On Djing...

Yeah, that sucks. A Little Respect is a bit of a litmus test for me: if they won't dance to that, they won't dance to anything, and there's nothing that I can do to fix it. I had a saxophonist with me for a party earlier this year; she sent me a playlist of half a dozen tunes, and I put them into a mix at the start of my set. It was... fine. And then everybody disappeared upstairs, and almost nobody danced for the rest of the night (I did the A Little Respect litmus test, after which I just relaxed into the situation.) The person whose party it was felt bad about it, and gave me a bottle of wine the next day to compensate!

I didn't know that Bits & Pieces was a Scottish anthem!

My Friday nights are still going well BTW. I have an optional extra half hour which depends on how busy the bar is, and for the last couple of months I've been playing it in full - we always get a late surge of punters, even if it's been quiet earlier. The renewed interest in country has become very apparent: Wagon Wheel is massive (US readers: feel free to roll your eyes, but it was never a hit over here, and it seems to be having a moment), and I get a good reaction to Tebey's recent cover of Blinding Lights, which TBH I prefer to the original.

My most loyal regular - at least 70 years old, less than 5 feet tall, zero dress sense and an amazing dancer, Nothern Soul spins, the lot - has become something of a mascot; everybody wants to dance with him, nobody takes the piss, and something about his gentle enthusiasm helps to set the mood in the room. He drives about 35 miles to get there, and books a room for the night in a local pub. I'm honoured!

I am now trying to picture you playing "Loch Lomond" in Queens Park tomorrow and it is cracking me up

ha ha! i shoud do it to see what happens.

mike, your most loyal regular sounds amazing. what a hero.

oh, and yes - I didn't know that Bits & Pieces was a Scottish anthem!

i honestly think if this was designated Scotland's official national anthem a good % of the population would be all for it.

Another great thing about my regular is that he loves the deep cuts - Azymuth: Jazz Carnival is one of his favourites, and more recently he's been loving Warriors: Destination (a brilliant Britfunk/jazz-funk track which is all about the lengthy instrumental middle section). As he's always there at the start and is the first one to dance, I programme my first half hour especially for him, before wheeling out the more obvious stuff.

Omg what an absolute nightmare boxedjoy. Hope you can look back on it and laugh someday

I did another members night in the Italian club bocce court last night - I have so much fun playing there, it’s not really conducive to dancing but I did see a few people bopping here and there. Tried my hand at a cosmic-style set (lots of leftfield 80s synth and jazz-funk peppered with some African and Brazilian tunes, never went above 112 bpm), ppl responded well to it and I am ruinously hungover today oof

I know there's a "digital DJing" thread I recently revived, but feel like this is a better all-purpose place. Let me know if I should take this over there...

I've always been predominantly vinyl, not for any snobbish reason, mostly I just have the records, I'm used to them, and I'm very used to the process of flipping through my records and pulling certain ones up front and pulling some out halfway, all in a way that's very physical and immediate and way more fun than making a playlist while DJing.

I've also appreciated the limitation of only bringing so many records, and not knowing I have a huge library to pull from.

Regardless I'm trying to set up my USBs/Rekordbox to do more digital djing...to not have to lug as much vinyl, to access stuff I don't have on vinyl, to do some edits and take advantage of looping.

Wondering what people like to do organization-wise. I have a bunch of playlist broken up by genre, some obvious genres, some just obvious to me, and some of the contents clear, some just make sense to me. I'm just wondering if there's some magic number where a playlist is just too big. If I should be splitting up some of these genres into smaller playlists, maybe by era, or relative bpm, or something else I come up with.

Or do people not bother with this and just throw everything in there and just search for things?

My playlists tend to range from 40 songs to 170 songs, depending on my interest.

Any thoughts? This is important because I dj like twice a year.

despite being an archivist by trade, my digital library is an absolute mess lol. i don’t have anything organized by genre and my tagging is pretty spotty too. for my happy hour sets which are usually only three hours long, i always make a playlist of about 75-100 songs and make it a point to stick to that playlist for the whole evening. (if i have access to my entire drive i will literally be paralyzed with indecision.) i have a rough idea of the songs i’m feeling that week and then i just spend some time diving into my collection pulling things together that i think would complement or build nicely off those songs and try to fashion a semi-coherent set from there. lots of just zipping around my collection and seeing what’s what. organizing it by BPM helps me with set-building too, tho ofc that number isn’t always accurate on rekordbox.

I get the paralyzing. Trying to avoid that. Excited to add stuff to the library but worrying I'm gonna get lost.

I have 1 playlist called "crate" that I basically fill up before a gig with stuff I'd like to play, so I at least have that shortcut to a small playlist of appropriate stuff.

i find myself doing the equivalent of packing a crate of records for most events i play by making a smaller playlist of stuff i'm most excited about playing that night. i also dump everything i put in rekordbox for the year into an yearly "incoming [current year]" playlist and i make two copies of it, one sorted by date added with the newest at the top and then another sorted by BPM, so like: "inc 2024 date" and "inc 2024 BPM." gives me easier access to the music currently on my mind. there might be a way to change the "sort by" of playlists on newer decks but idk i'm used to doing it in rekordbox. i also make playlists using real or made-up genre names and for various djing purposes (segues, tools, acapellas, etc) and i use that double playlist tactic for any playlist that gets into hundreds of tracks. it's common for me to have the same tracks in multiple playlists b/c they're genre-flexible. people do cool stuff with tags which makes it much easier than using playlists to sort and search for tracks b/c you can search for multiple parameters like "disco + peaktime + chugger" but i haven't gotten into that b/c i don't always play on nice cdjs that support that so for now i stick with my shitloads of playlists

i am typically not a very organized person, so it's taken me forever to arrive at this even vaguely sensible system

I’ve made sure everything is tagged with the correct Year and Genre(s).
I don’t really do “Energy” or “Mood” tags.

Then I just make a smart playlist with, say, Genre contains “Italo Disco” and Year is min 1980/max 1987. I’ll go through that subsection, and pick the tracks I like and put them in a playlist, which will go to my USB stick.

I’ve got a Denon Prime now so it’s EngineDJ instead of Rekordbox, but it works pretty much the same.

This works well for single-genre sets, not ideal for anything-goes genre-hopping.

jeez I don't do any of this, but I have an unorthodox setup and don't mix at all, plus it's for a restaurant/bar so I don't have to worry about people dancing

I bring 1-2 crates of undigitized vinyl, plus a box of 45s. then on the other mixer channel I use a laptop with, y'know, 20,000 albums on the external drive, I bounce back and forth as I please

just like my radio shows, I tend to build up mini-playlists on the digital side, 15-20 minutes max

then keep in reserve as needed

a lot of times this involves me just randomly scrolling through the 7500 FLAC albums just to see what catches my eye

i think if i were playing regularly to proper dancefloors i'd be a little more organized in terms of my sets. my happy hours are kind of "anything goes" sort of deals although they do broadly tend towards disco, synth-pop, house, italo, etc.

I've taken the approach of building up my DJ library slowly, trying to limit it to just tracks that I know I'm enthusiastic about. Each of the mixes that I record and post here is also my first time working with that particular set of tracks. I usually start by building up a playlist on spotify of tracks I like that fit a certain theme. Once I have a good list and Bandcamp Friday rolls around, I will buy up those tracks and pop them into a corresponding playlist in Rekordbox. I give each playlist/mix a name I can remember and that reminds me of its overall mood. After the mix is done, I hang onto the Rekordbox playlist and add it to my USBs, that way I have a collection of playlists that are already organized around specific themes and have a catchy name to easily identify them, which makes it very easy to find tracks that fit a set when I need them.

I've got it mostly worked out. Most of my playlists aren't that long. I just have this one playlist called "Recent" which is 278 songs that were recorded like, after 2000. I know, my idea of "recent" is ridiculous. And I play almost none of it. Some of my early 2000s nu-disco friends like Metro Area and Danny Wang yes, but much of the rest of this stuff, not really. I just want to? I have a bunch of mixes I've made over the years with a lot of this stuff, that I'm happy with, just never seems to fit in with my decidedly more retro sets, which is what I've always been most comfortable with. So fun to make those mixes, which I started as a sort of "see, I have new(ish) music too".

But I generally have trouble working a lot of that stuff in. Like the old techno and house I play works well with the old italo and new wave, but the new stuff sounds too different to me. And I LIKE being eclectic.

It's a lot of bandcamp stuff, some pretty small/obscure. But also stuff like Border Community, Norwell, Lawrence Le Doux, Roy of the Ravers, Oyvind Morken, Roman Flugel, Young Marco, D'Marc Cantu. Stuff on Lovefingers ESP

I could probably split some of it out into nu-disco, nu-techno, nu-house. Or go by region.

Though I may just split it up into tiers based basically on how likely I am to actually play it.

Stuff like these mixes:

https://soundcloud.com/lodown95/lodown-presents-new-york-endless-another-mix-pt1?in=newyorkendless/sets/mixes

https://soundcloud.com/throneofblood/tob-podcast-075-dan-selzer-aka-new-york-endless-pt2?in=newyorkendless/sets/mixes

https://soundcloud.com/newyorkendless/a-heavenly-imposition

are completely unlike anything I've ever even tried to play in a club/bar/party/etc. But I'd like to. Maybe I just haven't played those kinds of parties. Maybe I'm still stuck on my old days in my 20s where you really had to lay on enough vocals and hooks to get it going. And I don't mind doing that still! I love that.

this mix is a better mix of newer house/techno and classic house stuff that I like, but still isn't what I actually sound like when DJing.

this is more akin to what I sound like playing out:

https://soundcloud.com/the-magic-message/009-magic-message-radio-dan-selzer-womr-921-wfmr-913?in=newyorkendless/sets/mixes

or the first 35 minutes of this:

https://soundcloud.com/newyorkendless/bumped-my-ass-off-at-james-bday?in=newyorkendless/sets/mixes

I don't know if I want to find the best way to mix it up, or find ways to find myself in contexts where I could play more deeper house and techno. There's been a change in NY where techno really blew up in the past 10 or so years and I'm jealous of people where they're banging out techno an the audience is into it and into the energy and not just waiting for something they recognize. I have PTSD, years of "play some michael jackson or prince" requests in Williamsburg bars. On the flip side, I don't actually like the techno and house 99% of people are playing these days so feel conflicted. And find when I'm djing it's still a more low-key space and early enough that I stay in my comfort zone, even if it's a relatively eclectic one, but it's one with vocals and songs, because that seems to work better for me, and because I think it's fun!

Not that I don't like any proper contemporary DJs but even then I find it more likely that they'll mix it up more. Optimo never sounds like the same thing all night long to me, thankfully. I saw Scott Zacharias DJ a sunday night in a bushwick record store 2 months or so back and it was mindblowing. I didn't know a single song and there were long stretches of just deep banging jacking house stuff that could've been chicgo 1987 or somewhere now and then stretches of weird european classic rock or whatever. I don't know what but it was fantastic and everyone was dancing. And I was there from 9pm to 11pm, then went home and got a good night's sleep! What a dream.

Sorry I'm ranting. Generally things are great in NY. People dancing at 8pm or 10pm. On a sunday night. There were MANY years where nobody would start dancing until like midnight in manhattan or 1:30 in brooklyn. The new kids are so keen to just have a good time, it's really cool.

And I'm not being naive, I know what the good and/or popular parties were like 20+ years ago, I was there. More than I am now. Even those huge gigs didn't kick off till later.

not sure I'm making my point, going to go to bed now so I don't say more conflicting things or anything petty or bitter. Tomorrow hopefully I'm gonna process the dozens of tracks I digitized a few weeks ago.

Which does bring up another question. I'm gonna remove some pops, remove the space before, fade out the end etc. Eventually normalize. But does anybody do any mastering of any kind at this point? Or do you figure the record sounds how it should and I ripped it well and should just let that be? Or do you think oh some subtle mastering compression/eq or whatever can help this compete a bit?

When I said "this mix is a better mix of newer house/techno and classic house stuff that I like, but still isn't what I actually sound like when DJing."

I meant to post this: https://soundcloud.com/newyorkendless/definition-of-a-plan

AND getting work using iZotope RX and Ozone for some subtle restoration and mastering and I realize that somehow a good half of the records I ripped months ago are in mono. Finding some of these on the iTunes store so just gonna buy them. This really sucks. Half of those are not available anywhere so I'll likely re-rip. I know Mono is ok in the clubs, but I want it for mixes and listening.

I took Siegbran’s advice and checked out “djay Pro.” Despite the terrible name, it’s nifty! It’s far more interesting than Traktor Pro 3, and, from a software perspective, way more functional than a CDJ-3000. I feel bad that it took me thing long to take a look. I blame the name.

“Fluid Grid” provides a proper, Ableton-like grid where it statically registers a dynamic track to a dynamic grid. I say “it” because, in my limited experience, I couldn’t find much tooling to modify the track and even less tooling for modifying the grid. Nevertheless, it does a reasonable job at the translation, even on tracks where I would’ve assumed it would shit itself like “Good Vibrations” and “Proud Mary” by Ike and Tina Turner (a staggering 90 PM to 170 BPM change). It even managed to keep _reasonable_ time to my vinyl rip of Suicide’s “Ghost Rider” and the J Dilla tracks I tried. It doesn’t do part detection, as far as I can tell, but the analysis did find all the key changes in “Paranoid Android” so parts were easy to spot.

Siegbran was right about the cross-fader. It’s sick. It does all the transitions I’d want as someone who almost exclusively plays dance music. However, it’s so sick that I now want to customize or build my own cross-fader automations, e.g., it doesn’t ship with a jungle or drum and bass rewind transition!

I still need to mess around with NeuralMix (i.e., their segmentation feature) more but so far the results have been mixed.

Not that I don't like any proper contemporary DJs but even then I find it more likely that they'll mix it up more. Optimo never sounds like the same thing all night long to me, thankfully. I saw Scott Zacharias DJ a sunday night in a bushwick record store 2 months or so back and it was mindblowing. I didn't know a single song and there were long stretches of just deep banging jacking house stuff that could've been chicgo 1987 or somewhere now and then stretches of weird european classic rock or whatever. I don't know what but it was fantastic and everyone was dancing. And I was there from 9pm to 11pm, then went home and got a good night's sleep! What a dream.

I miss Detroit parties.

I've always been a fan of djay pro. Started using it in the pre-pro days and thought it got written off because it was so mac/iphone based and had a cute skeumorphic interface. But it was obvious to me at least that it was also extremely easy to use, totally functional and powerful. I've had two controllers over the years that worked primarily with djay off the phone or iPad and was very happy with it. I only moved up to getting a pioneer XDJ-RX2 so that I could DJ with just a thumb drive and get more used to the same controllers/mixers that are in most venues.

Siegbran was right about the cross-fader. It’s sick. It does all the transitions I’d want as someone who almost exclusively plays dance music. However, it’s so sick that I now want to customize or build my own cross-fader automations, e.g., it doesn’t ship with a jungle or drum and bass rewind transition!

I say “it” because, in my limited experience, I couldn’t find much tooling to modify the track and even less tooling for modifying the grid.

The Crossfader Fusion thing, I can see where that is headed: put 8 crossfader presets under your performance pads, select one and map a button to "apply crossfader", and voila: automated transitions. I can see why Algoriddim is hesitant to put this in the interface too prominently though, this is going to absolutely infuriate traditionalists.

Oh and the other cool thing about Djay Pro is that it's as of now the only DJ platform that can use Apple Music (the streaming service).

Me and Nick B have started a new radio show (I’ll post a link when the archive is up). I was a bit sceptical of the studio because they don’t have physical decks, just a little controller with Djay Pro - I’ve got to say I was pleasantly surprised how good it is.

eh speak for yourself, i was having a mare (just for a change)

At the risk of mortifying Nick, here is our first show warts and all! I like it, but I think we’ll get better :) In particular on my side I had a very busy and stressful week at work and have about 15 minutes to get some tunes ready.

https://www.totallyradio.com/shows/special-treatment/episodes/special-treatment-09-may-2024

Nona Hendryx - Transformer
Asti Spumanti - Luxury Life
Fun Fun - Sing Another Song
Scan Man - Arabian (Mang & Trujillo Long edit)
Stone - Girl I Like The Way That You Move
Time Capsule - Sexual Desire
Electric Party - Caribe
La Sellrose Can Can - Happy Morning
Van Jones & Mary Diggs - Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?
Rude 66 - In Exile
Mark Du Mosch - Nazomer
Bolis Pupul - Completely Half
Hannah Diamond - Affirmations
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - The Signal
Jesse Rae - Hou-Di-Ni
Lime - On The Grid (extended)
Gino Soccio - Remember
Pleasure Pool - Ask Your Body
Haruomi Hosono - Turquois
Perfect Vision - This Hook
Jean Luc Ponty - Open Mind (Luke Solomon Body Edit)
PowerPlay - Foolish 4 Ashanti
Life Form - Come Down (June Mix)
Erika De Casier - My Day Off
Needs - Walkin Thru Circles (Thump Mix)
Jordan GCZ - Sunny Side Up
Propaganda - (The echo of) Frozen Face
Change - The End

yeah some truly abysmal mic technique on my part, ugh. it's the one thing that you never practice isn't it? and then you open your mouth to speak and all words and thoughts have vanished from your mind, like cats out of an airlock

i would love to do a presenter-led radio type thing but my delivery is poor. i can talk for england but as soon as a mic is on or i feel i have an audience, i hesitate, repeat myself, lose my train of thought, run out of breath

exactly that. OTOH chewshabadoo is freakishly pro at it, so unflappable. it's just not fair tbh

yup. i have frineds who d a weekly one and they're just great - really clear, no umming and ahhing. it's a chore to listen to me

Haha, pro is definitely pushing my radio abilities! But I have got more confident in managing to bluff a load of utter nonsense out in a clear-ish fashion

loving the show guys

I never heard that Nona Hendryx song. So good.

OMG! They used to play that Nona Hendryx song at the first club I ever attended regularly and I never knew what it was. Thanks for solving a 40 year mystery!

Looking forward to listening to the rest.

Not umming and ahhing is way harder than one might imagine.

when I first started doing "real" radio DJ slots in early 1991, I had only ever broadcast on cable FM, which like its name is only available in homes w/cable. so I had to get a real paper license from the FCC, I still have it. the station manager had this little tape player rigged up so that it started recording as soon as the mic went on, and stopped when the mic was cut. then he would sit there with you, listen back through your show but just the voiceovers, and (pretty nicely really) shred you to bits over every obvious mistake. he turned out to be a jekr in some ways but he was a great old school radio teacher, and those lessons have stuck with me ever since.

also, for most normal mics, position them at a 45 degree angle to your mouth, it helps minimize the sibilants and plosives. and listen in headphones of course.

"jerk" lol

Celia played the Nona Hendryx - it’s featured on the film Love Lies Bleeding out at the moment.

I've always had a love/hate relationship with Laswell and his catalogue, but when he was great, he was great. I was already pretty steeped in NY disco not disco type stuff and had that Material album One Down and probably had never listened to it. Then a few years into my descent into italo-disco I finally realized my favorite ever italo song was a Material cover. The cover is better...but not much.

I like all the early Material stuff from when they were an actual band, Temporary Music and Memory Serves, I have zero interest in everything afterwards

was interviewed for a radio show...DJ was exploring the book Meet Me in the Bathroom and wanted to talk more about what was going on in NYC in the early 00s. As I'm happy for any attention and chance to reminiscence, I was game. Plenty of talk about DJing, then and in general, as well.

https://soundcloud.com/donplay/interview-w-dan-selzer-on-meet-me-in-the-bathroom-plant-bar-and-deejaying-in-the-electroclash-era

I keep meaning to give this a listen, but I’m so bad with audio interviews… any transcripts around?

I played two Grateful Dead songs last night at the restaurant/bar, 1st "Alabama Getaway" and I noticed a dude at a table close by was real into it. Later when things really got going (it was packed for a good hour) I threw on "Shakedown Street" and he and a buddy applauded after it ended, that's a first for me!

no transcripts unless he puts it on youtube and it's automatic. don't think soundcloud does that.

so the bar i was djing at, the oldest gay bar in slc, closed in january without any notice. apparently the owner wasn't able to purchase insurance. eventually they forfeited their liquor license. i thought they were gone for good, and i was trying to get booked at other gay bars with no luck.

well, three weeks ago someone told me they had an 'opening soon' sign up. lo and behold, they were bought by a new owner and opened up a week after utah pride. i talked to the new owner today. she is totally amazing. has a small successful accounting firm and bought the bar because her queer daughter experienced her coming out process and a lot of growth there. she has already done major renovations on the bathrooms. they needed it so bad. the previous owner, who i never met over the course of two years, was by all accounts a stingy asshole. anyway, the new owner is not like that at all. so, so competent and determined and driven in a 'mama bear' kind of way but very humble. i'm pretty sure i made a good impression, she definitely made a good one on me. she was telling me that all the bartenders she hired back had good things to say about me, but not so much the other djs. it's looking up for me there i think, as far as djing goes, and weekend slots are definitely on the table. nothing set in stone yet but the last saturday of this month has been tentatively offered to me. i just have to meet the young woman she has put in charge of marketing, who apparently likes young-person dance music and maybe has reservations about having an older dj there on saturdays, which fair enough, that crowd is young af. i have a little bit of a clue as far as what young people are listening to (i think?) but i want to hear from her what kind of thing she's envisioning and hopefully get a playlist from her. obviously i have my strengths and my own ear and all that, but i'm also flexible and would welcome the input. to be back there under new, excellent ownership? the place has such a good, storied feel even though it's seen a lot of shit and has been treated like shit by past owners. i'm really excited and heartened. it's been a tough few months without djing for a bunch of reasons. i thought i was ready to give it up. so glad i sent that first message when i saw they were reopening.

best of luck!!

sounds promising <3