I've done music my entire life since I was a little kid so I never even thought about
really doing anything else. I love music because it's the only thing I'm good at.
I have never seen myself as a traditional DJ. If people ask me who I am or what I do,
for me DJ is actually the last part. To me, I'm a musician first, producer second, DJ third,
and I came into the DJ world really late, and I approached my DJ sets very differently than
a traditional DJ who would usually read the crowd and sort of play the right song at the right time.
I treat my DJing as a performance, and I'm the artist and I, you know, think far ahead.
I usually plan my sets but then there's always something that goes wrong
and I think a good DJ should be able to adjust to that. A good DJ in my eyes should also be good
enough to plan a set well enough to know that it will work. I don't see myself as I'm here to
please everybody's wishes. I spent literally three months in programming and rehearsals
and I created a show and that's what I want to show people. The term "DJ" is just such a
tricky term to use because I feel like it's also my responsibility to be in rehearsal for months
and to make sure that each song has the correct color and visual attach and then the blackouts
are at the right time. It's part of the experience that I want to give fans. I think as a DJ you have
the control over how people are going to feel for the next hour or two hour however long you DJ,
you can change how people are what people are hearing, what people are feeling, and
it's not just the songs that I play or the order of them. It's really about the whole experience of
what you see, when you see it, and what you hear and if I played my set without my production
I would not be very confident. Because what you see, what you feel is all one thing to me, you know.
The DJing part is just one segment of it. When I started DJing I actually was a lot more nervous
even though I technically do a lot less than when I was a drummer. Because what is the worst-case
that happens when your drummer you go out there the mic stop working you can still play.
People can see that you play, (and) you can carry the show, but there's one single cable that has to get unplugged
or something happens and the whole show is done, so it's a lot more nerve-wracking in a weird way
even though there's less that you can do wrong as a DJ, there's a lot more that can happen.
I think a casual listener is influenced by the sound quality subconsciously. I don't think they
understand why something feels better or worse and I don't think they necessarily can explain
what they're even hearing, but I think subconsciously our brains are influenced by
the quality of everything. I mean sound quality for the person in the crowd is the most important
out of all the positions, because I don't want somebody to be in the crowd listen to a song
and then start thinking this doesn't sound right or something is wrong or it sounds low quality.
I am used to jumping back and forth a lot and looping a lot, and I've always
missed a button for that, just because I think it's a lot more intuitive with buttons you can also
feel it with touch screens generally.
The feedback isn't the same as a physical button. So I've been really asking
for buttons to jump back and forth, and to be able to select the size of the jump as
well, that's something I'm just used to doing so that's a lot easier now than it was before.
Sometimes when a mix out of a song when the outro is longer or shorter than the mix in,
it really enables you to repeat whichever part you want quickly and easily.
Sometimes I change my mind in the middle of the song and want to do another song instead
and then it's nice to be able to start it wherever and then just jump your way into where you have to
be. I guess traditionally you would have done it like this. For me it's just math, I know where I
start the song I know I'm whatever 24 off so you just hit it and then you just jump back into
position, I do that and then looping wherever you want and then jump your loop back and forth.
It's just a lot of freedom and creativity you have that you don't have without that function.
The entire song is loaded into the CDJ in the worst-case scenario that something gets
unlinked or somebody steals your your key in the middle of your show knowing you have
up to six minutes to figure out your next move or transition or songs is definitely liberating.
It just happened to me and it just happens at the worst times possible and the loop is never
what you want the loop to be so knowing that at least you get to finish your song gives you
a lot more time to troubleshoot and you know prepare for the next transition.
Now the crowd will not have to hear a minute of the same for a minute of a little tiny loop of the same song.
It looks just much better. The screen is way better, way bigger. The Hot Cue button orientation makes
way more sense, I think from left to right as I never thought that top to bottom into two banks
made sense to be completely honest. I also think that having eight accessible Hot Cues
will maybe make people use them more, having had two banks sort of.
I always try to avoid using the second one because I thought what if I forget to switch back and
then muscle memory just press the button and I'm jumping into the completely wrong part of the song
has always been an issue to me or a reason to avoid them, having them all eight in a linear form is
I think way more intuitive and maybe we'll, you know, the DJs will use them even more frequently.
I generally would say I like to mix in keys, that's something that I don't like
when Ihear other people that don't mix in keys, I always feel like it's distracting, which
means for me that I sort of DJ in brackets in a perfect world with the option to change the key
exactly on the fly like this, it might enable me to do certain transitions that I couldn't
do before, and not worry about the key as much. Because there's some musical ways to jump keys
in certain outros it may not matter as much. It could even be cool to do certain step ups or start
five synopses alone and every four beats you go one up.
I think what people like about CDJs generally is that they're always the same,
you plug your key into wherever in the world and you know what you're expecting. I think with
the new CDJ-3000, DJs are going to be able to be way more flexible. People are probably going
to make less mistakes, and DJs are going to become better DJs. I'm really excited.