Genre Switching DJ'ing

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Genre Switching DJ’ing

Hey, i am just wanting advice from people who kinda mix top 40 tunes and just party tunes when dj’ing. I am saving up to buy speakers and lights to make me able to do mobile dj’ing because i have had to say no to loads of people who wanted to dj at there partys but cant because i had no equipment and it was to dear to hire and make any money from it at all. My girlfriends sister has already put me in to DJ at there pre formals in the coming months but i will not be playing EDM all night of course to cater for everyones needs.

Therefore I decided that i would buy my own gear so i can do these partys and within a couple of months i will have made my money back and have the rest for pocket money :slight_smile: I am traditionally a House and trance DJ and mix with 4/4 beats so switching over to try and mix with such a variety of BPM’s, style etc it has proved quite difficult making it sound good. i have been watching youtube videos of DJ AM, Ean himself etc and love his style of mixing it up etc and i dont want to be a dj that stops the track and simply starts the next. I am stil dj’ing EDM first and foremost but it is just a thing to tie me over and even maybe get me a bit more money plus when i have tried it it was brillaint fun but it just wasnt going nowwhere with me not having the right tracks, ideas etc. Has anyone any tips, videos, tune advice, mixing advice etc that will help me making this switch over alot more easier and enjoyable of course :slight_smile: i have found this forum brilliant for asking for advice and its not like any other i have been on as everyone is so helpful with this. i will probably be mixing with timecoded vinyl and some midi controllers (midi controllers most of the time for convienance purposes) if this helps

2

Keep in mind that faded blends, when one song fades and the other one starts later, can be used to a really powerful effect. Make sure you keep that one.

Mixing genres can be complicated. There are TONS of mixing techniques you can utilize, especially when combining midi and timecode.

I’ve taken a radio DJ style to it. I’ll mark down (or set an Out marker) where the energy disappears from the track, and set a marker where the most noticeable part of the incoming track begins, and layer them at will. This can either be done by beatmatching, or by cutting, but if possible I try to slowly introduce the rhythm of the incoming track. This makes it easier to trick the crowd into not noticing the heavy changes of rhythm. This can, obviously, only be done by beatmatching.

I guess, in the end, the only way to do this is to have your transition tracks put together. It’s much easier to go from funky electro to gangsta rap if you slide some electro-hip-hop in between, and then maybe blend in some hip hop rock hybrid before you go to pop rock. Y’know? Definitely do-able, and if you have a good understanding of your songs should be a breeze.

3

This thread could help me out a bit as well, been asked to do a friends engagement party in a few weeks, I usually play indie/electro but I’m gona have to drop some classics and top 40, so any other ideas would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

4

Weddings and engagement parties, from my perspective, are a different beast. The crowd isn’t going to be sitting there and critiquing your every mix and blend. They want to have fun.

So you can have fades and can talk on the mic over a harder mix, and all. Keep in mind that a lot of the crowd isn’t even going to be listening until they get drunk and won’t care anymore.

5

Too true, very good point,

probably a good job, it would be fair to say I’ll be too drunk to care aswell :smiley:

6

the most inspiration and knowledge i’ve gained for my eclectic mixing techniques come from just listening to other guys who do eclectic mixing and experimenting with different blend/transition techniques - some tricks will work for certain song combinations better than others, it’s a mater of just taking the time of doing some trial and error. it is more difficult finding combos that work than it is compared to just doing single genre and flat bpm mixes, but in my opinion the challenge makes it more interesting and enjoyable.

i’d have to say i’ve been most influenced by Solid Steel Radio for the multi-genre stuff. listen to this religiously and your bound to pick up a few ideas. cheers

7

i am no guru .. and for the most part my transitions consist of maybe adding a delay on the previous song, skipping part of the intro’s of the next pop/rock track and cross-fading maybe 5 seconds .. but i just feel that blending tracks too much when doing rock/pop is also not good.

people that go for rock/pop like the tracks the way they are and they want to be able to recognize the track .. so that they can scream and holler and get all the friends on the dance floor with which they have a history with the given song.

now of course if you can really put a cool spin on things .. all the better .. but do not be surprised if the audience doesnt appreciate it :-/

8

don’t forget that some DJ music websites, you can buy what are called “transitions” personally, i don’t like to use these, i kinda see them as cheating, if you know what i mean, but a lot of serato vinyl use them around here…

these are pre-studio made tracks that pull the tempo down or up, look here http://www.crooklynclan.net/

apply, and you’ll get in, there you can buy tracks and such…

9

just turn the radio off when you’re done with the top 40 ;p

10

don’t sound like to much of a top40 fan lol…

11

Thanks for all the advice you have given me. will defiantly help me on my way. dont usually listen to or download top 40 kinda tunes which is why use can tell it will be a bit harder for me to get the grips of lol anyone any videos of them dj’ing flaunting there stuff on the turntables or midi?

12

I’ve played a few weddings over the last few years and to be honest they are wicked fun. Drunk and up for it crowd. A lot of people in this day and age like decent music, even if they are at a wedding.

You can always do little sets of stuff that has the same bpm. Do a little commercial hip hop set (Beyonce, Jay Z, etc), then a commercial indie/electro set (Justice, New Young Pony Club etc), then a commercial house set (David Guetta blah blah blah)

Also, as well as top 40 look at some of the classics. There are some great tunes out there that are well known but classic to drop at parties.

Cheesy but MASSIVE!!!

13

hey

OK, firstly there is nothing wrong with DJing top 40 style music :smiley: Although all the “proper” DJ’s will look down on you and be all snobbish about their EDM or D&B/Dub or whatever, at the end of the day how many of them actually make a living from DJing and how many are just bedroom DJ’s? Totally nothing wrong with doing a little top 40 to pay the bills and still doing the EDM for your pleasure. DJing in student clubs has been my bread and butter for 12 years now and while I still do odd house gigs and other things for pleasure they’re what pay the bills :slight_smile:

Now in terms of mixing, the honest truth is with the type of music your playing no one will even notice. For 50% of the time a simple fade over and drop the next one as the previous fades out will be more than enough, and for the other 50% they will be similar enough in tempo that you may be able to loop the first few beats and do a wee medium speed beatmatch/fadeover but that is about as fancy as you’ll get.

Doing any more than this will actually go against you. These people are just here to hear songs that they know from the charts, get a bit drunk and dance silly, and any fancy mixing or cutting back and fourth or layering up multiple songs/samples will just put them off to be honest.

What you’ll have to concentrate on WAY above your mixing will be song choice. I could sit here all day writing lists of songs that would all go down well, but will give you some examples and you can take it from there.

Do it in wee mini sets, like 4 or 5 songs of a similar age/style/genre and then change to something else, maybe with one bridging song in between to smooth it over if its gonna be a big jump in genre/style, although in saying that big jumps can sometimes work well just situational really.

(Note this selection may be a bit UK biased in terms of what was popular in the charts for the US readers, but the OP is in Ireland so mostly should apply )

(PS, a good shout is to download the full “Now thats what I call music” catalogue, something like 70 disks they’re up to now and it has ALL of the chart hits back to the early 80’s. It’ll give you 75% of the tracks you need and you’ll just have to get some 60’s and 70’s stuff and your done.)

OK so what your gonna need is firstly a big selection of 60’s/70’s/80’s stuff this will be on average 40% of your night. Talking First last everything (Barry White), lots of ABBA, Bee Gees, Aretha, Love Shack, Love really hurts without you, some Blondie, Queen (mainly Dont Stop Me Now), boy george, young hearts run free, girls just wanna have fun, american pie (original) brown eyed girl, some of a preacher man, Jackson 5, Grease Megamix, Dirty dancing soundtrack, Elton John, Footloose, James Brown, Katrina & Waves, All night Long, 9 to 5, madonna (like a virgin or like a prayer), Tom Jones, sweet caroline, you can call me al, stevie wonder, Blues Brothers soundtrack, Commitments soundtrack, Think We’re alone now, Wanna Dance with somebody, Wake me up before you go-go, Only way is up, even YMCA on occation.

LOL and LOADS more really cheesy stuff like that thats all just off the top of my head.

Then add to it all of the pop music of the 90’s and early 2000’s: Shinia Twain, Robbie Williams, Anistasia, Amy Winehouse, take That, Boyzone, five, Backstreet boys, Girls Aloud, Sugar Babes, britney, christina, Belinda Carslile, Busted, McFly, george michael, Celin Dion, Mariah Carey (fuckin hate her! :stuck_out_tongue: ) J-Lo, KT Tunstall, Kylie, james morrison, moderm Michael Jackson Stuff, mambo no. 5, Nelly Furtardo’s older stuff (I’m like a bird for example) Liberty X, Lilly Allen, Pink, Mark Ronson’s remixes (especially Valerie) Mmmm bop, etc etc etc

Then add to that a big pile of music for the young people :smiley: so thats lots of R&B & Hiphop and whatever’s currently in the charts: Lady Gaga, Pussy Cat Dolls, beyonce, Jay Z, Dre, Eminem, Destinys child, Rhianna, Black Eyed Peas, Chris Brown, Neyo, Usher, Akon, Jay Sean, Pitbull, Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, Nelly Furtardo’s newer stuff, flo Rida, kati perry, kelly clarkson, kevin rudolf, Saturdays, Shakira blah blah blah the list goes on and on. You could also thrown in a little cheesy dance here like the remix of Sex Bomb, Don’t call me Baby, sing it back, etc etc and use that as your building up the night.

That will be the main chunk of your night and will keep everyone of all ages at the party happy. Your probably talking about 40% worth of 60s/70’s/80’s, 30% worth of 90’s/2000’s and 30% really modern stuff for your average party, and you can just read the crowd and modify that accordingly, if its like a 40th or 50’s then obviously lean to the older stuff and if its full of sexy young girls for a 21st or an 18th then throw in plenty of extra “young people stuff” (although they’ll quite happily dance dance to all the old cheese as well!).

On top of all that you’ll also need a wee handfull of Rock in case the people at the party are particuluar fans and want some on, so a selection of stuff from the modern like Killers/Kings of leon etc etc all the way back through brit pop with Oasis/Blur/Charlatans etc etc, your 80’s guns & Roses, Brian Adams and Bon Jovi and right back to ACDC, thin lizzy, alice cooper etc etc of the 70’s so you have them just in case.

And also you’ll need some Chav (or neds as we call them in scotland) commercial dance music for similar reasons as backup incase someone REALLY wants them, Pretty Green Eyes, Bass Hunter, Cascada, and that ilk, older 90’s stuff like Ntrance, TTF, QFX, Underworld, and all the rave stuff, and then cheesy (read crap!) hard house covers of things like hungry eyes and celin Dion etc etc will keep them happy too. “bouncy” songs as they will be referred to here in scotland by the neds!

You could throw in some really commercial dance music if there are plenty of young people, like David Guetta, Bob Sinclair’s Love Generation, the Agnes song that was in the charts 6 months or so ago, La Roux, etc etc. Maybe play a few as your warming up people and building some atmosphere while they all arrive and get a drink and say hi to aunty betty who they havent seen in a year etc, it would mix it up and stuff, but to be honest I’ve never had a private party ask for normal decent EDM or house music, its always that cheesy hard chart shit or just pop music so i wouldn’t worry about that too much.

And then finally round it off with some classics from your area and only you’ll know what that’ll be. For example every single private party i’ve ever been to or the odd few i’ve DJ’d at as a favor here in scotland ALWAYS finishes with the same two songs, proclaimers 500 Miles first and then everyone makes a circle around the birthday boy/girl/engaged or married couple/retiree or whatever it is and they play Runrig’s Lock Lomond while everyone jumps about and the circle shrinks in to meet the centre people and then back out again in time with the music :slight_smile: When your drunk it makes SO much more sense, but it is actually quite uplifting and touching to be involved in it :slight_smile:

LOL, anyway hope that helps. I was gonna do another bit about what equipment to buy but this is already a big huge essay so get your head round that first and then we can work on what speakers etc to get :slight_smile:

k

14

Thanks so so much for this. this was so much help!!! It’s the kind of stuff i already knew in the back of my head but seeing it as clearly as you put it there has made things alot easier to do and made everything come together. Also brilliant for me to refer back to in the coming weeks. All the tunes you have even mentioned are exactly what i needed because i could not think of any when i was trying to search for them the last couple of days.

i have alot of the older stuff but its just the point of organizing my tune selection now that has been made so much easier through this. i owe u a drink big time for this man, thanks.

Looking at alot of speakers etc now and have to get it on finance because i cant afford it in one lump sum. do you know any good u.k sites for speakers or packages on finance. dont have a clue when it comes to speakers etc especially for the needs i will be needing them for so i know its alot to ask for but your help would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

15

amen to that .. was DJing last saturday. it was a party for a frisbee tournament in berlin. usually a crowd that wants to dance. this time it took a lot of nudging and when i finally played some german hip-hop i was able to reach the critical mass of people nodding to have a dancing floor all night.

16

LOL, OK equipment:

Firstly and above all else AVOID skylab, skytech, Electrovision, KAM, QTS or behringer speakers.

Behringer mixers are Ok in a pinch, and their amps are actually fairly good wee workhorese, but for speakers those brands are just cheep and terrible. I’ve saw so many party DJs and Wedding bands who were actually quite good but the audience were so so about them or just thought they were poor because of the sound quality. They don’t know exactly why they think they are bad because they are not DJ’s or sound engineers, they just dont enjoy the night.

Conversely i’ve saw really average bands and DJs go down a storm because the sound was clear and good and they used decent equipment, and the crowd are again not musicians or DJs so they dont hear wee mistakes or bumps in the playing/djing, they just know it sounds good and dont really know why.

So yeah you wanna invest in slightly better quality stuff that you can build on and add too over time until you get a nice system.

Ideally you’re looking to invest in a system that has subs and tops. You can get large and heavy “full range” speakers but they never sound quite as good, and can be a pain to move about as i’m assuming you’ll be doing most of this on your own. Splitting the frequencies up into different speakers (specifically giving the bass its own speaker) means that each speaker has a smaller range to cover and hence a much easier time.

Your wanting to put together a system that you can build on and expand over time, because as you say it can quite expensive for all this stuff. Stick to slightly better brands like lower end JBL stuff, Mackie, EV or even samson and Warfdale pro are all a step above those other ones.

Can I ask, how good is your level of DIY or Woodwork? By far the best route to start off with if you can manage is to build your own speakers. A simple set of reflex tops and subs isn’t really much of a challenge and you will save loads. You probably wont get down to the prices of skytech etc but thats because they buy so muchcheep components in bulk, but what you will do is spend not too much more than that and get a set of speakers that are MASSIVLY better in quality and volume right up there with speakers that cost 100 of £’s more. If its something your interested in looking into have a look at the forum on www.speakerplans.com, there is a whole new world of info on there if you search through the forum you will learn loads.

Anyway whether you build or by, what your gonna be needing is speakers, amp(s) and a crossover.

Some speakers will have the amps built into them, which are called active speakers, where as the more traditional ones where the amp is a separate piece of equipment are called passive speakers.

The “crossover” is the part of the system that divides up the sound and sends the bass to the parts of the speakers that make bass, the mid to the mid parts and the high frequencies to the high parts. Again you’ll get active and passive ones.

What I would suggest for you just now is to look for a set of passive speakers (a sub on each side either 15" or 18"), and then a mid/top speaker above that either 15" or 12" personally i’d go with 12 you only really need 15 if you don’t have a sub) that have passive crossovers in the bass bins. This means that for just now you only need one amp and the amp will plug into the bass bins, which will take out the bass information and then send the rest (the mid and top) up to the top speaker.

That will be a nice simple system that will do most small and med parties etc, and if you ever need to do somewhere larger, you can look to adding a second set of subs and tops so that you have two of each on each side. In this case you would invest in another amp and an active crossover, so that what would happen is the mixer would feed into the crossover first, which would be a separate box in with the amps and which would do the splitting here rather than at the speakers. It would then feed the bass into one amp which would power the subs and the mid/top into a second amp which would feed the top speakers. Would give you a good jump in volume and a very nice sounding wee system for bigger gigs.

OK in terms of the numbers and specs and things for the speakers, you have to consider 3 things: the power handling, the sensitivity and the impedance.

The power handling is how many watts the speaker can take from the amp, and straight off the bat it gets confusing. Firstly make sure your comparing like for like. Most decent speaker brands will say their power handling figures are shown as “RMS”, but some of the cheaper ones will use “program power” or “peak power”. Program power is usually double RMS, and peak power is usually given as double again, or 4x RMS.

Without going into spending ages why this is just make sure to convert everything to RMS so that you know you have like for like and also for choosing the right amp to go with it later.

250w or 300w RMS for the tops will be perfect for your needs, and 300 or 400w RMS for the subs will also be magic, and while they obviously wont be mega top of the range they’ll be a good wee set to make a start with and build from.

Next is sensitivity, and this is a measure basically of how good the speaker is at actually taking all those watts and turning them into sound coming out, which is so much more important than most people know. The measurement is in dB and to illustrate the effect it has, a difference of just 3db is the same as doubling (or halving) the size of the amplifier.

Its particularly obvious in Car Audio really, where they have tried to play the numbers game and boast about how their subwoofer can handle x thousand watts and such, but all the extra strong rubber and metal and components needed to handle the heat and current from all these watts means that they are slow and heavy and particularly poor at converting all this power into actual sound.

Anyway while car audio will have figures in the high 80’s or low 90’s, for PA you should expect at least 95 for a normal reflex speaker but really like 97/98/99 is fairly common even in the kind of middle brands.

and finally the impedance. Now again this one is a bit complex to go into the details of, but what you need to know is that the impedance will almost always be 8 ohms or 4 ohms for a speaker.

It has two effects on your choices, firstly amplifiers give out different power depending on what impedance their playing into. So when matching up your amplifier and speakers you’ll need to take this into account. And secondly when you start to connect speakers together the impedance will change (usually lower) and that effects again your amps and how you connect everything together.

To sum it all up without going into too much detail, if you’re only gonna ever use one sub and one top per side, try and get 4 ohm speakers. You will get a bit more power out the amp than you would with 8 ohm ones.

But if you wanna be flexible and leave room for expansion in the future the 4 ohm ones are a problem because when you connect two together you go down to 2 ohms, and many budget or mid range amplifiers are not stable at 2 ohms. Much better in this case to get get 8 ohm speakers and while you will have to get a slightly bigger amp it will pay off long term when you can combine and add to your system much easier.

OK choosing the amp. What you want to look for once you have decided on your speakers is to see what their RMS power rating is per side (so like if your using a passive crossover it would be something like 300+400=700w RMS per side at 8 ohms) and then find an amplifier that can supply about 1.5 to 2x the power of that number at the given ohmage.

Now most people will first of all say wait a minute, doesnt that mean my amp is too big for the speakers and will blow them?

technically yes, but its the far better solution than the opposite if you use it correctly.

Firstly about half of the reason that the speaker is rated at whatever wattage is because thats how much heat it can handle because lots of heat builds up as it works. Now the RMS measurement will be taken under certain conditions with a constant sign wave tone, but real music has a lot more peaks and dips and loud bits and quiet bits, and so the heat doesnt build up just as much as the constant tone.

Secondly the alternative is to use an amp that is the same or slightly lower power than the speakers. But what’s gonna happen here is you’ll need to run the amp pretty much flat out to get the volume you need, and when its right on the limit like this you start to get lots of distortion and clipping in the sound, and this noise will not only sound SHITE it’ll blow your speakers far quicker than a little bit extra clean power will!

So the idea is to get an amp that is about 1.5 or two times the raiting of your speakers and then only turn it up to about 75%. This way your well within the limits of everything and it will all sound clean and clear and amazing :smiley:

OK now actual recommendations. My top recommendation above all else if you cold stretch to it would be the Void Acoustics Basys system. Its a wee package exactly as described, 2 subs 2 tops and a wee amp, with cables and everything its all ready to go and can be expanded in future if needed. Will sound FAR FAR better than all other similar party DJ’s and than anything else out there in that price range. (lol you only get 4 speakers but the picture the one on the ground is just to show that the tops can also be used as stage monitors!)

Outside of that just avoid the stuff on the DJ shops like HTFR and decks.co.uk and instead look at the proper music sites like Dolphin music, thomann and digital village the stuff on there will be better and if you follow the advice above you should get a nice wee system :smiley:

LMAO, and thats just sound. You’ll probably wanna look at some lights as well, which we’ll look at another day!

K

17

Backspin…drop next track
problem solved :stuck_out_tongue:

18

once again i cannot thank you enough for the all the help and advice :slight_smile:

Firstly i was considering making my own and have decent woodwork skills, my da is a joiner and my uncle is a carpenter and all who are happy to help me anytime i have needed anything like this done in the past. The only thing i would not be too keen on is relying on something that i have made myself especially with absolutly no speaker building experiance in my life and trying to compare it to someone else’s 3.2k soundsystem lol i havent looked at the site you posted but i will give it a blast after work

Secondly
I HAVE to buy these on finance as i will not be able to afford these any other way. I am trying to get these for about mid feb as i have some gigs lined up if i want them becuase my girlfriends sister is offereing me to dj at there pre formals (which will go on for about a year and a half) and therefore will get me a good amount of money back on the equipment i buy and also get my name out to all the ones haveing upcoming 18ths (brilliant for giving out my card).

I have been hounding HTFR becuase they offer the finance service and DV247 just dont seem to have much when it comes to soundsytems unless you could find something in my price range and of good volume and quality. at the end of the day i can only make this all possible if i do get this on finance and that is it. The void acoustic Bays are way out of my proce range just for speakers. £3569 they were getting quoted for. Thats over what i want to spend on everything altogether. my price range at the minute is £1500-£2000 for absolutly everything. I am willing to just get standard lights at the minute for about £100 or so (until i start making more money) and need a new mixer as well so ultimatly about £1700 on the speakers/amp etc.
I will be planning on renting these speakers to friends/promoters as well and for using them on local house and trance nights so i am more concerned about the speakers atm and the volume and quality especially as i said before. I doubt there would be more than 200 people at any of these events as well.

I have been reading alot of the technical side of things you advised me on and after 3 times they really are not sinking in and i still dont realli know what im looking for but im off been off work sick the last couple of days so its prob not sinking in.

i want to post some of the systems i have been looking at as well thogh dont want to to have your face in your palm after that what you just wrote to me but i ahve been getting advice from someone i talk to once in a while as well who has been recommending the odd link to me as well but you seem to have alot more knowledge about what you are talking about and therefore i will listen to you first off lol

oh and i know u want to shoot me already for where this link is from but this is one of the links the boy who i have been talking to has recommended. if its a no no just say but its just im getting confused when one person tells me one thing and the other something else. cheers once again.

http://www.htfr.com/more-info/MR272018

19

this thread has been a great help for me aswell, only ever played in nightclubs and a specific genre so a cheesy party is gona be a shock to the system lol :slight_smile:

20

hey

Who exactly quoted you 3.5K for a basys system? I could defo speak to some people and get you it for about 2.5K, which i realise is still a little out your price range but shouldn’t be as much as you were quited I wouldn’t have thought.

Anyway as to that Cerwin Vega system that looks quite good actually. Although I havent heard these ones specifically the brand is OK, defo a good step above the ones I warned you about. They are active which does involve a little more cabling (as the speakers need both a signal cable and a power cable) but saves you on carrying an amp.

My only slight concern would be that the jump from 15" subs to dual 8" tops might be a little big and you may loose a shade of low mid, but shouldn’t be too bad.

Yeah overall i’d say if they fit the bill and you can get them on HP then go for it they’ll do a wee job nicely :slight_smile:

k