Posts Tagged ‘software’

How To Make A Good DJ Playlist

DJ PlayList

Aspiring DJs should build a great library of music FIRST.

YOU MUST KNOW YOUR MUSIC

• Know the BPM of your songs

Beats Per Minute. Arranging your dance music this way creates consistency in tempo and provides better continuity for people who are dancing.

• Know the harmony notes of beginning and end of songs

You can find software for that too. Here is one new software which I haven’t checked out yet but I won’t need it anyway for myself. Mixed In Key. I use Mixmeister Fusion which has all those features. It’s a great DJ software.

Cheaper price For Numark MixMeister Fusion Here

More about harmony mixing here at DJ Prince

• Trim your songs

Long fade outs or talking and skits at the end can be trimmed. A good piece of free software for trimming unwanted bits from the beginning and end of songs is   Mp3Trim or   Mp3Directcut ( is my preferred one).

• Normalize your songs

Normalizing your songs will bring the volume levels in line with each other, so that the volume stays fairly consistent.
An easy way to normalize a collection of MP3s is to use a free piece of software called  Mp3Gain .

Select and combine the tracks into the same BPM harmoniously if possible. If harmony can’t be done then just beat match it and that should be OK.

Keep building the play list.

• Building A CD Mix?
  

Try this!

First track should be an instrumental (no vocals) and the duration shorter than 2 minutes 30 seconds.

Second track should have vocals and should not be longer than 4 minutes.

All  the rest of the tracks should be less than 5 minutes each.

Take in Requests?

As a commercial DJ, you are EXPECTED to know just about everything and HAVE just about everything they will ask for.

Take your DJ career serious? Then GET serious!

Peace

DJ White Hawk

Amin

Laptop DJ’ing

Laptop DJ

The key to running a successful software based DJ system, is to buy a dedicated  laptop for the task, and to only run the operating system and DJ Software on there, and never allow it to run other applications or even connect to the internet.

This way the installation runs and remains clean and largely error free, will rarely have a corrupt file, and won’t get infiltrated or bogged down with several other applications.

This advice is given by DJ’s  including me who have been using software and PC’s for many years, and have found this method of DJ’ing to be just as reliable as conventional DJ’ing from CD’s.

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With large laptop internal hard drives, you can store thousands of 320-bit MP3s  though a lot of DJs use  CD-quality WAV or AIFF files instead.

Video files take up much more space ,  so an external hard drive is necessary.

Sending video signals also uses more bandwidth than audio, so while a USB 2.0 drive is good for audio, FireWire 400 or FireWire 800 are better connections for video.

For video drives,  pay attention to drive speed (7200 RPM is essential) and the chip set.

The 500 GB external drives have fallen to low prices now, and terabyte drives are coming down in price.

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Italian DJ Giuseppe Ottaviani playing live with two Apple Powerbooks running Ableton Live & Tracktor, two  keyboards, two different mixers and an effects machine during Crasher Hyper Royale night at Gatecrasher One, Sheffield 2007, Picture by ©BrianOMahony.net .

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And here a more recent video

DJ Tip – A Remix Method

A DJ Tip On DJ Production

This is only a briefing and is not a blueprint.

So how do we go about making our own tracks?

The two easiest forms of music making and getting recognized is by DJ mash-ups and DJ bootlegs.

• A bootleg is a track of two different complementary tracks,  for an example : DJ Gauffe  with Britney Spears ‘Oops I Did It Again’ and Eminems  ‘The Real Slim Shady’.

• A mash-up is  a track updated with original elements added to the song, for an example : Mylo vs The Miami Sound Machine ‘Dr Pressure’.

Most DJs do it, there are even albums dedicated to bootlegged music.

The art of DJing is to do with the artist and not the gear or software.

The software and gear are just tools for creating your thoughts.

Judging when and what goes  with what  is part of the art.

It is also very hard to distinguish a DJ performance from a DJ improvisation to a DJ composition.

So why mash ups or bootlegs?

• There is a great following for both, lots of people love music mixes and different styles added to tracks. For an instance there are many versions of  Depeche Mode ‘ Enjoy The Silence’ like Linkin Park’s version is a great one.
• A lot of work has already been done for you so you don’t have to spend so much time creating tracks from scratch.
• You already have a ready made audience.
• You can get quite popular from making these remixes BUT also getting into trouble with the authorities over the sample copyright clearances, so always be sure about the copyrights.

To be Continued.

Experimenting is key!

DJ Mouse Controller

DJ Mouse Controller

I haven’t tried this myself but it does look interesting especially the mouse.

And there is the specially designed mat.

Looks pretty funky!

There is a package with this mouse and DeckaDance software.

I am not a fan of DeckaDance , I tried the trial version a year ago and it didn’t come to my liking.

I prefer Mixmeister Fusion.

Okay so watch a video here:

Watch another short tutorial video if you like, here:

DJ Tip – Tracks Of The Right Length

Another DJ Tip

A big problem is a track lasting too long usually meaning more than three minutes.  It’s a double problem.

(A) Most  dancers would prefer to have four 3-minute dances with four partners than two 6-minute dances in the same time.

(B) Many leads/men feel that their repertoire of freestyle dance figures is exhausted after two or three minutes, and they would much rather move on to something else.

Since many tracks are longer than three minutes, you have two choices: mix the track out at about three minutes, or edit out a central part to retain the original ending.

If so, then you’ll know that an earlier mix-out at 3 minutes is okay.  But if there’s a definitive ending  then you’ll edit out some central strains to bring the track down to three minutes.

If the track is four minutes long, you’ll listen through the piece several times searching for the minute which you can remove from the center without any harm to the track, usually a verse and chorus among many repeats of that verse-chorus.

If the lyrics are telling a story, you might worry about removing an important middle part of the story.

Don’t worry — dancers are too busy dancing to be listening to the lyrics.

There is plenty of software  for editing middle sections out of music to make a 3-minute dance version.

Exceptions :
Some fast and exhausting dances might want to be shorter than three minutes, like a fast techno polka for instance.

Some dance traditions favor long songs, like salsa.

Good DJs ask what the dancers prefer, including track lengths sometimes.  Dancers’ wishes always come first.

Peace