DJ Derrick E.

Fri 07 Jul 06 @ 12:07 am

I love my vinyl, and my CDs, but since VDJ I don't miss them a lot. Why you ask? Well I don't have to worry about having TWO copies of all my hot songs. Your next question might be why you would need two copies of anything. Well the first reason would be so that you can do tricks like beatjuggling. (That will be covered in a different blog.) But most importantly, you can do you own remixes (edits) of very long songs.

I loved the Thunderpuss anthems put out in the early part of the new decade. However it did irritate me how long it took to get to the actual song. Listening in your car is one thing, being in the club is quite another. People these days have short attention spans. Your job as a DJ is to keep their attention for hours at a time. The best way to do this is to not play the same song for longer than 3-4 minutes. Notice most songs on the radio aren't longer then 3-4 minutes. There are exceptions to this rule depending on the type of music you are playing, but in most cases it helps to keep things moving and take the crowd on a journey.

Now to subject at hand. Loading two copies of the same song will allow to skip those boring parts of the song and in some cases get back to a section of the song to allow you to mix the next song in. In order to do this properly you need to have a very good knowledge of the song you are mixing. Two things you can try in your next mix:

1. Try skipping an entire verse in the song. Mix your second copy of the song in during the hook (or chorus)

2. Repeat a verse using the method above. (I wouldn't do this during a set, just to pratice.)

For some songs it will be easy, for some songs an outright bitch, but that is part of the fun right?! Once you get the hang of it, you will wonder why you ever let that 10 minute song play for 10 minutes!

Be sure to use Cue points to your advantage. Back in the day we needed to mark our records so we knew where a break would coming in. If you've ever watched a DMC competition you will notice that most of the records have stickers all over the label and sometimes the record itself. The purpose of this is so that they can drop the needle at a certain point and know exactly where they should be without needing headphones to cue things up. (Headphones are for sissys. lol) Mark the breaks and chorus with cue points to make things easier when doing a custom edit of a song.

VDJ makes things a lot easier for the DJ these days, however that doesn't mean you should let it do all the work for you. Even though you are using a computer to mix, there is still plenty of "art" left in using a computer to DJ.