Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Starting a Wednesday Night?

I was walking to the bars around Chapel Street and surrounding areas, talking to the managers regarding starting a night. I got to this bar close to Chapel Street, on Toorak Road, where there was a Wednesday night available if I wanted to start something. But there was a (huge) catch. I'd have to pay for promotion, for the bouncer and will only get the door charge as payment (e.g. if 50 people come on the night and I charge $5 per head, I get $250 for the night).

Sounds good if I manage to get 50 people, but I doubt a lot of people would want to come over on a Wednesday night, considering also that there's a door charge, albeit very affordable. But even if I do get the 50 people, I'd still have to pay the bouncer and for the promotion, so I wonder how much I could go home with?

I guess I would have done it in the past just for the experience, but right now, I can't afford to. If I was payed an hourly rate I'd possibly consider it. Otherwise, I'm better off going around and playing at a couple of open decks sessions instead!

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Making full use of Vinyl

Last Sunday I was feeling a bit sick, and I thought it was because I didn't sleep well the previous night. My neck felt stiff and my eyes were aching. Little did I know that I'd end up with a bad case of food poisoning on Sunday night! The stiff neck and eye ache was probably because of very high blood pressure, in addition to the bad sleep.

Anyway, besides feeling sick on Sunday, I was also feeling bored, so I thought I'd put back my Vinyls in their appropriate cases. I have a bad habit of not putting the records in their proper cases when playing, since I'm usually in a hurry, and the last time I played it was so dark that I couldn't even see the covers.

While putting the records in the cases, I realised that there were a lot of tracks that I have rarely played, and some that I have not played at all. Most of the time I only play my favourite track from a record, resulting in forgetting about the rest. So I decided I'd play at home for about one and half hours, with the set consisting only of unplayed tracks.

It was fun!! The mixing could have been better, because I spent a lot of time searching and listening to tracks. But it was good to hear a lot of fresh music. Most of these were downbeat tracks, but a lot of them were the bumpy stuff I liked. Looks like I'll have a lot of fresh tunes to play at my next set!

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

March 2006 Demo Up!

I've finally created a demo after a long silence! The main motivation was because I had to give Inck Lounge a few copies for them to distribute. The demo can be downloaded from the bottom of this page.

The new demo is a bit different to the others, as I've put in a few deep tracks around the twenty minute mark, which some may actually think of as an anti-climax. But I think after this "deep break" I managed to raise it up to quite an upbeat (maybe even a tad commercial) track, after which I played a few more funky and chunky tunes before shifting to low gear and finishing it off with a few jazzy tunes.

Overall, I think some of the mixes could have been better (e.g. the mix into the Jack Childs track), but in general I'm happy with this one.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Concrete Lounge Hawthorn

I played at an Open Decks session today, at Concrete Lounge on Glenferrie Road. Concrete Lounge is a very nice, stylish bar lounge. They have some comfy sofas near a fairly large window facing Glenferrie Road and a reasonably large dance floor. The main bar area is a rectangle (similar to Candy Bar) with the DJ booth in a corner and a pool area at the back, separated from the main bar. What's different about Concrete Lounge is that on Tuesdays, they show the O.C. live, projected onto on a large screen hanging from the roof! The rest of their week is quite full-on too, and on Sundays they give some newcomers a go on the decks, with their Open Decks session.

Their DJ set up is; two Technics 1200s, two CDJ 100s, a Denon mixer and what seemed to be a couple of JBL 12" Horn Speakers. This was the first time I had played on a Denon mixer, so it was a bit of an experience. For one thing, the eq's didn't have same sensitivity as the Numarks / Rane / DJMs, so I found it difficult to get the mixes right. E.g. I couldn't properly overlap the vocals of one track with the bass and treble of another track because I couldn't always get the vocals isolated from the track. Also, there was a button next to cue called eq or something similar, that can be used to switch the eq's on or off. I have never seen such an option in any other mixer so I had the eq's accidentally switched off for a while, and was wondering why the eq's weren't working that well! It took me a while to get the hang of it all.

The two blokes running the Open Decks night were very friendly and helpful, and one of them took down my contact details after my set in case they wanted me to play their in the future. He wanted a demo too, but unfortunately I didn't have a copy with me, and I told him I'd drop one off in the next couple of days. I'm hoping to do another Open Decks session sometime soon -- much more interesting than practicing at home in an empty room!