Kevin Kiernan wrote:
>
> Velanche,
>
> about a year ago I was lucky enough to have hired Francois K. (Body & Soul)
> to spin at my company's party during the CMJ Festival in NYC. As it got to
> about 1:30am, the dance floor was thinning out, and Francois looked over to
> me nervously and asked "what do I play?" I still have to laugh at the
> concept of Francois asking me what to play. "Whatever you want man, you're
> totally on point; it's the crowd that's not working" is all I could say.
I guess all DJs have their days. When Alex Attias was at the helm last
Friday evening in SF, the crowd was slooow to dance. However, they
filled up the dance floor while mingling. It's an art gallery, after
all. I think that if they were turned off by his music, they would have
been in the main gallery area away from the dance floor.
The lesson I learned the night I first spinned was that to not totally
shy away. That would have been a bitter defeat, indeed.
> A bit of unsolicited advice, however. Always have a stash of 'transition'
> records ready. Snag 'em with something you don't think can miss (usually
> something better-known, cuz they may not be there to get educated, but
> rather to hear what they know), then when they're movin and groovin, slowly,
> track by track, bring 'em to a new place. If you keep them moving, they may
> not even realize the change has taken place...
When Joe Claussell took the decks last night at the same gallery, he was
quite adept in terms of his tune selection. He then threw in tunes from
The Jackson 5, Michael Jackson, a pretty decent remix of Sting's "Wrap
Around Your Finger," etc.
I'll have to ponder on the "transitional" tunes. One can actually scare
a crowd off if they end up hearing some cheesy tune. I guess, of course,
one should never find the cheesy ones. :)
> And now a friendly dig--with the current generation of cd mixers, how could
> you spend 3 hours a day practicing beat matching? You practically only need
> to push a button to do it now--and they'll even let you pitch adjust!
The only reason why I was practicing for three hours/night was that I
was preparing for the house party. Obviously, there are other things I
want to do and I have other obligations to fulfill. But I still want to
put in enough practice time to sharpen my skills. Yes, you can push
buttons and use the pitch adjust. The key, of course, is in the timing
and transition. That is the challenge, and one that I'll continue to
work on.
I'd say that I've done pretty decent for someone who has only used a
deck for two weeks. :-)
> Keep on keepin on
I surely plan to. Thanks the the tips and such.
V.
-- Velanche Stewart vstewart@calpoly.edu Linux, baby!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Sep 03 2001 - 09:44:18 CEST