Playing The Clubs vs Playing for Private Parties

I have had the pleasure of Playing in Night Clubs in front huge crowds and playing for small groups of people at their homes and in (not so large) hotel banquet rooms. Of course, the larger the venue the more exciting the party, but playing for small groups has it's advantages also. I haven't been a club D.J for several years now and although it was fun while it lasted I can't say I miss it all that much; Especially the late hours that came with the job.

Now that I'm much older with different value systems and perspectives in place, I find playing for private groups much more satisfying and in tune with my own personal taste in music. With D.Jaying, the best performance will always come out of playing and doing what you enjoy the most. The clubs here in Detroit are mostly interested in young D.Js who can play to and move a young crowd. When I say "young" I don't necessarily mean in their twenties; but at least below fifty (which I am not anymore.)

I still get asked to play at venues that include the young and the (not so young) so I keep up with todays music in order to remain professional in my trade. Oddly enough, I like a lot of the new music that is being produced by some of todays artist. Just to name a few, I love the new Maxwell album, and of course John Legend. Then there's Chris Brown, Akon, Raheem Devaughn Keyshia Cole, Mary J. Blige and many, many more that are too numerous to name, but you get the picture. These artist are carrying on a great tradition of making great music!

I am somewhat disapointed with some of the "Rap" genre especially when it tends to demean women and glorify a so-called thug life style. I have too many little nieces and nephews who listen to this garbage and become influenced by it! I know I can't change the world on my own but I can do my part by not including music with explicit lyrics in anything I do! All my mixes are clean! and if I happen to like the beat of a dirty record, all I use is the beat!

This brings me to one of the major differences between playing in clubs and playing at parties. In the night clubs the crowd want's to hear all the explicit lyrics and suggestive language that's associated with Rap music. At private venues, (in most cases) there are liitle children and elderly people present and of course, this would be inappropriate for both of them. So here's where my years of playing to various crowds comes into play. I can entertain the older people with music from their era and also entertain the younger group with the music of today! And it enthralls me to see everyone having a good time.

The other major difference is that when I played the club circuit I usually only needed my music that I wanted to mix. The night club already had all the sound equippment in place; so therefore they would only pay me a nominal fee for coming in and using their stuff. Usually anywhere from $80.00 to $150.00 is the most clubs would pay (and most times it was less than $100.00) per/night. As a freelance D.J. I usually bring in anywhere from $250.00 to $360.00 for a single night's work and most parties I do are over by 11:00 pm. or 12:00 a.m. but now I bring the sound equippment too. And as I mentioned in my last blog, that has become easier to do!

Well, that's about all for now, write to me if you have any comments about this subject or if you would like to express some of your own views! I'm always willing to share what I know and I'm always open to new ideas. Next time, I'll give away a few of my mixing techniques for those that are still learning the trade! As always, "Stay In The Mix."

From Vinyl To Plastic

We are living in a world of technology! This is the age of cyber links and computer generated everything; from people to entire worlds. Needless to say, the "Art of D.Jaying" has undergone a few transformations of it's own as result of today's technological advancements. I can still remember hauling around those crates of albums to the various venues I worked on and those huge speakers that I had to move with a dolly! And unless I had access to a van or truck, I had to rent one just to move everything. Well, those days are over! Now I can pretty much toss everthing I need in the back of my S.U.V and I'm off to the races. Instead of albums, now all I use are C.Ds and don't even have to use that many of them anymore because most of my music is being played from my laptop!


I use the "Prodigy F/X" a lot now when I'm working small venues and I take C.Ds with me just for performance purpose. The effects on the Prodigy won't initiate from the laptop alone. You need to have your CD inserted for them to work for you. I also keep the CDs handy for using the Pioneer CDJ-400 players and the separate effects units (like the pioneer EFX-1000.) All of this is smaller and lighter than the equippment I used when I still played tracks from records. The speakers being used today are much smaller and lighter too! and in my opinion, they sound even better than those huge monsters I used to haul around! A good choice for speaker cabinets I found were the JBL-PRX512M powered speaker cabinets. They're compact and have a self contained amplifier that delivers a true quality sound! For added low frequency you may want to include a separate sub woofer cabinet and Behringer offers a great bargain with the Eurolive VP1800S. As I said, all of this is easy to move in a mid sized S.U.V and real quick to set up!

So if you're new to the D.J. business these are just a few products that you might want to take a look at and If you've been out there for awhile already but haven't started using some of the newer technology available; take a look at these. My next blog will contain a few tips on how you can use some of these products to improve your performance. Until next time, stay in the mix!