Title pretty much says it all; your opinion on making YOUR OWN(!! Not playing Armin Van Buuren's, guys, you know who you are) this extends to mashups, too. Everything from simple to complex edits and mashups. Simple might be changing the tempo of a techno track at 116 to be 128, or extending a drop from 16 bars in a pop song to 32. Complex might be swapping or removing verses from the vocal, rearranging the track but not necessarily 'remixing' it. You get the idea, I hope. Moving on.
Note: These include DJ edits done simply by recording the output of your DJ software, and DJ edits done in a DAW. DJ's are welcome, not just DJ/Producers. We welcome everyone, here!~
The question is; are they worth making, or are they a waste of your valuable time?
Allow me to explain why I am asking, if it will shed some light on things. So, I'm a producer/DJ. I've been producing music for 6 years, and I've recently gotten really heavily into Punk and Grunge music, and even into some Shoegaze, Indie, and old Surf Rock from the '60's up to now. I'm also a guitarist, (have been for 8 years) and a bassist, (only 2 years, there) AND a vocalist/songwriter, on top of being a dance music, (EDM I guess; dubstep, electro house, dnb, trap + a few others and a Techno centric side project) producer and DJ. Now, I'm a pretty good DJ, (I'm not amazing, but it's all harmonic and my mixes convey the right vibe, I read a crowd right most of the time, etc) and generally, I'm an alright producer, too.
I'm in a position where I am trying to combine these two elements; this underground, indie/punk rock vibe, with my productions. It's possible to combine dance music and rock, just look at Zardonic, (https://soundcloud.com/zardonic) he's been very successful doing the EDM + Metal thing, as has Celldweller, (who's SC link I don't have handy; anyone?) and Pendulumn did it way before they did, (Though I dunno if I'd call that 'metal' just rock, imo) I know it's possible, and tbh, it's probably not even an original idea, anymore. But it's what I wanna do, none-the-less.
My issue is that I am having trouble mixing my tracks, (which are WIP's, atm, until I get the mixing elements right) with the electronic side in a DJ mix. It's not blending seamlessly. So, I'm debating making a slew of simple DJ edits, of which I have already done a couple, (mostly dropping a little guitar lick or the accapella of a rock song over a dance track) to help blend the vibes together, which appears to be working, and I'm sure I'll get better at the whole 'DJ Edit' thing the more I do it. However, I'm also considering the amount of time it'll take to make that many goddamn edits, (I play a LOT of genres, and I like to do mixes for several hours at a time, atm, and span across lots of genres; it's not fun to me to play 2 hours of dubstep, that actually kinda just sounds... plain) and whether it might be more worth my time to simply look for tracks in my plethora of genres, that have rock influences. I've found they're few and far between, ESPECIALLY since I want to stay away from Metal as much as I can, (because that's something people have heard before, it's not new, it's not unexplored territory) and because I'm not really a fan of taking a rock vocal and writing a dance track underneath or dropping it over a dance track, (Like Pretty Lights, for example, does a lot of remixes of rock songs with just the acapella; no vibes from the original except the vocal) Sometimes, the real vibe of a rock track isn't in the vocal, it's in the riff, y'know?
So, worth it, or not? I'm leaning towards worth it, especially with an uncommon style like what I'm trying to convey. Especially since doing DJ edits of dance tracks and adding rock elements and remixing rock tracks into tracks I can DJ with is probably going to go over better in DJ sets where I'm spinning a track I wrote and singing.
Your thoughts on the DJ Edit/Mashup in YOUR special niche? Feel free to weigh in on my situation and each other's. I'm curious to see what everyone says.
Namaste, kids.
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