Club Audition, Please Help

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Club Audition, Please Help

I’m so freaking out right now. I’m going to D’Tox International, a small club that opened up in Bellwood, IL. I’m auditioning to be a DJ there. I’m so nervous that I’m shaking.

My biggest worry is that I’ll play the wrong music or screw up transitions, or do something else big and embarrassing that will lose me the gig. Anybody got any ideas on how I should handle this? Am I worrying about nothing?

Luckily, I get to go early, so I know what kind of music the crowd up there is into, but I’m still worried I don’t have the right music, the right vibe, the right focus. What if the DJ before me plays all the good songs, and I’m left with crap, due to my smaller selection? (I know the area/club is a pretty good mix of hip-hop, latino, reggaeton, but I don’t have a whole lot of any of those).

Also, I’m not the best at transitions. And my VCI-100 likes to change the pitch on the currently-playing deck anytime I press any button. Traktor Scratch Pro 1.1.1 or 1.1.2 is my version.

Every possible tiny worry is springing up and making itself a huge nuisance. What do I do? Any words of advice and/or calming/encouragement?

-DJ ATP

2

First, you need to stop, take a deep breath, and relax.

You have, in the end, only your abilities at your finger tips. All of the tech stuff that can go wrong might, but that is out of your control.

If you don’t have the right music and can’t keep them dancing then this isn’t the gig for you. Go and spin and rock out and have fun, but if you don’t deliver then you don’t deliver. There will be other gigs and opportunities.

If you know what the crowd is into then make sure you have that. If the DJ before you plays all the good songs then you need to be a DJ and do what needs to be done. If you don’t have a lot of music that the club is based around then you should go, spin and do what you do, and if no one is into it then it isn’t a gig for you.

The VCI-100 is probably not changing anything. You should make sure that your TSI is clean, there are no Pitch Reset commands, and that your sync workflow makes sense so it isn’t syncing to the clock when it’s on Auto and goes all over the place. Make a backup line so if the pitch goes nuts you can reset it.

Look, all you can do is bring the skill, tech and music you already have at your fingertips. If you aren’t a fit for this club then neither party loses. You’d be better off finding this out when you’re spinning early to people who you can spin for than when you need to spin to a big room of people and it just doesn’t work.

Relax and have fun. If it isn’t fun then there’s no point in all the crazy work we put in.

3

My girlfriend and I were doing some looking around online. Apparently, Friday night is House night. I have plenty to go around, so I’m not too worried about that anymore.

My remaining worries are my funky tech, and my abilities. I’ve never been truly ace at transitions, so I really have to focus on keeping them short and sweet tonight. Here’s hoping I get it right.

That, and as long as I rock the party right, my mixing skills won’t be the focus of everyone’s good time. Here’s hoping I can read the crowd ok and keep them moving and having fun.

As for my VCI-100 SE, I’ll check everything and make sure nothing weird is going on behind-the-scenes…but I’m using a (barely) modified version (changed behaviours of Play, Pause, Cue buttons) of the official DJ TT mapping, matching the new stick-on plastic sheet cover thingy. Most of my problems have to do with sync engaging automatically, and the pitch changing by crazy amounts when I press any of the transport controls buttons on my VCI-100 SE. I’ve always had a problem like this since I got the thing, and I had figured out some way to not have it be a problem…but I forget what I did to fix it before.

How do I make a backup line, as you say, and how do I check my sync workflow? I’m not sure what you’re referring to.

I’ll do my best to just relax and enjoy it, because if I’m not enjoying it, nobody will, right? Thanks for the support, DvlsAdvct. Keep on advct-ing the dvl. :stuck_out_tongue:

4

The problem you’re running into has to do with your sync mode. Under the clock it should say Manual / Automatic / Internal and… External (doing this from memory, so bare with me). If I have it set to automatic, which is really useful for navigating through the Master/Sync modes, I’ve found I run into a really unique problem.

Run through this scenario and let me know if this happens to you. Start with nothing in any decks, all pitch faders in the middle, (I think the BPM count off reads out 120BPM), or just load traktor clean. Make your Clock mode automatic. Load a track into the deck. It should come up as Master and have its original tempo. On that deck press Sync. It should light up halfway, meaning that the deck will default to Sync once it is no longer Master (either designated by you or the automatic switch over)

Now what I want you to do is just press play and watch the Master Clock up top. It won’t shoot to the bpm of the track, but something else. Before it Master Clock reads the same as the deck stop the deck. The deck should also be in Sync Mode. So now the master clock should read something weird, but definitely not what you’re deck is. Now if you just hit Cue/Play your tempo should jump down to what the Master Clock says and stay there.

If this is how it happens then we’ll go on from there. If not then I’ll have to be in front of my comp.

By a backup line I meant to create a new entry in your TSI that is dedicated to reseting the pitch, either as a hotkey or a MIDI command. That way, in case something weird happens you have a quick fix.

To check your sync work flow you need to go through the TSI and look at your Sync and Tempo entries (sort by Command should do this) and make sure there are no weird mappings.

Don’t worry about funky techniques. Do those when you’re comfortable and secure in your abilities. Focus on rocking the crowd and keeping their hips grooving to the tunes you’re blasting.

You got the right idea. If you aren’t having fun no one else will. I’ll do my best to live up to my name :wink:

5

How did it go??

Did you take pics?

Why not?

6

DvlsAdvct, you saved my ass. I’ll look into your specific problem tomorrow after I get some sleep post-club. The Auto-Clock was the problem for me. I changed it to Manual, and now I don’t get the pitch fader jumping around any time I press a transport or cue/loop button. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I’ve also swapped my high-EQ knobs for Deck A and Deck B Key-shift, so I can key-match songs for less-painful long mixes (I’m using Bento’s Smart Mixer, so I don’t have to use my EQ knobs anymore) (and I don’t have to mix with keylock off anymore in order to do Ean’s nifty “make-the-loop-smaller-and-smaller-while-pitching-it-up-to-build-excitement-and-mix-tracks-with-incompatible-BPMs-or-keys-or-time-signatures” trick he showed us months ago on the blog), as well as swapping my mid-EQ knobs for pitch-reset (I just twitch one, and I get instant pitch-reset for emergencies).

Thank you for the tips.

sarasin, I’ll be checking back with pictures, and/or maybe a recording of my live mix, if I even get squeezed in like the owner said he might. Otherwise, it will be a few days before my audition actually happens. I’m hoping it’s tonight for stress reasons. That, and I already told everyone I know they should check out my audition tonight. Also, I’m broke (actually), and I’m hoping he’ll pay me if I do a good job…though I doubt he will, since it’s a live “audition.”

7

Shit!

Good luck then dude!

:slight_smile:

8

DvlsAdvct has it down. Next time just relax. If it doesn’t work so quickly do what other DJs have done before you… LIQUOR!!!

9

Buddy drink some liquor!!! Right now I’m about to go on and I had 1 to many Jack n coke. If ur traktor is giving you shit, make sure to take some CDs just in case.

10

Yeah, so many problems.

So first my girlfriend and I sit there from before 10 PM to about 12:15 AM. This guy promised me he might squeeze me in. So I get up and go talk to him around 12:15 and he tells me to go out to my car and set up my shit. So I go get it, bring it in, crouch in the corner of the DJ booth while I’m setting up my laptop. I go through my normal startup routine for my smart mixing setup, but Ableton won’t load. I restart Ableton several times, all the while being asked by everybody and their fucking dog if I’m ready yet. Then it finally loads, but my VCI-100 SE won’t connect with it. Then I go to the MIDI settings in Ableton and try to fix everything, but it freezes. So I say screw this, and just use my straight Traktor-to-sound card connection. The channels got mixed up somehow, I assume from using JackRouter so much…so it takes me like ten tries of cable-swapping to get a stereo signal out of deck a. There was so much hassle, I didn’t even bother trying to set up my recording setup, so I have no audio at all of the event.

Then, I mix out of the previous DJ’s stuff, disconnect his cables, and plug in my deck b cable, and get mixing. I take too long doing things because everything is new, and I brought my personal mixer, but there was no room for the big lug, cuz the club’s mixer was HUGE (a DENON rackmount on the table in a TINY thing I wouldn’t even call a booth)…so I’m completely overwhelmed by the sheer retardedness of the club’s mixer, and I can’t get anything other than split cue to work (I don’t do split cue, cuz my left ear is slightly damaged due to some stupidity years ago, meaning I have a several-decibel cut across the board on my left ear, as compared to my right). It should be sufficient to say that I was completely lost. I did the best I could, though, and kept pressing on.

I began to run out of time on my first song, and cued up my second song, and somehow got the transition DEAD-ON. I was SO THRILLED, because I fuck up every other transition I’ve ever done. Then, everything got even more fucked. No matter what I did, that problem that has been haunting me, with the pitch changing all the time…came back. The settings were all the same as after I fixed the problem before…but the problem started happening again. Any time I’d press play on the cueing song, the currently-playing deck would change pitch up or down by a random (but large) percentage up or down, resulting in a train-wreck before I even got to a transition. This happened two more times, all the while dealing with requests to “play more hip hop,” then to “play more house,” and “play more reggaeton.” Then there was this one guy who apparently was promised by the last DJ to play the lolipop song (Make that loli-pop is how the lyrics go), and I remembered the guy before me playing the other loli song (loli loli [work that body]). Shit. I had to deal with this too.

So, after four songs and a HUGE line of train wrecks…the main DJ came up and took over, plugged his shit in, and I closed down. I was on for less than 30 minutes, and I fucked it up BIG TIME.

I feel like I’ve failed worse than I’ve ever failed before. I’m thinking of giving up finally, because I’ve been practising for 5 years, and I’m worse than when I started (vinyl is SO much easier to mix, and I don’t even know why). Either give up, or back to 5 more years of practise at something I’m not cut out for. Shit.

Oh, and when I was packing my car to go to the club…I dropped my VCI flat on its face on the asphalt in the apartment parking lot. Dinged the fuck out of the edges of the case, one corner, and several of the knobs now have divots in the rubberized coating. Fuck.

Worst. Night. Ever. I didn’t have this much trouble in high school using a cheap Gemini dual CD-player, my two cheap ripoff Numark “Funkmaster Flex” belt-drive mistakes, my old Numark DM 950 mixer, a whole bunch of ghetto-rigged cabling, and six of my friends to help me set it all up.

And I had some to drink, too. Didn’t hurt me, but didn’t help either. I certainly calmed down after spending forever at the club drinking some stuff I’d never heard of that tasted not quite entirely unlike tea.

So basically, I wasted two gallons of diesel fuel (my car runs diesel), three days of my time preparing for this gig, fifteen gigs of hard drive space for new music, a bunch of panic and adrenaline, my girlfriend’s time and effort (she worked HARD to keep the dancefloor in this almost-empty club moving – the club’s first night, and the majority of the people there were paid to be there, or were auditioning for positions just like me), unnecessary damage to my equipment…and all I get is a headache, ear pains, a dry throat, a general feeling of being sick to my stomach, and a HUGE let-down. Oh, and a horrible start to my career.

What the fuck? Apparently hard work isn’t enough. Kids with a laptop, Serato, and some MP3s can do a better job than me. A guy who has been DJing two months with brand-new Numark HDX turntables and too much free time can do it like a fucking pro.

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.

I’m so depressed.

So yeah, sarasin, sorry, but no pictures or audio. I have pictures of my dinged-up VCI, but I’m too tired to care right now. Maybe I’ll post them later.

I’ll try not to post about my gigs until after the fact in the future. I don’t need to be putting false hopes on this forum, in addition to myself, my girlfriend, and all the friends I contacted (and the one who actually showed up).

-DJ ATP

11

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.

12

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

13

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.

14

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…

15

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

16

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. :stuck_out_tongue:

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

17

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.

18

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!

19

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.

20

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. :slight_smile: