Page 2 of my extra stuff/FAQ page.

Just scroll down a bit....please?

Click a number....

Articles:- (PAGE 1)

1) Bad Dj'ing Habits (From Dj Magazine)
2) A Hierarchy of the many levels of Dj'ing (from Wax magazine)
3) How To Be A SuperStar DJ (Satire)

Answers to Emails:-

1) Calculating Bpm's
2) What are those dimples and the red light at the side of my decks for?
3) If I leave two records playing together for a long time, they always seem to go off a bit. I try to give a push or brake to record B, but I don't know which one to do. Do you have a technique for realising whether it's faster or slower?!?
4) I don't have separate equalisation for the two channels so when they are even the slightest out of sync I get a BOBOOM as opposed to a nice solid thumpin' BOOM. What's with this?
5) How do I hook my decks up to my computer?
6) I'm often confused on when I've got a perfect match, i.e the beat may stay together and i think right, I've got it on and then it starts to drift
7) Also i often find myself correcting the tunes when I'm mixing and they aren't really that much out of line and it sounds worse in the end, any advice?
8) Can I get good decks (and a mixer) for under £200?
9) Why does the record not slip right when using the slip-mats?
10) How do I set up the tonearm on my decks?

(PAGE 2)

PAGE THREE (Man there's a lot!)

35) How do I get a mix to stream on the net?
36) Why do my needles keep jumping?

On Direct Drive decks however, the motor is placed in the center of the deck, which turns the center spindle of the deck 'directly'. The plate is 'wedged' over the center spindle (the spindle is flared towards the bottom, so that as the plate gets lowered, it wedges itself in, meaning that the motors efforts are translated 'directly' to the deck plate - there is no intermediate like the rubber band on the Belt Drive decks.

On decks (assuming you're buying vinyl decks) First off, set the pitch control to 0. Take a look at the strobe indicator (the red light to the side of the deck plate, which illuminates the dimples on the plate) At 0 pitch, these dots should stay still. If the move a little, it's maybe ok, you should be able to adjust the motor a little. If the dots move erratically, then there's a problem with the motor.

Now move the pitch slider smoothly into the + area - again look at the dots, the speed of them should increase smoothly as you increase the pitch - again, if it's erratic, there's either something wrong with the slider, or the motor. do the same for the - pitch. While you're doing this, check the feel of the pitch slider, it's supposed to be a smooth control (apart from when it locks in at 0 pitch) - if it starts to grab on, making it hard to move, then it's gunked up. Also check to see that the 45 + 33 buttons do their job. I know a few people who forgot to check that, only to get the deck home and find out it doesn't change.

If you can, lift off the deck plate, and take a look underneath it. If it's really dirty, then there's a chance that the motor will be dirty too (ask if you can unscrew the cover over the motor, and take a look at it - most people will tell you where to go though!!). While you have the deck plate off, take a look at it to make sure it's not warped or bent. try placing it on a flat surface, and make sure all if it connects with the plate. If (heaven forbid) you're looking at belt driven decks, take a look at the belt too - it's under the deck plate - make sure there are no obvious signs of stretching or corruption on it.

For mixers, make sure you get a chance to see it in action. Check through ALL of the controls. From the master output, to the gain controls, to the Eq's on each channel (which you're looking for a) that they do what they're supposed to, and b) that they don't crackle when you adjust them) Then the channel faders - again, make sure they're not sticky, or crackle. Then the cross fader, same as the channel faders. Then the headphone socket (again no crackles, no cut outs). Then the mic input (if you're able to check it) to see that it connects well - and three are no sudden losses of signal). Try to check through all the outputs too - there should be a Record Out, a Master Out, and if you're looking at a good mixer, a Booth output. Plug the output into all of these, and make sure there are no breaks in signal - and that adjusting the levels on the mixer transfer to the specified output (just remember that the master control doesn't normally affect the recording output. Finally, make sure that the Line/Phono switches do their job. from being able to switch to and from Line and Phono for that channel, to being able to get silence when you switch from one to the other (when the other has no input).

If there's special things like BPM counters, cross fader curve adjusts, punch buttons or hamster switches, check that they all work too.

If the gear you're buying includes Headphones, make sure that they work too. Move the cable around to make sure there are no breaks in it, and rotate the connector in the socket on the mixer to make sure there are no crackles and signal breaks there too.

You can't. I've had quite a lot of people write to me and ask about this one, most of whom will quote a time when they have seen this done.

But what they've heard isn't the original tune which has been Eq'd well, it's either an accapella version of the tune, which might be included as a mix on the record, or it could be a re-recording, either from the master tapes for personal use, or (the one I've done) got someone I knew with a similar voice to sing into a dat player, then burnt it onto CD. I know it's cheating, but it's a way round it.

The reason you can't EQ everything out is (mostly) this. If you take out any of the ranges, say the bass so you can lose the bass drum, you're also taking out the bass timbres of the vocals. If you take out the Hi end to lose the hi-hats, you're also taking out the hi end timbres of the vocals etc. etc. Even the most complicated of mixing tools won't do this will - at all. Yes, some expensive units can help you isolate a frequency, but you've still lost the timbre surrounding that frequency that makes a vocal come alive.

So simply, either look for an accapella or drum only track, or record it yourself.

The Following 14 questions were ones that someone asked me to answer for their report at school. Lazy bugger. Anyway, I get one of these questionaires sent about once a month, so I thought I'd stick it up here to save me having to re-type every time! The funny thing is, that I spend ages writing out these, and not one of them has written back with even a "Thanks for your time" note!

Then I heard a tape of Sasha playing, and found exactly the genre of dance music that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I spend the next couple of months scouring shops, the radio, anywhere to try to get more mixes from Sasha, Digweed and Oakenfold, and listened to them religiously. All the time I was listening to this lot, I was trying to work out what separated them from the other Dj's that were big at the time, and, of course, kept getting lost in day-dreams about how cool it'd be to be a Dj myself.

Then G moved to Holland to play professional hockey, and wanting his records to go to a good home, asked me if I'd buy them from him. Damn good deal though, about 500 records for £100!!

He'd sold his decks about a year earlier to fund his love for labelled clothes, so I had to go find some stuff of my own. I checked through the second-hand newspapers and found two Soundlab DLP3R decks and a DSM-15 mixer for £180. Ok, this was pretty basic stuff, but I didn't know any better at the time, all I really knew was not to get Belt driven decks.

So I spent the next four or five months practising like mad on these eye-sores, skipping college so I could practice more, getting frustrated at my slowly increasing talent and then one day it all just kind of clicked. I describe it like learning to drive. For months you think that the car is in control of you, and you just don't feel at ease, then one day, you sit in the drivers seat, and it all comes into place, you know you're in control. From that point on, it's all about learning all the intricacies.

That's how I got started.

Not that I'm saying aim for what's popular in the charts, things tend to go to shit when a genre gets charty popular. Look at the amount of bollocks that was released through 1999 on the back of trance being the big thing. Hopefully, now that it's beginning to fade out a bit, we'll get some good music written again!

The other thing I'll say is that when you're starting off and trying to learn all the basics of Dj'ing, make sure to have fun. If you sit in front of your decks for hours at a time trying to learn how to beat-match, and you just aren't enjoying it, you're going to get pissed off and fed up in no time. What I advise to people is that for every 5 minutes spent learning something, spend 10 minutes just screwing around and having fun. If you end up thinking of it as a job, or work, then all the fun has gone out of it, and you just won't enjoy Dj'ing anymore.

To help out the learning process, make sure to know all your tunes inside out. I've said this before on my site, but it's a good idea to put everything you are going to play onto tape or MD and listen to it all the time so you know all your tunes like the back of your hand. The down side to this though is that you'll start to get bored with your tunes after a while. It's all in the mind though, the clubber in you gets bored of the tunes, but remember the Dj in you. When (or if) you make it into a club, you're going to be playing tunes over and over. If you just had a clubbers mentality, you'd get bored with them, but as a dj, you have to look at the whole picture, how that one tune slips into the jigsaw of a mix.

There's more I could say, but it's all strewn through my site - and I don't want to be the only one doing all the work here!!

But, when it comes to the actual Dj'ing side, I think one of the hardest things about Dj'ing is the choice and order of tunes you're playing.

Anyone can learn how to beat-match given enough time, but it's the order you mix the tunes, the choice of what tunes you mix together, where you do the mix in the tune, when to bring down the energy, when to pump it up. It's that energy creation that's the hard part. I'm not going to go all wanky and say that you have to "tell a story" when you Dj, I'm just saying that if you don't put thought into the mix with reference to the crowds states of energy, then you're kind of defeating the purpose. You can't just mix tunes together because they mix will - well, you can - but if you want to actually make some kind of mark in this area, some thought has to be put into the mix.

The easiest part of it is the job itself. Getting up in the morning and knowing that in about 12 hours you're going to work - to do something you love doing is great. All those people in the world who are tuck in jobs that they hate doing, and only do it for the money know exactly what I'm on about. To go to work and hate it is a real killer to your soul. To go to work and to love it is one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself.

The purest essence of all of them is the same though. The point is to make the crowd happy. The techniques through all the genres might be a bit different, but the end result is normally the same, to make people smile and dance on the floor.

As I say in the Styles page on my site, if you gave the same records that Paul Oakenfold has to a bedroom Dj who is good at mixing, but doesn't have any experience of working a crowd, you'll find that the bedroom Dj will have a great mix, but it'll be flawed with a lack of emotion, whereas Oakey will play the tunes in an order to really pick up the crowd.

Unfortunately, there's also a thing of a dj's reputation preceding them. People will be happy with whatever some of the super Dj's play, purely because it's them, but if a lower Dj played the same set, people would dub them as shite! But the bottom line comes down to tune selection, and the order of the mix in relation to working a crowd.

I think the sound thing has helped when it comes to my attention to detail in respect to the quality of sound production, but I think that all stems from my course at Cardonald College in TV production (where everyone is nice - not a wanker to be had there!).

So it might be an idea to go somewhere down that line if only to teach you the proper recording techniques, and how to properly control your mixer, but apart from that, the best way to get ahead is to bunk of college, and stay home to practise!

Just tread carefully, have an open mind, and a thick skin when trying to deal with tossers!

Musical style, I'd say it's Progressive. I would say that it's spilling into the Trance scene a bit, but here in Britain, Trance has become synonymous with chart based shite - so I'll just stick to Progressive thank you!!

I take care to try to make my mixes as seamless as possible, and try my hardest to spend the night reading the crowd to give them what they want in terms of energy and power of the tracks.

Why is it popular? Well, I think for a start there's people who see the reverence that the bigger Dj's get when playing in a club. 2000 people chanting your name, loving everything you do, in really close, intimate quarters.

Apart from the ego trip though, I think that a lot of people develop a real emotional attachment to whatever genre of music they listen to, and it's a great way to build upon that attachment, to be able to mould it in a mix. It's like all the young Rock N Roll people, who hear a band they idolise, and want to re-create what they do in their own styles.

There's quite a lot of information out there that offers advice on how to learn the basics of Dj'ing, my site (I hope) is one of them.

When it comes to developing a style, it's a hard one to describe. It just comes from your heart. You'll know yourself the genre you want to play, then through practice you'll just develop a style of mixing the two tunes together without actually knowing it. It's not until people hear your stuff though that you'll know if it's a style of your own, or if it's actually any good!! But the bottom line is PRACTISE, PRACTISE, PRACTISE.

In the club scene, when you start off, you'll find that you're probably only going to get work if you work for free, or maybe a few drinks. As you get better, you'll start getting in around £50 a night.

Once you're actually reasonably established in your own town, things can jump up to around £400 a night, then as you get bigger and better, the sky's the limit for how much you can request. Go to HERE to see the section if this FAQ on money.

I think though that if theirs is anything that does separate me it'd be things like Tune selection, mixing style, and the way I work a crowd.

Really though, it's just that I love the music I play, and I love playing it for other people.

How do I burn a seamless mix onto CD?

So, now that you have your mix on the computer, decide whether you want 1x74 minute track for your CD, or if you want to be able to advance through the 15 or so mixes on the Cd. What do I reccomend? Individual tracks. The way I go about this is the hard way I think. If there's an easier way to do it, please get in touch - it'll save a lot of time.

Using a program like Cool Edit , which gives you a time code for each frame of the music, chop the mix up into it's 15 different pieces (assuming your mix has 15 different tunes). for example. If your first tune starts at 0:00:00:00 and the second tune starts at 0:04:15:10, then split the mix at 0:04:15:10 and save that as an individual file. Your next tune ends at 0:09:35:23. So, cut the tune from 0:04:15:11 (notice it's one frame ahead of the last cut point) to 0:09:35:23 - and save that as a separate file. Go through this process through the whole mix, so that you now have 15 individual .wav files to represent your mix. It's an idea to give them numbers when saving, not titles - it makes life easier. Just save each file in sequence (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 etc.)

Now, the important thing here is that you have a program which does the recording onto Cd. The one I use is Dart Pro. You can get this from www.dartpro.com . Go through the process to add in the first track of the mix. There will be an option in your program which will allow you to adjust the gap between the tracks. Set this to ZERO. There might (hopefully) be a selector on this part which says "apply to all tracks". Select it. If it doesn't, then you'll have to go through this process for each track. Now, simply add in each track in sequence, wait until everything is in, change all the gaps if you have to - then set it to go! Kazzaaam, you've not got a properly made Cd - I hope!!

When "In the Mix", what do you do with your headphones?

The way I do it is that when I'm setting up the beat-matching part, I'll listen to the incoming tune clean in the left ear, and have the right ear open to the monitor in the Dj booth.

Then, when I'm about to start the mix, I move the little headphone mix slider very slightly, so I can just hear the live tune as well as the incoming tune (though I stress the incoming tune is by far the dominant one, I only 'bleed' the live one in very slightly) If you wonder why I do this, it's to catch any slips in the timing before they're heard through the amps.

Then, when I start the mix, I go through three things. 1) I listen to it through the headphone and live, 2) I listen to the mix purely live (then switch between both styles, just to check the mix) and then once the incoming tune becomes dominant in the mix, I switch the cued signal in the headphones to that of the outgoing tune.

What are your views on beat counters?

Why can they help? What do they do? I hear you ask. Well.

All a beat counter does is measure the BPM's of a record for you - so you have a visual readout that tells you the record is currently running at (say) 135 beats per minute. Now, stick on your second tune, run that through the beat counter, and look at the readout. say it says something like 130Bpm, you then know you have to increase the pitch to match it. Then, when the figure hits 135Bpm, you know you've got the mix sorted.

Sounds like a great deal, huh? Well, there's two problems to using counters. The first is a technical one, the second a human nature one.

1) Most counters have a basic fundemental problem in that they only go to whole numbers (i.e. 135Bpm) But, the difference having that one decimal place can make (i.e. 135.6Bpm) can be massive. 0.6 of a beat in a minute may not sound like much, but if you're into some seriously long mixes (guilty) then this means that you're losing over half of a beat in one minute - which can make your mix sound awful. So - if you're looking at counters for precision reasons, try looking for one that goes to a decimal place. There's not many of them around, the Red Voyager is a good double counter that measures to the decimal point for each deck.

2) The other problem comes to reliance. Let's consider little Barney (not the dinosaur, figment of my imagination)

Barney has just bought decks. He tries to learn to beat-match for the first couple of weeks using just his ears (then found he should use his hands......sorry - bad joke). But, after not being the new Tall Paul after this fortnight, little Barney decides he can't do it, and instead of working at it, decides to get a beat-counter to help him out.

After a couple more weeks of looking at the counter as a reference to whether to speed up or slow down his tunes, Barney is becoming competant at beat-matching. He gets thrown up from time to time when the counter can't handle the beat patterns (counters don't like D+B much!) but, when the counter works, he can get the beats matched 80% of the time.

Bouyed by the massive improvement in his mixing over the past two weeks, Barney then spends the next 12 months practising, referring to the counter for each of his mixes, getting them to sound sweet and liquid. One morning he wakes up and finds a letter from a club he'd applied to work in, "come work for us, your demo was awesome". "Yippee" says Barney. (is this pissing you off yet? Or are you just reading this like a bed-time story)

So, Barney packs up his headphones and his records, and runs like the wind to the club, where he will be able to show the world JUST how good he is as a dj.

He unloads all his records, walks into the booth, and has a look around. A cold chill races down his back as he searches vainly for a beat counter. "Surely all clubs have a beat counter on the mixer" muses Barney. "That it is not so," a haunting, Alec Guiness style voice booms from the ceiling, "you'll find that in the small to mid sized clubs, more often than not they won't have a counter for you to use. Just use the farce young Dj(di)"

So, while wondering what his brother had put in his coffee to make him hear voices, young Barney approaches the ones and twos, starts to mix, and then feels like committing suicide! The mixes just aren't working. With no way to reference the beats of the two tunes, and having not learnt to mix without a counter, young Barney is completely lost when it comes to mixing with this set up.

"Why was I so intent on taking a short cut!!!" Barney screams.

"Because you took the easy way out, and turned to the Red Sounds side young Dj(di)."

Moral of the story? Well, if you have the discipline to know that you still have to learn how to beat match conventionally without a counter, then they can be of aid to the novice to expert Dj, but if you think you'll end up just reading the display for the rest of your life, give it a miss, you'll still learn how to mix after a time of practise, and you won't get thrown up like Barney.

Why is there a separate input for vinyl decks and CD decks?

Basically, it comes down to how vinyl is recorded. If you were to take a normal tune, and record its signal onto a record without doing anything to it, you would drastically reduce the amount of time available to you for recording, as the stronger the signal, the more space it takes up on the record.

So, in an effort to combat this, when vinyl is pressed, some things are done to the signal of the music.

Mainly, this involves cutting the bass level by 40dB and boosting the treble by 20dB. By doing this, you can fit lots of time onto the vinyl.

Then, when it comes to playing the record, the RIAA curve comes into effect, which boosts the bass by 40dB and cuts the treble by 20dB.

and that's the simple basics of it. The mixer needs to know that it's receiving something that the RIAA curve is applied to in order to get the signal sounding like normal again.

As I said before, if you want to know more, then go to UR Pressing .