live/dj set coming up, aaaargh!!

[skinny.b]

yo, i've got a live/dj set coming up and i'm kinda shitting it a bit. Sure i may have pushed the promoter to put acts on the stage rather than in the DJ booth so it's sort of a rod for may own back. Now I'm a little concerned that what I'm doing won't look interesting enough to warrant being on stage. Here's my plan: cut up the 'best bits' out of all the beats/tunes i've made and load them onto the SP, nothing longer than 1-2 mins, just do the 1 pad per track thing and add some FX, stutter the starts of tracks a bit, and try and throw in some finger drumming (i'll throw something together specially for this). Also thinking, if that's not enough time filled, to have my laptop DJ setup on stage too and cut in some 'classics' or whatever occasionally. And I have one month to prepare for this. Does this sound like a good way of doing things? HELP!!!

[L.C.W]

sounds like a solid plan just practice a shit load before your gig, would look cool if you could get a projector displaying what your hands are doing to the crowd.

[skinny.b]

oh hell yeah man, i'm putting production on hold for the next month to sort it out! projector sounds like a wicked idea, they have one down there so i might speak with the promoter. I've done a million dj sets before but never done anything live of the SP so it's shitting me up a bit, really excited though! cheers bro

[admbmb]

I like to cut up my tracks into little pieces and trigger the pieces by hand improvising the sequence and dropping effects along the way. Takes time to memorize the pads (works well with practice) and I will feel inspired to throw in a pile of "one off" samples all over the extra pads. The one complete track per pad/drop effects technique will work and your crowd will not know the difference...but for me the "little pieces" method is more risky and therefore, more fun. The more you are having fun the more everyone else will. But if you are nervous, I've seen piles of other dudes do the one track per pad method and it will work out fine. I just need the risk factor, though the crowd is oblivious.

[skinny.b]

Yeah dude, that's where i'd like to be at but i reckon i'll hold back on the risks this time round, gonna throw in a couple of on the fly remixs but try and keep the fuck up potential to a minimum! Cheers for the advice guys, if I get any video footage i'll post it up

[kel]

Have fun man! what SP do you have? I could offer one suggestion. If you don't do this already, practice punching in FX on the fly with tap tempo... And selecting FX with the pad method instead of turning ctl3 knob gives you much less of a chance of accidentally messing up...

[lodger]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8d3BZQQN3A

mixed in key is an awesome program/resource for having good mixes. the thing is, you dont have to blend or mix to have a good set, but the best thing is to have songs that compliment each other harmonically if you are putting them back to back. MIK helps automate this to discover some new ways of using/combining tracks.

[skinny.b]

i actually didn't know about the tap tempo technique man, that sounds cool, i'll totally try that out, I'm on the OG404 by the way. And that mixed in key sounds interesting dude, i'll have to look it up. Cheers for the advice dudes!

[formal]

I had planned to do a live show last summer, but it never panned out. My plan was about the same as yours. Use SP404 one beat per pad and then use SP505 for vocal drops and interludes. I put my vestax 07 in the middle DJ style. I got all my samples sorted, but ran out of time to practice a routine/mAke a set list. Performing live is stressful!

[Unfolding]

Gotta be honest I reckon the one-pad-per-track method's lazy. You're not really playing live if you hit one pad that plays the whole song for you. If you've got anyone standing where they can see your hands they'll know it, doesn't matter if they're familiar with the SP or not.

Ever thought about planning out your tracks across multiple pads on a single bank for live play? For instance always have a drum loop (no hihats) on pads 1&2, hihat loop on 3, bass loop on 4, then have melodic loops & one-shots across the other pads. That way you can play 10 beats with one beat per pad bank. Plus it's an actual live performance that way.

But that said, with a month to practice the one-pad-per-track method's probs the best to run with. Especially when you'll be DJing too.

[LO-]

a good reason to try and keep your elements seperated, is if you wanna rock it live later, I know this takes up lots of space, a bank per beat, having the beat like this is more valuble to me than having a high quality mix down of the song in any case. I can't talk though, I mess up pretty good on stage sometimes, like i forgot to chop some stuff up properly, so i had to do it on stage, I use a combination of live pad beats 202 style, and sequencer beats, where I can mute the drums out and add some samples for fills and stuff. 1 beat per pad is still better than Ipod set or even worse a laptop set or CD player. for a dj set it's rad, because it looks like your playing an antique radio alarm clock.

[lodger]

I'd recommend you post a demo of your gig here and get feedback from people who might be able to help you put on a better show.

[skinny.b]

Totally, i'll see what i can do