Lessons

Lesson Info

Workshop 7 - The Golden Rules of DJ Performance with DJ Hapa

How's everybody doing out there come on it's almost noon how's everybody doing out there all right all right my name is d j happen h hey, I'm actually I come from an organization called scratch dj academy which if some of you are not familiar scratch dj academy is the world's leader in dj education so I myself have been a deejay for the last twenty years um in terms of things that I've done as a deejay pretty much touched almost most of the aspects that you could ever really do as a deejay including was the first e j ever on the news on the morning news on tv so you'd wake up every morning and there would be on tv very interesting gig do them for two years won an emmy doing that um I've been in movies have done uh soundtrack work I've done uh obviously club work bars bar mitzvahs you name it I've got him I'd still tours a deejay do a lot of I don't tour as a bar mitzvah d j I toured the club deejay still and you know it's sze my pleasure to be here I think the thing that I'm most passi...

onate about though more than anything is helping to advance this art form and helping to advances are from d jane so um real quick about scratch deejay can be really fast scratch is actually a school that was founded by jam master j from run dmc j started the school in two thousand two with the idea of if I don't share all of my secrets bill, I'll die with me. Jay started the school in two thousand two in the spring of two thousand two and later that year, october thirtieth, two thousand two, as some of you may know, jam master jay was murdered, so this is literally a a huge part of jam. Master jay is legacy, the notion and the concept of teaching our art form to legitimize it is a big part of who I am and what my mission is so it's my absolute pleasure to be here speaking to you guys right here, um, I've done some more wood creative live in the past. These guys are awesome. We've done a whole bunch of video siri's on everything from d j fundamentals too mohr sort of advance tips and tricks and things inside of the software and hardware pieces and things like that. We're talking about this, zack was like, well, what do you want to talk about for forty five minutes? And I was like, well, there's a lot that I could cover I mean there's literally, we probably have about, I don't know, twelve hours easily twelve hours of content just on creative live alone on dh that's just the tip of the iceberg so I really wanted what I want to do today is I can talk about almost anything and I've prepared a few things but this is actually a big part of even what I told him I would do is I really think as a dj it's very important to performed to your audience just the same and I kind of want to know who we have in the room real quick. So how many of you are somewhat new? Two d jane I would say, like two years or less or maybe have never ever d j but maybe have some passion for music. How many? How many of those folks you have here? Ok, so a lot of you, how many do we have that are like you're a pro, your d j you get poked out as a deejay that's what you do anybody a couple? Okay, cool. Um, again I started teaching eleven years ago, a lot of this stuff that I when I started teaching a lot of the stuff that we teach it was a huge learning experience for me as well, because I'm self taught so, like most djs were also to be learned off of another person or learned through watching or, you know, and if the person that you studied from had bad habits than you picked up those bad habits as well, right? And so I think the idea and the notion now of, um, a sort of having this mind share of, like, well, what is the way that you do this? What is the way that you do this, and sort of then creating this, essentially, like this collective curriculum that we've been designed and continues to evolve, I think has been very helpful soap for those of you who are pros and in the audience, and I feel like some of this stuff will go over today will be helpful for you just the same, and then, for those who are brand new to this, this will be a great sort of insight on what it is that we're doing appear, so I kind of want to start by, um, I kind of want start by breaking down what we're doing up here, what, like, the actual idea is behind d j? Because I think that, especially in sort of the modern era feel like deejays have gotten a little bit of a bad rap as a button pushers or not really musicians and not really applying music, and so I want to start there, and then I want to cover as much as we can cover, sort of in forty five minutes, and so what I want to do first is I want just kind of explain a few things gear wise, that's up here, I purposely set up a few different setups within the setup, just tio, just to show you that everything that we're going toe cover today is not necessarily based on this one piece of gear or this one piece of gear, and I think that that is one of the biggest things that happens in our world as well, like you go to guitar center and there's, probably I don't over there, there's probably like thirty to forty options for what they would consider deejay here, you have no idea where to start, and you think that, like, maybe this is different than that. And honestly, at the end of the day, there's way more similarities than there are differences, so I just wanted to to kind of diversify the set of appear I've got to see t j two thousand's up here, a pioneer mixer for channel mixer. Eso, by the way, you know, just keep it basic. I've got four channels, which means that can control up to four pieces of audio at once if I wanted tio. You know, most people are anywhere from two to four most people are controlling I've also got a turntable appear which some of you might have been a while since you've seen a turntable I've got a turntable up here and all of it is kind of running into my laptop on my laptop I'm earning a piece of software called serato deejay there's a ton of other deejay software programs that are out there as well today I want to just talk about surrounded deejay like like I'm saying though a lot of this is can be translated over tio all the different dear that's out there so really quick I just want to start with like maybe like mixing two songs together just you can sort of see what it is that I'm doing and see what what the elements are behind what I'm doing so I'm gonna start by just kind of playing two songs get and I'm gonna break down what I'm actually doing all right sounds good all right? So I don't know what cameras we need here, but whatever we don't figure it up uh so I've got one song plane and that's playing on this deck right here next one I'm gonna queue up in my in my head they do think about you, you you you I've been thinking about adjustments, pitch to speed to try and get beat so this is a simple, basic mix that I'm doing, I'm taking two songs that weren't made to go together, necessarily, and then trying to essentially bridge that gap and instead of just playing song to song and sort of fade in, fade out or have that moment of silence between tracks, you know what I'm talking about, right? When you're setting up, like let's, say, an itunes playlists and letting it run? S o this is what I'm doing and there's a lot that goes into this obviously there's layers to this for sure, but in this simple sense, can somebody tell me what it is that you would think would be probably one of the biggest things that I need to figure out before I do this? Yes. Okay, good. So b p m stands for beats per minute and this is in reference to the tempo of the song, right? So every song has a beats per minute or every song that has a b two. It has some sort of number, and that number is the beats per minute assigned tio every song so you can count beats per minute. They have ways like there's, a there's, a bee counter on some of this some of this year, you can also even download an app that will help you. You know, figure out the b p m of something you literally can tap it out and we'll average out with the with the bpm is now what? Even if you had two things that were exactly the same like exactly the same beats per minute like this was one twenty and this one was one twenty even if they were the exact same beats per minute there's still a lot more work that needs to go into this in order for them to actually go well together now up here I was manually beat matching this so in a lot of gear today there's the ability to literally hit a button and sink the tracks together get the tempo to sink together I personally prefer to have a little bit more control. Deejaying is all sort of about control and control over the control over the gear control over the music. So you know, think about this it would be the same as if like you have cruz controlling you a car, right? Pretty much every car that was made since whatever nineteen ninety whatever has cruise control on it imagine on ly driving in cruise control you sort of definitely lose certain, you know, control that you have of the car so um not that there's anything wrong with saint functionality is well like I mean there's plenty of instances in which I will use that for something but I personally just prefer to actually manually beat match something it's a little bit more of a challenge for me um okay school so so in terms of beats per minute, not everything is going to go with everything else, so I've got to do some preparation to figure out like what will go with what I'm not like before I came up here you know, I had in mind like a couple of tracks that maybe would go together I wasn't just completely winging it like here let me just download a song right now let me download another song right now and then just do this in front of people, right? So a big part I think in terms of like performance is a deejay is a lot of times people don't recognize the preparation that goes into that now I must say this and this is a very, very important part as a sort of side note real quick I did a gay actually last saturday I had a show and they booked me for this show it was in l a and was it the spot called the globe here in l a and they a lot of the music that I'm producing nowadays and plane is more in sort of the deep house tropical house so the future house vein andi they booked me because they wanted me to come in and play that that set that music that's why they booked me well I show up and it's not that audience at all I mean it is a super divers like there were people in suits and then there are people on like it was just it was every brace you could think of it was every type of person that you could probably think of and I'm there in the opening deejay is playing and he's playing deep house and completely missed like people completely checked out I mean not even like head bobbing to it and I'm just like ok, wow we're gonna have to switch this up tonight a bachelorette party walks through the door a girl comes in holding a huge inflatable thing for about bachelorette party not the deep house future house crowd I was expecting so you have to adjust though and you have to be willing to adjust and what I'm going to talk about is I'm going talk about preparation but I don't want you to think that's what I'm saying is that everything also has to be like contrived and pre set and there are a lot of guys that are you know, playing preset sets and that's fine there's times in which I'll find you know sections of things and like hey wow these these songs really sound good together like they sound as if they were made for one another and so I'll often you know, play them sort of together, but it doesn't mean that I'm stuck there and that's actually the way I started so the way I started was you know, I would be practicing for hours and hours and hours at home trying to get two things to sound good together and then when I found two things that sounded really really good together, I was like, cool so every time I played this song this one's coming right after it and that's the way that like I and I was so scared to play anything else besides this song after this one for fear that like they just wouldn't sound good together, you know? And I felt really restricted and limited by that so be pm is a huge thing that really opens up the door and that's just one aspect, but that really opens up the door to what can go with what, so as soon as you now know that something is one hundred twenty beats per minute or something is eighty beats per minute or ninety five beats per minute, you can kind of start to tell them like, ok, these things technically could go together even though maybe they're not the same genre they're not from the same era, but they could go together because temple wise they to be mixed together does that make sense like at one twenty at this sort of one twenty range a song like I'm playing this song right now that's like route ninety for my love, which is more of this like u k carriage inspired like, you know, fun up the track and I could actually mix this with like a cdc shook me all night long, the state they're within the same temple range and I could also mix that with, you know, another like I could actually mix that with I don't know like bob marley is it love because that's half the tempo dropped down and so like it then allows you to kind of be a lot more free when it comes to what could go with what? So my library is not necessarily sorted by genre but is more so sorted by tempo bpm because a lot of this stuff like in that in that case that I get you on saturday I was all over the place and I played everything I played everything from show tech and some like big room stuff toe like rianna only girl in the world which that bachelorette party had a great time with, you know? I mean to then I did play a little bit of future house and I did a little bit of deep house because that's where I was hired for but you know, the ability to sort of mixed things up is really essential, so I want you to not think practically everything in the d j world and in life technically, but pretty much everything in the d j world is not black or white there's really no, never this and always this it's, usually somewhere in between. So even though like I would maybe prepare a set for something, it wouldn't be that I would always follow that set, right? Ok, so that's three pm and now what else might I need to know about these two songs before I put them together? Anybody have any idea? Said again, the key the key might be important. The key might be an important aspect, really quick just tio briefly mention keen, I'm I'm actually I want to do another workshop specifically on key mixing for d jane, because it's it's I sometimes things that people can use that as a way of finding things that go together, but also can then be limited by that so same as with bpm, it doesn't have to be that I then on lee, stay at this one tempo all night, right? I mean that that might actually be a bad thing for me to then say, well, I'm not going to play this this this and this record because here's the only temple that I'm gonna set into same thing with key and sort of understanding that like within songs there can be key changes and within some of the things that were mixing together these two songs were only mixing together for eight bars that's what I mixed them together for it was eight bars and one of them pretty much had mostly just drums there you know? So there's also cem things that when it comes to key anything else that I might need to know though he's a good one though anything else that I might need to know before I mixed these two songs together just from a very, very simple like I mean, not even as a d j what do you think went through my mind as this song was playing and I was getting ready to bring this one in yeah yeah the arrangement very good right? So I've got like the most simplest form I need to figure out how I'm going to get in and how I'm going to get out of every single record and even know that because I can't just like randomly just cut the song over and it's like oh, I finally got it to get matched up okay cool switch you know, like I've got it like follow the natural pattern of like the song and follow the arrangement the way that was was built so you know what is the most sort of popular part of the song? What songs that have like vocals most popular parties though the course right? So I probably don't want to cut the song before the hook in like a sort of bdm track. What is the most popular part of the track that everybody's waiting for the drop? So I'm not gonna I'm not going to cut the song before the drop. Same sort of deal. So understanding also, then, how long I have in terms of bars were talking bars, like, like very, very basic music theory. How long do I have to then be able to mix this out? So does everybody know how you would define a bar in here? Somebody tell me what is the bar yet? For for four beats, four beats to a bar. Okay, good. So, you know, one thing that I think is really important, especially when it comes to d jane is I started as a drummer started as a drummer before I started t j for whatever reason, in my mind, I thought there were two completely separate things like that lived completely independent of one another and later on when it's, once I started teaching them, realizing that, like, we should teach music that we should follow music theory and it's sort of simplest form, you know, so eight bars, like a a hook is not sixteen and a half seconds, right? Like, ah, hook is eight bars or sixteen bars or twelve bars it's important to like, understand and break down music in that way so that you know what you're what you're working with and and honestly then it makes things a little bit easier so let me do this really quick I want to just show you, um how I can utilize things like q points on dh notes inside of the files to be able to help me figure out how I'm going to do this because by the way, when I first started and it was all on vinyl, I would still do this I would just write the notes on the actual record now in its digital form, I can actually write the notes on the actual track, okay, so can we get a cz green shot of my, um my lifetime perfect? Okay, so this is the first track that I was playing on the on the decide on my right side, so this is thinking about it just kidding and I've set up these q points you'll be able to see them. This is this is the beginning of it to see if I've got sound, so I've been able to set up a point you'll be able to see I can actually set a q point over here see that pink market so I could actually jump back to that big market by one two that's a cute point that I've set ok and now there are points that I can use then jump back to but I'm really using q points to help identify and break up the structure the arrangement of the of the song so I can tell just by looking at this track because I because I did this and by the way, this was a technique that I've got to give ah former student credit for I didn't actually come up with this like color coding technique, but inside that's one of the benefits of surat o d j a program like serato djs you can actually color code the q points which I find really, really helpful. So, um this point right here I know that I've created then this thiss color coding system where red means eight bars tank means sixteen bars yellow means four bars like there's, this sort of like system that's here, I know that there down in the track right here is a mixed point this would be a point to get out and that point is sixteen bars because it's mark pink, same thing sort of these these mixed points I can see them right here so I know what what the track is and now I've gone and I'm actually I've gone in and set those but like, you know what now I can do is on the other side this one had a eight bar because it's red on this actually has vocals on it's the one nice thing about this is you can actually double click on this and right in what it is come right in like what these pieces are and then be able to see them as you're pulling things up so it you know, it's a big challenge these days to be a teacher I think especially being open format deejay somebody who plays more than just one genre of music just because music is constantly coming out so you have really have to stay on top of the stuff that comes out and it's you know, it's hard to also stay fresh and keep your sound fresh and a lot of that's going to come down to them like, you know, downloading more music and sort of being wider in terms of your music selection or whatever it is, but it's also they're going to require you to really know that music and so to be able to break that music down is really important really helpful. So I actually want to take a track that I haven't done yet because I just downloaded a bunch of stuff that I put on my radio show and didn't necessarily map out yet so and by the way that's sort of the way I refer to it is like mapping the song so I'm just gonna what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go through this track really quick and I'm going to set I said a couple of years points but I'm a set these to be riel actual q points and I'm just going to find the parts that are of interest to me I said I know what to mark them office so let me just do this really fast with goes and she starts beginning to strike this is the way that this track starts what I'm looking for is a deejay too um is I'm looking for extended intros for them because I'm gonna lay one underneath the other one so I'm looking for places in which these consort of live together, right? And if the song that I'm coming out of like the song that I'm playing and is going to finish off, we said that's like the highest point of the record is is what do we say the course or the drop right the course of the drop so it's likely that the course has words correct ok, so therefore what I layer under that would be the start of the other song what what should it then have can it have words as well? It should not it should not have words and that's actually really important and I hear people screw that up all the time because it's actually really, really distracting to hear words over words it's like what do you what are you listening tio you're confused, right? I mean to be really, really difficult it's the same reason why like two people can't have a conversation in both talk at the same time it's just impossible impossible to hear what is going on, right? Ok, so I've gotta have then a sort of an intro that has an instrumental so let me just write this down with the cook on this board so that we can fall on this really fast so like something like this in a situation like this let's say this one song is playing, the other song is coming in for a period of time I'm gonna have the course and maybe I'm going to have the instrumental under the course, right? Like the instrumental intro under the course, which okay, if the exact same length that makes it very, very sort of simple, right? And, you know, I had I've had we teach so many different people, people come from all walks of life. I had an algebra teacher, a high school algebra teacher in my class ones and he was like all yourself in for acts like that's, what you're doing is you're basically trying to figure out like, you know what the point of intersection is your song for x, which is technically true, so if you don't like math, don't think about it if you do, like mathis is great. Um all right, so I've got the course, and then I've got this intro that's coming in, right? And hopefully, if it if everything is done right, this would have been in my color system. That would be a red point. And that would also be a red point, the way my color system is right and so but in this first in this example with this thing's new prisoner record, this does not have a a parental. In fact, let me count this out for you guys. Just as a refresher for beats and bars. This is one, two, three, four, two, two, three, four, three, two, three, four, four to three. So, this is a four bar it's a four bar intro. All right, so in my case, I'm actually the mark. This is yellow. And on this board example on this board example, where would I start this? If this was playing under another track, where would I start this? Yep. Happily through the course. Very good. Right? Halfway through the course. I hear people screw this one up all the time as well, because it's really important. That this is then lined up where it's going to end like where that hook is going to end where that intro is going to end is all at the same place so that it goes nicely right into the next track right there we don't want to have a section where there's either this remainder piece or the reverse and then just having like words over words I've got now them the verse over the end of the course and now I'm gonna have words over words right so this is very important so cool I'm going to go through and I'm just going to set these points on this record just you can see sort of how quickly I can go through and do this and then and then yeah and we'll take it from there part of the song is the first what it makes out on this I don't need to necessarily having more golf e way thing okay so this right here would be that like drop or that course probably right here somebody's going to make a mark right here three two three four for four seven or eight okay so that section right there that would be where I would mix out that would be a place that I could use to mix out of that record it's eight bars long so what I'm going to do is I'm actually and then change this and this is actually the next point and I'm gonna go through every track and do this and then what I'm also going to do is I'm gonna write this in the comment field so this is actually one thing to think about now that everything has gone digital and you're using mp three's this is very important and again I could go into a whole another session of just like file management, but it really can get very, very confusing if you've got a whole bunch of stuff that's just all over the place and if you have multiple versions of the same song it can be very, very confusing as to like now that I've set q points I've said q point, but this one file if I had another copy of this same file that was in my library that one wouldn't have the q points well then that's going to get really, really confusing so in terms of file management that it really becomes a huge challenge and I want to get back out briefly talk a little bit more about file management here in a second, but let me write something into this first I'm gonna write um I'm just going to write the information that's important for me so I'm gonna write that this is a phenomenal right in terms of beats it's just the way that I have always set myself up to do so this is sixteen beats sixteen intro uh, would know drums and a thirty two hook instrumental now that's tag now, it's done now, every time I play that record, I'll see that I'll see these notes pop up, and I've had people tell me in the past, you like, oh, isn't that cheating really like, would you give up? Would you stand in front of an audience and give a speech without any sort of notes whatsoever now, probably not at the same time, I'm not going to stand up here also with, like, a full script and try and read, you know, word for word, what it would be that also wouldn't sound right, but sort of the what would I do if I was going to give a speech? We'll probably something important to do if you are. If you were going to give a speech, you rehearse it, what does it have? Some reference notes, maybe maybe bullet points, right? Maybe just some sort of like something. Tio jog your memory that's what? This is something to jog your memory while you're in the middle of this there's so much that's going on that you want to make sure that, like, you don't get lost in that also, as a deejay, the your responsibility is you're sort of the center of this event or party or whatever it is. Most times sometimes you're in the corner. But either way, like there's probably gonna be a lot going on. There's a lot. That's happening, right? You've got we were talking to you get somebody that's telling you got fifteen minutes left to go, which they just said to me, you've got all this that that's happening, right? That you need to then like for you to then stop and pause and say, you know, have this conversation really quick while this is still playing and then be like, oh, wait, where my eye? Those notes gonna help you tremendously right. Um, and that's what's really important. So this one thing this blew my mind when we started doing this when we started really like mapping songs out and figuring out the structure of things. And then this is what really led for me. This is what led to production for me. This is what led to them, me creating my own remixes, my own versions of tracks because then now I broke things down into the smaller increments of what they were and then said, oh, there's this like a bar section that's, just guitar, and I really liked that guitar, and so let me sample that eight bar section of guitar and throw this in under something else that's just drums and like really like sort of this idea of like rearranging the song to be whatever I want it to be I mean that's really the craziest part about this is that now you can't do stuff like this so this is by no means is any sort of crazy remix of anything but like I'll just show you by jumping two points like what this could even look like so if I'm playing attract on all of doing is jumping around you know but you could see that then okay? You could have some ideas and then understanding the structure you could then rearrange something and actually, you know, use a program like able to knives let's say or there's even some ability within now this cerrado software to be able to create your own rearranged and it's on the fly inside of cerrado okay, so what I think is also important about this about writing it's the common field is if you're a cross platform this will translate to everything in terms of the comment field so when you need to understand about the mp three and and forgive me if this is if you already know this information I would assume that some of you may not know this though is that like there is meta data that is saved to the actual mp three to the file so not only are your q points into the file for instance if I gave you this song right now on a thumb drive you would have all of my notes on that file all them q points whatever open the comment field all of that the other thing that's crazy that I pulled this up in itunes it won't have the q points because itunes doesn't recognize that but it will have the comment field that's there it will have the bpm that I've now written into it it will have the key that I wrote into it it will have all that same information because they're the same fields that translate over cross platform so I'm really important t do that as a a strategy so now um well I knew I wouldn't get very far on that list I tried I tried my best was where we were there's so much to go over with this particular thing of d j squeeze it all into forty five minutes is super tough I think like one of the this is the most important part though that I think and what you can do with this now is once you've now figured out what songs go with what in fact this is very important for those is anybody in here I mean I said you know how many of you are new to d j but how many of you are really looking to pursue d jane out there okay like in some form of fashion to maybe like, you know, d j once a month it would be fun to deejay once a month at a party or something. Okay um when you start to them put these these this music together, you can also start to put them into a crate and you can start to organize your music and sort of have it organized in that way ultimately, what you really want to do with this though as you're mixing songs together is when it comes to practice it takes a lot of time in general to really hone in and develop the skill set I'm not gonna lie to you I mean, even with all of the technology that exists, these shortcuts that are out there and all of that stuff no matter what is out there there's still nothing I's going to make up for putting in the time and the work. I will say this though what I've started to teaches this first what I just showed you breaking down the songs first and understanding the songs before trying them before doing them together. And I found out that it works a lot better like that you're able to move a lot faster because if you're just trying to mix two songs together that you're not even sure we'll even go together, you don't have to be pm of those songs you don't you don't know this sections the arrangement of the song you're just trying to match two things together and hope that it sounds good you don't even have anything to reference you know even know if that actually could sound good you know but if you've now broken it down and said yes they're within the same sort of temple range sort of a plus or minus four is usually what we like to refer to so if something is one twenty that would be anything from like one sixteen to like one twenty four they're within the same temple range if you've now figured out how you would get in and out of both of those and now now after you now know that now you try it it's going to be a lot easier to tell whether or not you nailed that or didn't or whether you're actually getting it or not so I really, really highly recommend that is that you know the nice thing about technology these days is that most people have access to a computer most people have access to a computer and this software that I'm actually using up here this software is free cerrado djs of free software it won't work with all of this unless you actually have the hardware but the software itself is free so I always encourage people like you can actually go in and even if I take out I'm going to a new unplug from the hardware you know looks like this you see on my screen yeah, so to just be a player but I can still go in and I can still go in and set q points I can still go in and write things to the file I can still prep thing says if I were getting ready to then be able to d j in fact, I actually do a ton of this I'm on planes constantly on I do a ton of this work on the plane just this of, like, trapping and that's actually some of the best practice and the most practice because then when I get here now I have some idea of where I want to go with this and I can like then really be a lot more free to experiment a little bit um I want to leave a little bit of a section for any question that might be out there I could probably take wanted to question anybody have any questions about anything yet my in your monitors? Yeah, no, this is my choice for, um for really now everything I've moved over to in your monitors for a couple of reasons one for hearing protection number one um what would tend to happen is, you know you'd be on a festival stage of being a nightclub and you have a booth monitor and it's like cranked up and the guy before you is now cranked it even higher and now you're coming in and you know as so as a d j by the way you know one of things that I want to have it don't want to be able to hear the ambien as well right because I'm trying to mix two songs together so when I would use like over your headphones I'd have one year in and then the other ear exposed and what what happen is I would leave the club like with this huge ringing I mean literally like it happened to me it was like a three day ring in my ears in vegas um and so at that point I knew I had to make a switch and so actually the way that I have these design is that one of them is I can turn off so that one of them just access like a twenty five tv filter and then the other one is my actual like you so I mean and these air custom molded they're expensive it's an investment for sure but it's something that I feel like as is worth every penny in my in my opinion any other questions about anything? T j wise gear wise yeah are you like structure your intro s o so the first part of your question was what I heard the intro part yeah it's actually a great question that's a great question, and I think like, I think it's really important to be in the moment as a deejay more than anything, I think it's really important to being in the moment like that, the biggest challenge when I think it comes to to the biggest challenge and yet benefit of being a performing deejay versus any other type of musician on stage is that we actually, for the most part, have the ability to change direction like that, like, I am not limited by what my band knows or what my band has rehearsed, I'm limited by, like the choices that I make up here, so it does make it a challenge sometimes, though, because you also then want to be in the moment and, like, even though you've planned for something, you've got to be it's a conversation between you and the audience, I don't care who you are on, I don't care like you could be the biggest, you know, d j on the planet, I think reading the audiences is key is fundamental to being a successful d j and playing a successful deejay sent you know, I was I was given that example earlier about saturday, where, you know, I was booked to just do this, and I've seen this before from a lot of like a list deejays where you know they're obviously booked to do this but the crowd is not necessarily that and I've seen a lot of guys clear dance for us pretty quickly in fact actually not to mention any names but there was somebody that played after me on saturday I left the decks at about one they were going to go until three it was one two three I got off the decks I went went back stage I came back out about fifteen minutes later there was there were about five hundred fifty six hundred people there in the venue like sort of when I was finishing at one o'clock come back at one fifteen and the place is probably at about one hundred twenty in fifteen minutes so you know and you know I think it's really important to like you can have sort of some things that you've got set up but it's important to address the audience in fact today if all of you raise your hand and said hey we're all pro djs I would have gone a different direction today you know the fact that the majority of you guys were like hey I don't really have much experience is d j which is why I landed here so you know I think that it's it's absolutely crucial to be able to read your audience and I think that that is probably the biggest fundamental when it comes tio being a successful performing performing d j, I think, go on forever, like, literally like we could. We could do another eight hours of this if you want, but, um, and I really would, but I know that we've got time constraints and whatnot. I want. I want to thank you guys for having me and being such a receptive audience. My name is d j happen from scratch. Dj academy. Find me online or what not feel free to reach out like, literally, this is, ah, big part of my mission is tio, you know, help fellow djs and help people who want to get into this cell. Please feel free to reach out. Thank you.