DJGold

jbrown157 · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 1:10 pm Post subject: First all computer gig

Well, I did it! I brought both the CD and PC DJ rigs to last night's wedding with the intention of using the Cds primarily and mixing in the MP3s. Once I got started with the computer I never went back and didn't use the CD player at all. Wow! What a difference. Everything was much easier and faster. I had more time to interact and be creative.

There were a couple of technical glitches. I still had some minor stuttering when scrolling through the lists and occasionally had a phantom window open up when trying to load a track but I'm sure I'll get that all worked out.

The only other problem I had was finding myself wanting to go to the CD case to "browse". It's a habit that I've picked up from years of using CDs and one I need to break. This will require a different mindset when programming music. A couple solutions I can think of to help will be better organization of my music catagories (to enable browsing) and make better use of wait lists.

I know that many of you have already completed this transition. Do you have any tips for those of us just embarking on this digital journey?

dokai · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 4:12 pm Post subject:

Congratulations! Glad to hear that you ran into so few issues, and that they were so minor in nature. I'm sure you'll work the remaining wrinkles out of the system very soon.

As far as your "browsing", I've suggested this before, but I'll mention it again.

While most of us started out sorting our CDs and vinyl by artist (or by BPM for the club jocks), sorting song files that way isn't necessary. All you have to do is click "search" and type in "Britney" and all the songs you have by Ms. Spears will show up. Therefore, sorting them in advance by artist is redundant, and interferes with the type of "browsing" you're describing.

I sort my songs by decade, then by genre. They're automatically sorted by artist within each genre by the computer. However, if I'm programming a "60's" set, I can look at ALL of my 60's stuff in one display without having to request specific artists. This makes browsing much easier. For example, I could just open the "Rock" folder and grab a few songs from there, do the same thing with the "Soul" folder, and then finish the set with something from "Ballads".

- 60's -
| - Rock
| - Soul
| - Ballads
- 70's -
| - Disco / Funk
| - Rock
| - Pop
| - Ballads

It was much easier than having to REMEMBER all the artists that I have that are from the 60's, and then going to that artist's folder and choosing a song by that artist. THAT approach usually limited me to the same dozen or so artists that came to mind the quickest. Once I switched to sorting by decade and genre I started playing a lot more variety. I've had MANY guests approach me at the end of an event and compliment me with "I heard SO many songs that I love, but haven't heard them in so long!" I attribute that to being able to browse so easily when someone says something like "Got any *insert genre here*?"

Waitlists are also a great way to create sets quickly. Obviously this is more appropriate with "oldies", as they're not making any of those any more, so your oldies waitlists can be more static. Come up with a killer set and then save it, and you can recall it whenever you need it. This also makes it easy to "tweak" each playlist until it's polished to perfection. New songs require a more "build your set on the fly" approach, as there is constantly new material to be incorporated. And waitlists are also great for putting all of the "special dances" in an easy to find location.

Other tips:

I like to have Media Player fired up in the background with a ballad loaded. A couple of times over the years PCDJ has "frozen" for around 30 seconds, and being able to flip over to Media Player and hit "play" almost instantly has kept the dead air to a minimum. I use a ballad because a random ballad tossed into the set is less jarring than a random "anything else". Like I said, it's only happened a couple of times in the MANY years I've been using computers in my performance, but it's cheap insurance and buys PCDJ a couple of minutes to regroup. That's enough time to save your work and close out of PCDJ, and then relaunch it "fresh" if you have to. I've never had to do that, but it's nice to have the safety net there.

I also keep a "notepad" window open, to jot down requests. It's easier than trying to keep track of them than when using a pencil and paper, especially in limited lighting. Also, I can cut and paste the artist name or title into my search field from notepad, rather than typing it in a second time, minimizing the opportunities for typos.

djdonny · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 6:07 pm Post subject:

Good suggestions, Dokai.

Also Jack, if I can make a cheap plug, to substitute for browsing through your CD cases, can I suggest you use a book of songs for suggestions. Of course, I have just the thing for sale at http://www.bpmlist.com/. You can search by music style, artist, title, or BPM without having to squint at the PC screen.

jwg · Joined: September 15th, 2004 Posts: 1089 Location: Erie, PA

Jack: Isn't it amazing after doing an event totally digital? You wonder why you didn't do it years before!

I have my folders layout exactly like dokai's. In the id3 tags, I also include the play time of the song and the year released.

hernan · Joined: February 5th, 2006 Posts: 90

Do you veteran digi-DJ's ever categorize by key or BPM or tempo?

it seems that would be a great way to utilize my database.

But i have not done so yet.

dokai · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 8:50 pm Post subject: Re: First all computer gig

hernan wrote: Do you veteran digi-DJ's ever categorize by key or BPM or tempo?

PCDJ, and probably most other DJ applications, allow you to calculate the BPM and then store it in the application. You can sort by BPM from there.

jwg · Joined: September 15th, 2004 Posts: 1089 Location: Erie, PA

My method is in this order:

1) Rip CD in Audiograbber

2) Run the mp3 through the free Mixmeister BPM analyzer.

3) I then use Tag & Rename (about $30.00 program) to put the proper ID3 tags in the mp3 file. Since I am still using the old PCDJ Red, I also add the song's Play time to the PCDJ Version column and the year the song was released to the PCDJ comment column.

dokai · Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2006 8:29 am Post subject:

And don't forget about normalizing the files, so they're all (close to) the same volume level. I use MP3 Gain. It modifies the files in a non-destructive manner, and works well.

DJ Teddy Bear · Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2006 8:47 am Post subject:

Welcome to the 21st century!

jbrown157 · Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2006 9:30 am Post subject:

Some great ideas. Donny, I ordered your condensed version. I can see where it will be very useful as a reference at gigs. I think it will also be useful for when guests ask to see a music list.

Phil & John, again, great ideas. I figured that I'd have a load of work to do on the music library once I actually started using it. I ripped it in the same format that I used in my CD case. I can now see that the method you are describing will be a lot more effecient... now I just need time to recatalogue all those tracks (yikes!). Heck, I'm still working on eliminating duplicates... I've already deleted over 800 and there are lots more!

You're also right about the normalizing. I found some significant differences in sound levels that required adjustment. I've done some of the files, but have lots remaining to do... fortunetely, I can run this application at night while I'm sleeping! I also downloaded the program that John suggested for syncronizing my hard drives and it seems to do exactly what I want.

I really like the idea about having the year in the note section - that's another area where Donny's book will come in handy!

I am getting the feeling that maintaining this digital library is going to require constant effort, but it'll be well worth it. :thumbsup: Your advise is greatly appreciated!

jwg · Joined: September 15th, 2004 Posts: 1089 Location: Erie, PA

You're right. My #2 process after ripping in Audiograbber is to run them through MP3Gain. I have it set at 93 which seems to work well.
So, it's actually a 4 step process from ripping the CD through Tag & Rename.

DJ Teddy Bear · Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2006 1:16 pm Post subject:

DJ Teddy Bear wrote: Welcome to the 21st century! I hope you took that in the spirit in which it was meant....as an honest "Congratulations - You'll start kicking yourself for not doing it sooner real soon."

For the record I made the switch only a year ago. This week will be my first wedding that I am not bringing my CDs. Yeah, I will have my 700 song, 42 disc set of emergency CDs with me.

Not that I'll need them. I haven't had even a hint of a problem since my second digital gig.

My only real problem ws at my first digital gig. During the honoree's speech, when I wasn't playing music anyway. I bumped into the FireWire plug, and it fell out of the jack! I had to quit and restart the program and all was fine. Back in business before the speech ended.

Seems the big, fat, heavy duty FireWire cable that came with the external hard drive had a plug that was about 1/16" shorter than the plug on the thin, cheap, chincy looking wire that came with my original iPod. I now use that wire, and it stays in firmly. Go figure.

TheBartman47 · Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2006 2:23 pm Post subject:

I use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to rip my CDs, and it has normalizing option built in, so you can rip, normalize, and encode to MP3 all at one time.

djdonny · Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2006 7:17 pm Post subject:

Quote: I can see where it will be very useful as a reference at gigs. I think it will also be useful for when guests ask to see a music list.

Exactly. That's how I use the Condensed Edition. Thanks for ordering, and enjoy the book. I'd love to get your feedback before the next edition is published.

Thanks Dokai for the lead on the MP3Gain. Just downloaded it.

jwg · Joined: September 15th, 2004 Posts: 1089 Location: Erie, PA

Donny:

Set the target volume at 93 in MP3Gain. The default setting of 89 I think is too low. Anything above 95 is too loud, almost distorted.

Toneman · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 12:19 am Post subject:

Welcome to the wonderful world of DIGITAL DJing. I started it about three years ago and never looked back. I still bring a collection of CDs and two cd players to each event as backup.

One thing I would like to add to all the comments and suggestions is ... If you don't have a large hard drive on your computer to store all your music you can burn music to MP3 format on CDs and play them right from your disc drive. Each CD can hold about 150 to 200 songs. This was how I started out due to I only had a 40gig hard drive. I loaded my hard drive with the most commanly played and requested music and had the CDs with everything else. Today I have a 200gig hard drive to store all my music but I still burn MP3 CDs for back up just in case my computer goes down and/or I lose my library. With in this year I'm looking to invest in a second external hard drive to replace all my MP3 CD backups.

dokai · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 8:20 am Post subject:

djdonny wrote: Thanks Dokai for the lead on the MP3Gain. Just downloaded it.

You're welcome, Donny! Ditto what JWG said - the default gain value of 89 is too low, while 93 seems to be optimum.

FYI, you can consider us "even" for tips: I'm picking up the spiral bound copies of your book on my next paycheck. :wink:

djdonny · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 5:28 pm Post subject:

Quote: Set the target volume at 93 in MP3Gain. The default setting of 89 I think is too low. Anything above 95 is too loud, almost distorted.

As a fledgling digi-DJ, I'm not quite sure I understand the concept of normalizing then. If I normalize all my songs at 89 dB and then raise the main volume 4dB, shouldn't it sound about the same as if I normalized to 93dB? And vice versa if set to 95 and then lower the playback volume?

I thought this just tried to match the volumes among tracks.

djdonny · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 5:30 pm Post subject:

Quote: I'm picking up the spiral bound copies of your book on my next paycheck.

Glad to have you as a customer. I'm busily working on the 2006 edition as we speak. Hope to have them for sale at the CT convention in June, but if not, then definitely the AC convention in August.

dokai · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:18 pm Post subject:

djdonny wrote: As a fledgling digi-DJ, I'm not quite sure I understand the concept of normalizing then. If I normalize all my songs at 89 dB and then raise the main volume 4dB, shouldn't it sound about the same as if I normalized to 93dB? And vice versa if set to 95 and then lower the playback volume?

I thought this just tried to match the volumes among tracks.

You're right, the primary goal is to match volumes, but the louder your source file, the less you have to jack it up and the better your S/N ratio is. The idea is to get it loud, but give yourself a little room before distortion starts.