Do you guys listen to your library during your the day? I usually listen to other djs sets, and only listen to my tracks when I am practicing....
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Do you guys listen to your library during your the day? I usually listen to other djs sets, and only listen to my tracks when I am practicing....
i wing it 100% of the time
i dont suggest that though
It's a good point.
When I used to DJ exclusively with vinyl (10+ years ago now), I ONLY used to listen to my tracks when I was DJ'ing. These days, I always have tracks I'm DJ'ing with on a USB stick, or on an mp3 player, and listen to 'em whenever I'm driving, or just chilling.
And to be honest, I think I knew my tracks BETTER when I was ONLY DJ'ing with them. Funny, that.
I am perhaps more obsessive about this than most, but what I do is
1. Keep my setlist small. When I started out, my setlist was capped at about a hundred tracks until I had a workflow that allowed me to know that size list, then I began to expand it. At this point, it's approximately 500.
2. I mark my tracks up like MAD... when I was using Traktor, I had markers all over the place... cue markers for in-and-out spots, and I used loop markers to indicate where vocals were, etc. Now that I've written my own software, having the tracks marked up is a major feature of it - each phrase in a song can be marked as intro, verse, chorus, bridge, ending, fill, etc., plus whether there are vocals or not (or what I call "semi," which means there are vocal bites like hip-hop "yeah, uh-huh uh-huh" but not real singing).
3. I tend to practice obsessively, 1-4 hours a night. That said, lately, I've been slackin', but movin' from one continent to another, I think I am allowed some time to get back on the horse.
But, as I said, I am more obsessive about knowing my tracks than most. On the other hand, I can completely restructure my songs on the fly to make them fit together with tracks where you'd normally have a screaming trainwreck, so, I think it worth it.
These days, load up all new tracks on the phone or computer and play them while working/surfing etc... give them a low star rating when they don't sound as you thought they would for easy removal later.
It doesn't take a whole lotta time to know a track well enough that you wont screw up a mix, of course if you are slicing/dicing/looping/preparing thats real "work"
Most of the time I'll leave traktor running in the background anyhow so I can mouse-mix tracks from time to time if i think A would go well with B.
Snap, Turnover was lower On vinyl, the likelihood was that if something got a mediocre reaction the first play, then it wasn't going back the (heavy) box the following week(s).Quote:
I ONLY used to listen to my tracks when I was DJ'ing.
And to be honest, I think I knew my tracks BETTER when I was ONLY DJ'ing with them. Funny, that.
Alot of resident DJ's I know didn't have turntables at home, they'd come in early to vet some new tunes prior to the night in question and that was it.
Also, we used to usually play the entire record (at least once completely) the first time live to find that "mix point" at which stage you knew it pretty well the next time round anyhow.
No-one bought or played anything that they felt would not be memorable - not just due to money, but space constraints !
DJ Party Shuffle! Pull up a playlist, or songs I've added in the last 6 months, put it on random and just listen in the background. Anything that gets your attention...got your attention.
So do I. I used to have all the tracks from my DJing playlist on my phone to sort of push them to the subconscious parts of my memory. That doesn't work anymore since I started buying only vinyl, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kwal
From my point of viewn the thing is to considering how the human memory or abilities to learn is working.
We used to say that you will remember easyer
1- Things you do by yourself, manipulating
2- Things you will see as pictures, images
3-Things that you read
4- things that you heard
So, Dj purpose is to quickly put something to remember the tracks he want to play, you beed to associate a sign and a track content.
So, no surprising that it's will be probably easier to remember vinyls than Digital files
Vinyls: it's an object, you manipulate them whan you play it, there is picture on the record, on the sleeves, many way to make a quick and easy to remember matching beetween whay you manipulate and/or see with the track content.
Don't forget also that most of the time, you probably buy /own less vinyls than you can buy/own digital files)
Digital file: Small pictures for those who activate the picture view, bt mainly list of artist name, track name, labels,etc... We are now in the bottom of the list I dod to begin this post. It's normally harder to make quicktly matches bbetween thes e reading signs and listened content.
As an example or proof of that, i can say that when I was essentially buy vinyl 20 years ago, I can remember 90/95% of then today despite I stopped deejayng for around 15 years (I own around 700 vinyls)
If i compare with digital files, on a single folder of 250 tracks, I can make easy and quick match on no more than 50/60%.
I try to often listen to them when driving, digging, but it's not really help.most of the time, I get attention on some few tracks , but some others will move away from my memory (OK, may be my 45 years old not help me with accurate memory ;) )
I've always kept a "New Tracks" playlist on my iPhone (iPod back in the day), and listened to those tracks on my way to work, etc.
If I have a gig coming up, I'll create some playlists for moods (usually a Mild, Medium, and Hot), and listen to those as well. I never pre-plan my sets mind you, but I definitely filter things down to 100 or so tracks between all 3 lists (and will likely bring other music as well, but this keeps things focussed).
Sadly, I can never remember track names. Or artist names. I'm terrible at that.
But my musical memory is quite good, as soon as I hear a few notes of a track, I know what it is, where the breakdowns are, etc.
See - that's why artwork is so important!
I have tracks that I LOVE, and always play - but I don't know the name! I just recognise the artwork...
This actually. I also agree with the comments about vinyl and artwork. I knew my tunes backwards when I DJ'd with vinyl despite only really playing them in the club rather than at home. Also, I knew which record, or remix, was which because of the artwork which made flicking through my record box much quicker.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kwal
I used to always listen to my digital files at work, but I found it really didn't help much as I wasn't really concentrating on the music, but it was more of a background thing.
Now that I use primarily records, I can't do that as well.
Your best bet IMO is to just practice mixes with your songs. As you add new songs, add them into your practice routine with a lot of the older stuff.
Some of these more experienced cats can wing it and still pull it off, but I think it's harder for newer cats to do that and still sound as good. I know I wing it and I get caught on a number of occasions, not knowing the song well enough. But, I have a lot of musical interests and only so much time throughout the day.
I just create folders and label them by month of purchase. Then whatever music I get or buy in that month I place in that folder. Then I also totally Wing what in playing, I never create a play list, I just go with the flow.
Using markers in a logical way is good.
I don't listen to all my tracks many times, but I know that if they are in the folders they are good, and the markers show me how they are, if there is a vocal in the beginning, where are the breaks and drops. The different folders tell me their style and energy.
And like this guy up here ^ I also never make playlists, I go with the flow, it's much more fun!
Markers and folders will tell you everything you need to know.
Just wing it - it's not precision science ;)
I used to be able to wing it every night. The tracks that I played more, I knew better, obviously. Each track had a "learning curve"
Now that I'm not DJing out as much, I'm finding that I need to spend more time learning my tracks.
Practice time, recording my sessions, and listening to my recordings are how I learn my tracks and figure out what I'm doing right (and wrong).
Well, I technically have playlists, but not like what you are meaning when you say you don't use them - I have them as essentially crates of related tracks so I can get to them easily, but when I play, I pick the tracks at playtime... can't react to the crowd otherwise. (Excepting one festival I played in Berlin where their agent was told by the GEMA that their DJs had to supply their playlist ahead of time to be cleared.)
I always listen to the tracks before hand but when it comes to playing i usually end up just winging it. Seems to work most of the time lol
I custom-tune my "Recently Added" smart playlist on my iTunes to include new songs added for a longer period of time, then i just pick 15-20 tracks at random, load them onto a flash drive, plug it into my car radio (it has a usb port) and just put it on shuffle. I rotate the songs on the flash drive every 2-3 days.