Confessions of a Mad DJ

dj bakasan - baka Means Idiot

Dido - White Flag (Rock-It! Fuel Mix) Jurassic 5 ft Dave Matthews Band - Work It Out Headnodic ft Procussions - The Drive All Natural - Writer’s Block Del Tha FUnkee Homosapien - Thank Youse DJ Format - Now You Jurassic 5 - Jurass Finish First Ugly Duckling - Turn It Up Young Black Teenagers - Tap The Bottle 112 - Peaches and Cream Wreckx N Effect - Rump Shaker JD ft Snoop - We Just Wanna Party Wit You Musiq - Musiqforthenight Lumidee ft Tony Sunshine - She’s Like The Wind Cassie - Long Way 2 Go Mase - Feels So Good Down - Leak Like A Cholo Will Smith - Gettin Jiggy With It Danity Kane - Touching My Body Gwen Stefani - Holla Back Girl Ne-Yo - Because of You (Kanye Remix) Maroon 5 - Makes Me Wonder Nelly Futardo - Say It Right Beatles vs Missy Elliott - Obla Di Obla Da Nirvana - Come As You Are Bon Jovi - You Give Love A Bad Name Kelly Clarkson vs Blur - Since Song #2 Been Gone (DJ Steve1der)

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I should make it a policy to stop mixing when I’m dead tired. This mix was nearly 4 hours of sheer comedy gold. Feeling bad for cutting my mix short last time, I decided to throw down an hour long mix for ya’ll. Too bad I didn’t find out until the very end that I’d plugged my recording gear into the headphone jack of my laptop and not the microphone input. Strike 1. Correct the wire and determined, I decided to try again. An hour later, guess what, I’d managed to hit the wrong button on my recording software and I have a nice hour long file of dead silence. Strike 2. At this point it’s 1:30 AM and I debate whether to give it another try. Figured what the hell… and the result is this mix… not quite an hour… was exhausted. Sue me.

So this mix is all about style and defining a signature sound as a DJ.  I’m all over the map musically as a bit of an experiment.  The mix runs from breakbeats to old school hip hop to mainstream R&B to rock to adult contemporary to funky jazz.

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I’d gotten into a conversation with someone recently about what defined a DJ’s “style”. We went back and forth a bit on what constitutes style and what distinguishes one DJ from another (beside just sheer technical ability which is difficult for the laymen to measure anyhow). It basically boiled down to what they played, the way they mix from song to song, and the overall energy they have behind the decks.

At the very end of the conversation, my friend (lives and DJs in Washington DC) said I had a very “West Coast” sound. Probing what that meant, by his count the crux of the West Coast DJ sound was a set that pulls deep from the crates–nothing is really off limits. The mix goes from track to track very quickly, any given song is only playing for a bit more than a minute, probably not more than two. The technical skills are demonstrated throughout in each individual mix. And there’s a healthy, healthy love for the use of old school hip hop side by side with newer material.

After hearing this, I guess it fits my overall “sound”. As somewhat of a joke though, this mix is me trying to be as West Coast as possible. Whatever that means. It’s got its rough patches since I was purposely trying to go all over the place genre wise , but ah well. (Jeremy, tell me if I slipped and got a little too East Coast).

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By request I’m going to start making my posts in a slightly better bitrate than I’d been posting as.

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Posted under: jiggy, old school, indy, R&B, mashup, bakasan

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 10:32 am and is filed under jiggy, old school, indy, R&B, mashup, bakasan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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