Digital Music Front

Posts Tagged ‘DJing’

This update brought to by my leaking kitchen roof and having to stay home today to wait for the plumber….

On Saturday I did something new as a DJ, I played a live set on the radio at SYN FM 90.7. For those not from Melbourne,  SYN is not on a big station or anything, its a public access / community station run by one of the universities in the city. A friend of mine has a regular Saturday night time slot there, and he has developed something of a following apparently. I was kinda nervous about it before hand, a playback from a recording is usually much less forgiving of mistakes than playing at a party. I imagined that a radio set would be much the same. I did some practice at home before I went in, but I was mixing pretty bad truth be told.

Thankfully, once I got into the studio I pretty much rocked it. The mixing wasnt awesome but it was good enough that I was happy with it. My track selection was a little off I think, I got thrown off balance when I was told I should play mostly hard stuff with lots of guitars, I was going to start with some trancier goa stuff. Still, I think the feedback was mostly good, and I’ve been invited back, assuming my friend gets to keep his show. Apparently the next lot of timeslot allocations hasn’t been done yet.

The set was recorded so I will post it for you all to listen to as soon as I get my hands on it.

No, DJ’s worst nightmare is not rocking up to a gig where there is no coke (well, unless your name is Jason Midro). A DJ’s worst nightmare is playing a shit set at a big party to a crowd of people who’ve never heard of you before.

Last weekend I played a set at Maitreya Festival. I don’t play out that often, despite having DJ’d for 7 or 8 years, and over the past couple of years I’ve hardly even bothered to practice because there just isn’t much thrill in playing by yourself. As a DJ with little experience outside the bedroom, playing at a big 3 day festival where the head liners are old school internationals like Etnica and Pleiadians can be a little intimidating, even if its only at 8pm on the Friday night when hardly anyone is there.

So I was a little nervous as I walked over to the stage on Friday evening and discovered that the DJ who was supposed to be before me hadn’t shown up, and in his place some random was playing minimal tech at like 110bpm. Aside from the obvious question of ‘who the fuck plays minimal tech?’, this is something of a problem for someone who was planning to play full on psytrance at about 145. Its not the kind of transition you can make without clearing the dance floor. The guy who was supposed to be on before me would have been closer to my style, but this guy, this guy presented me with a problem.

So I had to replan my whole set with about 15 mins to go. I figured I would just start out with some mellow trancey shit and build it up slowly. No big drama, people would go for that right?

Well it turns out this was the least of my concerns. Upon stepping up to the decks I discovered that the mixer was faulty – only one ear of the headphone jack worked. In your bedroom you might be able to cope with this, but every time I’ve ever played out the main thing I’ve had trouble with was being unable to hear the cue track clearly in my cans over the thump from the subwoofers. Now I’ve got Sony MVDR-700’s, as head phones go, they’ve got some of the best isolation available, but when one side is out they might as well be ipod ear buds.

So I played my first track and it rapidly became apparent that I wouldn’t be able to hear anything clearly. The realisation that chances of getting the mixer replaced were slim to none and I would just have to perservere filled me with a sense of dread. By 5 tracks into the set I wanted to get the hell out of there, my mixing was shit house and as I faded each new track in i shook my head at how terrible it sounded.

For a wonder tho, something of a crowd started to gather. I guess when yours is the only stage playing people will tollerate bad mixing. It also helps when you’re playing banging full on psytrance, its hard not to dance when something like that is on. I was worried people would think it was too much for Friday night but evidently not.

Then, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the power cut out during the middle of a particularly popular track. So there I stood in the dark, with no idea what to do, and no sound crew or sparky’s in sight. One came running in about a minute and soon got the ball rolling again. “Play the same track”, came the cry from the crowd, so I did, but it didnt even get half way through before the power cut out again. “I guess this is a sign I should get off the decks”, I shouted, but the call came back for me to stay.

When the power came back on I decided not to chance it a third time and played a different track. I carried on, thinking I only had to endure to the end of my 90 minute set… except when that rolled around there was still no sign of the next DJ. Again, with no one to ask for help and unable to leave the decks, Ijust kept playing. Eventually someone I knew came up and I sent them to find a replacement for me. There was no way I was going to play another 90 minute set under thses conditions.

Well that was excatly what ended up happening. By the time they found someone to replace me it was 10 minutes til the next DJ was meant to be on. So I played the extra 90 minutes. 3 hours in total, easily the longest set I’ve ever had to play at a real gig. I was knackered by the end, and convinced I’d probably played the worst set of my life.

Not according to the crowd however. The dance floor was pretty  crowded when I walked off and all the people who I spoke to said I played a kranking set….

I dunno what the moral of this story is… except that if I can get thru that nightmare, I can probably get through any gig.