[Music]
the more you master how these things work and live with these filters and
on-board effects and four band EQs and three band Isolators the better and more
personal you can make your DJ sets A lot of us DJs are ripping vinyl to take on tour
with us, or you might be playing a track that’s just come straight out the studio.
And a lot of the time you end up boosting the gains and … Pushing in to the red.
Pushing it far too much in to the red so to have a a compressor that you can give that a
little bit of a push then that’s amazing. Er, also for old vinyl rips which we do as well.
Dance music from the past from disco to early house was all analogue,
so they are a lot lower in sound output. Using that compressor basically made
it sound like it could’ve been made yesterday, you know, really, really bring it to life.
If you've got a wave form with - with collapse and lower parts like that, it brings up
the bits that are higher without bringing up the bits that are already high, so you'll
feel more volume in the body of the song, rather than the whole thing just
becoming louder, which obviously causes tracks to click. It won't work with - with records
that has been recorded from 20 or 25 that are already higher recorded, but it will work with something that has been recorded from twenty or twenty five years ago
and give it the very best sound possible. It doesn’t just turn it up, it gives it life,
it breathes life in to the tune. Turns down things that are too loud and brings up the
things that are too quiet.
[Music] It makes a world of difference.
People will have different views on what good sound is, depending on the musical
landscape of the city or the country. They always set up a Booth EQ for what they
think is what you wanna hear. I'm not stuck with what the engineer or the
sound guy has set the - the EQ of the bass to be. There's so many times, especially
at festivals you get to the booth monitors are too bassy.
And then in some places it’ll be too many highs and which is what really screws up your hearing.
Got a hole in my right eardrum so for me mids and tops can sometimes be too harsh
on certain systems. So, I may use that sometimes to bring that off a touch.
I can now finally get my headphones off and then I feel more
connected to the crowd. [Music]
The 4 Band EQ now, it's like essential for us in mixing.
You get rid of the low, but the low mid’s still there, you know, sticking its nose in,
so sometimes it's nice just to be able to curve things off slightly.
You're accenting different aspects of a song for emotional response.
Because they're layered so much I really need something to just kill these sub frequencies without killing
the kick drum for example. Having the extra option of the low end or the
low mid makes it easier for me to adjust the quality or the mixing of a track that
may or may not be as loud or as ? as perfect as I want it to be.
You can tweak up that mid bass, generate some tmosphere, before you're bringing in the actual bass.
There are stories of - of Chicago guys playing with the bass out
for like an hour and then like getting it in there again. DJ-ing isn’t just about me
performing music to people, DJ-ing is that whole feeling of like the crowd and you
creating something together. [Music]
On the 900s it's been low pass/high pass on the same knob, so I always go a little
bit low pass on the way back and finally now you’ve got the whole range, which is
fantastic. I do love having a full super with filter.
And now you have a filter under every channel. A master filter is nice,
because there's two of us we often have more than two or three channels going at
the same time, so to be able to filter everything at once is fantastic.
Really lets you be creative and make your - your own track out of five or six different elements.
A lot of people use the isolators to build the energy, whereas we
would use it more as a sound engineering tool to tune the room.
The versatility options are - are endless for this. When I have four or five channels coming in at
once I can't like high-pass five filters at the same time, it doesn’t work.
And so with that master isolator I can do that for the entire mix at once and that
makes it a really powerful tool. Yeah having an isolator is something that, you know,
mixes, especially with that level of like technology on it, don’t have.
If the room isn’t that good and it maybe needs some more highs or more lows, or more mids,
then you can just add it yourself, you know. You don’t have to do it on the EQs itself.
If we feel that our music sits better in a - in a bassier scenario compared to
the DJ playing before or after us I think then we could change that to our
own preference which is - which is very nice. Just having that isolator, to be able to ‘sch-sch-sch-sch’
and you could take everything out, but - of everything, and then just with the turn
of one knob, bang, it's back in. If you're three - three or four deck mixing, you
wanna create atmosphere, create sort of a moment in the track where you're
dropping the bass out of the whole mix, maybe you've got three or four tracks
going, that’s gonna be exciting to use.
DJ-ing is channelling emotions. It's a form of expression. Creating an atmosphere,
creating a mood, creating moments. I am really focused on the crowds, just to
make sure they have a good time, for me that’s like the priority of my sets.
[Music]