Just the other day i was at this party, where a very known dj in my area was spinning, and going backstage i noticed a youtube tab open with a “2013 boom megamix” video playing. He was just pretending to mix on his ddj-t1, mashing buttons and rotating knobs like crazy. I’m not hating on him, because i don’t know the whole story behind it, so here goes the question:
Now, my question is: honestly, have you ever been in a situation where, for a reason or another, you just weren’t feeling like mixing? Say, a sleepless night before the gig, or a strong headache, or just one too many shots or glasses of wine and you feared the worst trainwreck humanly possible?
I can in all honesty say i never faked, except for loading 10min mixes to go to the toilet, or maybe twisting some knobs when drunken people came to the booth saying “can i do wiki wiki on the dj stuff oooh and how do you do that and what is that light over there and play levels”
No. Absolutely not. You should call out that kat publicly! Ive used relay and cruise modes when going to get a drink, but to fake mixing or any other artform is the lowest of the low.
I feel with the current state of djing every dj has an obligation to do their job. As it is a lot of people already think “everyone’s a dj, it’s so easy”. Things like fake mixing only hurt dj’s credibility. As you said before nothing wrong with throwing on a longer mix to run to the washroom, I’ve also ran a mix while I’m in the process of getting things setup.
That is COMPLETELY acceptable from my point of view. Far better to be able to go to the toilet than having a bottle or some such in the booth. Also totally ok to have a channel empty to point drunkards to, had a trainwreck get created by a drunk girl once, not cool.
Dunno how much it counts, but I’ve played one or two pre-recorded mashups that I’ve made.
Exactly.. Same thing happened to me but with a drunk dude who threatened to punch me if i didn’t let him touch my gear. Needless to say, he ended up out of the club and i ended up with a bruise on the cheek. Tough job
As i’m not playing at gigs, i can’t tell, but i have seen a few famous people faking at DJing. One of the ones i remember was a guy from a famous radio show in France (yeah i’m french ), that was completely faking. I hated him for that because i knew this guy was totally not a DJ, but he did like he was.
I think that every situation is different !
Nothing wrong with a pre recorded mash up. It frees up a deck for you and you still did the work. This would be like scratch dj’s who make their own battle sentences and battle records. Claiming its your own mash up when you downloaded it from someone else is another issue.
I love to do live mashups with acapellas, but sometimes prepreparing them in advance is a lifesaver (say, the acapella you want to mash is half a key lower than the instrumental, i don’t use traktor so i don’t have pitch shift)…
Regularly played shows with a DJ who would pretend to be mixing Girl Talk-style mashups live, twisting knobs during buildups, etc - but actually was playing 5-10 minute mashup tracks that he’d pre-made in FL Studio and poorly mixing those mashup tracks together. It always felt like such a sham to anyone who was behind the booth, but damn if he didn’t bring the crowds in full force.
2 of my ‘mates’ got hired to play this really annoying girls 21st birthday party at her parents mansion (stinking rich).
They took a load of records and cds… but these kids were so fucking obnoxious they thought fuck it and put my latest mix CD on which I did for a club that a lot of the people there went to. So the kids heard the music they liked and my mates did NOTHING for nearly 2 hours apart from drink.
THEY GOT PAID.
I got nothing apart from I this story, which is ok I guess.
They still bring it up “ha remember that time we got paid loads for playing YOUR mix” .
One time I was playing at a party and I got so many “reggaeton requests” that I just put a mix I had but i did not fake it, I was not in the booth, every now and then I’d go back to check everything was ok.
I did not pretend to be twisting knobs or anything.
