A Reminder To Challenge Yourself

[miyuru]

Just thought I would make a quick post about this past week at my night. Basically our group decided that we would play disco-inspired sets this week, which I thought was a cool idea. Retro is always coming back, it's a never-ending cycle really, and I listen to a lot of music with funky basslines and string sections whose roots are in the disco era.

For a couple days I did some research on what kinds of songs I'd like to play. Already I play lots of French touch so it made sense to expand on that. I started going through my Crydamoure stuff (Crydamoure is Guy-Man's label [Guy-Man from Daft Punk]). Check out this track which is one of my favorites off the label:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbRkQpjaBjU

Anyway, by the end of it I had about 3 hours worth of songs that I was happy with that were all very disco. None were actually from the disco era though :P

My problem was, I couldn't find a way to piece together a set as per usual. When I mix, I use four decks in Traktor and piece together compositions using parts of other songs, like the vocal from one, a synth loop from another, and then on the other two decks usually having two songs blending together as per usual.

With all these disco songs, it was extremely hard to find sections that I could isolate clear sections and loop in a similar fashion. There's always so much going on in each track, and they're not exactly DJ friendly sometimes as there's often no intro/outro with just the drums.

My set was pretty terrible by my standards but I'm more excited about DJing that I was last week, mostly because I do truly love all these new songs that I've gone through and I've discovered some new artists along the way. My goal is to understand these songs to the point where I can mix them more creatively than a simple A->B set, if that's at all possible.

I guess that's what I love about DJing, there's always always always room for improvement. So if you're ever feeling bored, try tackling a new genre to see how you fare, and hopefully you'll be able to appreciate music that you didn't appreciate so much before.

[Damien1138]

Agreed; Artists either grow or stagnate.

[kidfromkibbly]

Wisely said. At the moment I'm enjoying a little personal rock revival, going through all my old rock stuff and gathering some new stuff as well, going to build up a new Traktor collection with just my rock stuff..... we need one of those emoticons with the little dude doing the devil horns and rocking out!

[Nephew]

I know just mixing A to B isn't exciting/creative, but maybe you should do that just to learn how the tracks interact with each other until you learn how they are produced.

I've been on a big disco/slo mo kick the past two years and know exactly what you mean about no proper intro's/outro's and no isolated parts where you can grab a certain part and make a clean loop.

Best advice I can say is to warp them and make sure they are lined up with a proper beat grid before you try and line up a beat grid in Traktor, and possibly edit them with your and make your own intro's/outo's. It's a pain in the ass but if it's something you're really digging you'll love that much more.

Cheers mate!

FYI, Todd Terje has a lot of edits of disco tunes where he pretty much just extended the intro/outro and made them more DJ friendly.

[Karlos Santos]

Using 4 decks is great , yeah its cool and the possibilities are enormous.
I would NEVER say what constitutes good or bad dj practice but some of the greatest DJs in the world just do A - B djing. Pick the right tunes and all you need is 2 decks.

Mixing A- B IS exciting and creative when the music is fucking outstanding.

[Todd Terje makes great re-edits , also Danny Krivit i could go on an on]

[DvlsAdvct]

Check out the Scissor Sisters if you didn't find them. My favorite new disco

Regardless, I agree with Karlos. The mettle of a good DJ is not measured by the amount of decks they use. At least, in my opinion. The good DJ should be measured on a lot more than that. A simple A-B DJ can create, build and blow a room out of the water. A DJ using 4 decks can destroy an energy, and vice versa.

The challenge needs to be there, though. I definitely agree with that.

[miyuru]

I agree with what's being said about 2 deck mixing, don't get me wrong!

Just for myself, I prefer to use up to four decks.

I'm going to look into some edits etc. and hopefully create my own this week too! Good luck on your challenging yourself!

[cmcpress]

there are a lot of old skool disco cuts that had long beat intro and outros - most of them probably not tracks you've ever heard though as these were big in the new york in the late 70's. Tracks like Loose Joints - all over my face and lots, lots more (i have a few at home that were ripped HQ from Youtube). Love disco from round that time - sleazy, dirty great stuff.