prophetgoddess

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i decided to teach myself how to dj over the past week or so. i've made a lot of progress. one remarkable thing that has happened is i now appreciate listening to dj sets a lot more. i've found it really useful to listen to and watch them, to get a sense of how djs handle transitions and mixing. i especially like the boiler room ones, because they focus on the dj a lot and i can really see what they're doing and how.

here are some of my favorite dj sets i've listened to over the past week!

porter robinson

porter robinson is one of my favorite producers, but i know he got his start as a dj. he's great. this set is fantastic, features a lot of great porter tunes and remixes, and a surprise appearance from lil b. i love how much fun porter is clearly having.

ag cook

a.g. cook is the head of the hyperpop label pc music, and this set is bonkers. it whiplashes between corny y2k era pop music, pc music stuff, and the most horrible noise you've ever heard. in other words, it's exactly what you'd expect from the phrase "ag cook boiler room set."

jamie xx

jamie xx is another one of my favorite producers (when are we gonna get another jamie solo album dammit), and this set is great. a whole bunch of classic uk dance music sounds, sequenced excellently.

james blake

james blake is kind of what got me interested in the idea of djing. previously i hadn't been really interested. but hearing him talk about it, and hearing other people talk about him, and the uk dubstep scene in general, made me a lot more interested. this set is from the year he released his second album, overgrown, but it features a wide range of sounds, including early james blake cuts and harmonimixes.

nicolas jaar

nicolar jaar is a prolific producer both under his own name and under his against all logic alias, and basically everything he touches turns to gold. this set is really wild, a ton of great leftfield dance music performed with two laptops and a radio.


anyway here's my first recorded dj set:

i livestreamed this to some friends via trash dot cloud today. i livestreamed a set on sunday too but the recording came out weird. i've been doing a lot of djing just by myself and to myself, but it's a lot of fun to dj for other people. i'd love to do a real show at a party or something some day.

i would definitely recommend learning to dj if you're a fan of music or a music producer. it's not very hard, but it does change the way you think about song structure and mixing for the better, i think. it's given me a real appreciation for the craft of making good club music, and a deeper understanding of dance music structure and genres.

lemme know what you think and tell me what dj sets are your favorites! i wanna listen to more!


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in reply to @prophetgoddess's post:

I watched Secret Sky 2020 live, that set was fantastic, and dropping Look at the Sky like 5 months before he even acknowledged its existence again was so hype. Check out Madeon's set from earlier in that show if you can find it, it was even better IMO. (I haven't studied enough to know what makes a DJ set good academically, but the sheer amount of 0 to 60 that set took me on definitely made me remember it for a long time.)

Might take a look at some of these other ones later! I've been on a Porter kick for basically two straight years since that set tho tbh haha, planning on going to Second Sky this year. He really does still treat all of his live shows as DJ sets drawn mostly from his own material, especially when he does an alter ego set like Earth to Sky or Virtual Self or such. When Porter comes to my state I just pay up and schedule it in, at this point haha. I can't wait to see Second Sky and get taken on another ride. (also, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu coming to the US, what the heck? I'm curious and very excited.)

i was really considering going to second sky this year, i'm also a big fan of bladee and magdalena bay and g jones, but i kind of hate music festivals and the idea of going all the way to oakland for something i might not enjoy thoroughly isn't that appealing to me.

i did watch the recording of his 2021 nurture live set from second sky that year and it blew me away.

I think that's perfectly fair honestly! I don't think I've been to anything really considered a festival...It was a little hard to avoid Lollapalooza back when I was living in Chicago, but I definitely didn't attend or anything, it was just a mess happening near me involving a lot of people I knew. I'm still hyped, even if it turns out to be a shit time it will be one heck of a story I think, and I have an appetite for those at this point in my life.

Really cool! I listened to the first fifteen minutes before having to go out, I enjoyed what I heard! Here are some DJ sets I think are awesome:

honestly... i just bought a $100 dj controller and screwed around. i have a lot of pre-existing knowledge about music production and i already knew like the fundamentals of what djs do so it was really just a matter of figuring out what all the buttons do. all the resources i found were kind of terrible. i might make a video or do a writeup on the basics.