How do you guys feel about remixes?
I personally love them, but a lot of my gigs are in front of a bunch of Top40 loving kids and if I drop any sort of a remix, they start screaming “What the hell! I hate remixes! Where’s the original?!”
Anyone else experience this? Doesn’t have to just be Top40, all other genres count too…
-Bence
I feel that… Unless you play the Radio Edit people get pissy.
Theres no point in people saying “well educate them” chances are they know the remixes and want to hear the Radio version cus thats what everyone else knows and can sing a long to.
Theres always great remixes of Top 40 stuff but many take out the bits of a tune that made it a hit. You cant blame people for wanting to hear what they know.
Its a shame cus some great remixes just dont get played out enough.
Unless its some dogshit Dubstep version that people like just cus its cool to like it (La Roux springs to mind).
Did you have any in mind? Be interested to know mate cus i have this dilemma weekly ..!
Dilemma as in a gig and you need some Top40 remix stuff, right?
I’d love to help you of with that 
Lemme know what’s up…
But one of my main example’s is this…
It’s the Fred Falke remix of Tik Tok, I personally think its a bangin’ remix, but I’ve dropped this before and gotten 50 piss drunk girls yelling “what’s wrong with you! I hate remixes!”
I spin a lot of top 40 and I don’t even bother with remixes anymore. People don’t go to top 40 clubs to be educated on music, they want to hear the same crap they listened to in the car on the way there.
Lol no i mean dilemma as in whether to play the Radio edit or one of the 15 remixes that comes with every darn Beyonce/Gaga/Rihanna track.
I do a Top40 gig every monday. Its a good gig, students and locals VERY cheap booze so it can go off some nites. Keeps me out of trouble !!!
Yeah i like the Fred Falke mix of Tik Tok in fact you pick a great example. Fred Falke does some great synthy remixes of a lot of pop but if you play them people moan.
Totally agree. Which is annoying , but true.
Personally, I’ve heard the original radio edit of tracks so many times, that yes, I could still dance to them if I had to, but I want some sort of new spin on it, some freshy new dancy beat, that’s part of why I like remixes so much, the other part is, that remixs make some great tracks, which were “un-danceable” with the original, “danceable”.
My feeling is that, as long as the crowd has a decent response to a remix, your good to go, if not, stick with the original. For me (and I would hope other DJs too), It’s all about reading my crowd and thinking to myself, “okay, these guys look really into it, should I try something a little crazy?” or “Naww, these guys aren’t drunk enough, lets play it safe tonight…”
And it’s a freakin shame, these dudes like Falke have some amazing mixes, but nobody wants to hear them! I love all of Falke’s shit! What’s up with people not wanting to hear it?!
I’ll always play a remix over the original.
The way I see it people like to hear something they recognise, but also like a sense of something new on a night out.
Not ‘always’ but yeah, fairly often.
Same goes for my large collection of funk covers of well known tunes … Cookin’ On 3 Burners / Feel Good Inc. anyone?
Depends on the club and the kind of clubbers.
I can tell you with 10 years of experience that if your DJing at a High Street/Student Union club people will get pretty pissy pretty quick if you play remixes all night.
Unless the club is known for more Dance orientated music it can be hard to play remixes.
The club i do on Mondays is pure cheesey pop for the rest of the week. I dont play outright cheese but the pop i play has to be the radio stuff cus the kind of people that go to the club are not “clubbers” they just your average Joe & Jenny Student.
No point trying to ram music people dont want to hear down their throats in some vain attempt at education.
I try remixes, of course i do but i have to keep the floor full all nite. Thats my job at that night. When a remix fails i play the radio edit the next time unless i am 100% certain that it will work. DJs are fallible , you can get it wrong.
Takes a good DJ to decide ‘right fuck that people arent having it’ and play the edit rather than stubbornly upholding the better remix.
Thats the reality of those kinda clubs im afraid.
Some DJs wont compromise, i accept that. Personally im prepared to play “Bad Romance Radio Edit”…:eek:, cus id rather be able to buy that nice Penfield jacket i just saw (and bought) .. SELL OUT 
I play(ed) a lot of remixes and generally the response was pretty good. People I know like to hear (even cheeseball) remix of top 40 tracks.
And if someone has a problem with it, just resort to bad jokes..
“Hey this remix sucks…”
“Nah man it’s cool, I talked to D.”
“Who the *&%& is D?!?”
“DEEZ NUTZ!!!”
lol.
I think for me it totally depends on the track, sometimes you want to play the original and visa versa!!! I like the fact that you have the option sometimes. Plus most of the time being able to gauge the crowd you can tell if they are Top40 or remix material?
Also this is all irrelevant anyway now you can, in effect, remix on the hop with all of the advances with things like Traktor etc, get creative and make your own with some of the bits from the original?!? At least then you are covering both bases?
Yea fair enough, but I am just referring to my personal experience which is only playing at electro nights, and playing the kind of music that I DJ. Definitely no top 40/pop or anything similar. I think playing an original would clear the club let alone the dance floor
Good point.
Yeah totally . I play plenty of other nites where i wouldnt touch a Top40 tune.
Thats the whole point though. I guess the cooler electro crowd dont wanna hear the radio edit cus its not cool enough. Sometimes the original is actually the best version. Right track for the right night.
Horses for courses…
Horses for courses…[/QUOTE]
Hit the nail on the head!!!
I tell you a good remix to cheesy top 40. Skeet Skeet remix of Tik Tok is pretty dope.
I often play remixes just to speed up the bpm of some tracks. I like keeping it up there to about 124-130 ish
I think theres a fine line with some remixes. In some cases if you drop them in and they fit the vibe you can pull it off. In a lot of cases I find the originals are better anyway, but I’ll drop a few in a set if it works.
Damn the Fred Falke remix of Tik Tok didn’t speak to me at ALL…
I guess this thread is totally for top 40 guys because remixes are more the norm for the kind of EDM stuff I go with… the question kind of exists in reverse.
I guess you could always tease the crowd with the remix, then drop the hookiest part of the top 40 original to drive them onto the dancefloor. Then it’d be easy-peasy to overlay in a bit of finely tuned feedback to pop the poor fucker’s eardrums. It’d be a mercy deafening.
Well my personal opinion is this…sometimes the original can be better than a remix simply because it sets the mood of the night the way i want it to and blends better with the whole rhytm and mood of the previous songs…however…after readin this thread i just scanned my library quickly and realized that most of my tracks are remixed…i guess i do like the whole idea “Im unique…just like everybody else” XDXD…but yeah…i always try to play remixes simply because i want to differentiate my sets and everytime make them a differente experience…at least for the fact that if a new dj shows up at my spot he can play my exact same set and people wouldn’t even feel the difference…while adding remixes to your set does make it something personal and who knows..you might make it even your trademark. And honestly…too bad if someone doesn’t like it…plus most of the time the remixes i choose are the ones that make the track much more danceable so people seem to appreciate it.