Check out what's happening within the ItsTheDJ community and the rest of the music world.
That's Melanie abobe from NJ who came for DJ lessons last Spring. She's been practicing away on her XDJ RX2 mk2, and just played her friends birthday party. Go Mel!
There's Dean Zlato from Sydney rocking out a Thursday night party. Dean has been consistently playing events and is a rising star down under. You can catch his weekly radio show on soundcloud.
Mir. Z. Ali rocking a room in Los Angeles. He's made a name for himself and is a frequent performer in the LA underground scene.
Big News Coming from Jacki-e of "A Darker Wave"
Jacki runs a weekly radio show called "A Darker Wave" - we've been connected on FB for some time as I made a guest appearance on her show about 3 some years ago. It's been over a year in the works, but Jacki's first track to be professionally released is coming out on a major Berlin dance label - more on that shortly, but artwork is complete as are 2 fine remixes. Here's Jacki on soundcloud.
Agent Orange's Witch Doktor Edit finds a home on Drumcode Radio
Here are some news items I didn't want you to miss.
Coyu drops more truth bombs stating that DJ sets today are too niche focused and that breaking out of one's box limits growth and creativity.
I agree, there's not much of a journey in 1-6 hour sets where DJ's stick to what they are known for. Personally I'm not a fan of hearing a DJ play for multiple hours in what sounds like them piecing together multiple hours of their pod casts.
In a other 3-5 years, the game will change again. Trends are cyclical.
In defense of lazyness - this is an article about sports and how some athletes with better genes have a natural ability to recover fast from intense workouts. Obviously this is an advantage - in addition to other talents. Give this a read and apply it to your music making and professional lives. I say that because it's a slap in the face to the "work hard" "hustle' mentality that's so popular right now.
Everyone says they work hard but what does that really mean? How do you define it...how do you know you're really working hard.
People love to believe that "working hard" will get them success while failing to acknowledge the role that luck, and timing play. And you see the reward for hard work play it self out in things like movies. We love to see people rewarded for their effort which makes for a nice story but reality seldom works this way.
How many producers catch a lucky break because they are already connected? Many. This is part of the reason I made Underground Elite, to get people good at production fast so that when you make a connection and start building a fan base around your DJ following it doesn't take you 5 years to produce a piece of music.
Being lazy smart is ideal, however don't brag about it. It usually won't win you any fans in the office because most companies glorify work martyrdom and "putting in the hours." Ever go to work and get frustrated by all the stupid pointless procedures? I have many times. The obsession with email distribution lists and getting emails you just don't need. Pointless reports, endless analysis of data...fuck that. If you've ever done anything entrepreneurial you realize how pointless this crap is and you rid your self of it.
Sadly this thought process spills over into the production world - it's not about hours logged but results. So yeah, think about how you can apply being lazy smart to production as this coach has done for athletes.
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When you get to that level Anthony Parasole and others have advice about leaving your day job. I can't say Im the biggest fan of Anthony's flavor of techno however he seems like a regular working class dude turned DJ.
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Sadly some people did quit their jobs to work at Soundcloud and sadly found their new positions gone. News of this along with learning about their lavish office culture has been a complete turn off. I've been a paying member for 4 years now, so I won't be sad if the whole shit house goes up in flames.
I guess they never really figured out their product and in the process let some rounds of funding go to their heads. Plus the founders must have made some big promises about sales growth that were based on hopes and dreams and not traffic and conversion. One day this thing will be sorted out - could take 5-10 years. So work on your music and grow your fan base.
Check out this article in the "finish faster" series, subscribers get access to the mock arrangement done in Ableton Live. I took a deep look at Layton Giordani's tune "Dragon Fly" from his debut album on Drumcode.
YouTube and ASCAP come to an agreement - this means royalties from YouTube will be tracked. This means that you should up your game with self released material.
On that note my experience with Amuse.io has been great so far. It's a mobile app that allows you to self publish you own material for free. They won't get you on Beatport or Traxsource but they the big sources covered like Apple Music, Spotify and so on.
You upload your music and artwork to Google Drive, from there the app pulls it in and schedules it for release. It takes about 2 weeks and my single "Waiting for You" just made it to stores.
On the production tip, this looks like a cool technique for drums. It's 2-stage parallel compression.
Here's a video on Mixing where I show you the plugins I use on different tracks in the mix like the master fader, along with individual tracks as well as groups or busses.
Also, streaming live is not that hard or expensive.
Here's a quick one where I'm dabbling w/ Maschine Jam.
What you need"
Rode SC4 available on Amazon and lots of places. This converts a stereo input into a mic input for your smart phone, I'm using an iPhone.
Then you need something like this to go from your mixer to the Rode connector.
**this is important**
You're phone takes a mic level input, your mixer or soundcard sends line level signal which is MUCH hotter than a mic level signal.
So you'll need to send a very low level signal into your phone or you will get distortion.
What does this mean?
On a DJ mixer you must use an output with a knob that controls the signal going out. For example I'm using the booth out on my DJ mixer and I have the output set to 9 o clock. This is very low.
In the clip on facebook above, it doesn't sound super great because I'm just jamming and when I further arrange and mix this tune I'll be making sure it sounds good in mono. Using this method which is quite easy and cheap you'll be broadcasting in mono.
This is fine for streaming DJ sets where the music is already mix, mastered and sounding good in mono.
Enjoy and see you next time.
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