also know that it's not the right place to indulge in songs that don't have words.

That’s a constant struggle! I can still err in both directions, but there’s always something to be learned from it.

yay boxedjoy! <3

yeah i mean even if it doesn't turn into a regular gig, which def has that stress, i'm so glad it gave you a taste of the positives. sorry i don't mean to sound presumptuous. i don't think you would be capable of losing your own voice tbh. there's a lot leeway in chartpop and nostalgia. and i've recently been surprised by how much energy people can feel during a wordless song now and then - if you really love it and play it like you do, people tend to respond. anyway, way to go. i think it's obvious you have talent and could do this in any number of ways that felt right to you and people would enjoy it.

i do think it's important to let yourself off the hook for 'keeping the energy up and right' all the time. the truth is everyone will need to take breaks from the music anyway, whether it's to get a drink or just to socialize. some things that don't have as much of an impact as you think they will - that's the absolute mystery of timing for you, which is so fickle, so much out of our control. when i find myself peaking with the energy and i don't know what to play next, i think it's a valid move to deliberately go down a step in energy or switch to a slightly different feeling. also, i have this background sense that we're supposed to basically know what we're doing by a certain point in time, but i still think it's ok to experiment a little bit while you're playing, take a risk or two. if it pays off it's quite a rush, if it doesn't you just gotta let it go and move on. i think one thing that is always urgent and key no matter what is to love your music. for me that means listening to stuff just for enjoyment, outside of the context of 'prepping for a dj gig.' i think everyone itt is very much that kind of music enjoyer. the more i do this the more i feel like it's very important to hold close to that.

sorry to jump in, but i have done a couple of things up at my local pub.
and it was a lot of fun (and stressful being surrounded my everyone you know !).
however, i don't beatmatch cos i play stuff that can't be easily mixed together and i cant be arsed to learn now that i am a grey hair.
when doing pub gigs map, do you beatmatch and go for the whole 4/4 build up ?
as i can guarantee that would not work well in my local.

map, I 100% agree with you. At a bar/pub, it’s fine to let the floor thin out from time to time. I’ve even had people come up and thank me for playing tracks that nobody was dancing to. Sometimes you play to the crowd, sometimes you do you. And sometimes you’ll play an obscure track that connects, and there’s no way of knowing beforehand if that will happen, and when it does it’s wonderful.

mark e: I beatmatch about 90% of my sets, but there aren’t a lot of people there who care about my transitions. It’s just a thing I have to do. And when I do an unsynced hard reset, that’s often the moment that brings people onto the floor - especially when it’s a big drop in tempo.

mark, i also beatmatch, but i'm playing straight-ahead 4/4 music, often with longish lead-ins and lead-outs, so it just makes sense. i agree with you that it's not necessary for other types of music. also agree with mike that changes in tempo can be a catalyst at the right time.

what i've figured out at my bar is that friday and saturday nights are already the "gay pop singalong" nights. for the first year or so i was convinced i had to master that format, and indeed, because i was asked to fill in on fridays and saturdays once in a while, i really had to push in that direction. i tried to do that while also playing dance pop i'm more attached to but that people here are not connected to (i.e. jessie ware, roisin murphy). but what i've learned about the weekends there is that there is a fairly predictable list of songs and artists that will be played and programming sections that everyone expects (i.e. 12 and after is reggaeton and hip hop). weirdly it's somewhat still radio-driven i think? i often hear complaints about the weekend dj that he plays the same songs and the same set almost every time. it is very similar at other gay clubs in this town. a certain kind of clubgoer here has been trained on it. and so when 'weekend people' wander in on my night and come up to make a request, when i was saying 'yes' and trying to find their song, i was signalling that it would be another 'weekend' night. by saying 'no' i'm letting them know that things are gonna be different. and surprisingly a lot of the 'weekend' people make an adjustment and go for it! it's weird how sometimes people are more satisfied if you tell them you won't be taking their requests and they have to be happy with what you're going to play.

i love when i get compliments from people who are like, "i'm from chicago..." or "i'm from new york..." they tend to get it, lol, like they've been raised on djs who are trying to do something a bit more special with music. i'm certainly not one who turns his nose up at pop music. at a certain point though it becomes relying on the recognizability of it rather than the musical qualities, at least in my particular context. it's a tricky balance to strike ime. i'm finding out that i like a well-placed pop song or remix after two or three 'not really recognizable but good and hopefully interesting or catchy' tracks.

there’s a lot more to it than tempo

ime the continuum for cdjs to current controller dj’ing makes it possible to do something you really can’t do with vinyl at any skill level, which is to make any music like jon digweed mixes tech house. i can do that with anything from 100 bpm “poolside” to 180 bpm dnb but from ukg on up (135 ish) you actually count the measures differently than you did mixing house and techno

so even though i have the skill to mix 90-100 bpm trip hop and old funk 45s like that, i don’t want to mix like that because the music is not “built to do that” the way anything post chicago house is. i end up using the crossfader, when i am playing downtempo and jazz and prog rock and ambient (ok balearic) i mix more like a reggae dj based on mood and special fx transitions

even if you listen to larry levan do it with long 4x4 drum breaks (what i call “get down with the genie” type breakdowns) it’s really different how he rides the blend vs how ron hardy is doing it just five years later mixing “happy song” style edits with early armando jack trax

which is to mix* any music like 4x4 “dj’s” mix trad house

i think my main feeling is nobody wants to hear long blends in any genre unless i’m playing house / techno (and even then maybe sometimes you want play more like jeff mills or bad boy bill adding in lots of fast cuts) or just utterly formless ambient / field recordings / new age music

it’s sad i think that so many ppl feel the “gatekeeping”
from vinyl djs. at the same time it is a truism that computer mixing allows you to do stuff (broadly speaking, what i might call live performance / controllerism / edm neon pyramid style live remixing) that would have been unfeasible from 1985-1995)

i don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with applying that to pre beatport dance (let alone stuff like edm not in the “blend dj” tradition) but i do think djs are right in that it’s kind of nice that vinyl mixing requires you to take paths of least resistance (ie “going with the flow of the music”) vs just where you want

simple example i have a 10 min derrick carter track (as sound patrol) that he did live with nakuza in the studio. during each breakdown they sort of lose time (because of the jam nature of the track) and then bring it back
in a drifty way. so you have to mix like that. but on traktor you can just beatwarp it to a grid and add a sick progressive house drop. which is not really the point of a track named “drifting off into the starry sky of naptime”

but that’s also sort of an edge case. i have an awful lot of stuff that you’d mix the same way digital / vinyl. i do think a lot of “poolside edits” are a dumb idea. who cares, just play yacht rock, let ppl dance to something without a 4x4, people are here because they like your insta, not because they want to revel in how coordinated and ambidextrous you are

finally just fyi 90s breaks (like wee djs, bassbin twins, dj icey) type music is deeply unfashionable now (unless it’s a carefully curated retro reference point) but the term “blend dj” is something i heard them use derisively, there was a strong feeing that house djs only knew how to do “smooth blends” and had a massive blind spot for anything other than “one fader up the other one down while blending the kicks” (that usually meant hip hop techniques, or even just how to manage tracks with cut and paste dynamics and hard out-of-time breaks, like funk 45s)

sorry to dovetail from the above interesting discussion but:

a DJ friend i made recently had his birthday party tonight at the bar where he’s a resident DJ, he invited me and also told me i could bring some records to play if i wanted. he’s turning 52 so the party was b-52s-themed (ie 80s and fun/upbeat). i was slightly nervous at first because it was a big crowd and i don’t play out on vinyl much but the vibe was really warm and fun and everybody was very sweet. i just did a short set of eight songs. my friend liked what i played, the rest of the bar seemed into it too, and i befriended one of the other DJs who played and his husband. a very sweet night all around.

what i played:

sexual harassment - if i gave you a party
tom tom club - the man with the 4-way hips
magazine 60 - don quichotte
gina & the flexix - i wanna believe
lex - fourteen days
isabelle antena - be pop
ingrid - the hunt
the b-52’s - legal tender

^^ i feel like this a selection of tracks that is danceable and would carry the right floor and would really sound best with minimal / subtle / sensitive mixing

i don’t know the music that well but like i love playing the first tom tom album on vinyl. my copy is really light and floppy (not like really flexible but whatever the opposite of 180g is) and i think the charm of playing vinyl is how it makes all rubbery basslines even more wobbly and the vibe even more woozy.

good example of a track w different merits in digital - i always get a kick out of hearing the clear channel oldies station play “genius of love”, brings out the crisp electro hi end

i say this as someone who feels like maybe i wasted too much $$$ buying inferior edits (razor n tape type stuff) when i could just be playing music that’s better not getting shoehorned into deep house mixing

much love to the rare edits that manage to improve the original!

I’m team “play the original” most of the time - there’s so much edit fodder out there that cuts out a fun chrous and puts the same chunky beat behind something, making someting that sounded interesting and quirky more “tasteful”. But when someone does it properly it’s a beautiful thing.

yeah for that set i just played out all the tracks to completion and crossfaded at the end of each one, super minimal. i got multiple compliments on playing that TTC track! “genius” looms pretty large in their catalog (not without good reason) but that one is so much fun to dance to

i play edits in my set from time to time but there is such a glut of run of the mill edits that don’t do a whole lot with the original or cut out what are imho the best parts of the original, so i try to be judicious in my use of them

i play edits, there are a ton of good edits. there are also a ton of bad edits. also edits that were good at the time but sound bad now. a lot of edits worked with the whole slow disco thing when filtered chopped vocal loops that unfolded slowly were big, mark e was doing it, and it made sense after french filter house, but without the gritty dumb panache of full blown cheeze it didn't age that well, or at least doesn't work for me at the moment. the ones that rely more on classic dub techniques feel more timeless to me, just looping the best bits and piling on the delay and reverb here and there, justin vandervolgen is good at that, and harvey of course. good edits don't remove the best bits, but they remove the bits that ruin the hypnosis and take you out of the zone. sometimes you aren't trying to sink into the zone so it's fine and preferable to be taken out of it

yeah i agree… the edits that really stuck with me (and i didn’t get rid of) are things like classic “edits by mister k”, things that focus on one element of a song, or bring out a section, or just edit it in a way that’s more along the flow of a peaktime disco burner.

classic example, glenn underground “gu edit” of “love hangover” that just focuses on the chuggy band part at the end and sends her whoops and exclamations into the sort of outer spaces donna summer reached in “i feel love”

there’s also the various “mindless boogie” / idjut boys style edits that “dub it out” or make it sound more trippy, i have room for those. i still have razor n tape records, like the hade edits, which do some real subtle looping to make it so you can sort of beatmatch in a downtempo sort of way …

i’m not really sure where my ire is directed. i think the mark e type slo mo stuff are okay too, they’re kind of like ugly edits - they put some of the dynamics of dance music into non dance stuff (with loops and fx) while also not just squashing it flat into 4x4 tech house dynamics … and even that’s cool! that’s sound stream or dj sneak or van helden, right?

ok maybe karl’s right and there’s just a bunch of bad edits with no organizing principle to them

i quite often play the original version and people will assume it is an edit. there is a particularly amazing live version of Nina Simone's See Line Woman i play and i often get asked whose edit it is and always love being able to say "Nina's!". recently this happened and when i said "Nina's!" they said "Kraviz?"

omg yeah same experience with “the moving finger”!!

tbf i play at like -4 or -8 but “headz” were asking who produced these downtempo beats and i was like uhhhh dorothy ashby

I could listen to "R&B Drunkie" forever some days tbh

that track is my personal shame, the perennial overused party starter. but so so so effective, i can never not bop along

Now that is a GR8 edit, I agree :)

i got a ton of mileage out of that one too

i feel like bumpin to some old school. definitely a different thing than the original, but the original is great too.

hmu for janet remix opinions

i quite often play the original version and people will assume it is an edit. there is a particularly amazing live version of Nina Simone's See Line Woman i play and i often get asked whose edit it is and always love being able to say "Nina's!". recently this happened and when i said "Nina's!" they said "Kraviz?"

― stirmonster, Monday, July 31, 2023 7:39 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

omg yeah same experience with “the moving finger”!!

tbf i play at like -4 or -8 but “headz” were asking who produced these downtempo beats and i was like uhhhh dorothy ashby

― the late great, Monday, July 31, 2023 7:42 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJhNRgMIeAE
surely the ultimate one of these, please forgive the intrusion

wow thanks, i’ve never heard that one!!

Played a Classic Pride Anthems set in Harrogate last night: it's a city which has never had its own gay venue, and I believe this was its first ever indoor LGBTQ+ dance party, which is mad, right? It ran from 7pm-1am and my slot was 8-9.45pm, so I wasn't expecting much, but by 9pm the decent-sized venue was packed and the dancefloor overflowing - proper peak time vibes - which was an astonishing and beautiful sight, and basically unheard of for that place at that time. Talks are in progress to make this a regular event, and I reckon last night will have sealed the deal. I badly want to do more of these; as much as I love my Friday nights at the bar at the top of our street, this was my biggest gig since my club residency ended in 1989, and experiencing those vibes again was utterly magical.

Next up: two club nights in Nottingham in September and October, playing five-hour Hi-NRG sets at both. It's a brand new dance space in the converted basement of the city centre's last remaining gay bar, and what they've done with it looks seriously impressive. Things seem to be happening, and 18 months after going digital, I'm ready to let them happen.

DJ-ing during a heatwave in a room with no ventilation turned out to be a fairly pointless exercise! Every single person there ended up drinking outside on the street, having given the dancing a go and given up, so for about 30 minutes during the last hour I was playing to a completely empty room. They could still hear me through the windows, though. So it was one of those nights where the vibe was "I'm glad they've got a DJ on, but I don't actually need to engage further". Which was fine! I'd have done the same!

I had my second turn in the pub last night and I really did feel the odds against me. I was determined to not play anything I played last time in attempt to say, I can do more than just the things I did last time. I also had to combat the same heatwave, and also Scotland had a football game on and this bar does not have Sky Sports to show it. The first few hours were tough - I kept it very chill, 100bpm r&b rising up through to some disco, because I knew it would be quiet and I don't want to be playing "bangers" to an empty room. The bar has a beer garden so a lot of people who came were sat out there. It was pleasant and fun but I was definitely feeling that insecurity of wishing it would properly launch. Then it hit 10pm and they closed the beer garden just in time for me to up the energy with "You Should Be Dancing" and "Good Life" and it suddenly just felt like a total victory. People were up dancing, people were buying shots, it felt so lively and energetic. I had the best time.

People kept buying me drinks so I was a little more tipsy than I wanted to be, and I think some of my transitions were not as smooth as I know I'm capable of, but nobody seemed to notice or care. I was texting my boyfriend and my best pal to ask if they noticed and they hadn't so I was happy with that.

I was surprised by how well "Padam Padam" did, people love it and rightfully so but I didn't think it was in the top-tier floor fillers space yet. I also got a big reaction to Frankie Knuckles' remix of "Million Dollar Bill" and to "Filthy/Gorgeous." My own highlight was "Horny" which I played around 11.15pm and it was positively rapturous with everyone - EVERYONE - singing along. And of course I didn't really have a choice, I had to end on Scotlands unofficial football anthem "Yes Sir I Can Boogie" - complete with a chorus where I super-cheesily cut the volume as everyone sang along. It was a total buzz and I'm really excited to be doing it again in a month's time.

omg so fucking great!