Subject and description prettymuch says it all. I’m pretty much a complete novice to the world of DJ’ing and music production, but it’s what I love and I’m pretty much saturatingmyself with everything I can learn right now.
I’ve watched all the various dj tutorials, because while I want to produce music… I really want to learn to perform live as well. I like Ableton a lot, but I have a suspicion that if you aren’t using Sorrato and turntables no one will take you seriously as a performance DJ. How true do people think this statement is?
there are plenty of ableton DJs/performers, including some very big names, I think is more down to what is that you want to do as a DJ or live act and what works for your music. Of course you’ll find 100s of purist (most of which never played to more than 10 people) saying that it’s not ‘real’ DJing. But who cares you’re not there to please or impress other DJs, you there to rock the crowd. Personally I use Traktor Scratch and love it 
Hey folks, I have another quick question about Setting up a set. I’ve been to more clubs, shows, and raves than I could ever hope to count. I think I have a decent feel for general set structure and such, but I’m curious about something.
Lots of DJs say they spin house, electro house, trance, etc. (as in most list a few sub-genres if you look at myspace pages where they catagorize themselves). However I don’t know that I’ve ever heard many dj’s mix say a bit of hard house into a trance set.
Is mixing sub-genres within the same set just a huge faux pas or something? Why is it you never hear a bit more variety within sets?
although im not a user myself, ableton is a very powerful tool dont let any1 tell you any different, but ppl will only respect you for your style, so why not mix it up a bit. maybe not heard so much in trance etc, but its not uncommon to hear a dnb dj splash in some dubstep or house djs to throw in anything with a simillar style (electro, breaks, indie disco…)
First off Ableton is just as valid a format for DJing with as traditional turntables, CDJ’s, Traktor etc. What you have to remember is that 99% of the people on the dancefloor don’t know what your doing technically, they are only reacting to what they hear, so if what you are doing sounds good and people are dancing then you are a good DJ whether or not your using Ableton, CDJ’s or a snare drum mic’d up to a distortion pedal!
Secondly I think most of the best DJs in the world mix up styles within a set, for example someone like Elite Force can drop electro, techno, dubstep, house, fidget, indie dance, old rave mash ups etc in the space of an hour and make it work brilliantly. There’s probably few things more boring on a dancefloor than exactly the same style for two hours. Personally I’d rather hear someone who had a great and broad taste in music DJing than a purist who wouldn’t play anything other than their preferred style. Same goes for making music as well, the wider your tastes and appreciation of as many genres as possible then the greater amount of influences you can draw from and potentially more interesting tunes you can make. Most of the time it’s worth taking risks because that’s what will set you apart form the masses.
Thanks for the responses folks! Definitely making me feel a bit more comfortable with some of what I’d been imagining.
So a followup question on the whole mixing genres thing: are there techniques for actually changing the pace (bpm) of your set? With electronica ranging from ~120-180+ bpm depending on the sub-genre… Simply beatmatching songs could end up with things just sounding horribly off. Granted you’d probably want to work your way gradually, but how do DJ’s handle that if I dd want to say throw a slower house song into a faster trance set… Or even go the other way and mix in some faster drum n bass?
there are 100s of different ways, of course you don’t want to beatmatch everything. On the most basic end, you can simple start a song on the last beat of the previous one, start with learning ‘traditional’ DJ techniques, youtube is a good place to start, check this video out [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIsPx-8-_Is]5 Basic DJ Transitions Between 2 Songs - YouTube