Spoke Too Soon

Well bitches... I spoke too soon.  Robb G invited me back to play Reboot Mondays this week!  It was a blast.  Robb G and O-God both commented on how I played a lot better this time around.  Was I still nervous? YUP. But about 2-3 transitions in, I was flying.  It felt so damn good.  I was cautious i guess... I made double sure that my beatmatching was solid, that the levels and EQing was good.... 

Now, to all other new club/bar DJs.... how the hell do you HEAR anything??  The house and the monitor are so damn loud, it's nearly impossible to hear whats being cued up.  My solution was to have only the cued track in my headphones, and beatmatch against what I could hear OUTSIDE of the cans.... bit bizzare, but seemed to work well enough.

Yeah... and!  even better news: Robb mentioned having me play a SATURDAY show at his event Get Slayed! HOLY SHIT!! WOw!  what an opporunity that would be!  I have got to get my shit together and PWN it in July if it drops.

For the Fun of It

Damn it's been a long time since the last post.  Let me start by adding a picture of the flyer with my name on it.  Likely the only flyer to be posted for a while ;)

Well let me cover that night... God, I was so unbelievably nervous for my first set.  We each got two 30-min sets and I had to open up the fucking night?! Bitch, please.

Talk about nerves.  I worked pretty hard leading up to that night, planning out about a set and a half (set in this instance = ~30mins).  I practiced so hard... But I had such a horrible case of "DJs Block".  Like the name suggests, a real struggle with mixing, programming etc. Everything sounded like shit to me.  Everything sounded wrong.  Each mix was either forced, overdone, overworked, or too busy.  And if it wasn't any of that, mixes were cliche, boring, lame, unimpressive.  Ask Amber, i was just distraught to all hell.

But somehow I threw something together and just shrugged and said... fuck it, i'll just have to wing it.  

Let me start off by saying this as the bottom line:

I HAD SO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!!!

Nothing went as planned, I was nervous, I was excited..... but at the end of the day, I had a blast and no, I didn't make it to the finals ;)

So I opened up the night to about 15 of my friends (at that time making up about 85% of the bar's population lol) who were all there to support me.  Now, when I say nervous, i mean REALLY nervous.  Literally, my hands were shaking.  But in addition to the nerves.... there was just this ridiculously steep learning curve that I was to somehow overcome in the span of oh, um.. NOTHING but DURING the set.

I play on a really basic set of CDJ-200s, and at the time, I had my shitty little (Broken btw) Numark mixer.  Do you think I know what to do with all the flashing green knobs of a RANE SIXTY-EIGHT?! No.  Nevertheless, the equipment is more or less the same... except it wasn't.

The pitch control on the CDJ-1000s they had is the loosest fader I have ever felt.  We are talking about Hooker Harvey's loose.  Add a pair of shaky hands, and I had a real problem trying to match beats.  The slightest nudge would wang the fader too far.  To be honest, I think this is a really important note to newbies out there who may land a first gig.  *shrug* maybe Andy Poolhall's decks are particularly loose, who knows... but i get the impression it's just from usage.

Onto the second set.... Went much better!  I hardly had anything pre-planned for this one, so I just decided to wing it and go with the flow.  Definitely trainwrecked baaadly, but recovered as much as I could, and kept on chugging.  My friends, supportive as they are, danced like maniacs on the floor, they'd had a lot of drinks in them by now and were having a good time.  I was having a great time!  I was much looser, much less nervous, and really enjoying and reveling the moment.  

What a great night.  Like I said, I didn't win but I had a blast.

What did I learn?

• Pre-plan a little bit, but dont expect to throw down an entire set pre-planned in future... it takes some of the fun out and is too restrictive.  However, that being said, having a pre-planned set was very good in easing some nerves off the bat, because I had definite goals to work towards.
• RELAX and just REALLY enjoy the time up there.  
• Get feedback from people who know their stuff.  Talk to other DJs, music lovers, etc and get their honest and constructive feedback.

Robb said I had great programming skills and track selection, great vibes in my set, but just had to work on my technical aspects to really get things tighter and solid.  Thats great news!  Technical stuff is practice practice practice... track selection, programming, vibe-enhancing is stuff that is probably harder to "learn".  So I'll do it as I go, and see where it takes me.

I met some new friends, saw some great local talent, and hopefully, got myself a future gig!


Next Post: My new mixer... the ECLER NUO 3.0... talk about a gorgeous upgrade

I'M IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Soooo..... Robb G and Andy Poolhall decided to launch their Monday nights Reboot with a DJ Competition.  The prospect of this was really exciting to me but I felt really unprepared and inexperienced... However, after a shitty couple days of work i turned the negativity and sad energy into a mix.  I made some notes on my first rough mark up of it.  There were definitely some good blends in the first draft, but DEFINITELY some shitty things too haha.  Anyway, the next day after an even SHITTIER day of work... I churned all that into a really productive evening! 

I submitted it with an hour to spare to the deadline!

Two days later, my friend Aviva and I are driving to visit Wals in London ON and I have been checking my emails and facebook on and off all day Friday. Still no word.  It's Saturday.  As we are approaching Ingersoll, I check my email from my phone once again. 

The @ sign in the nav bar indicates a new email... OH DEAR GOD.

false alarm.  LUSH Cosmetics wants me to buy their christmas products on sale.

but soon enough, another email comes in from the REBOOT contest and it says:

Hey Jasmine,

Congratulations, you're in!

The 16 contestants names will be announced once I've communicated with
everyone personally. Who competes on which night will be announced before
the end of the weekend.

Thanks for being a part of this.

Robb
Reboot Mondays

AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I cried.  I won't lie.  I actually cried. I told Aviva and she told me she wasn't surprised :D.  I immediately called up Amber and told her and I cried again.  It feels like everything happened so quickly!!

I feel really in over my head now to be honest, because I saw a couple others who entered the contest on facebook... and they've got some serious gigs under their belts :( i'm just a tiny little DJ from my living room...

So now what?

The Cunning Mix available here for stream.

Tracklist below:

1. Manman - Avicii
2. Bubblegum - Afrojack
3. Less Go (Porter Robinson Remix) - Spencer & Hill
4. Pondo (Chuckie & Silvio Ecomo Remix) - Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano
5. Animal Rights - Deadmau5
6. Cool (Afrojack remix) - Spencer & Hill
7. Nasty Dog - WoNK
8. The Thirteenth Skull (Original Mix) - Cold Blank
9. Acid Drops - Asle
10. Proper - DJ Fixx
11. No Pants Dance - Robb G

INSPIRATION!

December 31 2010  5:30pm

Hey! There's a great party going on at a cool downtown bar in Toronto! One of your favourite DJs, Robb G is playing along with some others. Wanna go?!?!

YES!

Hey... so party's cancelled.  Cool Bar lost their liquor license... it aint nobody's fault.

NO!

Hey! Our super awesome friend is going to host at his swanky downtown condo!  COME!

So what could have been a bad time turned out to be an intimate, FUN, energetic DISCO THEMED party at a stone's throw from my home.

Robb G still behind the decks (in this case, a Numark mixdeck) as well as HOOKER and some friends rocked the night with Breaks, Electro, Techno, Nu-Disco and all that good stuff.  It was amazing to get a chance to talk to Robb about his first setup, how he got into DJing, and his cute lil kids!

Here's what I've learned... Apparently the best way to save from a trainwreck... is NOT to touch the platter!  Although I use both the platter and the pitch control to adjust... I suppose I will take Robb G's advice and try to ride the pitch more.  My question is, for small adjustments... am I still to wang the pitch fader up/down and then back into place again?  When I get caught in a situation in which the songs begin to drift... I will push the platter in the appropriate direction and THEN nudge the pitch accordingly in order to keep the beats aligned. 

Understandably there may not be a rigid "right" and "wrong" way to go about this... but Robb G is pretty much a god... so what can I say?

That being said, last time I was at FLY nightclub in Toronto, I was being pushed up against Deko-ze's booth and as I  shamelessly stared at him working, I noticed him nudging the platter and then instantly adjusting the pitch fader.  I was actually shocked at how FAST he could do it! Literally it was like one movement.  He kept one of his giant palms on the edge of the CDJ-1000, used his fingers to nudge the platter, then instantly with thumb and forefinger, nudged the pitch fader.

And I mean... Deko-ze is pretty much a god as well... so *shrug* the Jury is out kids.

Back to NYE... A new friend, Garnet got behind the decks and rocked us with some dirty breaks and electro.  I was also happy to see him using Traktor... for some reason it reassures me that other people use it too...

All in all, I came home at 5am tired and delirious.  Amber and I conked out for most of the next day... But today I had the urge and inspiration to record a new mix.

My first attempt was ... well bad.  I was trying to re-create a freestyle mix I had recorded a couple weeks ago by following the tracklist.  This was terrible unsuccessful and felt restrained.  So I ditched it and did another freestyle mix going for more of a dirty electro (sans the dirty dutch for the most part), and well.... I'm actually pretty damn happy with the results!

Here's the link.  Tracklist is below.  Constructive criticism is ALWAYS appreciated.

Moody Electro

1.  (0:00)    Disco Decay (Felguk Mix) - Neelix

2.  (4:26)    Disco Ballistic (Original Mix) - Lazy Rich

3.  (8:40)    WTFIH (Cyberpunkers remix) - Haezer

4.  (11:34)    Zombie Barbie - Aniki

5.  (14:40)    Nobody Listens to Techno feat MC Flipside - Funkagenda

6.  (19:00)    Sorry Mofo - MALO Remix - Robb G

7.  (21:41)    It Is Not The End Of The World - Laurent Wolf

Not a Total N00b

To start off... I'm not a total newbie to the whole DJing thing.  I've probably been practicing on and off for nearly a year now and I've got the basics covered... It's getting through the mucky learning curve that's proving to be a challenge.

What I intend to cover in this blog is my experience learning how to mix songs.  How to beatmatch two songs. How to learn about genres of music (EDM in particular: Electronic Dance Music).  How to research gear and find reviews. And all of this I'm doing absolutely alone.  I have no DJ friends.  I have no DJ acquaintances.  I am having to learn all of this entirely on my own.

Here's how I'm coping.

Thanks for reading.

Linguist.