HOW-TO-PUT-YOUR-DJ-MIX-ON-THE-WEB

For some this question might seem a little too easy to answer, that said in reality it is not so easy to answer if we take into consideration the law, because NO at the base you do not have the right to broadcast your dj mix on the web if you have not previously requested authorization from all rights holders. That is to say, that to broadcast a DJ mix on the internet, you are first required to request permission from all the artists or producers of the music you mix in your set.

Why will you tell me?

First,  because by modifying one piece of music to adapt it to another, you violate the adaptation rights of the original songwriter.
Second, because by recording your mix you are violating the reproduction rights of the songwriter and performer.
Third,  because by broadcasting your mix, you are violating the performer’s right of performance and the performer’s right of communicate to the public.
In other words, you are violating almost all the economic rights of songwriters and performers. And this is the reason why it is almost impossible to send a mix on youtube if we use music that is recognized by the Content ID system, it is

HOW TO BROADCAST YOUR DJ MIX ON THE INTERNET?

To be in accordance with the law there are actually only two possibilities, either you ask the authorization of all the rights holders of the music that you want to mix in your set, which is practically impossible if you are not reputable (and this does not guarantee you anything either). Either you do or participate in a Webradio.

It may sound incredible to you, but it is so. Although there are thousands of DJ mixes on youtube or SoundCloud, almost all of these mixes are illegal. If you take the risk of uploading one of your mixes without having the necessary permissions:

  • you can at best be authorized by the rights holders to broadcast your mix in exchange for recovering all the sums collected by the advertisements that can be displayed on it if you upload it to youtube or end up with the sound of your mix cut to the passage of unauthorized music.
  • Or at worst you end up with your youtube or other account deleted and the possibility of being sued as a bonus if you made a profit by posting advertising (which is still extremely rare).

In short, the only way not to put your youtube or Soundcloud account into play and to either create a WebRadio or use an upload service on web radio and that’s good, The trick of its sites is to offer your mix in the form of radio streaming. Thus, these sites are considered web radios and save you the trouble of setting up one. The only problem is that to date, none offer video, which makes sense for a radio lol

MIXCLOUD THE SITE TO POST YOUR MIXES LEGALLY

While not the only one, Mixcloud is my favorite site for posting and listening to mixes on the web. Be careful not to confuse  Mixcloud with Soundcloud which does not allow it to upload sessions or remixes of music for which you do not have the rights. Although many people use SoundCloud to post anything without permission, SoundCloud is now on the verge of going out of business due to the incredible number of copyright infringements. In short, I will not go into detail on the SoundCloud controversy, but still, it is that here I am talking about  Mixcloud and not of Soundcloud, that we will also have the opportunity to talk about it in another article.

Mixcloud is free, easy to use, offers simple playlist management with a direct link for purchase, it also offers a very complete sharing function like the one found on youtube and offers an embed player (embedded) for broadcasting it easily mixed on any site that allows HTML code, not to mention that  Mixcloud is quite simply the most popular website when it comes to dj mixing.

WHAT IS A GOOD DJ AND WHAT IS HIS JOB?

If you think that Daft Punk, Avicii, or Martin Garrix are good deejays, well chances are you don’t know what a good deejay is, because contrary to popular belief, these electronic music celebrities, strictly speaking, are not deejays. Okay, maybe I’m overdoing it a bit, but let me explain the deejay profession to you and you can judge for yourself whether these celebrities are good deejays or just aren’t.

This article is absolutely not written with the aim of “breaking eggs” on the backs of others, but rather with the objective of doting the “i’s” and finally putting an end to these illusions that marketing the music industry and its equipment spills over into your head.

I am writing this article with the primary aim of making you understand what the job of a dj really is and to distinguish it from that of the producer, author, and composer of music. I do this so that you can identify what really motivates you and to be able to draw a profile that suits you.

And I know what I’m talking about, having started with amateur deejaying first, I got more and more interested in the studio mixing and Computer-Aided Music. I started my first productions and I forced myself to do the evening deejay in the idea that in this way I could make myself known and finally reveal my music.

THIS TYPE OF COURSE IS A MYTH THAT YOU MUST STOP BELIEVING IF AT THE BASIS WE DON’T LIKE DEEJAYING !!!

  • If it’s the composition that interests you, make the composition and don’t get confused with the deejaying!
  • If it is the deejaying that interests you, stop believing that it is the composition that will allow you to succeed, it is completely wrong!
  • If you are interested in both and do both well, but remember that Dj and songwriter are two totally different things.

FROM DISC-JOCKEY TO DEEJAY

Whether you like it or not the first role of the disc jockey (deejay, DJ) is as the name suggests, ” TO ENCHAIN ​​DISCS” . This means that the primary role is not to make people dance as we can often hear, but to string together records. Because a deejay can very well be paid to string together records in a fashion show or during the presentation of a new model of car and therefore, is not paid to make people dance but to ” PLAY MUSIC WITHOUT INTERRUPTION” during an event. Indeed, I grant you, we are more used to seeing deejays in a discotheque, that said, that was not always the case and we have to go back in time to understand why deejays have primarily found their place in this type of place.

At the outset, the dancing establishments, the “Night Clubs” as they say, called on real music groups to  ANIMATE  an evening or an event. Over time, recording and sound reproduction technologies in the 1950s gave birth to the  “LP record”,  commonly known as ” vinyl record “. This one, in the space of 10 years became of such good quality that it was no longer necessary to call upon a group of musicians to reproduce a music. And that’s how the first music fans quite naturally began to collect tens and hundreds of vinyl records to string them together at private parties and become “

During the same period, the “Night clubs” understood that they could also collect hundreds of music and distribute them without having to call on musicians. Consequently, in the interests of profitability, nightclubs have gradually replaced music groups, musicians, by a single employee whose function was to make the “Disc Jockey”.

You will have probably understood it, the deejays, have between quotation marks, “stung” a part of the work of the musicians.

But things don’t end there. Although the DJs of the day could easily replace a band when it came to music delivery, things were quite different when it came to setting the mood. A music group certainly makes music but also performs on stage. A band takes the stage, a band puts on a show and that’s where the deejays were and often still are. This is why to fill this void, the deejays have become secondly  ANIMATORS.

Thus, the role of the Disc-Jockey has grown to that of ANIMATOR.

And it is thanks to this point that the profession of deejay has been able to find recognition among an audience. Because the deejay no longer had the simple role of playing records according to a musical program defined by an artistic director and/or a musical programmer but had to do it well, listen and adapt to the reactions of the public.

Thus, the deejay, to adapt to the public, had in addition to having a good musical culture, to keep abreast of the latest news. This is why it must be attentive to the different fashions and be on the lookout for new emerging artists.

In a short time, the deejay has taken such an important place in dance establishments and radio stations that it has become a benchmark in terms of talent scouting.
This is why the record companies and producers have naturally approached the DJ to offer them to play their title by means of “arrangements” financial or “in-kind” …

“If you pass up that title, I’ll give you that … or you can meet him or her …”

These arrangements have gradually transformed some popular deejays into artist-producing deejays. Because having the power to distribute unknown music to an audience, it has the power to make artists known. And consequently, the power to produce artists takes too much risk since it can directly test the “capacity of appreciation” of a title towards an audience.

But this is another story that goes beyond the framework of conventional deejay and begins that of some producers of current music. History which will give birth in the years 2000 to the phenomenon of ” DJ Star “

DEEJAY’S JOB CONSISTS OF:

1) Chain music.
2) Animate an audience.
3) Listen and adapt to the reactions, tastes, and desires of the public.
4) Be on the lookout for new trends and emerging artists.

A good DJ does not impose his musical tastes.
A good DJ must follow the tastes of the public to the detriment of his own.
A good DJ is distinguished by his ability to understand and give an audience, the atmosphere, and the music that this audience wants.

Remember that in a nightclub, it is the public who come to the party and not the DJ, nor all the people who work in the establishment. A good DJ in a nightclub creates a festive atmosphere because it is the public who asks him! It is not the dj who asks the audience to dance. It is the public who asks the DJ to put on some music to dance!

This also means that an audience can ask a dj for something other than dancing.
The public in a “lounge” establishment does not ask a DJ to play music to dance, but music to relax.
It’s the DJ who has to adapt, not the audience!

  • Having said that, the audience isn’t the only one in deciding what to do with a dj, because in reality, it’s the customer.
    The DJ provides a service to a client and that client can be something other than an audience.
    In a nightclub, the “end customer” is the public, but the direct customer is the nightclub that calls on the services of the dj.
    This means that a direct customer can ask the dj not to adapt to the end customer, for example, to impose a brand image.
    This can be the case for a fashion show. The creator of the show requests the services of a deejay and therefore becomes his client (or his employer depending on the type of contract, but this is a detail that does not change the logic at all). This creator asks the dj for a certain sound dressing, a certain selection of music that the creator judges to be in adequacy with his parade. In this case, even if the public prefers Hip Hop music, if the creator has chosen Electro music, the DJ will follow the indications of the creator who pays him.

CHOOSE THE FOLLOWING MUSIC ACCORDING TO ITS HARMONIC COMPATIBILITY

There you have it, you have chosen to start music and it is now time to choose the one that will follow. For that, you need to know how to mix with the harmonic keys, also you can thank to this page learn all the techniques of mixing by harmonic key. Here, in our playlist creation, I advise you to go to the simplest and most efficient. Select music with the same equivalent harmonic key, test as a priority the music with the best notes and if this does not suit because of too strong or too weak musical intensity, go to the higher harmonic key, test again, and if it still will not go to the lower harmonic key on the condition that it allows you subsequently to resume the current harmonic key and to be able to pass to the higher one Example: you are currently playing music in harmonic key “4A”, test another music in “4A”, if that does not suit, switch to “5A”, if it still does not suit, switch to “3A” on condition that you can come back to “4A” and switch to “5A”.

7) MASTER THE INTENSITY THROUGH THE CHOICE AND THE WAY TO MIX

The intensity of a piece, its energy, and its complexity in sound sources, means that it is more or less suited to another piece and logically directs the energetic evolution of your playlist, your deejay set. That said, you shouldn’t just rely on that, because the energy of your dj set will also be defined by your way of mixing and chaining your music. Also, the original tempo of the music is not necessarily evocative of its potential. This is why when you choose a title so that it is linked with another, you must try it by mixing it with the key corrector of your software or dj player (“Keylock” function) with the tempo you want. want for this precise moment of the dj set. This will allow you to discover that many normally slow songs can be a real bomb when accelerated. However, the opposite is rarer and should be avoided, because the more you slow down digital music, the more you reduce the resolution and therefore its sound quality.

Also, you must change the tempo gradually throughout your set and especially not stay frozen at the same BPM. Increase it gradually throughout the mix and from time to time, you can choose to lower it to better bring out the bass for example. To lower it, it is better to do it when there is no rhythm, or if not to do it quickly and exaggeratedly to gradually increase it again during a rise to create a break effect between two phases. of charged rhythms.

In addition, when a piece is clean, simple, minimalist, this one alone, will not be a good choice to follow behind music very loaded in sound and intensity but can prove to be an excellent choice for a three or three. four decks. In this case the selection of 2 simple kinds of music can very well be linked in 3 decks behind a loaded title. This is why you should also test and select a song according to your DJ skills and your material.

8) END YOUR PLAYLIST STRATEGICALLY

After having selected about twenty titles that follow one another, you will undoubtedly notice that your playlist evolves in the form of waves. This geometry is undoubtedly the most appropriate for a playlist and a dj set, because we could say that each wave contains a starter, a main course, and a dessert. At this point, we could choose to stop for dessert, but as the other would say, “we would have a nice little strong coffee”, then after “it’s time for a drink” and “rebelote”.
More seriously, a dj set can be defined as a wave, but a playlist has no limit, so I advise you to try to chain several waves, but above all to try to return to the Harmonic key of the start your playlist and end it with a song that fits perfectly with the very first song in your playlist.
Thus, when you find yourself in a party situation you can, without any worries, start mixing your playlist at any time depending on what you were doing before. With this type of fence for all your playlists, you can mix and change at any time and thus perfectly adapt to the audience’s reaction without any stress or musical mess.

9) ADJUST THE SELF-GAINS AND SET THE TEMPO GRID OF YOUR MUSIC

That’s it, the hard part is done, now all you have to do is prepare your titles one by one to ensure formidable precision during your dj sets.
To do so, the first thing to do is to choose reference music, simple with perfect regularity in its tempo and sound level.
Choose a song that is not too old and of good quality, it will be used to calibrate all your music.
Now you slip this music into player A, you calibrate its tempo grid just once, and without touching its gain, you listen to it in a loop.
You then tune the auto-gain and the tempo grid of each music in your playlist according to this reference title. So you can be sure that everything will be on the same level and perfectly aligned during your set. Thus, you can concentrate on the purely artistic part of the DJ mixing.
Thanks to the new id3 tags, all the auto-gain levels will be memorized autonomously in your mixing software, i.e. the sound level adjustment will be directly recorded in the id3 tag of each music, which is really practical. (this is also the fundamental difference between auto-gain and the gain which is not memorized).

10) PREPARE THE CUES OF YOUR MUSIC

Finally, the last part and which is not the least, because it consists of editing starting cues to chain your titles like an ace and recompose a song live. Also, each dj has his own technique for editing cues, which is why here I will only tell you about my current technique Since the majority of DJ software and even high-end CD decks all generally allow you to store 8 Cues per title, I organize my Cues in the same way for all my music in order to be able to improvise better, according to my desires and public reactions.

I use Cue 1 to start the song, I place it on the first beat, usually the bass drum. I generally choose a passage at the beginning of the song corresponding to a rhythmic intro, but not too busy, perfect to mix with another title I use Cue 2 for a really flashy snare that allows me to juggle and manually recreate a rhythm with the other cues set on bass drum beats. Or if the song is not appropriate, I prefer to wedge it on an onomatopoeia I use Cue 3 and 4 to score the starts of two loaded parts of the song, usually the verse and the chorus I use Cue 5 and 6 to mark the starts of two climbs and bridges of a song. The 5 must be less intense than the 6 I use Cue 7 and 8 to mark two interesting parts to mix the next track, generally, I use it as a hot cue in the form of pre-recorded loops

11) TEST, RECORD, LISTEN, AND PERFUME YOUR MIX

There it’s finished! your set is ready to burst into the crowds, but before, obviously, you have to practice, record, and listen to learn your music, your set, try different ways of chaining, daring effects, climbs, beat juggling, etc. … in short, do your job, mix.

 

 

HOW TO MAKE A HIGH QUALITY PLAYLIST AND DJ SET

To make a high-quality playlist and DJ set, you have to work and be organized, the preparation of playlists and DJ sets is absolutely essential to claim to lead crowds to musical euphoria. Obviously, alcohol and drugs help to fill the gaps of a DJ and can even make you forget that this one does not know how to mix, but before you launch out in a vast campaign of collective intoxication to hope to make you acclaim with the end of your performance with retarded people who will undoubtedly show their joy by throwing upon you, I can only advise you to follow this tutorial which will make you a champion in creating a DJ set.

1) LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC AND GIVE THEM A RATING

This step is the absolute basics before you do anything, you obviously need to build up a rich music collection and listen to each track to give them a rating from 0 to 5. So if you find that the track is 0 1 2 3 4 5 To rate your song, you will obviously need to use the star rating system available through the id3 tags of your files using software such as iTunes, Tracktor, Serato and many others.

2) CLASSIFY AND EDIT YOUR MUSIC TAGS BY MUSICAL GENRE

Beginning by assigning a musical genre to a piece is not easy when you are a beginner, because it requires a real musical culture. Also, the attribution of a name to a style of music can seem to complicate as the diversity is great and equivalent to a general lack of culture which dictates a tendency to confuse everything. Thus, for the styles of electronic music for example, it is necessary to differentiate well the “House” of the “Deephouse” and of the “Electro”, but also the “Dubstep” of the “Big beat”, the “Techno” of the ” Minimal “or” Tek “etc … To put it simply, you have to start by assigning a style representing a musical family which contains sub-styles. For example, we can define in an electronic music family, TECHNO, HOUSE, DANCE, DUBSTEP, BIGBEAT, GARAGE, 2STEP, DRUM & BASS, JUNGLE, TRANCE, DOWNTEMPO, etc … To define a musical family, the tempo often gives a clue for the classification but only the construction rhythm and song prove it. Also, for those who know “gesaffelstein” you will not be surprised if I tell you that this artist does techno, but that contrary to what one might think, half of his songs have a BPM (beats per minute ) exceeding 100 whereas for this style, we rather expect 140-160 in BPM. the tempo often gives a clue for the classification but only the construction of the rhythm and of the piece proves right. Also, for those who know “gesaffelstein” you will not be surprised if I tell you that this artist does techno, but that contrary to what one might think, half of his songs have a BPM (beats per minute ) exceeding 100 whereas for this style, we rather expect 140-160 in BPM. the tempo often gives a clue for the classification but only the construction of the rhythm and of the piece proves right. Also, for those who know “gesaffelstein” you will not be surprised if I tell you that this artist does techno, but that contrary to what one might think, half of his songs have a BPM (beats per minute ) exceeding 100 whereas, for this style, we rather expect 140-160 in BPM.

Then, we assign a sub-style, we can reuse the same thermal baths and use many more subjective ones which above all allow us to clearly identify the style of the piece, for example: HOUSE dance, HOUSE tropical, HOUSE disco, HOUSE hip-hop, HOUSE rock etc … But also, ELECTRO rock, ELECTRO funk, ELECTRO house, ELECTRO techno, ELECTRO dance, ELECTRO clash, etc For the sub-style, it is not essential to try to attribute to all songs from your music database to begin with, but as your collection grows, this step becomes more and more important for you to quickly select songs to prepare cohesive playlists.

3) ANALYZE THE HARMONIC KEY AND THE TEMPO OF YOUR MUSIC

Once you have assigned a musical style to your songs, you can move on to analyzing the harmonic key of your songs. For this, you need a music file harmonic key detection software like the famous MixInKey version 7 of this software. I invite you to use one of these software only for the detection of the harmonic key and not for the tempo, for the BPM, it is preferable that you do it directly with your dj software like Traktor which is often much more precise than key detection software.

4) CREATE A PLAYLIST AND ADD MUSIC FROM ONE OR MORE MUSICAL GENRES

Now is the time to start your playlist. To do this, create a playlist directly in your DJ software or iTunes if you know how to export your playlist to your DJ mixer software. To start, give a name related to the musical genre you want to mix, then, when your playlist is finished, you can modify this name by adding a sub-style or an adjective qualifying your playlist, for example, playlist: ELECTRO funky cool. Select your music according to their genres and musical styles and add them to your playlist, the more there are, the better, because you will have more choices to select music that will mix perfectly with another. So, if you want to make a playlist with a very precise style, add all the music of this desired style to your playlist. Likewise, if you want to make a versus style playlist, that is to say, to oppose and mix two different styles like ELECTRO with ROCK or even HOUSE with HIP-HOP.

5) CHOOSE A STARTING MUSIC AND HARMONIC KEY

Once your music has been added to your playlist, classify them by harmonic key and locate the key with the fewest possibilities. By that, I mean a musical key which would be rather rare in your musical selection. The idea is to minimize the chances of finding yourself with little to choose from in the middle of a playlist and thus ensure that you can always select music that will perfectly suit the desired musical energy. In this harmonic key, choose music that would make a good starting piece. Obviously, you are in charge of judging which one will do the trick. However, prefer music with a rather moderate musical intensity to give yourself the opportunity to build up the pressure later. Don’t start with loud music,

 

How To Effectively Create PLAYLIST For Your DJ Sets:

Some DJs don’t like having a set prepared in advance They prefer to “improvise” in real-time, even if this improvisation is only partial (they know all the same that their tracks go well with such others for example

The advantage of this approach is that you have a lot of flexibility to be able to adjust your performance according to the reactions of the audience, or even the time at which you go to the decks.

Other DJs, of which I am part, prefer to have a set already well worked and fine-tuned before mixing.

It can go as far as mixing “to the measure ready”, that is to say knowing exactly when in title 1 title 2 must enter, and for how long before title 1 is released completely.

The advantage of this approach is that you don’t have to think and “improvise” when you’re in public, and your set rendering is potentially very fine, subtle, precise, and clean!

In any case, if you have a set prepared in advance, you have THE CHOICE to play it or to give free rein to your feeling and “improvisation” during your performance …

In an Excel grid, you can write down the info of your tracks, move/rearrange/reorder them as you wish, and easily format everything.

The principle to follow is to write ONLY the essential information, that is to say useful while you mix.

For example, you can order your songs and specify in columns:

> Their name.

> Their tempo and key (optional, even if you mix harmonically because you already know the previous and next tracks 😉).

> Their entry timing (ie at what point in the previous title do you have to enter this title into the mix).

> Their release timing (i.e. when you have to take this title out of the mix).

> Their energy level (a little / moderately / very angry, for example).

Always aim for SIMPLICITY: make a clean, minimalist document, easy to use and to consult when you are in the dark (write in black on white, roughly…).

Start by creating a fairly rudimentary document and test it as soon as possible.

Then, you can improve it to see what works, what doesn’t, useful info to add, and unnecessary info to remove to simplify 😉

If you have several sets, you can dedicate a tab in your Excel file for each one.

When it’s ready: print this playlist on paper so you can use it whatever your mixing gear (with or without a computer): vinyl turntables, CDs, or DJ software.

By creating a set all prepared in advance, one might be tempted to think that it will not be possible, or in any case very difficult, to surprise your audience …

Because we are not in front of him in real-time, and therefore we cannot adapt at the moment, so as to release THE right track when it is necessary for example …

There are parries, “hacks” to still BLUFF your audience, and why not, repeatedly throughout your set.

The key to getting there is ANTICIPATION!

That is to say that when you design your set, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the dancers who would “follow” you, in order to better capture their attention, and to “guide” them in a way 🙂

You have a lot of possibilities to surprise them:

> switch from one musical style to another very different, in a fluid and transparent way.

> Take a “leap” in tempo, without it being heard at all.

> Apply a well-placed harmonic “modulation”, for example by switching from one melody to another.

You can discover such advanced tips and techniques in The Dojo training (especially with “The Checklist for a Killer Set” in Level 9 ).

You can plan, anticipate a striking surprise for your audience two-thirds of your set, in order to revive the interest of the dancers 🙂

You can even do it in a more moderate but more frequent way, for example, every 15 minutes, by playing the remix of a well-known hit …

The possibilities are endless!