DJ Stylus – The Vibe Conductor

Little Miss Whiskey’s Golden Dollar is no longer a secret. Spot was full by 10pm. Jammed by 11pm with a line outside. I rocked them bammas, but I had to retool my approach to play peak time intensity at 11:30 rather than 1am. Mark the owner was looking at the room, then looking at me like “could you go ahead and crush these fools already?”

The chorus of supporters all say “why weren’t you recording?”

My recorder is kinda funny style these days. The cash register was working overtime last night so maybe I’ll go buy a new one. “Cha-ching!!”

I lieu of what would have been a dope podcast, here’s a setlist, if only for the folks who were asking me about tunes I couldn’t remember playing. Must have been “The Awesomeness” at work. I somehow ended up with more peach whiskey slurpees than I intended.

[setlist: DJ Stylus at Little Miss Whiskey's, 1/23/10]

Hard drive failure.

Laptop failure.

Theft.

Ever happened to you right before a gig?

Just a few short years ago it wasn’t uncommon to lose record boxes on flights. That’s a soul killing ordeal. Remember those check-in battles to carry your vinyl as a carry-on? Remember when you’d lose that battle and damn near have a heart attack waiting for your flight case to emerge at baggage claim? Now that most of us are partially or all digital, the convenience of our current tools sometimes makes us forget that tragedy can still strike.

I’ve read that A-Trak tours with two laptops. That isn’t practical for me, but I do have my music drive mirrored on an external that I bring to every gig.

But what if my laptop AND external drive fail? What if your main AND backup laptop get swiped?

Actually, before you proceed, you MUST read A-Trak’s account of one of the most confounding EPIC FAILS that any DJ could suffer, including a stack of dead Lacie drives. I hope no one is still under that illusion that Mac users are immune to this sort of suffering.

I don’t tour as much as many of my peers, but if I did, I’d look into online backup services. Imagine being on the other side of the world and your whole gig bag gets stolen. You can download a full clone of your hard drive onto a new machine and be up and running again quickly.

DJ Tech Tools has a nice roundup of these services with a helpful summary of all their features.

The comments in that article are even more informative. There are many different approaches to emergency proofing your data.

Of course, we all have multiple backups at home, right? RIGHT?!? They’re just no good to you on the road in an emergency.

What disaster avoidance schemes do you all have? There’s no way that any of us should have our asses hanging in the wind due to computer failure. We just have to prepare in advance and not be lazy.

I played back-to-back classic hip-hop parties this past weekend. I teamed up with two of my favorite DJ colleagues in DC, we had a blast and smashed on both nights but the crowds couldn’t have been more different. One crowd was full of serious heads who got more excited the deeper we went in the mix. The other crowd was more diverse, significantly younger, and only really moved by the same hits that everyone knows. One party-goer described my set from that night as “hybrid house jazzy hip hop.” Pete Rock in particular got a thumbs down and I double-checked the track list for house music but couldn’t find any.

I was reminded that when it comes to hip-hop these days, most people have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.

Not exactly breaking news, I know.

When I was younger and wore hip-hop like a shield of identity, I’d be quick to check you on hip-hop dogma, then I’d strike a b-boy pose. Now that I’m getting older, I’ve started to feel like something was wrong with me. Like I’m the fuddy-duddy who refuses to change with the times. Talking to folks, reading these websites and being in the DJ booth trenches with my comrades are making me realize it’s not me.

This isn’t about people showing up to The Main Ingredient and requesting Gucci Mane with a straight face. The folks in that alternate dimension who think the world revolves around “swag”, tattoos and Patron are a separate discussion and might as well be on another planet. I’m talking about the folks who ride for hip-hop as hard as I used to, except their zeal is fueled by ignorance.

Hip-hop raised me and molded me but on my journey as a DJ and creative soul, I’m always adding new sounds, styles and genres to my portfolio of experience. Ultimately I’m a music person. I always seek to paint from an ever widening palette whether I’m spinning records or making them. I no longer identify myself as hip-hop, pretty much because no matter what I do, it’ll always BE hip-hop. It’s a lens that shapes my perception outside of my conscious awareness. It’s my internal rhythm. It’s not something that I have to proclaim or debate. It’s something I’ve lived so long that it’s like breathing, yet it’s still one dimension among many that I can access when expressing myself musically.

You don’t have to have the same experience in order to love hip-hop. You don’t have to spend 20 years and tens of thousands of dollars collecting records. You don’t have make a pilgrimage to the Bronx or perfect a six-step. I understand being zealous about hip-hop. The difference between my experience and what I’m seeing today is the lack of humility about what you DON’T know.

For instance. I love jazz. I started learning about it in high school. I’ve been to a lot of shows and collected a lot of music. I’ve even performed with jazz musicians. But I’d never critique an expert jazz musician without knowing what I was talking about backwards and forwards. So out of all the assholes that regularly give us grief in the DJ booth, why are the most rabid ones almost always on some hip-hop related bullshit?

These days people have a surface grasp of hip-hop combined with a warped sense of entitlement. And there’s a significant thirst for validation involved too. I don’t know if it’s really about the music or the times we live in. The latter is influential, because there seems to be a correlation between talking loud and saying nothing about hip-hop and the ease with which people feel comfortable spouting off on the internet. But I focus on the music because that’s where I’m most engaged.

What is it about hip-hop makes those with the least to say speak loudest? Why are you too lazy to care about anything beyond the same 20 records that we’ve caning to death for 20 years? Maybe it’s because no one listens to albums anymore. I thought I no longer cared but it still gets to me sometimes.

[photos: Vix, Mezzanine SF]

A little over a week ago I checked out Wanda Sykes filming her new HBO special at Warner Theatre. Other than nearly laughing myself into urinary incontinence, I was struck by the strong parallels between the crafts of dj’ing and standup.

My observations:

Timing

This is the defining skill of every good comic. The difference between a huge laugh and the sound of crickets can be measured in micro-beats. And so it is with the DJ. Drop a record a hair’s breadth off of the “one” and your dancefloor hiccups (at best) or you lose all of your momentum and everyone stops to stare at you (at worst). Nail the right transition on beat and everyone goes apeshit.

Narrative, flow and pacing

A comic’s jokes are like characters in a story. Sometimes those jokes are mini tales of their own that are woven together into a grand narrative by linking together common strands. A real DJ always tells a story on the decks. You should be able to follow a narrative that includes setting, plot twists and climaxes. Individual songs become building blocks in a discernible audio journey with all the characteristics of a well written novel.

The role of the opener

A night at a show or on the dancefloor follows an energy arc with a beginning, middle and end. A comic or DJ opening for a headliner is tasked with getting the room warmed up and prepped for peak time energy. Go too hard and the crowd will run out of steam prematurely. Don’t come with it and the crowd sees you as the enemy delaying them from enjoying the headliner. Strike the right balance and everyone wins, especially the opener who earns new fans and more gigs.

The tightrope walk

It’s sooo easy to go from killing to being killed. The crowd loves you until they hate you, although comics have more leeway to dispatch hecklers. The flipside is that it all comes together when the dj/comic builds a relationship with the audience. There’s a tipping point in the evening where trust is established. Once that point is reached, the comic or the dj can really go in, which builds more good vibes in the crowd, and a feedback loop of positive energy is created.

You’re all alone

It’s just you on stage with a microphone, just as the dj commands the decks alone. Some dj booths are set further away from the dancefloor so you’re less accessible but still, all eyes are on you. It’s a position that’s simultaneously powerful and precarious. When you as one individual can command a whole room, club, hall or arena’s emotions, it’s a unique rush that you can’t stop chasing once you’ve experienced it.

Stay tuned for other installments in this series such as:

DJ’ing is like video editing.
DJ’ing is like distance running.
DJ’ing is like sex.
DJ’ing is like being RNC chairman Michael Steele (bad nights can be really bad.)

So I kinda just looked up and all of a sudden I noticed that I now have 50 mix sets posted on this here site. Painfully aware of my ongoing consistency issues, I ended up staring at the WordPress category in amazement.

Going back through the collection yields an interesting series of snapshots of how I’ve been playing records the past few years. Some mixes are planned, some off the cuff, some are recordings either from our radio show or live at gigs. Certain artists tend to make repeat appearances. Some mixes consistently bubble up to the top of my server logs even when buried deep in the site’s archives. I think that has something to do with Google searches for rare records but I’ll take the new listeners however they happen to stumble over here.

If you haven’t been along for the ride from the beginning, here are my five favorite mixes from the bunch. Make sure you subscribe (iTunes/XML) so you can get the newness automatically as soon as I post. For folks that go all the way back to when I used to press up cd’s of these joints, please post up in the comments with YOUR favorites.

In no particular order:

1. Rhomiepalooza III
People ask me why I would want to spin records at my own birthday party. Because it’s THERAPY, that’s why. Especially when I can play for a room filled with people who love music as much as I do and trust me to tell them a compelling story. Tone, Bill Source & Divine are like family. I was learning about classics as a young buck listening to Source at Howard U. warehouse parties and he STILL pulls out records I’ve never heard in my life. This particular Sunday evening we were banging out and kept the three man rotation popping. I love that you can hear the dancefloor in the recording. When I haven’t been to Daylight in a while, I don’t feel right inside. Which means I’ll probably be paying a visit this weekend.

2. Progressive Groove 2
I did this one when I turned 30. I programmed the selection pretty carefully but executed the mix in one take. I was trying to make a statement and I’m still pleased with it. I did have to put some of these cuts on semi-retirement because I was playing them to death. Can’t help it when a tune feels that good.

3. Fonk Smoothie
Fonky and smoove. That was the goal. Some old dusty joints off the original vinyl, some modern soul and some electronica that all have connecting elements. This one remains popular and can set a party off. I might have been having a little too much fun with the SP-303 I had just copped but oh well. The filters, yo! Love it, although I replaced it with its big brother. And if you know me, you know I have no qualms throwing not one but two Steely Dan joints in the same mix.

4. ProjectVIBE 15 – Obrigado Brasil
Brazil is a huge source of inspiration for me musically and culturally. Last year I finally had a chance to make a visit. Folks keep asking when I’ll do another one of these. It’s on the list. Elliott, I see you but I’m so ashamed. I’ll try my best to get back in your good graces.

5. New Year’s Eve at Marvin 2008 (pt. 2)
For the past two years, Jahsonic and I have committed the DJ equivalent of this commercial at Marvin on new year’s eve. If you were there, one or the other was probably your most fun December 31st party ever. If not, we pretty much recreate the experience every Monday.

The title quote comes from a pretty ill interview with Roctakon over at the Turntable Lab blog. Reading it got me reflecting on the choices I’ve made in my DJ career, the state of the art of dj’ing and the environments and markets in which we practice this craft.

But first, some back story.

I remember Roctakon from the ’90s in DC, when he was working at 12-Inch Dance Records, battling with the O.G. Goonies crew and dropping mix cd’s. All of us had tight backpack straps and lived to juggle doubles of pretty much anything that was recorded in D&D Studios. Dirty Hands was still DJ Static, The Trooperz were repping in DMC battles at the old Black Cat and State of the Union was in its prime. Eventually Rocktakon moved on to Turntable Lab in NYC, downplayed the scratch nerdery and started building his name on the club circuit. Turntable Lab got its weight up as a brand and business and started transitioning from its turntablism niche into a driver of hipster DJ culture.

I was also expanding beyond my purely underground hip-hop background but in a different direction – away from the popular trends towards deeper soul, house, electronica, funk, world music and the like. I gave up my big room mainstream club aspirations as other peers of mine dominated that lane just as the music was becoming increasingly unbearable.

So considering that I come from the same scene (that now feels like centuries ago) but went in an entirely different and non-lucrative direction, Roctakon’s screed is a pretty fascinating assessment of a world that I don’t really encounter but check in on occasionally.

It’s stuff that I know but I’m not living day to day.

On the worst place to dj:

I’d say the current manifestation of bottle service clubs in NY is one of the worst scenes ever. I mean its dead but nobody will admit it, they just try and keep it going, its like going to dj a funeral, but nobody will look at the body. 1Oak will stay around and so will the B&T spots but the rest of ny bottle service will die in the next year or so and i say good riddance.

On life as a touring club dj:

Its lowest common denominator shit like you just end up playing Move Bitch and Party Up by DMX its miserable..

Yea some football player counted 9 hundred dollar bills onto my laptop cause i was not playing the Plies song he wanted quick enough…

This is a popularity contest and don’t forget it. being nice and kissing ass and knowing the right people and being likeable…

Dude might be experiencing burnout, and I’d counter some of his assertions that creativity doesn’t matter in the commercial world with examples of really skilled and technical cats that can rock for the boo-boo heads, but… he’s dropping mad nuggets of truthiness in this jont.

[photo: myslavelake.com]

I want to talk about gain control today. Because it’s really out of control.

As DJ’s, we’ve spent hours, weeks and years honing the various aspects of our craft: mixing, scratching, blending, programming a set, reading a room, digging for new sounds, mastering various types of equipment, learning about different genres of music…

But truthfully, most of us fail at monitoring and maintaining optimal sound levels. It’s the one aspect of the craft that has been completely abandoned and I’m aggravated about it.

If you’re not wearing earplugs at any show or nightclub these days, you’re in for a brutal assault. A few years ago, I started leaving a set of earplugs in every bag that I use. My regular day bag, my dj bag(s), travel bags. With the type of schedule I keep, I never know when I might end up at a party, a show or a session, and I ALWAYS have to be prepared with plugs.

With most DJ’s these days, if you take a look at their mixer at peak time, the meters are slammed in the red, their gain knobs are maxed and their master volume knob might be topped out too.

Red means “Turn the volume down, you asshole!”

If there isn’t any dynamic processing in the signal chain, at best the music will sound horribly distorted. If there are compressors and limiters and they aren’t set right and/or you’re pushing them too hard, you’ll get that irksome pumping sound. At worst you’ll blow a speaker or two, or all.

Then you have people on the dance floor looking like this:

[photo: addicted2salsa.com]

These people are not enjoying themselves.

Understandably, many sound systems are poorly set up and maintained. They make it difficult to pump the music so people feel it in their chests and asses, but aren’t being assaulted. Note that I said “difficult” not “impossible”. Our own judgement and attention to detail are the best tools for creating an optimal experience for the folks on our dance floors.

- EQ your tracks as you play them.
Cut those shrieking mids or that rumbling sub-bass. You’ll often find that perceived loudness increases with clarity as opposed to simply cranking it up.

- Start your set with optimal gain levels.
This might seem so basic but it’s so misunderstood. Unity gain is generally marked on most volume controls as the 0 (zero) level. That means that the signal coming into the channel is the same level as the signal going out. YOUR JOB IS TO MAINTAIN UNITY GAIN ALL NIGHT. You should set your master and the front end processing (if you can access those controls) to allow you some headroom over the course of the night, but you should NOT use your individual channel gains for overall volume control.

Gain creep is a fact of life for the DJ. Over the course of a gig, the amount of distractions grows, the energy in the room increases, the noise floor increases as more people pack into the space, and one must compensate. But rarely is this done with any sort of specificity. For far too many DJ’s, louder is always better.

- Walk the room.
I regularly leave the turntables to assess the volume levels. Some folks find this odd. (“What are you doing out of the dj booth?!?”) If it’s a room I’ve never played before, I do this a lot. Few of us have the opportunity to always play clubs with optimal DJ booth monitoring, so it’s almost a given that the sound in the booth will differ drastically from the sound on the floor. YOU MUST ALWAYS BE AWARE OF WHAT YOUR DANCE FLOOR SOUNDS LIKE.

Please, all of you. You’re killing folks out there. People going home from parties with migraines and ringing ears. Sound systems being blown. Records sounding like crap because of distortion. We all want our parties to crank, but ultimately Bob Marley knew the way things should be:

“One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain.” (Trenchtown Rock)

Brasil vs. Japan!

And despite the terrible editing and syncing in the dj’ing scenes, this flick was one of the main influences that made me want to be a DJ:

Andre Harris – “10 Things Not To Say To A DJ”

I mean, how is it that stupid people ALL OVER THE WORLD all end up reading from the same script when they decide they want to inflict psychic pain on you while you’re trying to rock the party?

I’ve built upon this with scores of my DJ colleagues and the uniformity of the stories is fascinating. Someone has to do a psychological study on it. I’ve collected tons of data first hand over the years. Is there some shared genetic defect in stupid people that is triggered by a nightclub environment? Does that have to do with the fact that stupid people are statistically more likely to go out to certain clubs? It’s like a perverse feedback loop of causality. Do they all get together in a huddle before they come to the club to maximize the annoyance factor of their strategy? Perhaps it’s a conspiracy waged by an international cabal of stupid people with the shared goal of driving all DJs into early retirement.

The one that makes me want to beat myself in the forehead with ball a peen hammer is:

“Everyone wants to hear it.”

AAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!

I’ve actually asked folks if they really polled the whole club to arrive at this assertion, just like in the song. Things usually go downhill from there.

I’ve grown pretty heartless over the last couple of years. My patience has been worn away to a cold, hard steely sheen, especially because there’s something about DJs that make people want to heap abuse on us in ways they would never dare in any other aspect of human interaction. Folks consistently say things to me that would automatically earn them a punch in the mouth if I weren’t behind the decks. Of course, I can’t do that, even if it’s warranted.

But woe unto the clubtards that approach me these days because I don’t hesitate to dispense liberal doses of non-violent face crack. And it doesn’t matter how fat your ass is and how much cleavage you jiggle in front of me. That will actually make me more likely to hurt your feelings. It’s funny to observe the strain on the faces of attractive women who can’t process the idea of a heterosexual man telling them no. Actually, that applies mostly to an environment where the primary goal of every man is to catch their attention.

Despite the effective coping mechanisms I’ve developed, I can’t WAIT to play this song. Thanks Andre.

The “ho stroll” being my personal terminology for the mainstream gigs I occasionally play. Despite the fact that the money is always better than any of my gigs where I can be creative and play good music, the ho stroll gigs are becoming increasingly difficult. The last few of them paid for my birthday trip abroad and a bathroom renovation so I should be motivated to keep chasing that paper. But I’m struggling.

I basically have to play music I hate for people I can’t relate to. This nullifies my biggest asset, which is my ability to make an emotional connection with my audience, otherwise known as that whole vibe conducting thing.

It should be easy actually, because most of today’s popular music takes no skill to mix. Actually, you generally don’t have to mix at all. Most of the songs are mad slow and you just drop them on the one and folks go nuts.

To keep the ho stroll money steady, I have to stay current. Usually I just get a zip file from my WPGC connect. That’s much better than the days when I’d have to prepare for such gigs by actually wasting money buying the records. Of course those songs weren’t as bad as today’s songs either. Still, the instant playlist approach means that I end up not knowing the songs very well, so sometimes I have to break down and listen to the radio (nOva, you’re a bigger man than I.)

It withers the soul and makes my brain ache.

Occasionally there’s a decent tune. I’m not mad at the new Lloyd jont, with Weezy interpolating “Paid In Full”. But that appeals to my old school sensibilities so maybe that’s not a good example.

I was struck by the fact that The Dream has a tune with a good melody. The most classic way to make a solid song is so rare on commercial radio that when you hear a standout melody it’s an event. I can’t front though, T-Pain has crafted a few quality melodies. But the props I had ready for The Dream were soured when I heard the album version that has a refrain of “fuck that nigga” sung in falsetto. I recommend the radio edit.

And sometimes I feel like I’m the only one noticing things that should make everyone howl in disbelief, like hearing Too Short’s old ass (who I admittedly loved as a youth) drop these jewels…

I got ten bad bitches, actin’ retarded
I’m tryin’ to meet a few new ones
What’s up with you girl, maybe we can do somethin’
Do you drink, do you smoke?
I could tell by your purse and your shoes you ain’t broke
Hang with me, the first thing you do is get stuck
Take you somewhere, later on you’ll get fucked, beotch!

…sandwiched in between shout-outs from local high school girls. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever learn.

But the pièce de résistance (for now) has to be “Bust It Baby”. This one is actually worth an embed. First of all, I can’t believe this saga has three parts, one of which features Janet Jackson (to hell with you Jermaine Dupri).

I now offer an exercise in audience participation. What is the most coonerific facet of the video below?

- the song
- the “performance”
- the outfit
- the comments

Even my little sister – a millennial who generally digs such fare – was like “I have to draw the line somewhere”.