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!