On Djing...

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!

my thursdays have been really dead lately. empty floor most of the time. i'm still feeling the music and enjoying my sets. i'm also playing music for the entire bar. the people who are there generally seem to like it. bopping around while playing pool. i had a drag queen dancing in front of the mirror last night to a few songs while checking out her boobs. i played a perfume track. yeah girl you're hot.

bopping around while playing pool.

yeah since I DJ in a restaurant this is exactly the kind of reaction I look for

Last night I teamed up with a couple of peeps I'd DJ'd with in the past couple of months. We went into a studio that hires out decent quality CDJs and spent a happy few hours just going back to back.

It was especially great because we're all quite newly acquainted I feel like I've made some new friends with similar tastes and interests. And while some of the transitions were a little sloppy, mostly cos we're not that au fait with the equipment and we don't know each other well, the point of the exercise was to have fun.

Getting to use proper CDJs makes me realise how much I have to learn. I'm fairly confident with beatmatching and using EQs and filters but I really want to get more confident with looping and FX.

I want to be able to do that neat trick where you can switch tempos by doing a delay out of one track into a faster or slower track by dividing the tempo by half or whatever. Also just being able to do cool jitters and swooshes would be a game changer

Empathising with my fellow ILX bar DJs. I have a monthly gig in a pub with a very accommodative garden where they don't give a shit if you smoke weed, so naturally the bar area is empty.

I usually feel like I'm playing to people who would rather not have me blasting music in their ears so they can converse.

Then at about 11.15, they close the garden and I have about a half hour to play to a suitably lubricated crowd, then it ends and everyone shouts for more: lads, I've been playing for four hours, where were you?

I usually feel like I'm playing to people who would rather not have me blasting music in their ears so they can converse.

lol I always have to watch this one specific table that is right under one of the four speakers, for some reason that is always the table that complains about volume

(i.e. the other table in the same position never complains)

I am too old to learn new DJ tricks I think, gonna cold mix Mancuso style for life

So glad you had a good time boxedjoy

^^ yes I wanted to say congrats there as well

My place shuts its beer garden at 11pm, so that’s the usual sudden influx - except last night when they just walked through the bar, out of the front door and onto the street. boxedjoy, that sounds awesome! I had a request last night for Million Dollar Bill that I couldn’t fulfil, so that one’s going straight on the list. I like the Padam Jax Jones remix, but brought back down to around 130bpm, but of the current hits it’s Dua Lipa and Peggy Gou all the way, the latter blending very nicely into Kylie’s On A Night Like This (only just spotted the similarity).

well done boxedjoy!

at the bar where i DJ, the monitor is right behind me so it’s difficult for me to gauge how loud it actually is - sometimes i think it’s roaring and then i step away from the booth and it’s actually pretty quiet. think i’m gonna just turn it off entirely next time i do it. my next gig is a month from now and that might be it for me at this venue for the remainder of the year. it’s gonna be a rugby night again, which is great - those boys really brought it out of me lol.

i do have a potentially very exciting opportunity for a party on the horizon but don’t want to jinx it quite yet :)

Would Peggy Gou into ATB or vice versa be too on the nose or anyone trying it?

Last week, I went from Ithegane to a great bootleg mix of Nanana that samples Michael Wycoff to the Sequential One mix of ATB, and it all worked well. Those two Peggy tracks merge together seamlessly.

I have to play a lot of obvious stuff that people know, but I won't do it in a way that totally sells me out. Playing the hits is as much of a challenge as any other form of DJ-ing - more so when you're playing to a crowd that ranges from late teens to late sixties, and all points between

I've actually been thinking a lot about this post in preparation for these nights at the bar. I'm really glad I still get to do my online radio show where I play deep house, garage and techno which I love, but that stuff is really not appropriate for the Friday night casual crowd. I like to think that, yes I'm playing crowd-pleasers but I'm doing it on my terms, I'm not going to ever be playing stuff I wouldn't listen to on my own time like Queen or Ed Sheeran which just isn't me. "Horny" might be a cheesy anthem but it became that by being a great song to start with, and I think you can have big obvious fun without it descending into a Freshers Disco. Of course, everyone's mileage of what's too naff for them is subject to taste.

great post, I don't really play anything like what most of you play, but I still bring what functions as "crowd pleasers", songs people actually know

otoh one time I played a whole side of ZZ Top's Tejas and a gal sitting at the bar starting to tease her boyfriend because he wasn't sure what band it was, deep cut LP ftw

Last night I got two requests. One was for a song that the woman requesting didn't even know the artists' name so I wasn't really worried about it. "Type it in and see if it comes up?" I humoured her knowing it wouldn't be there but I said I would see if I could do anything with it anyway. I obviously didn't.

The other was a guy who came up around 9.30pm. He'd been in at least an hour and had heard the vibe of disco and r&b. He asked me if I'd heard of a singer who does acoustic guitar music with blind children. It was a good laugh trying to explain that it simply wasn't going to happen because it would have just completely killed the room. From the way he was talking it was obvious he was trying to show off, "I know more music than you" but I couldn't care less. So when he came up ten mins later asking for Bob Marley I took great delight in pretending I didn't know who he was, "is that another guy with a guitar?"