♪ Listen to your heart ♪
- Yo, good people.
What's up?
Hi, I'm Sinclair Wheeler, AKA Black AM,
AKA Young BB Knuckles,
and I'm here humbly with the people at Fender
to talk about technique of the week.
I am a multi-instrumentalist DJ producer
that has found a lane in playing my guitar
with live DJ sets.
I've done it in several different capacities,
several different formats,
everything from dive bars to nightclubs,
but today specifically, we're going to be talking about
my artist project, Black AM,
which is based around the genre house music.
There's a couple basic things
that I wanted to talk to you guys about today
to kind of get you to a place
where you can start jamming and playing
and definitely practicing.
I would highly suggest before you show up
to a nightclub with your instrument,
that you get this right in your house first.
This is a very delicate thing that we're working with here
with live instrumentation, with DJ sets.
So let's dive right into it.
First thing I wanted to talk about was the Camelot Wheel.
It's something that you'll need to search on your own,
but it is basically a wheel diagram
that gives you information of keys,
and that is the most important thing
that we're gonna be talking about today.
Every single song has a key signature, and we know that,
but we're not all composers,
and thanks to recent technologies and DJ programs,
they analyze songs for you and give you the key.
A lot of the times that information
will be in Camelot language,
which means they won't just say E minor,
it'll say 8A or 9B, and basically,
it's just all the minor and major keys.
So before you even think about playing any instrument
over a DJ song, unless you're pitch perfect,
I would suggest putting these songs into any DJ program,
there's several out there, a lot of them are free.
And analyzing your tracks.
Not only will it give you the BPM,
which is very important for DJ-ing,
but also the Camelot language,
your wheel, your key signature.
So that is number one, first step,
please get familiar with the Camelot wheel,
and then on my next video next week,
I'm going to go into a little more details
about the Camelot wheel.
Second, I wanted to talk to you guys
about getting your guitar or instrument into your DJ setup.
There's a couple different ways to do this,
and I've done several throughout the years.
The first one that I would suggest
is direct output out of a pedal board
or a digital pedal board.
This is going to give you the least amount of variables
and the cleanest signal to prevent any sort of problems,
feedback, and stuff that you won't want to deal with live.
Now, your goal should be playing venues,
hard ticket rooms, and people with front of house staff
that is doing production for the venue.
If that's the case, you will run your pedal board
or your digital pedal board out to the house.
They will generally provide a direct input box
that you can go straight into,
and then they'll send that to their mixer
and mix you from there.
Now that's not always the case,
and when I first started doing this,
I never had that option because it was smaller nightclubs
and lounges and all the sound engineers out there,
this is ear muffs part, 'cause I know
you're going to hate this part,
but in DJ mixers, controllers and DJ mixers,
there's a mic input.
When I first started doing this,
I would make up my Fender amp,
and I would send it to the mic input on my DJ mixer.
Now, here's where it can go left.
You don't want to have too much gain or volume,
and a lot of the times your monitors and your DJ booth
won't match the same level as out in the crowd.
So it's very important to do sound checks
if you're going to do it this way,
because you don't have someone mixing for you live.
So I can't stress enough that nobody wants to hear
any instrument too loud over finished songs.
This is not what they come to clubs for.
They do not come for instrumentation.
This is an art that you're doing on top of finished records.
So gain and level is very important.
Now on a DJ mixer, generally you will have an ability
to do EQing and gain, but that's it.
So I would always suggest to scoop your lows a little bit,
because generally your electric guitar,
you don't want hitting in those frequencies.
You want to allow the bass and the sub in the songs
to be working there.
So I would suggest scooping your lows,
I usually keep my highs right at 12 o'clock, right at zero,
and then for the mic input, it changes per venue.
But you're going to want to go out to the dance floor
or the house to make sure
that you can hear your guitar along with the music,
and you're not over the top.
The third thing that I wanted to talk about
on this introductory video about DJ-ing
and playing guitar is space.
Space is maybe the most important part of music
in all genres.
This is not only applicable to DJ-ing,
this isn't if you're in a funk band
or metal band or whatever, you have to respect space.
When you're playing instrumentation
on top of finished records,
those producers that made that song think it's finished.
They don't think there's any more space for stuff generally.
So you have to keep that in mind
and make sure that you're not playing
over the top of melody lines and changing rhythmic patterns,
and you're staying inside of this song world,
because if you get outside of that,
you're doing a discredit to not only yourself,
but also the song.
And generally, if you're the DJ,
you're responsible for the music, not for doing six solos.
So I'm going to play a little bit of music here
of the skeleton song we started to building
a couple of days ago, or I think it was two weeks ago,
and it's completely unreleased.
I just wanted to jam a little bit
and show you guys what's going on.
So before I play this, I analyzed it
on my preferred DJ program, and I know that the song
is 127 beats per minute,
and it's in C minor.
So what I'm going to do is just play for a minute or two
and let the song build and show you guys
a little bit what I'm talking about,
and please take notes on gain and also space.
And please feel free, after this video is released,
to reach out to me on social media.
I love helping people along their musical journey
no matter how far along you are.
I love to do it,
and I'll answer any questions that you guys have.
So let's jam.
(upbeat house music)
♪ Heart ♪
♪ Listen to you heart ♪
♪ Listen to your heart ♪
♪ Listen to your heart ♪ (guitar plays along)
♪ Listen to your heart ♪
♪ Tell me who you wanna be ♪
♪ Listen to your heart ♪
♪ Tell me who you wanna be ♪
♪ Listen to your heart ♪
♪ Tell me who you wanna be ♪
♪ Listen to your heart ♪
♪ Tell me who you wanna be ♪
(guitar solos)
♪ That you are the one for me ♪
♪ If you just believe ♪
♪ Listen to your heart ♪
♪ Tell me who you wanna be ♪
♪ We can go far ♪
♪ Far to be ♪
♪ Listen to your heart ♪
♪ Tell me that you understand ♪
♪ That you are the one for me ♪
♪ If you just believe ♪
Yeah, something like that.
Thank you guys so much.
I'm honestly honored and humbled
to be anywhere associated with Fender Guitar.
Thank you.
My name is Sinclair Wheeler AKA Black AM,
and I'll see you guys next week
for the intermediate advanced class.
Spread love. Peace!