It has been a little while since I wrote my last post and given my evening yesterday, I felt like it was a good time to change that. When I decided to make deejaying my official side business, I wanted to make sure that I was really good at it. I think I mentioned in my last post that was about 19-ish when I bought a mixer, a CDJ-500 and used my home CD player and house speakers to DJ. In hindsight, I had absolutely no clue about "beat matching," "the one," BPMs, different types of scratching, or any of the tools a DJ needs to actually be good at it. ALL I had was an ear for music that was heavily informed by the hip hop, R&B, 80's pop music and old school Black music (e.g. the Isley Brothers, Ohio Players, Funkadelic/Parliament and Barry White).
So fast forward to the present, after about nine months of DJ lessons and vastly superior kit (sidebar: I think "kit" is a very UK expression of the word "gear," but I rather fond of it) and I am a much better DJ...technically. After leaving my day job and picking up my wife and DJ bag from the house, I was on my way to perform at a boutique lingerie shop in Maple Lawn. I am not sure what I was expecting when I got inside, but it was definitely smaller than I imagined. My instructor and I were kind wedged between a rather short table and rather expensive brasiers.
The cause was awesome enough...It was raising money for breast cancer. Aside from my instructor, it turns out that the only other person I knew at the store was my wife. However, one of the many things about music that makes it so awesome is that it didn't matter. What did seem to matter was my music choice. I got a heads-up that this probably not a hip hop crowd from my instructor and he was probably right. For me, last night was all about officially graduating from level two of my DJ program and moving into the final level before I graduate from the music school. For the guests, it was all about having a nice backdrop for an event geared to address a really good cause and promote their business.
That reality made me glad that I spent several days crafting a completely house/deep house-focused playlist for my routine. Compared to how active I think deejaying is when playing hip hop, house music is rather subdued. Its structure lends itself to stacking songs on top of each other much like a kid might play with legos. And if you are creative enough, the results of those combinations can be truly moving. And although I wasn't in a dark, foggy club, it was still really fun hitting the transition points I planned in my software's internal mode live with a pair of turntables.
The set I prepared could have gone on much longer than it did. My instructor told me that I would be playing for at least 30 minutes, but asked if I was comfortable playing an hour. Being someone who hates being "caught out there," I made my playlist longer than it needed to be and only got through about two-thirds of my playlist when I swapped places with my instructor so he could finish out the night. In any event, I am officially a level III deejay and the next time I perform in front of people (for the purposes of these lessons), it will be in a much larger venue for a longer period of time. I'm looking forward to putting all of these skills, the ones I have learned up to this point and the ones I will hone over the next few weeks, to the test!