Club Audition, Please Help

[BradCee]

I work my ass off for five years, and all I get is this huge let-down and the worst feeling I've ever experienced.

You're not the first to have it go wrong, and won't be the last. What you need to do push through it an keep trying, that's what will seperate from the truly bad djs. Take it is a learning curve.

If it was meant to be easy first time everytime then everyone and their dogs would be DJin. For everyone one of us that have a (for want of a better word) 'shitter' there's hundereds that wouldn't even dare to ask for a shot, let alone get in the booth.

As for the mixing probs. Vinyl, if it's what you started on it, will seem easier. Had the same thing myself when switching to CDJs, then a little bit moving to VCI. Maybe if you post up your current tsi someone will be able to help (still use T3 so, sorry, i won't be able to)

Just try to take the positive that you had the balls to do something alot of ppl wouldn't, and keep going. And more importantly don't try to stress about it. Did you give the guy a demo when you got the audition? if so then the music wouldn't be a problem as he knew already had an idea of what you play.

[MaxOne]

Ok mate.

1st off I'm going to reel of some cliches, but they are cliches for a reason and you need to take heed.

1) What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger
2) You learn from your mistakes, not from your success.

You have learnt a valuble lesson here that will stop you making the same mistakes again. Next time (and there will be a next time) you will know what you know now. This is gold.

OK, it sounds to me like you've got a VERY complicated set up there. It was always going to be tricky to set that up in a booth you've never set up in before. Bringing a mixer with you for an audition... too much.

Also it sounds to me, maybe i'm being harsh here, that you're running before you can walk. You're trying to run ableton and traktor pro and your saying you're worried about transitioning songs?!!

Simplify your set up. Just use traktor pro your vci and soundcard. Maybe get an audio 2 dj, cheap and simple but solid and built for traktor. Keep everything slimline and compatible. Less can go wrong. You want to be able to rock up, plug into a single line on the club mixer and be able to fire up your laptop, plug in soundcard and vci and smash it. Much less can go wrong.

Now, i haven't used the SE overlay and i'm sure it is amazing, but i also fear it sounds a bit complicated unless you really understand mappings, etc, which it sounds like you don't. There is no shame in that btw but it just means you need to get a set up you feel 100% confident with.

If i were you I would peel off the overlay (it does come off right??), just for now and just use a simpler tsi, moonie's got a good one, and i've got one too. It's a very clean and simple tsi.

Or stick with the overlay but just make sure you got the basics right. That auto-clock thing, too much man. that is just sketchy unless you know your shit.

Djing is about the music 1st and foremost. Traktor and the vci are great tools but they are as simple or as complicated as you make them.

Go back to basics, simple mixes, simple set up, let the music do the talking. Then build back up from there.

Honestly, you will regret giving up. There are always knock backs in life, always. Learn and grow from it. In a years time look back and say this was the moment that turned things round for the better.

Good luck

[BentoSan]

Yeah if your still getting off the ground i would stick to the simpler transitions, simple eqing, just running Traktor alone, no fancy fx and pitching tricks - these sorts of things are reserved for those who have mastered the basics of DJing.

Id keep on Eans overlay seeings how you already have it on, just dont dive too far into it and expect to be using all the functions just yet, all the simpler mixing functions are there use them some more - you can ease your way into the more complicated stuff over time. No ones expecting you to be doing all sorts of crazy tricks right off the bat, these things are great to play with at home but if you want to use them Live then its best to slowly ease the techniques into your setup and not just expect to be able to rock the house using all of them at once.

If you are having pitch issues with your transport buttons and you said that you were editing the midi assignments on your transport buttons then you must have done something to your midi assignments to mess them up, id go back to using Ean's transport button layout while its not perfect its as good as it gets for 4 transport buttons.

You can run a couple setups at once, keep the complicated jack router, smartmixing, custom mappings stuff for your trail and error sessions at home. As you become more confident using these functions you can work them into your club setup one technique at a time - you need to test this stuff at home, get it rock solid and have the up most confidence with your transition abilities before using them live.

Take what happened as a learning experience, its not the end of your DJing career, just a bit of a rough patch and theres lots of DJs out there that have had rough starts to their career and gone on to make it as successful DJs.

[MaxOne]

yeah, sure keep the SE overlay. I'm sure that's not the issue as it looks wicked. In fact I want to get it myself pretty soon, and i'm sure it can be used simply to start with.

Download the latest tsi again and just use it basically. the build up to the trickier stuff...

[DJ_Animus]

Im fairly certain everyone else nailed the proper points/comments. Ill just add my 2cents hoping I can provide meaningful advice or inspiration.

First...DvlsAdvct hes great, hes always been a wonderful help to me, great person to know in real life. Hes right, you need to relax. I used to have the worst case of butterflies, it was terrible! Now? I just get fidgety waiting for my chance to shine. Start simple. KISS...keep it simple stupid.

Youre having problems with your pitch and sync flow, do what Advct said and once those settings are in place, properly exit traktor. Boot back up and make sure its saving your settings. Ok next problem, your transitions...why after 5 years are you having problems? DJing on a vci is no different than DJing on turntables, you can create the same workflow. Fuck auto sync! You cant use it on non 4/4 techno beats (assuming youre not based on the hiphop stuff). Your basic commands would be play, cueing, pitch bend, ect. No different than vynil with nipple twists, brakes, and throwing the record into sync yeah? Think like vynil, the VCI can do it (it better if my herc can lol).

Youre getting worked out over nothing, I could understand the club owners were going to execute your girlfriend if you fucked up a single transition.

Ok so now its time for a recent story.

Last month I spun in NYC at rebel, a really nice club, the theme was an electronic dance night, you know techno, hardcore/style, breaks, ravey stuff...

Well I was spinning electro house, I was killing it, doing 3 decks, 2 minute long transitions, special effects, the works, having a blast and the crowd was too, all of a sudden after one of my favorite cooldown tricks the song goes into the break down, PERFECTION! crowd is totally digging and Im cheesing like a virgin, well like a jackass I kill the whole thing and load a song into the live deck...SILENCE...oh well, shrugged my shoulders, laughed, put my finger way up into the air and waved it around and slammed the play button, boom BASS and back to bussiness, crowd thought I was fucking with them lol, nope, I was bullshitting my way back into sucess. I overcame the mistake, learned from it, and now Im spinning at this club frequently, working on residency.

In the end its all good, this DJing stuff its all good man, make the crowd dance, we know you can or why else would you be on this forum? Relax, FOCUS, PRACTICE, and get back out there and kick some ass. Keep us up to date with your progress. You can always ask me for help, Im not Bento or Advct, but Ill help just the same.

PLUR
Animus

[DJ ATP]

Thanks for the encouragement, all. I guess it all looked so much worse to me since it was all fresh. After five hours of sleep (I couldn't get to sleep until 4), Things look a bit less bad, as they usually do after a night of sleep.

What a whiny bitch I am. :P

So anyway...the things I changed on my VCI layout:

I'm used to using an Axis 9 CD player, so I changed the transport controls to behave like that:

(First off, no I'm no MIDI mapping master, but I spent hours and hours going through the technical shit on my VCI to make sure I knew it like I knew my favourite movie/book/song.)

The sync button on each deck became a cue button, meaning that when a deck's paused, pressing and holding it plays the song from the current point, and pressing it while the deck's playing returns the song to the last active cue marker.

The Drop button is untouched. I like it just the way it is. It's like the loop-in buttons on my Axis 9, dropping a cue point right in the mix. It's great for songs I haven't had time to properly beat-grid and cue-mark yet (with more than 5000 songs, I'm less than halfway through all that stuff. Most songs don't even have beat-grids, but those are ones I never play anyway).

The Pause button pauses the song on the spot, and drops a temporary cue point, since that's how the Pause button on my Axis 9 behaved. The closest I could get to this was using play/pause, so pressing it again plays the song, but whatever. It works for me.

The Play button has been changed to Cue Play, which means that I hold down the button until I want to play the song, and then I release it for a better-timed and debounced start, guaranteeing a better line-up off-the-bat.

I was careful to keep the modifiers the same for these buttons, as I know how important they are for keeping the four-deck modes from screwing everything up.

The Scratch buttons on each deck have been changed into Sync buttons (I moved the Sync button up from where it used to be down by the transport controls). The MIDI from those two buttons is weird and not-evenly-matched between the two buttons (one has an on-release note, but no on-press note, while the other has both on-press and on-release notes), but I got it working by using the on-release notes from both, so whatever.

I removed the EQ knobs, Gain knobs and the CUE buttons and knobs from my TSI, as I don't use them. Ever. I prefer an external mixer.

I have my high-EQ knobs mapped to key shift so I don't have to worry about what key my songs are in (because I haven't found an efficient way to key them that is free and doesn't require musical knowledge I wasn't gifted with as a child), and I can just key-shift the incoming song until it matches closely enough with the outgoing track to get by in a blend.

I have my mid-EQ knobs mapped to an emergency pitch reset. 'nuff said.

My CUE section and Gain knobs are mapped to the Ableton smart mixing rig, and even if I don't use the smart mixing rig, I still use the knobs on my external mixer for EQing, so there's no loss of functionality for me. I wasn't using them for anything anyway, so I made the best of an opportunity.

I still have two unused low-EQ knobs on my VCI.

My big problem is EQing properly for a good blend. I kept it simple last night and stayed with easy transitions on beat-only sections, and I usually do that while practising, because if I don't EQ it right, it sounds like shit if I try anything else. What I really need the most is some one-on-one real-life mentoring from a good DJ who knows how to do proper EQing and can help train my ears so I don't make a shit mix and think I'm okay, then realise how bad it was when I go back and listen to my recording.

But for now, most of my transitions are very simple four-beat blends with a cut at the end of the four (sometimes eight) beats.

As for the VCI-100 and its problems, I might mess around with the 1.2 firmware and start from scratch with a simpler TSI, but I doubt that's necessary. The extra MIDI information shouldn't be screwing my Traktor functionality, it's designed specifically to expand it. Maybe if I actually buy Traktor Pro (yes, I'm using cracked software for practise, because I can't afford even $50 for something cheap -- I fully intend to purchase the whole Traktor Scratch Pro box set once I have the money, or if not, I intend to use the Mac-only aggregate-sound-card-renaming hack and buy the software plus two control vinyl. The VCI-100 SE was a RIDICULOUSLY HUGE investment for me, gotten using all of my birthday money and my savings fund. I was tired of using my 88-key MIDI keyboard for my Traktor stuff. too big, and NOT portable, by any means. Yes, I have crazy rich family members who give me money for my birthday because apparently books aren't cool enough. But whatever; I won't complain. I can buy a lot of books for $50 or $100. Also, I'm not a student anymore, so I can't get an educational discount either, which is the route I used to get myself a good copy of FL Studio back when I spent all my free time making music instead of mixing it...and I would love to use that route again to get myself a legit copy of Traktor Scratch Pro)

If I get some money above-and-beyond food, rent, and other necessities, I might get the Audio 2, but my dream setup involves an Audio 8, two Vestax PDX 3000 and my VCI-100 SE...so I might just wait a little longer and save up for the Audio 8 and Scratch setup.

So anyway, that's my setup. I've got to leave for a training meeting at work. Here's hoping once I'm trained I can actually make enough money at this job to afford some more decent equipment and a legit copy of TSPro.

Thank you all for the wise words and the encouragement. I definitely feel better, and as soon as I have some time, I'm going to practise harder, and possibly go take the DJ classes available at one of the record shops in Chicago until I understand what the hell I'm doing just a little bit better.

**********

If anybody lives in the Chicago area, give me a hoot and let me know what's up. If you'd be willing to train me in EQing, I'd definitely appreciate the mentorship and the friendship. I love friends.

**********

Have a great weekend, crew. Get out while it's still warm if you can!

Best Regards,

DJ ATP

[DvlsAdvct]

I think the advice given is good.

Master the simple stuff. Hell, I'm finally at the point where I am comfortable doing a bunch of different transition types without thought and NOW want to start implementing Ableton to the rig.

Take it in stages and for god's sake simplify your setup. Keep in mind that if you're doing the whole Scratch setup then you need to bring ALL of that shit to the club. That becomes a HUGE inconvenience. That's why I stopped, heh.

But yeah, become comfortable with spinning, with your setup and with your technique and THEN bring it to the club.

I think the best advice I can give you is to wait. There are too many DJs and musicians who are going off half cocked, not ready to bring their shit to the floor. But they do and they either recognize their faults (like you) or think they are the shit. So take a deep breath, go back to the drawing board, and get more comfortable with your rig. You should never have to say "I always fuck up transitions." So before you go to a club make it so you don't fuck up transitions.

Good luck to you. Feel free to hit me up whenever.

[wrong chris]

you'll gain confidence with lots of practice at home. but to gain confidence for playing out you just have to get out there and do it.

If you do mess up at the gig and don't get it, don't give up. Learn what you did wrong and teach yourself how to improve, it's the only way your skills will grow.

Record a live set tonight at home. Then sit down and listen to it, make note of ALL of your fuck ups. Be honest with yourself, when your learning the ropes you need to be a harsh critic of your performance level. Then go back to those problem areas and practice until it comes out right.

I think the main thing is being confident in your own skills before you start trying to get gigs, otherwise your just going to set yourself up for dissapointment.

Good luck!

[DJ ATP]

Yeah, I record home-made mixes all the time. I have like fifty of them. Every time, I go back and listen, and I note the problems, and I practise all the time, and it appears to be making little difference. It helps that I never really learned how to EQ correctly, or how to transition (I've figured out the transitioning part; my biggest problems are that I lose myself in the mix, thus negating my ability to self-criticise on-the-spot...and my improper EQing skills.). I have yet to manually EQ two songs so they play nice and maintain the same level of perceived loudness. I can keep practising and spend five more years tightening up my transitions, and finally becoming halfway decent at EQing...but I think if I got some help from a knowledgeable sound tech or proper DJ, it would go a long way. If only I knew anyone in my area who was accessible and a good, knowledgeable, professional, successful DJ.

I need mentorship at this stage, because I'm not really progressing, I'm kind of just going in circles.

[Lambox]

If anybody lives in the Chicago area, give me a hoot and let me know what's up. If you'd be willing to train me in EQing, I'd definitely appreciate the mentorship and the friendship. I love friends.

Yeaaaaah boy. Chicago suburbs ftw! I'm no EQing expert (or any kind of expert in anything), but I'm always excited to meet other DJs from the area.

As to your experience, see a thread I made like a month ago called Severely Discouraging. Even though it wasn't anywhere near the same situation, I think we share a similar outcome.

The point is, don't let it get to you. Keep on trying. And every other cliche you can think of.

But really, everything you do will have highs a lows, it's just a matter of anticipating the highs and forgetting the lows.