September in New England usually means wedding season is starting to wind down, school dances are back in full swing and it's time to think about Holiday parties. After a busy summer season it's a good idea to look around your office and catch up some things you've let slide. There's equipment to be fixed, things to be cleaned, social media and marketing to catch up on, etc. Time to switch gears a little. Here is a really spot on list of ideas from a marketing website I follow. I firmly believe that to truly grow your business, you need to digest content from a variety of sources. I came across Josh Pather on Instagram a few months ago. Not all of h... [read more]

Comparison / Contrast for DJs Way back when, as a freshman in college, my first writing prof introduced me to the wonders of the "comparison/contrast" essay: It's where you take a look at the similarities and/or differences between two things or subjects as a way to express some interesting truth about them. This Mobile Beat issue, which I originally thought would be a bunch of unrelated articles, actually offers a pretty good helping of comparisons and contrasts: competition/teamwork, cutting-edge quick mixing/crowd-pleasing classic song lists, how to build company culture/how NOT to build company culture, and so on. We even profile a solo operator... [read more]

I'll bet that at least half of the people that read the title of this blog thought I was writing about computers and the other half thought I was writing about political correctness. The previous statement clearly demonstrates two important miscommunication principles. 1. Misinterpretation and 2. Not saying what you mean. The folks that guessed political correctness would be right (I've never owned a Mac, but I do have an iPad, iPhone and two iPods). I admit I swear like a sailor on shore leave and I'm sarcastic to a fault. Ask my wife. Maybe it's the generation I grew up in or maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy (more likely) but I was rais... [read more]

All right. A little Serato, a little DJ during Scratch Live, but the same principle holds for Serato DJ. If you look up here, I've made a mistake, I have marked cue points out of order and I don't know if you've ever done this, but I've suddenly gone to Q2 and made it for Q3 and Q1 is suddenly Q4. So a lot of people say, I've got to kill them and then go back and redo them. Well, this is going to be an under a minute tip, because if you take your mouse like this and you realize you want this one first, drag it. I hope you guys can see this, try it again. Drag it up and it switches. So you can switch the cues all day long, make them any direction you want and what'll happen is it'll light up on the controller you're using on your cue markers in order. So if you're going off colors, if you're going off controll... [read more]

First, I would like to apologize to any disc jockeys that actually are lawyers. This blog isn't really about you, but it does pertain to you. There was a good discussion on one of the several thousand DJ forums I belong to about DJs offering legal advice or stating something is against the law without offering any proof. These strands start off innocently enough with someone posting a question about the rules on using a particular piece of gear at an event or about music, files, streaming or sharing. The strands quickly devolve into regional DJs stating how one can or can't do that in their market. A good example: cold sparklers. These things are re... [read more]

(TORRANCE, CA) August 8th, 2019: If you’ve been eagerly anticipating a Serato-compatible version of our pro-grade DDJ-1000 controller, good news: The wait is over. The 4-channel DDJ-1000SRT inherits the layout of the DDJ-1000, which feels familiar to a CDJ+DJM club-standard set-up. All the same professional features are there too, including low-latency, full-size jog wheels from the CDJ-2000NXS2 and the slick MAGVEL FADER for tight scratching. Concentrate on the crowd, not your laptop, thanks to color On Jog Display, which gives you important track information in the center of each jog wheel. Build excitement on the dancefloor and create... [read more]

From Hercules: Teaching AI to DJ: How Algorithms Can Help Beginning DJs and Add Unexpected Creativity to Their Sets Creating a great set is about more than mastering the hardware and technique. It’s about something you can’t pick up quickly: musical knowledge. This knowledge goes deeper than finding awesome or popular tracks. A great DJ can gauge music’s danceability in a flash and define the next big sound. This deeply human and intuitive judgement call can be supported by AI, as a machine can analyze certain track parameters and suggest novel ideas for what to play next. It can alleviate a major pain point for all DJs, but particularly for those new to the practice. read more]

All right. DJ tips in under a minute. Looking for new cool things that I can use, that you can use, especially if you are using MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, MacBook, the Frayfix.com. There's the end of snapping off your power supply like that. Here's the cool thing, it covers up, keeps this protected, but this is the part that always gets messed up, that part of your power supply. Not anymore. Now you've got that and then at the other end, you've got another piece, as you can see right here, because it's early and things aren't open yet. So I'm improvising. And this protects the other end of the power supply. Really cool company, I just acquired one, I'll be using it. You'll see it in my videos from now on and it's the Frayfix.com. You've got to check them out. Simple, easy, economic fix for a problem that defin... [read more]

What qualifies someone to give themselves a title? A degree, a diploma, a certificate of training? If I can change the oil, change a tire and give my car a tuneup, can I call myself a mechanic? Not really. If I can replace an outlet in my house or wire up a new connection, does that make me an electrician? Probably not. If I buy a set of speakers, a microphone, a controller and hook them up to a laptop full of music; am I a DJ? Apparently so. It's no secret that our industry has a ridiculously low barrier to entry. Many people would argue that there is no formal training to become a DJ. Those people would be partially correct. There is no Un... [read more]

DJ tips in under a minute, the end of the night, my wedding is over. Now it's teardown time. Little tip for you, that's my hard drive. So what I've been told, since it has moving parts and if you touch it, you can feel it's spinning is I like to close down Serato, close down the laptop and wait about 30 to 60 seconds before I disengage the drive. Simply said, because I don't want to run into any problems with the drive either crashing or being damaged or anything. So in under a minute, you close Serato, then you wait. So what I will usually do is bring this down a little bit, start to get ready, feel it spin down and then I will close it and pop it. So in under a minute, be good to your drives, your drives will be good to you. See you.   ... [read more]