Mix 43 – 930 Supreme

This mix is truly me as a DJ. This would be what I would do if I performed live. I prepped 7 tracks and created a playlist. The next morning, I picked a track to play and started mixing. Beat Sync was off. Once I started playing a track, I’d have to cue the next track in my headphones. This was my first time using the ‘Traffic Light System’ to identify songs that were in key. I used that to help select which track to play next. This was also my first time using a DJ pool to find new tracks. The one I selected was BPM Supreme, hence the name of the mix.

Overall, it went well. The transition between Never Be Alone and Going Bad is kinda dull. I think if I had planned it, I could have used EQs or something to make it pop. The transition between Going Bad and Loco Contigo is clean. I find that funny because Loco Contigo was the one track that I thought of removing from the playlist when doing track prep.

I’m really proud of the transition between 2 Phones and Call Out My Name. It definitely doesn’t sound the best, but it sounds decent. The reason that I am proud of it is that I had to put it together in the moment and it was good enough to not ruin the mix. The two tracks are 12 BPM apart. So, I could beat match. I figured I’d just do a simple fade and it worked!

I was excited to used the record break effect to stop the mix. I was a bit harsh, but hey, there’s a reason I call this collection Rough Drafts of My Perfect Mix. Enjoy!

Mix 42 – Life, The Universe, and Everything

I’m just too big of a nerd to pass this up. This is Mix 42. As per The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Universe, 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. So, we are going with it.

This weekend also marks a couple of other things. Continuing with the nerd theme, it is also the date of PAX: West. So, I’m in a bit of a nerdy mood. But Labor Day 2017 was also the point when I went on Craigslist and found a Traktor Kontrol S2 and bought it. Labor Days are my anniversary of DJing. Labor Day 2019 marks my 2nd anniversary.

Recently, I’ve questioned if I really wanted to keep going. This whole year has been, ‘The Dip’ for me. I’ve perfected scripted mixes, but doing it live is much harder. My time has been limited due to work/life obligations, so I’ve approached a lot of sessions thinking, ‘what I will do won’t be perfect, but something is better than nothing’. So, I’d bang out another 3 track mix. I’d try to learn, but there are so many conflicting views on how to do it. I’d read one blog or YouTube video and think I’ve figured it out. But then I’d review a tutorial that told me that if I didn’t do it their way, I’d never progress. So, I’d just get lost.

Labor Day is a long weekend for me. It is one of the 6 that I get on my current job (New Years, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas). So, it’s a great time to deep dive into something. Obviously, I’ve repeatedly used it to deep dive into DJing. This year is not different. I reviewed a lot of the material that I had access to on DJ with an eye towards getting passed ‘The Dip’. I can’t say that I’ve solved it. but I’ve set a set of achieve able improvements to my skill set and I’ll work toward addressing them by the end of the year.

What really got me motivated was my session today. I switched from using Hot Cues to Memory Cues to mark points in tracks. In Traktor, these really are the same thing. I also set RekordBox to do countdowns to these’s points. It freed up my performance pads to use for beat jumping while prepping tracks and effects while performing.

As such, in this mix, I had a series of tracks prepared with memory cues, not hot cues. From there, I performed live. I adjusted tempo of the next track during the mix. I used my headphones to figure out how it would sound in a transition. Then, when the time to transition occurred, I winged it. I did it real time. It’s not perfect, but it is truly a Rough Draft Of My Perfect Mix. So, I kept it.

Enjoy!