Most of my mixing sessions are done around planning good flow for a set based on records or digital tunes I’ve recently bought and not yet mixed, but tonight I felt like mixing and didn’t really have any kind of set, genre or records in mind. So, I just grabbed a stack of records. Now mind you, much of my collection is stuff I’ve bought from DJs who’ve retired and were selling all or parts of their collection - old school stuff from the early 90’s. While I’ve given almost all at least a listen to make sure I liked it, I really don’t “know” a lot of these tunes or mixes of the tunes. So, it gave me an opportunity to get to know some of my stuff, but also to re-realize why I like the records enough to keep them anyway.
Well, it turned out to be great fun as well as quite freeing - not having any kind of set plans, just going and mixing and having fun again.
I think it’s easy to get wrapped up in the hoarder’s mentality (at least it is for me) with as easy and cheap (digital anyway) as it is to get the latest stuff or even copies of the old stuff and easy as well to lose sight of the greatness of stuff we might have buried.
Anyways, here was one of my discoveries from tonight:
Might turn this into a weekly thing and even record some of these impromptu sessions.
I used to do something called “Desktop Sessions”, I would just pull whatever tracks happened to be sitting on my desktop that day and mix em. It made for some very interesting mixes.
I like the free approach to it.. To this day I’ve never planned a single set. It’s more fun that way, something like this would be interesting to do though.
Every mix I do is this style and in my mind is where my passion is. If ya check my mixcloud playlists for mixes you will see very few of the same tracks used in another mix..
What really makes it fun is picking the next track that will work and progress my mix to the peak…
I feel a mix should be a musical journey through sounds and emotions bringing you up to a peak then a plateau and then a gradual come down…
Yeah, I think sometimes you just need to break out of habits or routines to re-discover your passion. I think that was the case for me in this scenario.
Not to mention, these older records are so different from what’s put out on wax today. Back then, you’d have the original and three or four remixes of it, all in potentially really different energies or even styles. Nowadays, all the records have multiple original songs with no remixes with the occasional record with a remix, but usually not the same song remixed multiple times like this. So I was forced to really find the best remix for where I was going with the set, (like the tune above) causing me to try some stuff I probably wouldn’t explore if the set was more planned.
And @djlx4life…I just did it Monday, but yes, planning on just pulling an impromptu set out of my butt each week, grabbing a stack of somewhat similar styled records.
. 'twas such a random find for me. Did it ever turn into a weekly thing?