House Music in Cairns

Went around looking for some good clubs/bars/pubs for House music in Cairns. Found a place called "Inbox Cafe" where the DJ (Psytron) was playing some funky, deep house tunes. Stayed there for about an hour. Nice setup consisting of Technics 1210's and a few Yamaha speakers going around the bar. It was an internet cafe + bar + cafe with some friendly staff. The day before I left for Melbourne we went to a nightclub called 1936. The resident DJ was playing a combination of RnB and Commercial House (my my my, push up, four to the floor, like a prayer etc.). The PA system there was amazing!! Some of the lights were controlled by the DJ but the smoke machines kept going on and off -- not sure who controlled those or whether they were timed. Had a drink and headed back to the hotel to leave for Melbourne the next morning :-(

Replacement @ Lustre Lounge

Had another DJ replace me at Lustre because I had to go to Cairns for a week. There was an engagement party on at Lustre on the night and they absolutely needed a good DJ that plays 70's 80's funk based music! I'm lucky I wasn't playing. Looks like he played some good music, met most requests, and had some fun doing it. He was a bit surprised that there weren't any 'monitor' speakers to listen to yourself mix more closely and recommended it to the bar staff. Hope they consider it :-)

Technics 1200

Bought a Technics 1200mkII !! Cost me $500 which was a pretty good price for a second hand turntable less than a year old and in perfect condition. The dude had put up the advertisement up on inthemix.com.au and he was nice enough to drop it off. Have to buy one more turntable but one will do for now. I think my parents are planning to buy me the second one for Christmas woohoo! Hmm better not get my hopes up :-/

DJing on PC

I just found that I had installed my first software for DJying -- PCDJ Red Demo, on 9th Dec. 2001 and Mixmeister 2 weeks later, both on my laptop.

At this time I was, practically (although not officially) living with a bunch of guys (a.k.a. the "The Howse of Da Boyz"). All I did those days was come home after Uni., chat, get my compulsory two hours of advice for the day (I was going through a break-up) and have an in-house DJ Competition with housemates; DJ Enveen (a.k.a. Naveen R.) and DJ CJ (a.k.a. MCJ/Chandaka). Newtana (Nuwan M.) would be the judge and pick one of us as the champ for the night.

Come to think of it, I never actually won, so these guys would have been better DJs than me if they took DJing seriously!! They were doing all sorts of fancy tricks like loops and beat matching. Despite the lag on my 300 Mhz laptop, their mixes actually didn't sound too awful. Hmm I wonder if they're reading this post. Just to make sure they do, I'll repeat their names so Mr. Google indexes this post.

Here we go: Naveen Ruwanpura met Chandaka Fernando on Nuwan Malawara Arachchi, so Chandaka Fernando had to make sure that Naveen Ruwanpura doesn't drink too much water, or else Nuwan Malawara Arachchi would need to have a shower, since Naveen Ruwanpura would do the number one on Nuwan Malawara Arachchi. Chandaka Fernando would then have to be blamed on Naveen Ruwanpura's behalf, and to be even, Nuwan Malawara Arachchi would have to do the number two on Chandaka Fernando while Naveen Ruwanpura cleans himself up.

Played Vinyl for the second time! -- was funner ;-) The bar guy (and 1/3rd manager) said that was the best he's heard me mix! Not sure why though, probably had something to do with me playing Vinyl ;-) I'm actually starting to enjoy House music and would prefer playing house over RnB/Hip-hop, mainly because I'm not as experienced with RnB/Hip-Hop.

First Vinyl Gig

Tried out Vinyl for the first time -- it was fun! Was fairly similar to mixing with CDs, main difference was that there was no countdown timer saying when the song is ending. Have to get used to seeing the tonearm move towards the end of the song. Also found it convenient to beatmatch since I can push/pull the Vinyl rather than pressing those damned "+/-" buttons (which are not even standardised on different CDJs). I joined a forum called "inthemix.com.au" and asked them all the questions about Vinyl before I played at Lustre.

Collector's Corner

Bought 15 Vinyl's from a place called "Collector's Corner" just 10 minutes from RMIT! There was a special and most Vinyls worth around $10 were given to me for $4 because I bought in groups of 5. Most of the music was funky/disco house but some of them weren't upbeat enough for dancing -- but will do for the first hour or last hour at Lustre :-)

Records @ $1.50!!

Received 50x 12" Vinyl House/Disco Records I won at eBay. Most of these are old stuff but can't expect much better for $1.50 per record (including shipping costs). Have to either buy a second hand turntable to listen to these at home, or go to Lustre early and listen to some of them before I can mix them.

19th @ Lustre

Had a 19th party at Lustre. It was wasn't a private party but it was a hell of a fun loving crowd! Most of the requests were for commercial house. They had heaps of fun. This was also my first day on the turntables. I bought a U.S. house/breaks record from HMV with just 3 tracks and mixed them in mostly towards the end when I started breaks. The turntables were easier in certain aspects than the Denon, especially when adjusting the pitch momentarily. The pitch control needed a bit of getting used to because it doesn't have a digital display/ high precision markings.

21st @ Lustre

Had a 21st party again at Lustre. Probably the biggest party there yet. I had an entire song list given to me by the person celebrating her b'day. Was a bit of a headache playing someone else's music (especially when the music she wanted included Shannon Knoll!! -- which I avoided ofcourse). Went well in the end though. I also enjoyed playing 4 hours of RnB.

LazZ's debut and Val's B'day!!

Celebrated my girl friend's b'day on Friday with about 40 guests, plenty of food, beer and lots of music!! This was also LazZ debut performance!! He warmed up the dance floor with mostly RnB and HipHop while I played some RnB and 80's (requests!!).

Had a great time -- probably the best party ever held at this house.
The great thing about this house was the huge lounge with floorboards which formed a good dance floor for the parties. Also the extra bathroom on the ground floor is very conveniently accessible for even the quickest of pukes! And the backyard!! Great for all the BBQs and for a quick smoke. Too bad we couldn't stay there for more than a year or so...the landlord's son wanted to move in :-/

Here are some pics of LazZ (top left), my g.f. (top right) and myself in action!! You may notice the unfinished pizza and beer in the pic with my g.f. in it.

Change of Management at Lustre Lounge

Heard that the manager of Lustre Lounge will be leaving next month. The bouncers (also owners) will be taking over the management. This means I can play a bit more of what I like!

Future DJ

Competed at the future DJ competition held at RMIT. Had no chance of winning since the winners had much more experience than I had. The winner -- DJ Flux was really good. He was a scratch DJ. Looked like he had at least 5 years experience. He went on to the state finals which will be held on 8th October. I'll hopefully have better luck next year :-P

Sony MDR V250V headphones

Bought a pair of Sony MDR V250V headphones after realising that the time is up for my (cheap) Philips headphones. The Sony has everything I needed; it had rotating speakers, was lightweight, compact, and cheap ($50 after bargain)! I'm not sure if the Sony speakers lying on my ears rather than covering them would cause difficulty when I play for 4 hours or more at a stretch though. I chose the Sony over a Senheisser HD 212 which went for $100 (after discount from $115). The only possible advantage the Senheisser could have had is better sound quality (which for me is not that important when beatmatching on headphones), since the Sony is more compact and versatile and black in color (which I preferred over the silver Senheisser).

Whistler Ski Resort, B.C. Canada!!

Had an awesome time at the Whistler Ski Resort -- ranked among the top ten Ski Resorts in the World! I was there for about a week and a couple of us checked out three of the clubs there. The one that stood out was Tommy Africa's (shown in the picture). They had a fairly large dance floor, and the DJ booth was covered in glass/plastic. The DJ had 2 x technics, a Numark (rack-mount) CDN 900 CD players (but later they seem to have upgraded to 2 x CDJ800's) and a laptop. The mixing on the night wasn't all that good, and the music was jumping between Top 40, House and RnB but the place was packed and the atmosphere was awesome!

Took a cable-car and went over to Whistler Blackcomb mountain to have a look at people skiing. The mountain was pretty big compared to Mt. Hotham here in Victoria. The Whistler Resort itself was enormous compared to the Hotham Resort -- Whistler had all sorts of restaurants with any type of cuisine you can imagine, plenty of pubs and nightclubs, lots of 5 star accomodation etc. But looks like Mt. Hotham is spending $500,000,000 on a shopping centre and some luxury accommodation on the Hotham resort, so hopefully, the next time I go over to Hotham, it will look like a mini-Whistler :-)

House Party

DJed at a friend's birthday party. I also bought a set of DJ lights from BigW for $45 on the same day. My friend had a good set of speakers at the house where the party was held (300 Watts RMS) to which I connected my equipment. The lights didn't work that well because the bass wasn't distinct enough (too much vibration), but I guess I shouldn't have expected too much for $45 anyway! Hopefully the lights should work better when connected with an RCA cable to the mixer.

I played RnB and HipHop for only about 45 minutes, but looked like everyone had a good time.

Lustre Lounge Function

My second major function at Lustre Lounge. A girl was celebrating her 21st birthday and wanted me to play RnB, but with a lot of JLo, Brittany, Beyonce and Madonna. I bought a couple of Brittany singles and I already had an old JLo album and a few Beyonce tracks so I thought I was prepared. At the actual function I realised that neither of the Brittany singles (Toxic and Me against the Music) mixed with the average paced RnB music so I ended up not playing them. I also avoided the JLo songs since it looked like everyone was enjoying, so why ruin it? :-)

Gemini BPM500

Spoke to Gary Couch (webmaster of RainbowRadio.com) about the Gemini BPM500 mixer. I asked him about how accurate the automatic BPM extraction was and he said: "I never thought much about the BPM display as I have been DJing so long that I can usually pick out the BPM within 5 beats of what it actually is and/or match beats while cueing within the headphones.". Hmmm, thats pretty cool. I also asked him about auto-start of the CD player (i.e. my Numark mixer starts the CD player on moving the crossfader) to which he said:"As for the question about starting the song on the fade automatic nothing I know will do this as that would be controlled by the cd player and not the mixer. It also would not be as acurate as simply starting manually.". This I thought was pretty weird :-/ I've seen at least one professional DJ using the fader to start the CD player and I was surprised that him being a professional DJ himself hadn't heard about it. Maybe it's rarely used then.

Denon 1800F

Started using the Denon DN 1800F twin CD player at Lustre Lounge. This needed a bit of practice (about 4 hours) because it was a bit different to my twin CD player in that no scratch support was provided, no looping, no manual BPM counting (which is useful for beginners) and no fader auto-start (which wasn't really needed). Also, the cueing in the Denon was a bit different to my Numark. The mixer (Gemini BPM500) at Lustre was old, but had automatic BPM detection. This was good for many House tracks but when it came to RnB music, the BMP detection went crazy. I had to get used to mixing using only pitch control which turned out to actually be the way to go!

My first major function at Lustre Lounge. I had to play during the week for an engagement party of one of the bouncers/owners at Lustre. I was asked to play House music at the start and play the odd 80's classic (Retro, Rock 'n' Roll etc.) so I had a difficult time deciding which CDs to buy at HMV. Finally I decided to ask one of my friends to lend me his music collection, which had a lot of Retro and Rock 'n' Roll. At the actual function I had more requests than I have ever had till this day, and they were all from the Fiance :-) I didn't have a choice so I had to quickly change from House to Rock 'n' Roll, to Retro and finally to RnB. Wasn't a pretty sound :-/ Everyone seemed to have enjoyed the RnB the most.

My First Gig at a Bar

I had my first performance (demo) at Lustre Lounge. I was nervous as hell, especially since I had never played for 4 hours before, infront of a manager and in a bar-environment. Although Lustre Lounge had their own equipment (Gemini BPM 500 mixer, two Technics 1200s and Dennon 1800F rack-mount CD players) I took my own equipment (rack-mount CDJs and mixer) and connected it all before I started.

I played RnB/Soul for four hours, most of them being music I had never heard before! I usually play RnB/HipHop but the stuff I was asked to play on the night was much more layed backthan what I was used to. The mixing wasn't that good since I didn't know the music well enough to structure the tracks well in the set.

But overall the manager and owner were satisfied with my DJing skills, but the manager said I'd have to play something a bit more upbeat from next time onwards -- i.e. he wanted me to play House music. So in other words, I was hired (with a constraint)!

I had no idea what House music was at that point, so I had a lot of catching up to do. From then on I spent about $50 a week on House CDs, and made myself a good House music collection (with quite a few dance/techno tracks as well).

I had my first performance at Lustre Lounge. Played RnB/Soul, but on finishing the manager said I'd have to play something a bit more upbeat and asked me to play House music from next time onwards. I had no idea what House music was at that point, so I had a lot of catching up to do. From then on I spent about $50 a week House CDs and made myself a good House music collection (with quite a few dance/techno tracks as well).

RMIT Computer Science and IT Orientation

I DJed at the RMIT Orientation BBQ for CS/IT students, in the Sunken Gardens next to RMIT building 11. I hired two JBL 15" Horn Speakers (300 Watt -- 900 Watt (RMS) @ peak) + AMP (2 x 620 Watt) from a place in Fitzroy for $85 (am I crazy? Let me know). It was a bit of a hassle to carry the speakers by taxi-van to the evenue!. I had to ask strangers to help me carry them to where they were to be set up. It was a 15 minute late start by the time I got them to work. Started with a bit of RnB, moved onto Reggae and back to HipHop/RnB towards the end. There was a complaint about the volume because there were interviews going on in a nearby building so I had to turn the speakers away from that building and reduce the volume a bit. I performed for about 1 and half hours and I think people enjoyed the music. In the end, one of the cooks at the BBQ spoke with me and asked if I would be interested in DJing for 21st birthday parties. Turns out that he's a professional DJ and he thinks he's a bit too old for 21st parties and said he'd call me if he was asked to do any :-) Despite the happy day, I spent 2 hours and 22 minutes waiting for a station wagon taxi to return the speakers, that never arrived. I returned them the next day.

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