DJ Times 2020, Vol 33 No 4 by DJ Times Magazine

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AMERICA’S FIRST MAGAZINE FOR PROFESSIONAL DJs ESTABLISHED 1988 STREAMING 2020 ISSUE VOLUME 33 NUMBER 4

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NOTABLES…MILESTONES NEWS

DJ EXPO 2020: NEW DATES, NEW AGENDA

By Jim Tremayne

Atlantic City, N.J. – After much consideration, contemplation and negotiation, DJ Expo and DJ Times have exciting news: The 2020 DJ Expo is back on schedule, but it’s rebooting with new dates. Acknowledging the current social realities and balancing the health and safety of exhibitors, attendees and staff, DJ Expo will move from its original August dates to a new set of fall dates – November 16-19 at Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City. Produced by DJ Times magazine since 1990, the annual DJ Expo presents: the industry’s biggest exhibit hall, featuring the latest products for club, mobile and music-making DJs; more than two-dozen educational seminars, panels and keynotes; and three nights of sponsored events. Health and safety will be priorities at DJ Expo. While the show will be establishing its own phase plans, be assured that DJ Expo is also working with the venue, the ACCVA and the exhibition industry, all of which are under guidance of both the CDC and the WHO. Additionally, DJ Expo will be bringing on-board a veteran show producer with extensive operational experience to ensure that the show is executed beyond state standards. With its new dates, DJ Expo 2020 will take on a new agenda: to help the DJ industry bounce back from the unprecedented difficulties brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to showcasing the latest technologies to the market, DJ Expo will present focused seminars that will help DJs of all stripes jump-start their businesses and put them in a better position to thrive again. And as is always the case at DJ Expo, the networking with other DJs and industry members will prove invaluable to all attendees. We’re all in this together, and DJ Expo 2020 stands poised to be the start of the DJ industry’s return to strength. A Note to Those Already Registered for the August Dates: Your registration will automatically carry over to the new Nov. 16-19 dates. For new attendees looking to register for the November dates and for the very latest information on DJ Expo 2020, please visit www.thedjexpo.com.

Expo ’20: Set to jump-start the DJ industry.

Josh Kerman

New Tech & More: Ideas, gear & networking.

Sponsored Events: Get in the mix. Ronald Mungo

Ronald Mungo

Drive-In Rave Mannheim, Germany – This past June 6, more than 1,000 autos loaded with more than 3,000 fans parked and safely partied at BigCityBeats WORLD CLUB DOME – Las Vegas DriveIn Edition. Presenting live DJ performances from Da Tweekas, Le Shuuk and other Euro faves at the Mannheim Maimarkthalle, the five-hour event was the first global “pandemic-party” gathering. So, is this what our shortterm festival future looks like? Photo: BigCityBeats

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VOLUME 33 NUMBER 4

FEATURES

12 The Dream Stream

After Years on the Mic & in the Booth, Playing Online Pandemic Parties Has Launched D-Nice to Stardom BY JIM TREMAYNE

18 Live-Streaming 101

Looking to Sharpen Your Skills Spinning Virtual Events? Here Are Some Tips & Tricks for Vets & Newbies Alike BY STACI NICHOLS

22 Making Nightwhisper

Jody Wisternoff’s Splendid New Album Puts An Emotional Stamp on a Year Gone Sideways BY JIM TREMAYNE

24 The Game

How Understanding Human Behavior Informs Effective Marketing Strategies BY JOSHUA VOLPE

DEPARTMENTS

SAMPLINGS

7 Feedback

8 Golf Clap

DJ Expo Update: Nov. 16-19 in Atlantic City, N.J

Making Lemonade

26 Making Tracks

10 In the Studio With…

Bettermaker Mastering Compressor

28 Sounding Off

ASI Audio IEMs & Denon DJ Smart Console

30 Mobile Profile

Jersey Jock Dances to Success

31 Business Line

Adopting a Live-Streaming Business Model

32 Gear

New Products from Numark, ADJ & More

38 Grooves

Phat Tracks from Nora En Pure, Roland Clark & More

41 Club Play Chart

The Hottest Records, As Reported by Our Top U.S. Record Pools 44

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DVRKO

FROM THE EDITOR

editor-in-chief Jim Tremayne jtremayne@testa.com

Call Him D-Nice

DJ Times first came across D-Nice (aka Derrick Jones) in late 1990, when we did an artist profile on him. As a member of Boogie Down Productions – the seminal hip-hop collective founded by DJ Scott LaRock and essentially fronted by KRS-One – D-Nice was getting his due and enjoying radio success with “Call Me D-Nice,” an ultra-catchy single flexing a boomin’ sample from The Turtles. As I remember, it was the second issue I worked on in my new capacity of Assistant Editor and, for some reason, I very much remember editing the story. Fast-forward to these pandemic times, and D-Nice is the world’s biggest DJ story. This past March 21, the L.A.-based jock played an Instagram Live stream that drew over 100,000 lockeddown visitors, including some of the biggest celebrities and genuine influencers around. From entertainment to technology, from sports to politics, the A-Listers began commiserating during D-Nice’s uplifting set of classic R&B, disco and hip-hop. But what seemed to also set the thing off was the fact that the non-celebs who showed up for the set were in a virtual party with the familiar names. The story caught fire and, since then, D-Nice has been one of the only upbeat DJ stories at a time of extreme difficulty for the entire industry. We were lucky to re-connect with D-Nice, nearly 30 years after our first story on him, and he explains why he was probably the only DJ in the world who could’ve pulled off “the dream stream.” For reasons all-too-obvious at this moment in time, this issue is all about streaming – from our cover subject to our tech feature to Business Line and Samplings. So, we felt compelled to offer a “Streaming 101” story, penned by San Diego’s DJ Staci Nichols. In it, she offers a variety of useful tips and tricks for veterans and upstarts alike. In a sidebar, our Wesley Bryant-King cautions us about the ever-present (and dreaded) issue of copyright takedowns. In an artist feature, we talk with longtime U.K. DJ/producer Jody Wisternoff. Perhaps best known for his work with fellow Bristolian Nick Warren in Way Out West, Wisternoff recently released Nightwhisper, a terrific new Anjunabeats solo album full of melody and emotion. In Samplings, we connected with a pair of very different DJ/producers. For the first entry, Detroit’s Ashley Teffer interviewed Motown tech-house duo Golf Clap. As the current crisis curtailed the group’s gig schedule, GC’s Bryan Jones and Hugh Cleal learned how to take lemons and make lemonade with a constructive approach to the situation, which included upping their streaming content. For our In the Studio entry, we meet with DVRKO, the mysterious masked EDM talent who’s shown up on a variety of DJ-related platforms and a rising number of radio playlists. In our talk, he gives us the lowdown on his recording process and his rather tricked-out studio facilities. In our pair of product-review departments, Denver-based scribe Wesley Bryant-King hits the tech trifecta. For the Making Tracks column, he runs the Bettermaker Mastering Compressor thru its paces in the studio. And with the Sounding Off pro audio column, he takes on two products – ASI Audio’s 3DME in-ear monitors and Denon DJ’s PRIME 2 “smart console” (as the company prefers). For the mobile-entertainer content, Josh Kerman’s Business Line visits with Vermont DJ Craig Mitchell, who explains how he’s actually turned streaming into a viable business model. For Mobile Profile, we spotlight Jersey jock Jason “DJ Zap” Zaplin, who has literally danced his way to success. And in his mobile-oriented feature, Joshua Volpe explains how understanding human behavior can inform effective marketing strategies for DJ companies. DJ Expo Update: We have solidified a new set of dates for DJ Expo 2020. Skipping past our original August dates, the DJ Expo is now set for November 16-19 at Harrah’s Resort in Atlantic City, N.J. We hope to see you there for another successful – and safe – show.

editor-at-large Brian O’Connor boconnor@testa.com assistant editor Brian Bonavoglia bbonavoglia@testa.com chart coordinator Dan Miller dmiller@testa.com contributors Wesley Bryant-King Chris Caruso Amanda Chavez Shawn Christopher Paul Dailey Reed Dailey Chris Davis DJ Deets Tony Fernandez Tommy D Funk Michelle Fetky Jennifer Harmon Josh Harris Ryan Hayes Greg Hollmann Josh Kerman Michelle Loeb Erik Miller Lily Moayeri Jordan St Jaques Jeff Stiles Ashley Teffer Phil Turnipseed Curtis Zack President/Publisher Vincent P. Testa FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE AND TO ORDER SUBSCRIPTIONS, CALL 800-937-7678 VISIT OUR WEBSITE www.djtimes.com

DJ Times Sound & Communications The Music & Sound Retailer Sound & Communications ClubWorld Blue Book America’s Best DJ The DJ Expo IT/AV Report Convention TV News VTTV Studios

Cheers,

Jim Tremayne Editor, DJ Times

director of integrated advertising Paul Bozikis pbozikis@testa.com art director Janice Pupelis jpupelis@testa.com production manager Steve Thorakos sthorakos@testa.com digital art director Fred Gumm fgumm@testa.com social media coordinator Amanda Mullen amullen@testa.com traffic manager art production assistant Jeannemarie Graziano jgraziano@testa.com Circulation circulation@testa.com Classifieds classifiedsales@testa.com operations manager Robin Hazan rhazan@testa.com Editorial and Sales Office: DJ Times, 25 Willowdale Avenue, Port Washington, New York, USA 11050-3779. (516) 767-2500 • FAX (Editorial): (516) 944-8372 • FAX (Sales/all other business): (516) 767-9335 • DJTIMES@TESTA. COM Editorial contributions should be addressed to The Editor, DJ Times, 25 Willowdale Avenue, Port Washington, NY, USA, 110503779. Unsolicited manuscripts will be treated with care an d should be accompanied by return postage. DJ Times (ISSN 1045-9693) is published monthly except for February, July, September and December for $19.40 (US), $39.99 (Canada), and $59.99 (all other countries), by DJ Publishing, Inc., 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779. Periodicals Postage Paid at Port Washington, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to DJ Times, PO BOX 1767, LOWELL MA 01853-1767 Design and contents are copyright © 2020 by DJ Publishing, Inc., and must not be reproduced in any manner except by permission of the publisher. Websites: www.djtimes.com and www.testa.com Streaming 2020 Issue

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FEEDBACK THE LATEST

SEE HEAR CONNECT

AMERICA’S FIRST MAGAZINE FOR PROFESSIONAL DJs ESTABLISHED 1988 SPRING 2020 ISSUE

VOLUME 33 NUMBER 3

Life in Lockdown

Inside: ClubWorld SXM Fest: The Last Party Boston’s Big Night Live

Streaming & Coping

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Mitzvahs – Beyond the Booth: Jersey Jock Adam Hirschhorn, owner of AJH Entertainment, who has been writing the popular “Mitzvahs – Beyond the Booth” column for the DJ Times website, will moderate a seminar of the same name. Topics will include: how to find motiva‑ tors/dancers; custom set-ups; produc‑ ing unique ideas/concepts; and the sim‑ ple mitzvah vs. the extravagant mitzvah. Why the Caterer Should Not Do the Lighting: Presented by Mike Fernino of Connecticut’s Music in Motion En‑

tertainment, this sales-and-marketing session offers a specific niche concept to combat venues that try to steal away your lighting work – and do an inferior job at that! Topics include: social media to establish a subconscious awareness of your services; how to sell lighting to your customer; how to establish the difference between good and bad light‑ ing; the “Enhancement Concept”; and establishing yourself as an expert. Photo Booth — The Next Generation: Much like karaoke, photo booths have

proven to be a long-lasting addition to the mobile’s arsenal, one that has yet to reach its saturation point. Dave Stephenson, owner of Ismilepod, will teach how to create a photo-booth strip, how and why to set up an online gallery to host pictures, how to set up an iPad booth, and how to market the features of your photo booth to expand options to offer your customers. More seminars and events to be an‑ nounced. For the latest on the show, please visit www.thedjexpo.com.

4/27/2020 2:52:14 PM

This is Feedback, a monthly feature that fields questions from you, our readers, and funnels them out to in‑ dustry professionals. If you have any questions about DJing – marketing, mixing, equipment or insurance, any at all – drop us a letter at DJ Times, 25 Willowdale Ave, Port Washington, NY 11050, fax us at (516) 944‑8372 or e‑mail us at djtimes@testa.com. If we do use your question, you’ll receive a free DJ Times T‑shirt. And remember, the only dumb question is the ques‑ tion that is not asked. DJ Expo Update By now, everyone in the DJ industry knows that DJ Times has announced new dates for the 2020 DJ Expo – No‑ vember 16-19 at Harrah’s Resort At‑ lantic City. As always, the show will present the in‑ dustry’s largest exhibit hall, more than two-dozen educational seminars, and three evenings of sponsored events. At presstime, DJ Expo’s seminars include: Fix the Mix: Easy Ways to Trick Out Your Mobile Sets: Presented by San Diego’s DJ Staci, this session will keep your music mix up-to-date and unique. Learn how to deliver the “same-old” music you play week in and week out in a fresh, new way. Learn weddingfriendly wordplays, simple effects and scratch drops, plus make fun remixes right from your DJ software with no production background necessary. 101 Track: Get in Someone’s Face & Grow Your Footprint: Boston-based Rob Peters DeFazio of Rob Peters En‑ tertainment will share his secrets on how he networks. Learn how to gain prospective clients and build a strong referral network through face-to-face interactions. The result will be better cli‑ ents, better referrals and better profits. Upsell Your Video Screens: A HandsOn: Jimmie Malone from Exceptional Receptions in Binghamton, N.Y., will show you how to create slideshows to upsell video screens – and how to pitch them to clients.

BE OUR GUEST

How would you like to score a pair of passes to the 2020 DJ Expo, plus 4 free hotel nights?

JUST ENTER THE CONTEST & YOU CAN WIN! Here’s How: Submit to us the most useful DJ idea. It can be a tip for anything that relates to DJing, equipment or business – for bedroom, club, or mobile DJs – anything that’ll help the DJ craft. The best response, as determined by DJ Times editors, will win the prize. For further details & to enter the contest, please visit: www.djtimes.com/dj-expo-20-contest-win-passes-hotel-stay/ Set for Nov. 16-19 at Harrah’s Resort in Atlantic City, N.J., DJ Expo will present the DJ industry’s largest exhibit hall, its top slate of educational seminars, and some of the industry’s most exciting sponsored events. Produced since 1990 by DJ Times, DJ Expo is America’s longest-running trade show/exhibition for professional DJs. Whether you’re an upstart spinner or a seasoned pro, DJ Expo is always the place to be.

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SAMPLING

In Detroit, Golf Clap’s Bryan Jones and Hugh Cleal are known as much for their constant hustle as they are their bangin’ tech-house tunes. The Motown-based DJ/production team has built a fanbase around rollicking original tracks like 2019’s “Demo Tapes” and “Freak It Out” (a collab with Masteria) and remixes for top acts like Zhu, Destructo, Louis the Child and Autograf, but they haven’t slowed down at all during the pandemic. Despite the lack of gigs in front of live audiences, Jones and Cleal are working harder than ever by expanding their online content and footprint daily, with nightly live streams,

GOLF CLAP: MAKING LEMONADE

Golf Clap: (from left) Bryan Jones & Hugh Cleal.

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a weekly radio show, a talk show, and a livestream featuring their Country Club Disco label’s artists and friends. We recently caught up with Golf Clap’s Cleal and Jones to discuss their constructive reaction to the lockdown: When life gives you lemons, it’s been said, you make lemonade. DJ Times: What’s it like where you are? Hugh Cleal: Detroit is very intense right now. We are only leaving the house for essentials and everywhere always seems busy. Most people are wearing face-covering, but it’s obvious that there aren’t enough proper masks to go around in the city. Many of the big companies have switched production to life-saving items, which is good. But this much strain on an already-fragile city economy is forcing many businesses to shut down already in the first few months. DJ Times: How are you spending most of your time? Bryan Jones: We have transformed our studio into a broadcast studio to stream Twitch sets, as well as producing our first talk show called The Clubhouse. It airs weekly on Thursdays at 7 p.m E.T. We also have our weekly radio show Wednesdays on Insomniac Radio, and we are launching a new Friday “club night” on our channel, as well featuring our friends and label mates. Honestly, we are busier now than when we were on the road. DJ Times: Have you lost income-producing work? Cleal: I don’t think there is a single DJ that hasn’t lost income over this whole ordeal. But with all of this free time, we are using it to find new ways to earn. DJ Times: Are you doing anything now that can or will produce music-related income? Jones: Like any good thing, it’s going to take a little time to build our fanbase up to match our other socials, but the platform that Twitch offers is truly tailored to help artists and gamers earn in the app. We also run our label Country Club Disco and have a new release from Jace Mek feat. Clarity [“Elevate”] out now. DJ Times: What are you doing now that’s ultimately constructive to your music life/career? Jones: Like I said, we are busier now than we’ve ever been. Less time in planes and in hotels has given us a lot of time to work on music, run our label, host a weekly radio show, host a weekly talk show, host a weekly streaming club night, individually mentor some members of our Facebook group, learn more about video streaming and editing, acquiring sponsorships, and much more. DJ Times: What’s the most surprising thing you’ve realized during this period of social distancing? (continued on page 40)

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IN THE STUDIO WITH...

DVRKO: EDM’S NEW MYSTERY MAN

Fast Start: DVRKO’s first single made radio waves. Photo Credit: Kavan the Kid

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If you’re an EDM fan scanning the web, you’ve probably already seen the question posed on several platforms: Who is DVRKO? We’re not at liberty to reveal that information, because… hey, we don’t know either. But what we do know is that DVRKO’s another masked studio talent making crisp, well-produced, electronic music that features sharp hooks and memorable melodies. In an already crowded field of cloaked artists, does this seem all too familiar? Well, if you just let the music do the talking, it’s plenty convincing. His first single, “This Is How,” featuring a driving house beat, a bouncy, warped bassline and breathy vocals from British talent Sarah de Warren, has earworm quality. In fact, this debut single (on L1N3 Records) was quickly added to Spotify’s Friday Cratediggers. Also, on the strength of Gozzi’s radio-ready remix, it earned spins on the nationally syndicated Remix Top30 Countdown featuring Hollywood Hamilton (iHeartRadio), and at other stations like Las Vegas’ KLUC-FM Radio and Dash Radio’s ElectroCity channel. Other remixes from Jayceeoh and Tony Arzadon are making waves in a variety of national radio markets – from Miami to Seattle. So, as “This Is How” was making its mark, shimmery second single “Lights Up” prepped for its release, and DVRKO’s bumpin’ remix for Cheat Codes’ “No Service in the Hills” hit DSPs, we connected with DVRKO to get a glimpse into his creative process and peep his rather tricked-out studio. DJ Times: When you’re writing a track, where do you start? DVRKO: I scream at the moon until it screams back. Sometimes it’s awakening out of a dream and hearing a pulsing bassline or an epic drum pattern. Maybe a parrot woke me up – it could be anything. Other times, it’s a fully produced track for which we are writing toplines, which end up getting completely reproduced until the production and song is baked. It’s literally all about the song at the end of the day. DJ Times: Do you ever find inspiration at odd times? DVRKO: My only muse is hating polka; otherwise, the inspiration hits and you grab it by the hair before it tries to get out. Whenever the idea or concept strikes, I really try to execute right away. DJ Times: For “This Is How,” how did that come about? DVRKO: The process… I trust it, but it doesn’t trust me. Seems to work out, still – we are in a dysfunctional relationship, kind of like this song. I wanted solid house, a record I could live in, a record I had lived in. Started with a topline of my past, let the rest tag along. DJ Times: How did you work with Sarah De Warren on this cut? DVRKO: Sarah is an amazing vocalist. We had her and singer/songwriter Rama Duke in the studio together. Great team, not my usual chaos – we got stuff done. Vocals slammed out and the melodies just appeared. We had it wrapped in four, five hours – bow and everything. DJ Times: What are your main pieces in the studio? DVRKO: Man, so much stuff… wires everywhere. Mixing board is an SSL 4000. For vocals, I’m using an [Telefunken] ELA M 251 microphone going into a BAE 1073 [mic preamp] mod into a Retro Instruments Sta-Level tube compressor into [an Empirical Labs EL8] Distressor [compressor]. Been loving the Moog One [analog synth]. I have a pretty solid collection of vintage guitars – ’64 Fender Jaguar, ’62 Hofner Bass, ’74 Fender Stratocaster and some cool custom-shop pieces – a random banjo, a bell tower and a Theremin that turns itself on randomly. Also, I have a Fender Telecaster and a Gibson Les Paul. DJ Times: What’s your DAW? DVRKO: My two best friends, even though I think one of them is sleeping with my girlfriend, are Ableton Live and [Avid] Pro Tools. Ableton Live is amazing for the MIDI programming and production capabilities. Pro Tools is where the vocalproduction and live-production elements get added into the production and the final mix stages of the songs. DJ Times: What are your favorite plug-ins? DVRKO: For the synth stuff, it’s [Xfer Records] Serum. For a lot of the orchestral and string elements, it’s [Native Instruments] Kontakt. In the mix world, I use a lot of the FabFilter stuff, especially the Pro-Q 3 [EQ]. Love the Brainworx stuff as well… and the Steven Slate bundle and Trigger for some of the drum-replacement stuff in the mix phase. For vocal tuning and instrument tuning, it’s Melodyne. DJ Times: What about other hardware? Anything vintage? DVRKO: The SSL console is from the ’80s. We also use the [Telefunken] V72 mic preamps, which have a super crunchy sound to them. Have a few vintage [Teletronix] LA-2A [compressors] and [UREI] 1176 [peak limiters], along with a harp from 1947 that you will hear on some of the new productions coming out later this year. DJ Times: What about monitors? DVRKO: Monitors start with the [Yamaha] NS10s. I use these to do some of (continued on page 42)

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The Dream Stream AFTER YEARS ON THE MIC & IN THE BOOTH, PLAYING ONLINE PANDEMIC PARTIES HAS LAUNCHED D-NICE TO STARDOM By Jim Tremayne

DJ D-Nice: Club Quarantine resident.

Los Angeles – By now, the year’s biggest DJ story has been well told by dozens of news and entertainment outlets – but for those who somehow missed it, a recap: During the third week of March, after the COVID-19 pandemic rendered much of our world housebound, DJ D-Nice began streaming on Instagram Live from his L.A. home. His original show idea was to present interviews with hip-hop artists – with unmixed music coming courtesy of iTunes on his laptop. For the former rapper who had become a big-event DJ, this was well within his capabilities. But that approach quickly changed. With more than a little encouragement from legendary hip-hop jock Clark Kent, D-Nice (aka Derrick Jones) decided to up his game and create an ongoing, online DJ party featuring posi-vibe music – R&B classics, disco grooves and old-school hip hop. Feeling good about his direction, he called in some favors from high-profile friends, extolling the virtues of IG Live, and his nightly stream numbers began to spike. Then, on Saturday, March 21, everything changed. Five days into his new virtual reality, the entire world seemed to take notice of “Club Quarantine.” Fueled by a mind-boggling array of celebs dropping into the mix – from Drake, Oprah Winfrey and Mark Zuckerberg to Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Michelle Obama – D-Nice’s nine-hour party drew enormous numbers, peaking at over 100,000 visitors – a new IG Live standard. Life has not been the same since. How did he do it? Well, as he relates in our interview, it wasn’t exactly an accident. In fact, D-Nice explains why he was probably the only DJ in the world who could’ve pulled off such eye-popping numbers. Of course, it’s all rooted in the fact that D-Nice, 50, has a backstory that set him up for opportunity – so don’t call him an overnight sensation. He’s far from it. As a teenaged DJ/producer/MC, he was a member of seminal Bronx hip-hop collective Boogie Down Productions and, in 1990, he had a breakout

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hit with the boombastic “Call Me D-Nice.” After his artist career wound down, he re-focused his life by becoming a web developer and found himself back in the music business. During that period, the DJ bug bit again and this time it was a keeper. He re-honed his deck skills and parlayed his longtime connections into major club residencies (like AC’s Borgata) and big gigs for major brands (like Hennessy). Over time, he became in-demand for a variety of high-profile events, including President Barack Obama’s 2012 Inaugural Ball and his 2016 farewell party at the White House. So, as he worked us into a day schedule that had him fielding conference calls and video meetings with Apple and ABC’s “Good Morning America,”

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we caught up with D-Nice to discuss his history and the story behind the March 21st “dream stream.” The hustle never ceases. DJ Times: How did you start DJing? D-Nice: My initial influence started with DJ Scott La Rock, who was one of the founding members of our group, Boogie Down Productions. I was probably 15. He always told me that my role in the group would be either to become one of the rappers or to become the DJ of the group, but that I should learn how to do all aspects of what we were doing – production, DJing and MCing. DJ Times: He taught you how? D-Nice: The first recording he taught me to mix was an EPMD breakbeat, where you had to bring it in on the off-beat. It wasn’t on the one…

so he taught me how to bring that back and how to count bars with that particular song. DJ Times: What were you spinning on then? D-Nice: Can’t remember the brands, but they were B-level, for sure. They were belt-driven turntables, I remember, so… very delicate, to say the least. DJ Times: Why was the late Scott La Rock so important to early hip hop? D-Nice: First off, he was a social worker, so he was a nurturer by heart – that’s how he found KRS-One, who lived in a men’s shelter where Scott worked. My cousin was the security guard there, and that’s how I met Scott. Hip hop was in its infancy and we were still trying to figure out the business side of it. But he knew from the start that

the only way to get things done was to own your business and to own your masters. DJ Times: Be self-sufficient. D-Nice: Right. Some of the things that I’ve learned back then still resonate with me now. I mean, I’m self-managed. It’s my company. I remember all those lessons from Scott La Rock and also from my friend [the late music exec] Chris Lighty: “You gotta own. You gotta understand who you are and what your value is.” The early days of hip hop, we were finding our way… DJ Times: And ironically, I’m calling you from very near the 59th Street Bridge… so the “Bridge Wars” between BDP and the Juice Crew from Queensbridge come to mind – 30-plus years later, but here we are… D-Nice: [Laughs] Yeah, the “Bridge Wars”… that’s so wild, man. That was actually a special time. Look man, we were performing all over. We performed in Queens and then jumped on the subway back to The Bronx. You could never do that right now if there was some war going on and people coming after you… It just goes to show that, back then, hip hop remained onstage and on wax. It didn’t really start to get violent until the very late ’80s – but early on, it was just about fun. DJ Times: You had a big hit in 1990 with “My Name Is D-Nice.” How do you reflect on your career on the mic? D-Nice: My artist career was fun. I loved producing my own records. I wrote all my songs except the beginning of “Call Me D-Nice,” which KRS wrote, but then I took it from there… I’m just lucky that I had a career at such a young age because I’m not really fazed by what’s gone on right now… because I had some fame and fortune early on, when I was between the ages of 16- and 22-years old. But, I had some difficulties with my label, Jive Records, and hip hop was starting to change – it became more fluffy. DJ Times: By the early ’90s, it had become a huge commodity. D-Nice: Unfortunately, for me, it wasn’t a world that I was able to fit into. The record company wanted me to make a certain type of record that I just I couldn’t make. I could never be Dr. Dre – that sound was on fire. You know, Naughty By Nature – they were on fire. I couldn’t be them. I could only be me, and being me wasn’t good enough at the time for the record company and for other record companies. DJ Times: The business changed, but the new sounds kept changing quickly, too. D-Nice: I mean, I couldn’t get a deal after that. You’re talking about a guy who’d sold a bunch of records and I discovered Kid Rock.You would think that I would be able to eventually parlay that into a deal. But hip hop was changing and it wasn’t about any individual. It started to become about which clique you were down with… whether it was the Death Row crew, or later on it was the Bad Boy crew. And I wasn’t a part of any of that, so, yeah, it was a difficult time. DJ Times: You were considered old school… D-Nice: I was considered old-school because my first record came out in 1986, even though I was 15-years old. I was still considered old school

by the time I was a 22. DJ Times: So to wrap on the artist life… where did you find that killer Turtles sample [“Buzzsaw”] you used for “Call Me D-Nice”? D-Nice: House of Oldies in New York City downtown. It was a place where a lot of hip-hop artists would find records and they had nothing but the jams… like mint condition. So I knew that Biz Markie always shopped there. You had the ability to open and listen to a record, and you can look on the vinyl and see where the breaks were placed on the wax – and I heard that! They had, like, nine copies and I bought all of them! The record was The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands. DJ Times: Nobody was going to get that record. D-Nice: Yeah, I know. And the funny part was that beat wasn’t for me – I did the beat for Kid Rock. He said it was too slow. He wanted more of an upbeat kind of beat. Then I tried to give it to KRS for the second BDP album, By All Means Necessary, but he selected another beat. So I rapped on it and thought, “Holy shit, this really sounds good.” I took it to Red Alert at Kiss-FM radio and he played the demo – the program director heard it and they added it to the rotation, which was amazing. They were playing it for months before the vinyl was even pressed. DJ Times: Well, that record certainly got you out there, and it is one boomin’ bassline. D-Nice: Yes, yes… and it’s so funny that, when you fast-forward to my DJ career, half of the people that know me never knew that I was the same D-Nice, who made records back then. I remember I was doing a big event for Heineken and the woman who booked it said, “They keep asking for the rapper D-Nice, but we only know the DJ D-Nice…” [laughs] DJ Times: How did you transition back into DJing? D-Nice: For a number of years, I was a web developer. I started a company called United Can, and I started this company with no money. I had nothing. Dell Computers had this leasing program with no money down. I got a computer and started my business by building these interactive E-Invites, these promo cards that people are using to send out. It was kind of a new thing. Flash was popping and I taught myself how to program using Flash. I ended up doing online marketing for Violator Records… DJ Times: Back into the music business… D-Nice: And I was sitting in this meeting with Reebok and one of the guys comes into the office and tells me, “Hey, you know, I’m senior V.P. and I wrote my thesis about a song from your first record called ‘A Few Dollars More.’” And from that moment, I realized that all those years, I was running away from being D-Nice when all I had to really do was now embrace it. DJ Times: A new generation was in charge of things. D-Nice: Right, because the people that listened to our music coming up are now the CEOs. If you were into rap during my generation, you didn’t have that many options. We didn’t have radio stations just dedicated to hip hop – maybe

one or two, and there was “Yo! MTV Raps.” So, if you loved hip hop, these artists meant something to you. DJ Times: So a light went off? D-Nice: Sitting in that meeting, I decided to throw parties. I didn’t know if there was room for me to really become a DJ. But then I went to a place called Table 50 in New York City. I’d been throwing parties and dabbling in DJing, but it really wasn’t until I was in front of Q-Tip and Mark Ronson… they were playing a party that was called Authentic Shit. DJ Times: What were they playing? D-Nice: All they played was classic beats. Tip would play his typical James Brown and everything else that felt way. But then Mark was rocking Brand Nubian and they would kind of go an hour each. This vibe was so incredible that they had created with music that I just thought: “What am I doing? Like, this is who I am!” So even though I was dabbling in DJ a little bit, I realized that I actually wanted to do this full-time. DJ Times: So how’d you go about it? D-Nice: I called up my buddy, Chris Lighty, who owned Violator Records and Management – he also managed Q-Tip at the time. I said, “Bro, I think I really want to do this.” And he asked me: “Are you sure you want to get back into this industry? Because they’re animals now. It’s not the same. We grew up in the Daisy Age and BDP and everything was fine and happy, but now… it… is… a… business.” But I wanted to do it and, up until his passing, Chris supported me every step of the way. And the best decision that I ever made, in terms of my career, was to have that experience with Q-Tip and Mark Ronson, and get right back into DJing. DJ Times: How did your style develop? D-Nice: I’m going to tell you why I play the way that I do. The very first party that someone hired me for, this big sponsored party, I was DJing with DJ Eddie F from Heavy D and The Boyz. We decided to have a DJ collective together, but we don’t play records the same way. Eddie’s idea was that, hey, you can play hot records in the beginning of the night and you can play those same records later on. But for me, I’ve always felt like, no, it should be just one time. If that person missed it, then they should have been there to experience it. I don’t want to play the same record. DJ Times: Different DJs, different philosophies. Some DJs want to make sure they break a certain new record that night. D-Nice: I don’t feel that way. I just felt like it’s about the full-on experience. So that night, we totally clashed. I wasn’t playing records the right way, like I was playing records from the very start, not really paying attention to how it’s going to make people feel. After the party, the promoter wasn’t happy. He said Eddie and I sounded like we

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were fighting each other. At that moment, I knew that if I’m gonna take this journey to come back on the scene as a DJ, then I really need to learn to DJ and not just play records. I need to learn what it means to DJ. DJ Times: So how’d you make that happen? D-Nice: An iconic DJ, “Little” Louie Vega, used to have this party at Cielo in New York, and I would go there every Wednesday night. I would study what he was doing and how he played those records and how he was counting the bars and how he ended these songs together. And that’s when it hit me – most hip-hop DJs just slam records. But very few outside of, like, a Red Alert, were blending records. Everyone was just about scratching and slamming records. DJ Times: So what changed for you? D-Nice: I wanted to play for women and I wanted them to feel sexy – and there’s nothing sexy about slamming a record. So, studying housemusic DJs changed my whole life and changed my career, even in terms of just having the ability to play hip hop the way that I do, classic records. When I have my set going, it’s really about blending. I’m not trying to be a turntablist – it is about creating this feeling. DJ Times: You’re not trying to impress people with your skills – you’re making a party atmosphere. D-Nice: It’s kind of like this rollercoaster ride of music and riding up and down. I never go from, you know, 129 BPM to 99 BPM. I never do that. I 16

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don’t even do that with records that DJs edit to bring that down. I don’t believe in that. I believe that in order to get the transition down, you’ve got to work your way down. So, I’m literally five to 10 songs ahead of people because I know where I want to go and I know where to bring it up. DJ Times: And Louie’s a master at that. D-Nice: He is, and I’ll tell you another guy I learned from, Z-Trip. I played with him in Miami – oh my gosh. Flo Rida’s first record was smoking hot, “Get Low.” So, he was playing this record – like, it’s a trap record – but then he started mixing this house record with it. And that was a moment that hit me – I remember it like it was yesterday – this is just mathematics! He’s just cut the tempo in half. It’s the same song, and that’s how it’s flowing. That changed the way I DJ. DJ Times: Isn’t it a little odd that you’ve gotten all this attention in the midst of strangeness and tragedy. What’s it been like? D-Nice: It’s been it’s been overwhelming, honestly, like now I’m learning to deal with it. As a DJ, I had a five-year plan. I went into this year saying, man, I don’t know how much longer I want to do this or be in the clubs because I don’t have fun. I don’t want to play just trap music or just house music – I want to just be me. I was literally trying to figure out what was the next phase of my career. DJ Times: Where did you want to take it? D-Nice: I had been doing a lot of events with Live Nation opening up for the artists like Jill Scott, Diddy, Dave Chappelle. I knew that was the lane I

wanted to be in, be more of a touring artist, as opposed to being in a nightclub. I just don’t want to do that because I don’t get the freedom and flexibility to play what I love. It’s like you’re going into their house and you have to cater to this bottle-service crowd, blah-blah… DJ Times: You didn’t find that fulfilling, then? D-Nice: The checks were very, very nice, you know. But after you’ve had lots of experiences and you get to a certain age, you tend to want to do things that just make you happy, and that no longer made me happy. DJ Times: Things sure changed in a hurry for you when you began live-streaming. You’ve gotten everyone’s attention. D-Nice: So, I had this five-year plan, but when this hit on March 21, it changed everything. I had to reduce the five-year plan to one year [laughs]. All of these offers, all of these deals are coming to me – and they were coming for the wrong reason. It was coming because everyone was just hyped about what happened. At the time, no one had 100,000 in IG Live – nobody was using it like that. We figured out how to make that work during this time. But as for the offers, everything has to feel… authentically me, like something that I would actually do had this not hit. DJ Times: Why do you think this thing blew up the way it did? You’ve done a lot of high-profile events for a lot of important and famous people. It was a confluence of factors, wasn’t it? D-Nice: Absolutely. Initially, I thought I was lucky to be the one to do it. But then when I had some

time to really think about what happened, it couldn’t have been anyone else but me. DJ Times: How’s that? D-Nice: The way it happened was... once the quarantine hit, I was sitting in this cigar bar out here in Los Angeles with my buddies. We were trying to figure out what’s next – what are we gonna do? Originally, the plan was to invite other artists, like rappers, and interview them on IG Live. That was the goal – it wasn’t to DJ. DJ Times: But it grew into that… D-Nice: It was like a Tuesday and I invited people like Dana Dane, and in between I’d play music. The next day John Legend was doing his thing, performing live. I was just playing music from my laptop, not even DJing. But when he was done, I hit John up and asked him to join my IG Live. So all the people who were following him migrated over into mine – I was just playing music and telling stories. It felt good, and it was 1,500 to 2,000 people. DJ Times: How’d you turn it into a DJ party, then? D-Nice: I called up DJ Clark Kent and he said that I should actually DJ now. In my place, I had Technics turntables and a Rane 57 mixer, but the 57 doesn’t work with the new Serato software. I still played music, but I rigged it, so I played Serato in Practice Mode, so I was all-fingers. But I was playing like nine hours, it got written about and the numbers began to swell to 10,000. DJ Times: That was only the beginning, right? D-Nice: Then the Friday it began to pop off, getting to 20,000. Drake was in there and J.Lo. Somebody said the only person who’s not here is Barack Obama. So… I ended up calling someone who worked for the Obamas – then I left them alone. One of my friends worked with Bernie [Sanders], same thing with [Joe] Biden. They were all, like, “We’ll get back to you.” I was calling people, and that’s why it couldn’t have just been anyone [to reach this level on IG Live], because not everyone has those contacts, whether it’s music or politics. And I’ve DJed for all of them. DJ Times: Right, you played the White House for the Obamas – time to get your hustle on. D-Nice: This was the first time that I’ve ever asked for a favor for people to come in. And I didn’t think they were gonna do it, you know, and then when I started DJing… immediately, I saw on Instagram, like, it was 20,000 people in there. I was, like, “Oh, shit!” Then the next night, we were 30,000 people and we just kept watching this thing grow. DJ Times: In the streaming world, the celebrity factor is significant because it makes all the fans feel like they’re partying with the A-Listers. Is that what it felt like? D-Nice: Absolutely, and that’s what I wanted it to feel like. That’s why, when I do

shout outs, I want everybody to feel comfortable there, celebs and non-celebs. I get a kick out of it, too – Maria Sharapova, Fat Joe, Bobby Flay, everybody. I want to shout out everybody, like there is no V.I.P. section. We’re all at this party together – we’re in this quarantine together. It’s all magical. Even the top DJs in the world don’t do these numbers on their IG Live. With me, the people in the audience feel embraced. DJ Times: Your set is very inclusive as well. D-Nice: I just love music, bro. I mean, I love Calvin Harris and Nile Rodgers. There’s no reason that can co-exist in my sets.You can play the old Sister Sledge records with new stuff and make it flow. DJ Times: The music industry and other properties certainly began to take notice. D-Nice: At first, record companies – I won’t say who – made offers and wanted to do takeovers on my platform where I’d only play their artists. I mean, one particular artist had 20 million followers. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be who I am – I didn’t want to become what they wanted me to become. So I did it my own way. It’s a terrible time we’re going thru, so I didn’t want angry music. I wanted to play music that uplifted our spirits. I’m glad I followed my instincts – I can play anything. DJ Times: You don’t have to be just another gatekeeper – you can play the music that represents you and your feelings. D-Nice: On Mondays, I play pop music – I mean, “99 Luftballoons,” who doesn’t love that? David Bowie “Let’s Dance,” who doesn’t love that? I’m really enjoying exploring and sharing music. I hate requests, so I’m so happy that I became the DJ I finally wanted to become. It’s so crazy that it happened during this time where people can actually pay attention. And I’m hearing from other big DJs telling me that I’m playing the music that they wish they could be playing that… I hear them say, “Hey, bro, I’m proud of you.” It means a lot. I feel like I’m in my own lane now. DJ Times: What’s your set-up now? D-Nice: When I play out, my rider calls for the Pioneer CDJ-2000NXS player and the DJM-900NXS mixer. But here at home, I have the Pioneer DJ Serato controller – DDJ-1000 SRT. When Clark told me I should DJ at home, I rushed over to Guitar Center and bought this. I didn’t think this quarantine would last, but it turns out that it’s the best thing ever for me because it’s so compact. I also have these M-Audio BX5 speakers that I took out of my closet. I also use Sennheiser HD-25 headphones and I use the Roland Go:Mixer Pro audio mixer/interface to connect directly to my iPad Pro. That’s it – that’s my set-up. DJ Times: How do you make sure that your audio holds its quality, so you get a nice, clean signal? D-Nice: I use a second phone to monitor. I don’t know why other DJs aren’t doing it. I usually sign in from a separate account and I listen to my levels. I pay attention to my meters while I do a virtual soundcheck. You don’t want to peak. You never want distortion. DJ Times: Did you encounter any copyright issues with IG Live? (continued on page 42) STREAMING ISSUE

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Ever since the Coronavirus quarantine began this past March, we’ve been introduced to a new, cloistered reality. Accordingly, platforms like Instagram have seen exponential activity and that’s afforded suddenly gigless DJs new opportunities. By now, all DJs have surely noticed the live-stream craze taking over socials, with terms like “Twitch,” “OBS,” and “iRig” suddenly popping up everywhere in our community. In the end, it may be more than a craze – it’ll certainly be part of our new normal. So, if you’ve never done a live-streaming DJ set and want to get with it, you’ll find everything you need to get started here. If you have been live-streaming, but are still getting kicked off for copyright issues or are unhappy with your sound, there are some answers for you as well. Here we go: Live-Stream Platforms The most popular social-media platforms are generally where you’ll get the most viewers (i.e., Facebook and Instagram), but they are also where you’re more likely to have copyright issues. If you didn’t already know, here are the main platforms for DJ live-streaming: Instagram – For most of us, Instagram is the platform of choice because it will provide the most viewers. That is really its main benefit because it doesn’t allow you to save your live footage to a highlights reel (although you can save to IGTV or download to your phone). If you get flagged for playing copyrighted music, you may lose your footage altogether.You can add one other person

in a split-screen type format, but that definitely doesn’t provide much of a “watch party.” Instagram will kick you off at the one-hour point regardless, so be prepared if you are going to live-stream longer than 60 minutes. Facebook – On Facebook, you can create a “watch party,” which is a unique feature the other social-media options don’t have. A watch party is the closest thing to the “Brady Bunch screen” experience (like Zoom virtual meetings) where you can see the other viewers in real-time. You can even schedule a watch party in advance. You cannot set up a watch party on your own live-stream after you’ve gone live, though. With or without a watch party, you can download a video of your live set. If you have more than 300 viewers on your live video, you can also monetize through Facebook ads. Twitch – This platform is becoming more and more popular for live-stream DJ sets as the weeks pass. Forget about the copyright goblins here – relax, and do your thing. Twitch was created as a place for gamers to play live, and, because of that, it was created specifically for live-streaming. It’s easy to set up your Twitch account and go live.You’ll find many of your DJ-friends are already lurking on Twitch. They also provide a cool feedback report after each live broadcast giving you all your viewer stats. YouTube – This really isn’t a great platform for live-streaming unless you have an established following there. You need not just followers, but people who subscribe to your channel if you expect any viewers, realistically.You can easily save your live-stream footage on YouTube, but copyright issues are also very rampant on the platform. Mixcloud – This is the only platform where you can truly play live without worrying about copyright issues. A paid account is required for live-streaming, unlike the other platforms. Mixcloud live-streaming was just released and is still in beta-testing mode. Like YouTube, you really need an established Mixcloud following if you expect viewers. Currently, you cannot save your live-stream set. Plans for DJs to monetize their sets are also in the works (each DJ would only receive a percentage of each dollar made and the rest goes to the artist and their label). Periscope/Twitter – This is one of the few platforms where you are automatically multi-streamed because Periscope is Twitter’s live platform. This is definitely the leastpopular platform of those listed, and I would expect the lowest viewership. Zoom – Zoom is a virtual conference platform where a lot of DJs are now finding themselves hosting virtual proms and birthday parties. It is really designed for private events, although some online festivals are using it. No copyright issues here, but easily the worst sound quality of all the platforms. The reason is because Zoom is designed for meetings, so its default settings suppress background noise. To DJ in Zoom, click in the top-left corner to “use original sound,” and go into advanced settings to stop suppressing background noise. Although you can tell Zoom to route sound directly from your

LIVE-STREA controller or mixer, the sound quality was still terrible when I observed it done this way (could have been a Wi-Fi issue, though). Many DJs are asking guests to watch on Zoom muted and listen on whatever other platform they are streaming on. Others – There are also live-stream hosting platforms, such as Streamyard or Restream, where you can broadcast one live set simultaneously to a variety of platforms. Sound Quality Yes, you can definitely go live by just setting your phone or camera near to your speakers. This is going to be the lowest sound quality of what DJs are currently broadcasting with, though. If you can’t invest in a way to send your audio directly to your camera/phone at the moment, at least do a sound check via video to test your levels. Realistically, though, you’ll want to invest in a device designed specifically for live-streaming like the iRig Stream from IK Multimedia. Here are some useful products: iRig Stream – Despite the iName, this IK Multimedia device is Android/PC compatible. It’s a small black box with RCA inputs that feeds your master audio directly to your livestream device. The price point is under $50, and it’s simple to set up. Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) – OBS is free, so no reason not to check it out. Expect great sound and a myriad of creative visual options. Yellow Duck – Like OBS, this is a free platform giving you an Instagram stream key, so you can work-around some of their live-streaming issues. Virtual DJ – This DJ software has built-in video mixing and live-streaming. You must have the paid version of the software to access these features. Serato cue points show up in Virtual DJ, so it’s an easy transition. They offer a wide variety of video-screen options, including showing live video with your real-time waveforms on screen moving as your laptop’s waveforms move (viewers can see if you set a loop, your cue points, the two 18 18

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songs playing side-by-side, even the beat grid). Users experience easy set-up and get plenty of customization options. To test your sound quality, set up a dummy Instagram or other platform account, and go live then check the replay. As I mentioned above, you can also take a video and check the sound in the replay. For speaking (which you should do during your virtual set), definitely use a microphone, as opposed to shouting over the music. Playing Copyrighted Music Most likely, you plan to DJ with copyrighted music created by someone else. In this case, be sure to post a notice somewhere in the comments or on screen saying that you do not own the rights to the music. Here is a notice you are welcome to copy (as seen on DJ Dawson High’s Instagram Live): “I DO NOT OWN THE COPYRIGHTS TO THESE SONGS. THIS SHOW IS PRESENTED SOLELY FOR ENTERTAINMENT & EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES, PERMITTED UNDER SECTION 107 OF THE COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1976 FOR FAIR USE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.” Some good practices to avoid being kicked off the social platforms when DJing copyrighted music include: Play remixes (not radio versions) Quick-mix (get in and out after one verse) Play all songs 5-10 BPM faster than normal (really as fast as you can get away with) and make sure to have keylock on) Talk over the music Scratch and use effects Don’t be shy using your DJ drop, as most viewers will only stick around for a few minutes STREAMING STREAMING ISSUE ISSUE | 2020 | •2020DJTIMES.COM • DJTIMES.COM 19

All of these tactics have been successful... and the more of these tactics you can combine into your set, the better. The fastest way to get shut down is by playing full versions of radio edits! (For more on playing copyrighted music for a live-stream event, please see sidebar.) Set Up Your Live-Stream Studio One advantage of quarantine is not having to tear down your gear after each set. Ideally, you’ll want to set up your in-home live-stream studio somewhere you won’t be interrupted (a spare room with a door, the garage, or a far corner of your bedroom). Plan carefully to consider your backdrop. If you don’t have a curtain you can place behind you, at the very least have a blank wall behind you. Messy closets and living room clutter is the new “not taping down your cables.” Don’t be that guy or gal! If you have any kind of party lighting or disco ball (even Christmas lights), add a festive touch to the studio by decorating and preparing a “lightscape.” It really does help retain viewers, build a regular following, increase your social-media presence, and create more networking opportunities by having the most professional studio you can. As you plan your set-up, consider your camera angle. This is a unique time when DJs can really show fans up-close and personal what goes on behind the decks. The most enticing DJ live-streams to watch are those in which you can actually see the DJ’s hands on the turntables, CDJs, or controller. The farther away your viewer is, the less intimate it becomes. Remember the “live” experience is about transparency, behind-the-scenes access, and real-

ness. Some DJs are adding multiple camera angles and shifting back and forth between the different cameras or showing two cameras simultaneously. Creating Your Live-Stream Show Like any other “night” you might’ve hosted at a bar, your live-stream show needs the same elements to really be successful. Here are a few tips: Pick a regular time (for example, my live-stream show is every Sunday morning at 10 a.m. PDT). Expect Friday and Saturday nights to be crowded with a lot of your DJ-friends’ shows. Give your live-stream show a name. Names relating to Coronavirus and quarantine are pretty popular right now. For example, my brunch set is “Coronavibes” and DJ Dazzler has the “Comfort Zone Club.” Decide on a vibe: Open Format, Oldies, Rock en Español, or maybe a new theme for each show. Many DJs are simply spinning what they consider to be their “signature sound” round the clock (like DJ Jazzy Jeff or Z-Trip). Decide if you will ask for tips/monetize. Cash App, Venmo, and PayPal.me links are popular ways to ask viewers for tips. In Facebook, you can type the payment link in the video comment before going live. In Instagram, after starting your live-stream, type your payment link in a comment, click on the comment, a bubble will pop up asking if you want to pin the comment to the top, click it and your payment link (or copyright warning) will stay up during your performance without moving. Figure out where and how you will monitor incoming comments from your viewers. The fastest way to lose a viewer is by not even noticing that

he or she left you a comment. Even DJs that don’t speak during their sets, like DJ Roeski in Northern California, make a point of checking their feed at least once a minute (if not more often) and giving a smile, thumbs up, peace sign, or some other acknowledgement to the screen as a reply. Understand that if you use your cell in selfie mode that any lettering in your live feed will show up reversed (so video screens next to you can become more of annoyances than attractions). It is recommended to set up an additional device right next to you on mute and monitor comments from there. Best practice is to say hi to any new viewers as they enter and reply verbally to comments, unless you have more than maybe 25-50 people watching. But even DJ Von Kiss, who usually has about 100 viewers at any one time, will give shout-outs to as many new viewers as possible by grouping five new viewers to one shout-out. If I can see on the replay that someone left me a comment that I missed while I was live, I message them and say thanks for watching and apologize for missing their comment. Promoting Your Live-Stream Show We all know we need to promote our gigs if we want people to show up. But so many live-streaming DJs are skipping this step or doing a terrible job at it. It’s the same promotion game it always has been, so don’t cut corners. Some more tips: Create a flyer listing who is playing, what type of music, the set times, the date, the platforms you’ll be on with links, the name of the show, etc. Post the flyer on your socials, create a Facebook event and invite friends, post the flyer in the Face(continued on page 40)

Caution: A Word About Copyrights & Live-Streaming

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Live-streaming of sets presents DJs with opportunities — as well as potential pitfalls and legal liabilities that are often unclear, or even unknown. If you decide to perform online with a live-stream, you should educate yourself about the basics, and the risks. In the United States, the music that you use in a live-streamed DJ set is covered by two separate, legally protected copyrights, as well as a series of rights related to them. Note that this is for live DJ sets performed online via streaming — DJ sets recorded and distributed as podcasts (or other formats) have slightly different (but related) rights, and live-DJ sets performed in clubs or venues also have different (but related) rights, too. For live-streaming, the rights are: The person or people who wrote the music and/or the words to the songs you perform have what’s known as a public performance right. This means that each time their song is performed in public — whether live by an artist, or the playing of a recording of the song — they are owed payment for that performance. For every piece of recorded music, there’s an owner of the sound recording itself. Often, it’s the record company who released the recording, or for smaller artists, it could be the artist themselves. Regardless, the person or entity who owns the recording has a digital performance right to the recording, meaning that each time the recording is played through a stream over the internet, they, too, are owed payment for that playback. These rights are baked into U.S. copyright law, and rights holders for both types have legal basis to protect their interests — including requiring licenses and payment in order to use their material, as well as a right to bring legal action against violators. Public performance licenses are issued by entities called Performing Rights Organizations, or PROs. The three main PROs in the USA are ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. Technically, when you perform a live-DJ set online, you may be subject to licensing and payment requirements of the PROs, who cover the songs you’re playing. The PROs then distribute royalties to the songwriters and composers who write the music. Digital performance licenses are issued by SoundExchange. Here, too, when you perform a live-streaming DJ set, you may be subject to licensing and payment requirements set out by SoundExchange, who in turn distributes royalties to the owners of the sound recordings (again, these are usually record companies). There’s an assumption by many DJs that using recorded music in live DJ sets online is “fair use.” This is a reference to the Fair Use Doctrine, which is baked into the U.S. copyright law as well. There are multiple legal standards that must be met for use of copyrighted material to be considered “fair use,” but the key points include how much of the copyrighted work was used, and the purpose or character of the use. Whether live-streaming a DJ set constitutes a “fair use” of the compositions or recordings in that set has not been tested in court that I’m aware of. However, social-media and streaming platforms have indeed been sued over music copyright issues on several occasions, which has resulted in the deployment of technologies that detect and identify uses of copyrighted music. Tricks like changing BPM or shifting keys or playing alternate mixes may circumvent the detection algorithms in some cases — but it doesn’t change anything about the underlying legal issues. I am not an attorney, and this article is not intended to serve as legal advice. But if you’re live-streaming DJ sets online, it may pay in the long run both to educate yourself about the issues, and even seek competent legal advice so you’re standing on the right side of the law should your performance provide you with a little more attention than you bargained for — and not the kind of attention most of us want. – Wesley Bryant-King DJTIMES.COM DJTIMES.COM •• STREAMING STREAMING ISSUE ISSUE || 2020

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By Jim Tremayne Like a lot of global DJ/artists, Jody Wisternoff was looking forward to a big 2020. He’d finished Nightwhisper, an emotive, 12-track, Anjunadeep album full of moving melodies and proggy club beats, and was keen on supporting it. But, as we all know, things went sideways in March, and here we are. But even if you can’t go out and hear Wisternoff spin a live set, the album’s there for anyone to hear – and it’s a good one. Profoundly inspired by a manic year of playing big gigs nearly every weekend, yet returning home to his family and an ailing father, who eventually passed away, Wisternoff produced a deeply personal album, his first solo effort since 2012’s Trails We Blaze. Cuts like “Emochine” encapsulate the full range of emotions that seem to have gone into the album’s making – nervy, pulsing beats bathed in cascading synths fade into hopeful, warmer synth lines before it all ratchets up again. Meanwhile, “Story of Light”

some very exciting material. DJ Times: Why are these collabs with him bearing so much fruit? The album’s title track, for example, is a really gorgeous tune. Wisternoff: James has been known to describe me as his “musical soulmate,” which is really sweet and pretty spot-on. His contributions to our productions are largely from a non-technical viewpoint, which is an invaluable quality, as it allows him to grasp – or hear – the big picture and not be bogged down by the visual details of computer production. In a lot of musical partnerships, there

MAKING “NIGHTWHISPER” matches aching string melodies with supple house beats – a moving mixture. We caught up with the Bristol, England-based Wisternoff – still one-half of Way Out West with Nick Warren – to discuss the strange year, his creative process, and his splendid new full-length. DJ Times: How have you been coping with the health crisis? What’s it like where you’re living? Wisternoff: It’s just day-by-day, to be honest. Starting to accept what’s happened and adapt, instead of wallowing. We live in Bristol in the southwest U.K. It’s relatively rural and easy to find remote places to exercise, which is great. We also have a dog which is a blessing at a time like this. The most depressing thing is seeing all the closed pubs [laughs]. DJ Times: How are you using this sequestered time? Wisternoff: Spending actual quality time – as opposed to recovery time – with my wife and kids, which is the biggest silver lining for touring DJs like us, who are normally overseas every weekend. I’m developing new studio skills, such as using Ableton Live as a live looper and making music in a live, jamming format, instead of the usual sequencing way. Learning how to live-stream properly. I’ve never been hugely into this side of things, to be totally honest, as it’s always felt a bit narcissistic – but it seems like a necessity for the time being. Doing a lot of pull-ups. Growing mad hair! D.I.Y. Drinking way too much wine. Making the most of this break because we might miss it when back on the road. DJ Times: What have you learned from this era of social distancing and the situation in general? Wisternoff: Whilst it is a necessity at the moment, this is an incredibly unnatural and cognitively disturbing way for human beings to live. We are social creatures who thrive on physical interaction. Whilst the kids – we have two – are still loving the fact that they don’t have to go to school, these scenarios are not sustainable moving forward and could have a damaging effect on the younger generation’s mental health. We’ve also realized how important healthcare/key workers are and it’s lovely to see everyone coming together and supporting them – big up the N.H.S.! As for the most important issue of all, I’d like to think this is having a positive effect on the environment, which will give our children a future. DJ Times: Any themed songs for this weird time? Wisternoff: The Specials’ “Ghost Town,” Yotto’s “Personal Space” and R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.” DJ Times: OK, onto business… what’s your main studio set-up? DAW? Fave plug-ins? Go-to hardware? Wisternoff: Ableton Live and [PreSonus] Studio One 4 are my DAWs of choice. I have a few select favorite plug-ins: Unfiltered Audio BYOME; [Wavesfactory] TrackSpacer; everything by FabFilter; Spectrasonics Keyscape; Xfer Records LFOTool; and [Wavosaur] RaveGenerator 2. My most-used hardware synths are the [Roland] SH-101, MacBeth M5N, [Roland] Jupiter-8, [Sequential Circuits] Prophet-5, and [Roland] TR-808 – so versatile if using separate outputs into a mixing desk. Also, I’m really vibing on the [Pioneer DJ] TORAIZ SQUID right now, finding step-sequencing quite inspiring and a refreshing approach to writing at the moment. DJ Times: What’s your process for making music? Wisternoff: I’ve been doing this for 30 years now and the process is always changing. Right now, I’m really enjoying trying to write in a live, jamming sense – using Ableton as a live looper, plus hardware sequencer, controllers, analog synths, etc. – whilst being stood up, as opposed to sitting down, and using it as a normal sequencer with VSTs, etc. Saying that, the majority of the critical work always happens in this traditional scenario. It’s also nice to work with different people. Whilst I’ve always collaborated with Nick Warren over the years for our Way Out West project – of which, we have some amazing new stuff in the pipeline – my current alliance with James Grant for Anjunadeep is producing 22

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is quite a lot of overlap in both roles, which isn’t always an advantage. DJ Times: How do you work with vocalists? As a producer, is there a secret to getting a good vocal take? Wisternoff: These days it’s all done remotely, so it’s mostly down to editing the material they provide and making sure they understand the concept and direction of the track in the first place. I’d love to start actually working with vocalists again in the future – though, in this situation, psychology plays a huge part and the vibe in the room is paramount! Also, when actually working with a singer, it’s super important to always record the first take, as it is usually the best. DJ Times: For you, which producers have made the biggest impressions and why? Wisternoff: The Chemical Brothers have always stood head and shoulders over everyone when it comes to the combining of samples, modular synths, catchy vocal hooks, the live-show setup, and live production. It shows that they have all their time to put into this and are not juggling DJ schedules at the weekend [laughs]. Aphex Twin is another obvious choice. Whilst I’m not a fan of all his work, he has pushed the boundaries so many times it’s unreal. His back catalog is long enough to make a grown man cry, and yet again this is an example of a guy who can put all his time into music-making, as opposed to constantly navigating airports. Burial blew me away when Untrue came out [in 2013]. He had an entirely different way of structuring beats and was about as low-tech as is possible, but there was so much raw emotion there. I’ve had similar feelings about Four Tet and people like Bonobo, that whole movement. DJ Times: What about more current, clubby stuff? Wisternoff: I’m a huge fan of Russian producers such as Volen Sentir and Gorje Hewek with their impeccably produced low-end, rolling beats and beautiful melodic overtones. I’m also massively into loads of the artists we have working with us on Anjunadeep – Cubicolor, Luttrell, Ben Böhmer, Nox Vahn & Marsh, Leaving Laurel,Yotto, Lane 8, etc. The list goes on and on… so much talent. DJ Times: For this album project, what was your approach? Anything different from the previous album project in 2012? Wisternoff: Yeps, I pretty much wrote it from beginning to end, beside a couple of ideas that had been knocking around since late 2018. It feels like (continued on page 42)

JODY WISTERNOFF’S SPLENDID NEW ALBUM PUTS AN EMOTIONAL STAMP ON A YEAR GONE SIDEWAYS

Nightclubs: Jody’s Faves to Play

Sound-Bar, Chicago. One of my favorite venues in the states. The Anjuna sound has a great following there and, being the spiritual home of house music, it always feels special playing in that city! The sound system is also incredible. Plus, I’ve done a few Dolby ATMOS shows there, which have been great, and the owners/staff are lovely people. Exchange, Los Angeles. The best club in the entertainment capital of the world – it’s a good one! The visual production is incredible, as the room has such a high ceiling. The crowd is always madly up for it, and L.A. just has the certain something about it – a very special place to party! Printworks, London. An absolute spectacle of a venue! It’s so massive that for the two times I’ve played there, I haven’t even been able to find Room 2 [laughs]. Looking out into the crowd whilst DJing, it’s virtually impossible to see the end of the room. But also, being relatively close to the crowd, you also get that feeling of intimacy that is sometimes lost in the big clubs. One of the best venues in the world, no doubt about that!

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HOW UNDERSTANDING HUMAN BEHAVIOR INFORMS EFFECTIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES Over the last few months, I’ve written about and discussed many different types of simple or basic marketing tactics that DJs could adopt to help increase their business.The idea was to help DJs get their feet wet and do easy things to gain an edge over their competition. For this article, I’m going to take things up a few levels and discuss an important, but often neglected strategy (and a bit of a science) that DJs can take advantage of: It’s called Consumer Behavior Marketing. As someone who has a 100-percent sign-up rate with every single client I meet with, I have taken a lot of time to really understand the science behind it and perfect this when looking for new business, receiving inquiries and having consultations, which turn into a signing. Let’s face it, tech knowledge is not all that is needed to become a good marketer. Marketing is about understanding human behavior and creating relationships. It helps develop the right strategies, tailoring content to the needs of a target audience, and knowing which buttons to push to create an impression or to awake certain emotions. In other words, it’s playing on certain emotions to generate the proper sales conversions and stealing market share away from your competition. A large percentage of humans will base their decisions on emotion — and while the patterns they follow can be understood and manipulated, this doesn’t mean that they will last. As time goes on, trends and patterns always change. This is why you have to constantly evolve and do things different year after year. For example, consumer behavior has changed in the digital age. Most of your customers now spend a lot of time on social media, but Millennial/Gen-Z customers trust their peers more than something they see online. So, you need to be retroactive in your marketing on both points to gain the right amount of business. The best marketers are usually very skilled in behavioral science. They are able to define buyer personas quickly, adjust their writing voice and tone, find out what exactly people love about your brand, what makes them come back and how to find ways to delight them. Major corporations, from Ford to Apple, have spent billions of dollars studying consumer behavior. They want to know how consumers make buying decisions and what influences those decisions.Your company obviously is not as big as Ford or Apple (even though we all dream of being that big one day), but your annual revenue doesn’t decrease the value of consumer behavior. The more you know about what drives your target customers’ buying decisions, the more, and the easier, services you can sell to them. And if you can hit certain trigger points when consulting with them, they will never take a second glance at your competition, and they will sign immediately the first time they meet with you. Some of you reading this are probably thinking, “Josh, what exactly is consumer behavior?” It’s the series of behaviors or patterns that your target customers follow before deciding on you, signing your contract and officially hiring you. It starts when your customer becomes aware of a need or desire for your services, then concludes with the contract signing and retainer. • There are multiple points that actually go into the definition of this behavior, such as: • How customers behave individually and in groups. • Why their patterns change based on the types of services they need. • When they are most likely to hire you. • How they feel directly before hiring you. • How they feel directly after hiring you. • Which questions or objections contribute to their decisions to hire you. • The number of touchpoints a customer makes with your business before hiring you. This shouldn’t overwhelm you, but each of those factors is essential to understanding customer behavior. If you don’t know how to anticipate your target customer, how can you effectively market to him or her? Consumer behavior in marketing is the response a target customer exhibits to your marketing materials and presentations. For instance, if someone in your target audience views one of your Facebook posts, how does he or she react? You already know that marketing and advertising are essential parts of running your com24

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pany. However, that’s only one side of the coin. Nobody can force clients to hire you for their event. Learning consumer behavior will help you build better marketing materials. You’ll produce better content, select more appropriate images, and send messages to your potential clients that resonate with them. All of this goes hand in hand with behavior and their decisions to meet or hire your company. In other words, you want every step you take in marketing your services to align with what you know about consumer behavior. And since consumer behavior changes depending on the overall end product, you have to dig deep into the data available to you. Now that you have a basic understanding of consumer behavior and why it matters, let’s talk about what drives it. There are three important factors to this: 1. Psychology: This is pretty obvious. Who clients hire for their events depends largely on their psychological state before, during, and after hiring. 2. Personality: A certain client might feel drawn to your company and personality because you don’t take yourself too seriously or because you use humor on a regular basis. Maybe they are more likely to hire you if they share your political, religious, or moral beliefs. Understanding these critical aspects of consumer behavior can make you a much better marketer. It’s important to understand that you’ll learn your company isn’t a good fit for everyone.That’s OK.You just need to find a way to get your messaging in front of the people who are a good match for it. 3. External Motivators: Last, but not least, is outside influence. Peer pressure doesn’t just stop when we graduate high school. Let’s say that your potential client’s best friend hired you for their wedding. She raves about how great you were and what an awesome job you did. Your potential client is automatically more likely to hire you now. Someone they trust has endorsed you, so they don’t see it as a risky proposition. Conclusion Consumer behavior influences all buying decisions, regardless of the services you offer. If you’re familiar with consumer behavior related to what your business offers, you can produce dynamite, slam-dunk, marketing tactics that are not only more effective, but gain you much more business. Research your target customer data and demographics. And don’t forget about your competitors, either. Understanding how your competitors win over their customers and then putting a better or smarter spin on the way they do things can help you not just convert more clients from potential to actual, but also convert anyone who might be interested in hiring them instead of you. n Joshua Volpe is owner of Kalifornia Entertainment in Rochester, N.Y.

the game By Joshua Volpe

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MAKING TRACKS STUDIO…HARDWARE…SOFTWARE…

True Analog: Master like production pros.

STUDIO SOLID: BETTERMAKER MASTERING COMPRESSOR

By Wesley Bryant-King

Mastering — the process of getting a piece of recorded music ready for distribution — is equal parts art and science, and arguably it’s one of the most important steps in producing a track. And not to put too fine a spin on it, it’s perhaps as important as the songwriting and the performance itself to making a song stand up well against releases from the “big boys and girls” of the music industry. One of the key elements of mastering, in addition to equalization and overall balance, is compression. Compressors reduce dynamic range — in other words, they reduce the “distance” between the softest and loudest parts of a track. It does this by essentially compressing (reducing) the level of the louder parts when they occur. The softer and louder parts will be more even as a result, but the overall loudness of a track will actually be reduced by the compression alone. But, by then, increasing the gain post-compression, all the parts come up in loudness, thus increasing the overall average loudness of a track. Said another way, it’s as if you press all sounds closer together from the top, then raise them all up, and the net effect is everything in the track has more punch. Without compression, a recorded song can sound shallow, unnatural, and frankly, amateur. As a result, it’s a pretty essential element of the final mastering process. The trick is getting the compression just right, as over-compressed music can start to sound lifeless, unnatural, and also pretty amateur. Compression, like any part of mastering, can be done with software-based solutions, as well as hardware-based ones – and, up to this point, I’d only ever experienced software-based mastering tools. Over time, those tools have gotten good — very good, in fact. But while the basic concept of compression is pretty straightforward, how it’s actually implemented can have as much of an effect on the end results as how the producer or engineer configures it. In other words, compressors add their own unique “color” to the final mix, and as a result, many audio engineers and producers prefer the sound of hardware-based compressors. I finally had a chance to see (or hear) what all the fuss was about with the popular Bettermaker Mastering Compressor. The Basics: Bettermaker is a Warsaw, Poland-based company (founded by Marek Walaszek) that produces a range of hardware-based effects products, including three specifically for mastering: a compressor, an equalizer, and a limiter. The company has cast all three from a very similar mold, with true, hardware-based analog circuitry that’s been married to modern, digitally controlled interfaces. The company even went a step farther, by creating DAW plug-in software that allows you to more easily integrate into modern DAWbased workflows, while providing remote configuration capabilities for the hardware. That plug-in doesn’t have to be used, however; you can also simply patch the hardware inline and use your DAW’s native routing capabilities to send the audio out to the compressor, and back in again. My usual DAW, Ableton Live, has an “effect” designed specifically for this sort of situation: the “External Audio Effect,” which you can drag onto the master track to make the routing easier. A color-touchscreen display on the hardware itself allows full configuration capabilities to set up the device as desired and to adjust or fine-tune levels and 26

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Plug-In: Integrate into DAW workflows.

settings. The display is big, easy to see, and easy to use. No matter how you choose to do the integration, you will need an audio interface with sufficient ins and outs to route your stereo master mix out of the computer, then back in again post-compressor, in order to use it. On the back panel of the Bettermaker unit are dual ins and outs, both XLR, and a pair of ¼-inch sidechain inputs for situations where sidechaining is needed. There’s also a USB connection for your computer, if you’re using the plug-in, and/or need to update the unit’s firmware. The Bettermaker Mastering Compressor is designed to mimic any of three classic hardware mastering compressors that each give a slightly different type of sound. Setting it up is quick and easy, really; either via the plug-in or the front-panel screen, you can turn options on and off, and with a set of four small knobs to the right of the display, you can easily adjust levels. On the left-hand side of the display, there’s a giant threshold knob, as well as a power switch and what is effectively a bypass button, so you can compare the compressed results with uncompressed with ease. Given that compression controls are fairly standard, I found the Bettermaker unit to be extremely simple and straightforward to set-up and use. Why a Hardware Compressor? To be frank, the topic of compression in recorded music in general is a conversation that borders on religion. Google the subject, and you’ll find lively discussions in online forums, strongly worded articles and blogposts, and much more — all of which may lead you to be more confused than anything else. And while I may not be a professional audio engineer, I’ve produced and mastered my share of tracks, and made a lot of mistakes along the way. That being said, compression is always an important step in the mastering process, however you approach the task. It’s said that proper compression is felt more than heard, and indeed, the effect of compression can sometimes be quite subtle. And truly, it’s supposed to be. But these days, it seems software plug-in-based compression is the norm, especially for those of us on a budget, or who started off producing tracks on our laptops with a pair of headphones (as I did). So, what does a hardware compressor have to offer? The answer is clearer if you take the time to truly experience different compressors. The fundamentals of compression are pretty cut-and-dried. But while the fundamentals are consistent, the way you get to the result adds col(continued on page 40)

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SIR IVAN - Donates $10k to DJ’s for COVID Relief Electronic dance music singer/songwriter and philanthropist Sir Ivan has stepped up to help out‑of‑work DJ's that have been financially impacted by global entertainment venues closing, due to COVID‑19. Through a MegaMix competition that will be judged by Paul Oakenfold, Bassjackers, DJs From Mars, Tenishia, and Exodus; DJ's will compete for a chance at one of five $1,000 cash prizes. Contest deadline has been extended until July 1st, 2020. https://sirivan.com/megamix-contest 3DME FROM ASI AUDIO The new 3DME from ASI Audio uses patented microphone technology built into the earpieces delivering the natural sound of the ear. DJ's no longer have to feel isolated from their sound and crowd. Using the ASI smartphone app, EQ, Limiter and Audio levels can be set to enhance environments into the perfect personal monitor mix." ASIaudio.com

SOUNDING OFF PLAYBACK…PRO AUDIO…PROCESSING

ASI AUDIO IEMS & DENON DJ SMART CONSOLE By Wesley Bryant-King

ASI Audio 3DME I’ve had the opportunity over the years to review in-ear monitors, or IEMs, more than once — and I’m definitely a fan. Having learned to DJ first for radio mixshows, using big can-style headphones was never part of my style, even after I started doing club work, nor today when I handle primarily mobile gigs. I prefer the passive noise reduction and audio quality of properly fitted (or custom-molded) IEMs. One problem for DJs using IEMs, however, is having conversations with others, such as handling requests – you can’t merely slip off IEMs like you do with headphones. While I’ve gotten the hang of removing an IEM to talk to people, I was intrigued when I was introduced to a new IEM solution at this past Winter NAMM show back in January. ASI Audio was demonstrating its new 3DME, an IEM solution with a unique attribute: on the outside of each IEM is a small microphone. The IEMs plug into a small body pack (rather than directly to a sound source), and at the press of a button, you can add ambient sound to the monitored mix, enabling you to hold conversations or easily hear what’s going on around you. The third component of the system is an Android-based app that you can install on a smartphone or tablet. With the app, you can adjust the sound level of the mics, button behaviors on the body pack for enabling those mics, as well as a limiter, EQ and other options. The Android device connects to the body pack via USB, and once you have the settings you want, simply download them to the pack, and disconnect the USB. The body pack is designed to provide up to seven hours of continuous monitoring, which should be sufficient for even the longest DJ sets. The included USB power brick and cable are used for charging, and LEDs indicate the charge level. The monitors themselves are universal fit, and three sizes of replaceable ear tips are provided, with custom-molded ones also available. In testing, I found the 3DME app and settings sync process took some getting used to, but it’s easy enough. And while my assessment is very much subjective, with the EQ settings left at “flat” in the app, I’m not convinced that the frequency response curve of the monitors was truly completely flat; perhaps it’s best described as “default.” Regardless, the fact that you can tune the curve yourself as desired means there’s no reason not to set things up to your own preferences and perceptions.

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At press time, pricing is roughly $700, and includes the monitors, three sizes of ear tips, body pack, audio jumper cable, charging cable, programming cable, wall charger, cleaning tool, and shirt clip — all packaged in a terrific carrying case. More info at asiaudio.com. Denon DJ PRIME 2 At Winter NAMM this year (back when we all felt just fine about traveling and congregating in masses), DJ Times editor Jim Tremayne and I got our usual dog-and-pony show from inMusic Brands – parent company of Denon DJ, Numark, RANE, among other brands. The inMusic staff was unveiling some new additions for some of the brands and hinting at exciting things to come for others. But it seemed the limelight was focused on Denon DJ, and among the highlights was the new PRIME 2 dual-deck standalone controller, a new little brother to last year’s outstanding PRIME 4. I recently received one of the first of these innovative new controllers and was anxious to give it a go. In previous Denon DJ reviews, I’ve made a lot of the fact that across their brands, inMusic seems to have spun up some serious in-house talent on the technology front. At the end of the day, it’s a pile of computer chips and a bunch of embedded software that comes together to power today’s cutting-edge “smart DJ console” (vs. depending solely on connected laptops for the brains), and inMusic seems to have the drill down pat after a series of innovations in recent years. The PRIME 2 is merely the latest example of it. First Impressions: It would probably be easy to say that the Denon DJ PRIME 2 is merely a two-deck version of last year’s PRIME 4 at a lower price point, and I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. But saying so diminishes

3DME: ASI Audio’s unique IEM solution.

PRIME 2: State-of-the-art standalone device.

what is nevertheless a truly superb standalone device. Like its PRIME 4 sibling, the PRIME 2 is a beast — but it’s slightly less of a beast. It shaves about 4 inches of depth and 4 inches of width from the overall footprint, and about 5 pounds of weight as well. The outstanding multi-touch display gets scaled down from the 10-inch, diagonal version found on the PRIME 4, but the 7-inch, diagonal (not as much of a step down at the numbers suggest) on the PRIME 2 is still a superbly usable screen, and serves as the window into the very core of the unit. But let’s move past how it differs from the PRIME 4 and focus on what makes the PRIME 2 what I believe it is: One of the very finest DJ standalone devices available at the moment, and that is, simply, the matter of usability. It starts, in my view, with the software I mentioned earlier. I would never have imagined even just a few years ago that a self-contained standalone unit could possibly have gotten me to give up my laptop to perform a set. But after playing with the PRIME 2 pretty extensively, I find myself at the threshold where I wouldn’t hesitate for many types of DJ sets, and there are several reasons why I say so: The Engine software has gotten that good. Denon DJ has done a great job of creating an Engine OS ecosystem across their various products, continuously refining how things work based on their experience in the field. But more than consistency is usability. Operating the touch screen on the PRIME 2 to drive around its interface is intuitive and easy; it’s simple to find things, it’s easy to see what’s what, and the information shown is exactly what you need. For this evaluation, I plugged in one of the two USB keys that stores my collection of club favorites, and quite literally within 60 seconds of making the speaker connections and turning on the power, I was mixing as if I’d been using the PRIME 2 for months. Beyond the software, the things you need the most and use the most are equally accessible and intuitive. Take, for example, the looper; two buttons and a knob, and it’s all you need to easily mark the in and out points, size or move the loop region, and release the loop — and I didn’t need a manual to figure it out. Ditto the effects engine; use the display to choose the effect you want and control it with hardware knobs that are natural to use. You want sources? The PRIME 2’s got sources, offering multiple USB connections, an SD card slot, and even a hard-disk drive bay. Pop a solid-state disk in the unit, and you’ve got music library space that might as well be limitless. Selecting and accessing the material is as intuitive as the rest of the interface. Not enough? Connect the unit to Wi-Fi (also easy) and tap into the entirety of the Tidal streaming music service. Provided there’s internet access available at the venue (in my experience, virtually all venues offer it these days), it’s a mobile DJ’s dream: Haul around your base library, sure, but swiftly handle pretty much any oddball music requests from a guest and make it all look easy. The connectivity extends beyond music sources. With two mic inputs — a must in my book for serious mobile work, and both are balanced XLR/quarter combos — plus dual headphone jacks, XLR-based master and booth outs, and a single Aux input, and you’ve got everything at your fingertips. Speaking of those mics, they have 3-band EQ and talkover mode as well. Hands-On: Something that Denon DJ has been really focusing on is giving their lineup a really professional, solid feel. The metal components in the chassis suggest that the PRIME 2 will prove itself rugged. But beyond the chassis, the controls really live up to the impression made when you unbox the unit. The various buttons, knobs and sliders have a really nice feel, and something Denon DJ has really refined over time are the jog wheels. With a 6-inch diameter, capacitive touch, and cool, circular color displays in the center of each one (for album or custom DJ artwork) are a nice touch. But it’s the feel of the wheels in use that really makes it a pleasure to perform a set. About the only thing I still don’t personally find intuitive are the ubiquitous multi-function pads, eight per deck. I realize that these are a fixture of virtually every controller on the market these days, but since each manufac-

turer chooses to use them in different ways, developing any sort of “muscle memory” has been impossible when you move around brands of controllers. Regardless, practice and familiarity will make perfect for someone who buys a PRIME 2, and those buttons will serve them well by triggering loops, cue points and the unit’s roll and slicer functions. But I’d like to go back to the software for a moment, and specifically to what I think is what makes the PRIME 2 — not to mention other Denon DJ offerings with the same capability — a mobile-DJ “killer app.” It’s the ability to tap into a live streamed music library. While only Tidal is currently built-in as I finish this review, inMusic is promising additional services in the new future, such as SoundCloud. (According to the company, SoundCloud and Beatport LINK will be in the next public release.) But to be honest, the single biggest challenge I’ve experienced after moving from club work to mobile work is having the music people want to hear at the event I’ve been hired to work. You can talk ahead of time to the bride and groom, the event planner, the sponsor or whomever else all you want, but in my experience, all the preparation in the world will inevitably still leave you empty handed at some point during the event when someone requests something you didn’t anticipate. I carry around an extensive music collection, but it never fails. In recent years, I’ve actually carried around an iPad with Spotify as a “justin-case” solution, and it’s saved me multiple times. But having a service like Tidal integrated directly into the system is, in short, sublime. Denon DJ has done a great job of the integration, and it’s easy to find tracks by artist and/or track name. In my testing at home (which is admittedly over a gigabit internet connection), grabbing a track took just a few seconds. A few seconds longer, and the Engine OS will perform a complete song analysis on-the-fly, providing BPM and song key information, and mapping the beat grid automatically. I could call it nirvana — because it is. The PRIME 2 doesn’t play the stream live; it temporarily downloads a copy in full before playback begins, ensuring that there are no burps or gaps during playback. (Downloaded tracks are not permanently stored, but the metadata for the tracks is cached to whatever attached storage media is available.) The only potential downsides would be the limitations of Tidal’s library — all the streaming services are missing certain things, although less so than in the early days — and whatever limitations you might have on internet connectivity at the venue. This is the biggest reason why your base music library is always going to be essential; I think we’re a long way away from performing DJ sets solely from a streaming service’s library. Conclusions: Between the live Tidal streaming, and a really solid, welldesigned, well-laid-out controller with myriad ways to get your digital music on-board, the Denon DJ PRIME 2 truly represents the state of the art in DJ standalone devices, and along with its Denon DJ siblings is ushering in a new era in the way DJs perform — especially for those in the demanding mobile segment. Selling at around $1,400 on the street, the PRIME 2 represents a $400 or so cost saving from the PRIME 4, while not compromising on power or usability. All I can say is that with choices like the PRIME 2, it’s a great time to be a working DJ. STREAMING ISSUE

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MOBILE PROFILE CAREERS…INNOVATIONS…SUCCESS STORIES

JERSEY JOCK DANCES TO SUCCESS By Stu Kearns

Ballroom Dancer: Jason Zaplin has parlayed his talent.

Livingston, N.J. – For Jason Zaplin, it all started when he discovered dancing. In third grade, he performed a choreographed Michael Jackson song in an elementary-school talent show. He received a lot of compliments and a seed had been planted. Today, he’s the owner of DJ Zap Music, a DJ company in northern New Jersey, about 20 miles west of Manhattan, and dancing now plays a big part of his professional life. We asked DJ Zap about his career trajectory. DJ Times: You were inspired as a 14-year old when Emmitt Smith won “Dancing with the Stars.” DJ Zap: It was November of 2006. When Emmitt Smith won the “Dancing with the Stars” competition, I saw that a professional athlete had perfected the art of ballroom dancing. I, too, was an athlete – I played club soccer, baseball, basketball and tennis – and realized that dancing is a sport, as well. I continued to play travel soccer, but started to take ballroom-dancing lessons. What did ballroom dancing teach you? Ballroom dancing taught me strong discipline and teamwork, because you need to work together with your partner to perform the various dance moves correctly. I participated in dance competitions and enjoyed the experience of being judged with my partner. It is not an easy sport to master, but practicing three or four days a week helped build my strength, flexibility and confidence. You worked for another company – how did you start your own thing? I started my own business in my teens after DJing as a hobby and working as a motivational dancer for the other DJ companies. I assembled a great crew of DJs and dancers and started getting jobs through word-of-mouth and reputation. I got into the business because I was trained ballroom dancer that also loved music and sports. Dancing is a sport, so I put both passions together and started my business. What were two big challenges you faced when starting? How did you meet those challenges? As a young newcomer to the business, the challenge was to get my name out into the marketplace and create brand recognition. I had a great reputation as a dancer and DJ in my local area, but I wanted to expand that reach 30

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into the tri-state area. I created a website, attended trade shows, reached out to event planners and attended numerous networking events. Through networking, I’ve worked with many party planners, namely Collin Cowie, Stacey Baumer, and Jenny Orsini. How has ballroom dancing enhanced your business? I’ve always had lots of energy and put that energy into competing on town and high school sports teams. As I said, I had been hired as a motivational dancer by other DJs and became the person to hire to liven up a party. When I decided to start my DJ business, the fact that I could dance with both adults and children was attractive to my clients. I truly believe that being a trained ballroom dancer is a skill that has served me well. I truly love to dance and enjoy engaging partygoers on the dancefloor. There’s nothing better than playing great music and seeing your guests have a great time. That’s what a party or celebration is all about! How do you market the ballroom dancing? When I meet with a prospective client, I let them know my dance background and assure them that I will do my best, tactfully, to engage their guests. I’m not only the DJ, but I help motivate the guests into having a fun time. Most clients realize the value I bring and hire me based on my energy level and commitment to making sure their party is a success. Are you single-op? How do you market your services? Yes, I am a single operator, but have a great crew of DJs and dancers on call for the events we handle. I market my services through my website, Instagram and Facebook posts, and promotional materials, such as cards, brochures, t-shirts sweatshirts. hats and wristbands. I also DJ at many of the Event Planner functions. The last one I did was PB Live with Preston Bailey, the renowned wedding and event designer. For a typical gig – a wedding or mitzvah, say – what gear do you use? Serato DJ software with a Pioneer DJ DDJ-SX3 controller and a QSC active PA – K12.2 speakers and KW181 subwoofers. Among my lighting packages, I use ADJ Inno Roll LED lights, plus Chauvet DJ Swarm FX lights and Scorpion Series lights. I use Global Truss stands and I can hang a pair of 60-inch plasmas on poles. I can do photo streaming, custom montages, and at the client’s request, we can decorate the dancefloor with customized lighting of the person’s name or other graphics. How have you been doing during the lockdown? Did you get cancelations or postponements? I have been doing my best to keep busy during the lockdown. I’ve done several DJ sessions online to raise money for charitable institutions, namely the American Cancer Society. I’ve also helped deliver masks and food for people in need. I feel good about giving to my community in this time of need. I am hoping to set up a program in my town whereby I can play music in the neighborhoods at a certain time each day to bring some happiness to the residents. I am also keeping busy by setting up TVs in homes and backyards for my clients to view their child’s virtual graduation from high school and college. I’ve had many cancellations and postponements, and I am hoping I can reschedule most of these events. I’m eager to get back to work, but understand that the safety and health of my clients is the priority right now. How do you see growing your company -- what’s the vision for the future? The vision for my company is to expand further into the corporate market, college events and fundraising functions. The crux of my business are celebratory events, such as Mitzvahs, weddings, communions, anniversaries, graduations, birthdays, etc. I love making these events special and memorable for my clients.

SALES… MARKETING…SOLUTIONS…

As we all know, DJs around the world are hurting from canceled gigs and loss of income due to COVID-19. But one mobile DJ, Vermont’s Craig Mitchell, realized an opportunity to generate income by DJing from home. For him, live-streaming his DJ sets has turned into a business model that pays. Mitchell’s clients are hiring him because they need these services. Yes, this is an actual business model for DJs, but the question is: How can any DJ replicate this model for his or her own company? We spoke with the Burlington-based Mitchell and a couple of his clients to gain a clearer understanding of how it works. Read on to see if you think this is an opportunity for you. Summary: Community-based organizations who receive grant funding need to continue their programming in order to carry on their mission and qualify for future funding. They need to spend their budget in order to successfully continue benefiting the communities that they serve. The organizations vary in missions, but include supporting centers for the youth, addiction, LGBTQ groups, local arts, etc. There is another similarity among these organizations. They host dance parties for the benefit of their communities. Through grant funding, a budget is allocated for events. Some organizations regularly host a weekly party. That’s changed since COVID-19 influenced lawmakers to limit group sizes, which is leading to lockdowns. The traditional in-person events that we’re all used to have become less permitted. In the U.S.A., lockdowns started to happen in mid to late March. As a result, live-streaming has become the new normal for communication. We’ve transitioned to this new way of life known as social distancing. More than ever before, live-streaming is an essential communication tool for both social and professional needs. Community-based organizations are leaning towards shifting in-person events to live-streaming event. The concept includes hiring a DJ to live-stream for their private audience of community members. Due to the grant funds, organizations are able and willing to compensate DJs for their service. How To Do It: First, shift your focus from selling a physical DJ package to an online DJ package. Consider how you separate your brand from the competition. What marketing materials and digital platforms you use for your existing efforts that can be modified or updated to promote your new online package. Next, develop your online DJ package and the features that your company will offer by considering the following: • Streaming equipment and audio/visual quality. • Capacity of attendees that your streaming network can host. • Professionalism and design of the studio setup. • Musical style. • Number of hours that you can host a streaming party. • Audience engagement using a microphone, props, games, costumes, etc. Once your new package is ready, develop a game plan to sell it. Research the organizations in your area, then find out who handles events and entertainment programming. Here’s how: • Start with pre-existing contacts that you’re already in touch with. Utilize those contacts to begin building a reputation in this area of DJ entertainment. • Cold-emailing is a strong way to pitch your online DJ package (see Q&A for more tips). • Host a free live-streaming party to showcase your new DJ package – and, of course, your brand, too. • Take out an ad in your local newspaper or appropriate digital outlet. • Spread the word with friends and family on social-media channels. Q&A with Craig Mitchell DJ Times: Should any DJ feel guilt for profiting off of a community-based organization during a global crisis? Craig Mitchell: You have a population of people who are desperate for something to do. You have organizations with an unspent budget allocated to bring forms of entertainment to these people. AndCraig then you have this other Mitchell: Streams population who are DJs that are struggling creatively and financially. So take all for grant-funded outfits. three aspects and throw it in a chili bowl for everyone to eat. (continued on page 40)

BUSINESS LINE

HOW TO ADOPT A LIVE-STREAMING BUSINESS MODEL By Josh Kerman

Craig Mitchell: Streams for grant-funded outfits.

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GEAR AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

A Walk in the ARC

IK Multimedia

Roland

IK Multimedia 590 Sawgrass Corporate Pkwy. Sunrise, FL 33325 (954) 846-9101 www.ikmultimedia.com ARC System 3 is the third generation of IK Multimedia’s acoustic correction system. The latest version features an all-new analysis algorithm that measures acoustics at three different heights. There is also a streamlined measurement process for quicker, more accurate calibration, in addition to advanced controls and a re-sizeable retina display GUI for improving workflow. The complete ARC System 3 bundle includes a MEMS room analysis microphone, but the software will work with any RTA mic.

Imperio Palace Avante Audio 6122 S. Eastern Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90040 (323) 316-9722 www.avanteaudio.com The Imperio Gig Rig 210 is part of Avante Audio’s extended Imperio Series. Designed for mobile entertainers, the Imperio Gig Rig 210 features a pair of Imperio mid/top modules, which offer a 90-degree x 15-degree dispersion angle, and a single Imperio SUB210 dual 10inch woofer sub enclosure. Using the Imperio Pole kit, the modules can be pole-mounted above the SUB210, which features a 700W (RMS) Class D amplifier with an internal crossover switchable between 90Hz and 120Hz.

Avante Audio

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Elektron

Suites for My Sweet

Moment of ZENOLOGY

Elektron Music Machines 1340 E 6th St #632 Los Angeles, CA 90021 (213) 935-8521 www.elektronmusicmachines.com

Roland Corporation 5100 S. Eastern Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90040 (323) 890-3700 www.roland.com

Elektron released its Overbridge 2 software suite, which works with a variety of Elektron products, including Digitakt, Digitone, Digitone Keys, Analog Rytm MKI/MKII, Analog Four MKI/MKII, Analog Heat MKI/ MKII and Analog Keys. Users can utilize Overbridge 2 in order to make their Elektron equipment compatible with Ableton Live, Logic, Bitwig, Studio One and other DAWs, as well as utilize their Elektron instrument as a high-performance stand-alone sound card.

The ZENOLOGY Software Synthesizer is an expandable plug-in version of the Roland ZEN-Core Synthesis System for macOS and Windows. Users are able to explore, create and share tones across compatible Roland hardware, including FANTOM, JUPITER-X, RD-88 and more. The unit features an easy-to-navigate browser that lets users filter and organize sounds, as well as create custom banks. ZENOLOGY will soon support Model Expansions for recreations of classic Roland synthesizers like the JUPITER-8, JUNO-106, SH-101 and JX-8P.

AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

Bit By Bitwig

UVI

Bitwig GmbH Schwedter Straße 13 Berlin 10119 Germany +49 30 60 93 9430 www.bitwig.com

www.uvi.net

Bitwig Studio 3.2 offers a variety of new features that the company says “focus on greater control and sculpting possibilities for all sounds.” These include an instrument selector, note FX selector, arpeggiator, audio FX selector, logic delay, saturator and more. Bitwig Studio 3.2 also includes Saturator, a waveshaper that offers an expanded curve editor, as well as EQ+, which offers 14 filter options, global frequency Shift and Gain controls and up to eight bands.

The PX P10 is the latest addition to UVI’s Prototype Series of instruments. Based on a rare dual-keybed 10-voice analog synth originally released in 1981, the PX P10 allows its dual five-voice engines to be stacked in unison for a rich analog sound. The unit includes more than 300 fully-editable presets, as well as 188 layers and more than 30,000 samples. It also comes with a featured effect section that includes three-band EQ, drive, Thorus, ensemble, Phasor, Delay and Sparkverb. The PX P10 offers native 64-bit standalone operation by way of Falcon or the free UVI Workstation.

GEAR

Bitwig

UVI

GEAR AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

ADJ Products

Audionamix

Numark KRK

Grille Cheese

Mixtrack & Field

Magnet School

XTRAX of My Tears

Gibson Pro Audio 309 Plus Park Blvd Nashville, TN 37217 1-800-444-2766 www.gibson.com

Numark 200 Scenic View Drive Cumberland, RI 02864 (401) 658-3131 www.numark.com

ADJ Products 6122 S. Eastern Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90040 (323) 582-2650 www.americandj.com

Numark has introduced the 2-deck Mixtrack Pro FX DJ controller. The unit features large 6-inch, high-resolution capacitive-touch jog wheels, as well as 16 performance pads for accessing cues, loops, fader cuts and samples. Six quick-launch effects with dual paddle triggers are included. The controller comes with a full 3-band EQ, filter knobs, microphone input, headphone output and dedicated instant loop. Serato DJ Lite is included, and users get a free three-month subscription to TIDAL Premium upon product registration.

ADJ’s MDF (Magnetic Dance Floor) System is a new portable illuminated dancefloor. Each panel is illuminated by an array of 3-in1 RGB LEDs, and each can be controlled individually. Users can choose between Sound Active mode, Standalone mode or DMX Control with a choice of 3-, 5-, 7and 10-channel modes. The MDF System also comes with a dedicated road case, as well as a tool that allows a single panel to be removed and replaced from the middle an MDF Series dancefloor.

Audionamix 209 E Alameda Ave, Ste 200 Burbank, CA 91502 (323) 515-7161 www.audionamix.com

KRK Systems’ ROKIT G4 Studio Monitor Grille Covers are designed to protect the drivers on the ROKIT G4 powered nearfield studio monitors from environmental factors, as well as ensure that frequencies are not hindered by their use. They are made specifically to fit the five-, seven- and eight-inch versions of the G4. The grille covers are made out of 22-guage powdercoated perforated steel and they feature high-strength alloy metal magnets that keep them in place.

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Audionamix has released its new four-stem version of XTRAX STEMS exclusively to its subscription members. XTRAX STEMS is compatible with Windows 10 and macOS 10.12 - 10.15 operating systems and requires a high-speed internet connection. Powered by advanced AI, XTRAX STEMS uses a simple drag and drop to separate songs into four parts—vocals, drums, bass and remaining music. The software sports a new user interface and comes with a De-bleed slider to refine separations in real-time.

AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

VocoPro

GEAR

Genelec

Mono

V-Moda

Moda Behavior

Ready Set VocoPro

RAW Emotion

Stand and Deliver

Roland Corporation 5100 S. Eastern Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90040 (323) 890-3700 www.roland.com

VocoPro 1728 Curtiss Court La Verne, CA 91750 (800) 678-5348 www.vocoproc.com

Genelec 7 Tech Circle Natick, MA 01760 (508) 652-0900 www.genelecusa.com

V-Moda has released its Crossfade M-100 Master Headphones, which use Japanese CCAW coil alongside 50mm dual-diaphragm drivers to deliver hi-res audio with “improved tone balance and accuracy throughout a vast tonal range,” according to the company. The headphones come equipped with large memor y foam ear cushions that sport vegan leather cushion covers, as well as a SteelFlex headband that prevents the development of pressure points. A CliqFold hinge allows the headphones to fold up for easy transport inside the included Exoskeleton carry case.

VocoPro’s new MIB-QUAD8C system includes four wireless handheld microphones and four bodypack headset/lapel microphones. All wireless mics/packs are color-coded for easy setup. They operate on a 900MHz frequency band and utilize 24-bit digital technology with a frequency response of 50-20,000 Hz. The system also comes with a variety of accessories, including mounting brackets, ¼-inch patch cable, two XLR cables, a power adapter and a gig-ready bag.

Genelec’s RAW line includes features a special RAW aluminum color finish, available on a selection of models, including the 8020, 8030 and 8040 nearfield studio monitors. The RAW versions require no painting and less finishing material than standard painted models, according to the company. All the models feature a Minimum Diffraction Enclosure (MDE) design that is fashioned from recycled aluminum. The slimline enclosure offers an extreme rigid structure with large internal volume and it also delivers a flat frequency response thank to the elimination of edge diffractions.

Mixware, LLC 11070 Fleetwood St, Unit F Sun Valley, CA 91352 (818) 578-4030 www.mixware.net Mono’s Studio Monitor Stands, distributed by Mixware, are available in black and silver options. The stands are made from industrial-grade anodized aluminum. They sport an elevated design that places studio monitors at ear level. Features include laser cutouts for cable management and rubber pads under the base keeps the stands sturdy while reducing vibrations, according to the company. Mono’s Studio Monitor Stands contain no moving parts and require no assembly.

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GEAR AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

L-Com Global TASCAM

IK Multimedia

Songstats

Mic and IK-e

Model Citizen

You Need to L-com Down

United Stats

IK Multimedia 590 Sawgrass Corporate Pkwy. Sunrise, FL 33325 (954) 846-9101 www.ikmultimedia.com

TASCAM 1834 Gage Road Montebello, CA 90640 (323) 726-0303 www.tascam.com

L-com Global Connectivity 50 High Street West Mill, 3rd Floor, Suite #30 North Andover, MA 01845 (800) 341-5266 www.l-com.com

Songstats www.songstats.com

TASCAM’s Model 12 is a compact all-in-one integrated mixer that also works as a live production recorder, USB audio interface and live-streaming tool. The unit features an internal 12-track recorder that is capable of recording WAV files of up to 24-bit/48 kHz audio quality directly to an SD card with 10-track playback. WAV files can also be directly uploaded to a DAW for further editing. Model 12 comes with a USB audio/MIDI interface, as well as basic external DAW controls using HUI/MCU protocol emulation.

iRig Mic Video is shotgun-style mic offers professional-quality audio capture and production features that work with all types of video applications. iRig Mic Video works with any app that records audio, and comes with IK’s iRig Recorder 3 LE. The unit comes with a 10db pre-amplifier, 24-bit, 96 kHz converters and a gold-sputtered condenser capsule with a tight directional pickup. It features a magnetic mount, as well as a hot-shoe adapter for mounting to DSLR. Lightning, Micro-USB, USB-C and DSLR cables are also included.

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L-com has launched a new series of Ethernet and USB cables. These cables are built to USB 2.0, Category 5e or Category 6 standards and feature Glenair’s 801 Series Mighty Mouse Connector. L-com’s Mighty Mouse assemblies are built with lowsmoke zero-halogen (LSZH) or PVC jackets and are offered with either a male or female Mighty Mouse connector to a standard RJ45 or USB type-A connector. They are IP67-rated even when unmated and they are shielded for EMI/RFI resistance.

The Songstats mobile app utilizes push notifications to let artists, labels and more know when a song charts, gets added to a major playlists or hits other milestones that show how it is performing across download stores and streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Shazam, Beatpor t, Traxsource , iTunes, SoundCloud and 1001Tracklists. Dedicated analytics pages allow users to track their overall progress, as well as the progress of specific tracks. Available for iPhone and Android, the app can also be used to generate custom artwork and share it to Instagram.

AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

GEAR

Arturia

Pioneer DJ

Mackie

SoundSwitch

Head in the Cloud

It Takes 2.2

I Want My MTV-Class

Cause & FX

Pioneer DJ Americas 2050 W. 190th Street Suite 109 Torrance, CA 90504 (424) 488-0480 www.pioneerdj.com

inMusic Brands 200 Scenic View Drive Cumberland, RI 02864 (401) 658-3131 www.inmusicbrands.com

Mackie 16220 Wood-Red Road NE Woodinville, WA 98072 (425) 892-6500 www.loudtechinc.com

Arturia www.arturia.com

SoundSwitch is a lighting hardware/software control solution and its version 2.2 is the latest software update that introduces a major autoscript upgrade, refreshed user interface and a variety of usability improvements and stability enhancements. The latest version features a Phrase Detection Algorithm that automatically detects song characteristics and major music sections, allowing DJs to easily sync their lighting effects to the music. It offers an advanced lighting automation with individual fixture assignments that creates immersive light shows automatically, as well as a DMX universe menu that now offers Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Wash and Spot fixture assignments, as well as Strobe/ Blinder assignment.

Mackie’s series of SRM V-Class Professional Loudspeakers consists of three models—the SRM210 VClass, SRM212 V-Class, and SRM215 V-Class, with 10-, 12-, and 15-inch low-frequency transducers, respectively. All SRM V-Class models feature a 1.4-inch polymer highfrequency driver and the Sym-X horn, which the company says produces minimal distortion, even at high output. They also come with a 2,000-watt Class D amplifier that features a universal power supply (100 to 240 VAC) with Power Factor Correction. On the back panel, SRM Mix Control features a built-in four-channel digital mixer with two channels equipped with a mic/line/ instrument combo input, a dedicated 1/8-inch stereo aux input and stereo Bluetooth input.

Pioneer DJ has announced that rekordbox ver 6.0 and rekordbox for iOS (ver 3.0) is now available in three new subscription plans: Free, Core and Creative. This latest version offers cloud-based support, which means users are able to sync their libraries to multiple devices, including their iPhone and— with the Creative subscription plan—a Dropbox account that is linked with rekordbox. Changes made on the iPhone to metadata such as cue points and playlists will sync to other devices when connected to a single network.

The Arturia FX Collection brings together all 15 plugins from their “You’ll Actually Use” series, including the best-sounding, highest quality compressor, reverb, preamp, filter and delay plug-ins. Each plug-in features circuit-accurate modeling and unique tonal properties. In addition, each plug-in adds new advanced functionality, such as in-app tutorials, look-ahead tracking, envelope followers, sidechaining, pre-post EQ and a variety of presets.

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TRACKS…MIXES…COMPILATIONS

“PARTY PEOPLE” u Crystal Waters & DJ Spen u unquantize Spen teams up with legendary vocalist Waters to bring you some feel-good, vocal-house goodness. Sporting a ’90s-flavored underground vibe, bouncing 4/4 beats, bumping bass, swinging hi-hats and funky keys, this one’ll light up your floor. And make sure you check the grittier “DJ Spen & Micfreak Party Mix.”

– Tommy D Funk “FINALLY READY” u Shapeshifters feat. Billy Porter u Glitterbox Shapeshifters’ Simon Marlin takes his production to the next level by teaming up with star Broadway vocalist Billy Porter. Behind an uplifting disco-house soundtrack, Porter lets loose like a fierce, ruling diva – this one’s a future classic. – Curtis Zack

Crystal Waters

“WONK” u Wonkytonk u Superfreq Some seriously wobbly deep-tech here from Wonkytonk (aka Mr. C and Radio Rental) on the original, but look for the tasty remixes as well. Mr. C’s stripped-down effort gets pretty scalding, while Radio Rental’s mix rides the groove with more care. But don’t sleep on Jay Tripwire’s twisted entry, which somehow pushes into an even further celestial place.

– Jim Tremayne “FAITH” u Yass feat. Leslie O’Smith u Soulfuric

Izo FitzRoy

DJ Spen

Parisian producer Yass and vocalist O’Smith deliver an excellent vocal workout on the mighty Soulfuric. The soulful track features sublime synth stabs and powerful song to lift your spirits.

– Curtis Zack “MATERIALIZE” B/W “GROOVE 2 ME”

u anny Marx u Simma Black London’s Marx delivers a fantastic two-tracker full of house flava. With deep, hypnotic elements and spoken-word vocals skidding over warm bass and bumpy keys, “Materialize” takes you on a gleeful ride. “Groove 2 Me” steps up the pace with a taut rhythm, oozing keys and female-vocal samples – sweet. – Tommy D Funk

“SING IT” EP u DoctorSoul u Midnight Riot

Yass

Danny Marx

Lempo

The nu-disco delights keep coming from the Midnight Riot camp. Here we have three tracks of absolute quality that groove all day and night, and can’t help but make you move. While the sleek title track takes you straight to a 1976 dancefloor, don’t sleep on the mega-funky “Universal Thing.”

– Curtis Zack “DANCE WITHOUT A REASON”

u Lempo & Roland Clark u Strictly Rhythm The U.K.’s Lempo hooks up with Roland Clark for an elegant disco-house outing on the legendary Strictly. Bangin’ and bumpin’, this driving track does the business. – Curtis Zack “MIDNIGHT MOODS” EP

u Stay K u Kid Recordings

Jason Herd

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Boys Don’t Disco

Essentially a deft assemblage of juicy samples, this soulful EP delivers both primo chill tunes and hip-shaking grooves. Slinky opener, “Cross-

town Rendezvous,” sets a sleek scene, then “Honey Kisses” drops a very ’70sR&B vibe – snaky, but with a lowdown and funky swagger. Closer “Peggy Love” picks up the pace with plenty of sassy funk.

– Jim Tremayne “THIS IS HOUSE” u John “Julius” Knight & Roland Clark u Soulphuric Trax Knight returns with vocalist Clark on this spiritual house groove. With two mixes available, DJs get plenty of swelling synths, echoed vocals and funky riffs to make this a surefire dancefloor hit. The “Marco Lys Extended Remix” gallops along with precision, while the” Mattei & Omich Extended Remix” kicks a funkier vibe.

– Tommy D Funk “BACK ON-LINE” EP u Boys Don’t Disco u Jump Recordings San Diego natives BDD drop a lovely two-track EP of deep and juicy goodness. “The Narrative” offers some jumpy house grooves, while “Gusty” pumps with percussive purpose. Both bring chopped vocals and melodic quirks, but the grooves really deliver. – Tommy D Funk “SAVE ME” u DJ Zavala u Sirup Things get real hot on this sexy single. Dropping a melodic mid-tempo, almost Middle Eastern vibe, it’s a chunky, deep groover with a sweet female vocal that pulls everything together.

Nora En Pure

– Phil Turnipseed “ALL I NEED” u Nora En Pure u Enormous Tunes Catchy and lush, but sporting a throbbing bassline, the latest vocal cut from the Swiss DJ/producer is pure pop confection that’ll stick in your ear. Easy breezy.

“PICK ME UP”

u Mo’funk & Avon Stringer feat. Celeda u Simma Black

– Jim Tremayne

Proper house music here with piano, a boomin’ rhythm, and fierce vocals from the one and only Celeda. Two mixes included, with the dub taking you way deeper.

“GETTING ME HIGH” u Sebb Junior, Karmina Dai & Mr. V u Peppermint Jam Heavyweight house business on Peppermint Jam with the combination of Sebb Junior on production and Karmina Dai and Mr. V on vocals. The original is backed up by a summer-stormer remix from Jarred Gallo.

– Tommy D Funk

– Curtis Zack “I LOVE YOUR LOVE”

NO SHADE u Dave + Sam u Classic Music

u Jason Herd pres. 161 u Weirdo This shimmering, booty-shaking, disco-house jam from this amalgam of Mancunian talent is packed with all the essentials, including singalong vocals and uplifting pianos. And check the superb dub mix – “J’s Fat Arse Dub.”

On its 13-cut debut album, the Brooklyn duo delivers deep, soulful jams – house, funk, disco – punctuated with street-savvy and socio-conscious wordplay. Highlights include the urgent “Til the World Blow Up” with Mike Dunn and the soulful title track featuring Ramona Renea.

– Tommy D Funk

“BLIND FAITH” (REMIXES) u Izo FitzRoy u Jalapeno Super soulstress FitzRoy returns with a track from her excellent 2020 album, How the Mighty Fall. From the quality set of re-rubs, the “Smoove Remix” brings a bass-heavy boogie vibe, while the Art of Tones efforts funk up the proceedings righteously.

Guest Reviewer: Angel Johnson

– Curtis Zack

“CAME TO CHILL”

Roland Clark

John “Julius” Knight

u Alaya u Motive Bouncy, warm and groovy, this sleek house track’s main ingredient is an infectious, rolling bassline, which bounds along unapologetically. It’s punctuated by spoken vocals, sparse keys, and a sax that lifts you from the dreamy break. This one’s apt for warming up or for dropping peak-time, a versatile and worthy weapon from Australian producer Alaya. STREAMING ISSUE

Angel Johnson

2020

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DJTIMES.COM

Golf Clap

(continued from page 8) Cleal: How much more difficult it is to stream than we expected. There are just so many little things that can mess it up. It takes a lot of guessing, testing, Googling, asking friends, and hours and hours of streaming to start to feel fairly confident. Things still pop up from time to time, but we have started to figure out how to fix any issues quickly and keep the show rolling. All the viewers have been very

supportive and understanding, while we learn the ins and outs of this. DJ Times: What else are you doing online? Have you seen anything that impressed you? Jones: We are trying a couple new contests right now with the new Countr y Club Disco release. You can text “Contest” to 484848 to get more details. One of them involves a spot on our virtual club night and the

other involves shufflers. Some of our favorite DJ streams have been Treasure Fingers, Subset, Low Steppa and, of course, Diplo. DJ Times: Any theme tunes recommended for the moment? Cleal: We update our playlist all the time on Spotify and our radio show is ever y week, so we cycle through stuff quite a bit. One of our favorites currently is MASTERIA &

AceMyth’s “Do It” on Confession. DJ Times: Any advice on staying sane and relatively positive through this situation? Jones: Everyone is in a different position right now, but try to make the best of this “new world” and adapt as much as possible mentally and financially. Stay busy and learn new skills. We’ll all make it. – Ashley Teffer

either side of that argument; at the end of the day, it’s what sounds and feels best to you, as the producer or engineer, that guides what you should use. What I can say is that the Bettermaker provides a pretty incredible sound and feel. Doing some basic remastering work on a couple of tracks from my past revealed that the unit does indeed provide a sort of warmth to the result that I truly did find pleasing. Is it night-and-day? To my ears, I

wouldn’t say that, but I would say it’s noticeable, it’s pleasing, and it has me considering how, when and where I could fit something like this into my workflow going forward. Conclusion: The Bettermaker Mastering Compressor provides classic, true-analog, hardware compression for effective mastering just like the pros use, providing a clean result that would please even the most discriminating mastering engineers. If

you’re truly serious about your music projects, and want top-drawer results, it’s worth considering. That said, this kind of very serious kit is not for amateurs; with a street price that’s about $2,899, it’s definitely a pay-toplay-with-the-big-guys sort of offering — but one that really delivers. (Ed. Note: The company also offers a “younger brother” version, called the Bettermaker Master Bus Compressor, which costs $2,399.)

with Craig’s live-streaming, what kind of feedback did you receive? Peter Espenshade: People raved about how fun it was. Many expressed things like, “I didn’t think this was going to work... but I love it!” Johnny Chagnon: People loved it and were very engaged throughout the event on multiple streaming networks: YouTube, Facebook watch parties, Instagram Live, as well as on a traditional radio station. People also asked for more engagement with glow sticks and other lighting. DJ Times: Regarding grant funding that your organization receives, is it safe to rely on that funding to continue during the COVID-19 crisis? Espenshade: Yes. Organizations like ours receive funding for the sole purpose to bring people together. How are we supposed to do that during a time that “shelter-in-place” orders are in effect? Host online dance parties. DJ Times: Remind us of the im-

portance of hiring a DJ to provide entertainment for your community. Espenshade: Our mission is about connecting people during times when they may feel left out of society. While the majority is in quarantine, we need to continue our mission. DJ Times: Has traffic increased since the stay-at-home order went into effect? Chagnon: Yes. We are even busier than before the order. Instead of canceling events, I worked with my team to immediately transition our regular events to online formats using Zoom, Facebook Live and other digital features. DJ Times: Would you welcome DJs to cold-email you to introduce this concept? Espenshade: Yes, and I encourage you to not underestimate the power of this. Let non-profits know that this can be a mission-based tool to serve people in isolation with fun, happy, connecting programming.

Chagnon: Absolutely. I have also been relying on information from DJ friends across the country putting together their own virtual dance parties. DJ Times: What should a coldemail look like? Espenshade: Clear, bulleted, and how this can help a non-profit person trying to figure out what to do. DJ Times: Is this a viable business model between DJs and communitybased organizations? Espenshade: Ironically, this prohibition on public meetings might be something positive for the DJ community. DJs – unlike caterers, for example – can move their business online and keep people connected. It’s kind of a wonderful thing and we are so grateful to Craig for willing to experiment and make this work. I recommend it for your organization. Josh Kerman is a DJ, digital marketer and co-founder of the annual Vermont DJ Meetup.

Just like before quarantine, you support my show, and I’ll support your show. Same unwritten rules apply now. Even if you are in a hurry, try to pop into as many live-streams as you can and at least take a second to leave a smiley-face emoji before moving on. Live It Up Yes, you can make a few bucks from viewers leaving you tips, but most likely, this is going to be a labor of love. For me, personally, I have made a lot of new DJ

connections from playing in virtual music festivals together and watching each other’s live-stream shows. Promoters and talent scouts are definitely out there. Live-streaming is more of a networking opportunity than a paycheck, but you don’t want to get rusty in quarantine. Like the memes say, if you don’t come out of this lockdown with a new skill, then you are letting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity pass you by. For most DJs, live-streaming

has become therapy, a way to stay connected to our DJ friends, and a new project to keep you occupied. At the very least, a year from now, when a bride says she can’t afford your wedding-DJ services, you can tell her your ridiculously affordable livestream prices. Staci Nichols (aka San Diego DJ Staci, the Track Star) is a DJ/MC in San Diego, Calif., who spins a wide variety of events – mobile, club, and virtual. n

Making Tracks

(continued from page 26) or and texture to the mix. Different compressors simply sound differently, and if you take enough time to compare, you’ll quickly get a feel for what you like. With hardware compressors, it’s the actual electrical circuits that add the color; for the plug-ins, it’s the way the software is designed to work. Many believe that analog hardware compressors provide a better feel, a better sound, than software and digital approaches can. I can’t really defend

Business Line

(continued from page 32) DJ Times: Within the first week that the Vermont governor Phil Scott declared a state of emergency shutting down all restaurants, bars, and cafes, how many people have you entertained through this new business model? Mitchell: About 5,000 people between three live streams – one on a Friday night and two on Saturday. DJ Times: Based on the results and feedback from the first three live streams, do you plan on continuing them? Mitchell: Yes! In fact, they are my newest weekly residencies.

Q&A with Mitchell’s Clients We connected with a pair of representatives from organizations that booked Mitchell’s services – Peter Espenshade, President of Recovery Vermont, and Johnny Chagnon, Assistant Event Coordinator of Pride Center Vermont. DJ Times: After the first go-around

Live-Streaming

(continued from page 20) book DJ groups you belong to, send out an email blast to your subscribers, create a free EventBrite event (or MeetUp.com event, if you are willing to invest a few bucks), and, finally, start promoting sooner than 24 hours in advance. Also, announce it more than once. During your show, be sure to remind everyone when your next live-stream performance is. This is an important step, so don’t skip it: Watch other DJs’ live-streams.

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STREAMING ISSUE

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NOW! Listen the DJ Times National Dance/Crossover Chart on SPOTIFY! LISTEN NOW!

Compiled As June 15, 2020

C LU B P L AY C H A R T

NATIONAL CROSSOVER POOL CHART 1 Dua Lipa Break My Heart 2 Camilia Cabello f. Da Baby My Oh My 3 Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande Rain On Me 4 The Weeknd Blinding Lights 5 Doja Cat Say So 6 Sir Ivan Happy Together 7 Meduza F/Shells Born To Love 8 Megan Thee Stallion F/Beyonce Savage 9 Lodato Good 10 Robin Schulz f. Alida In Your Eyes 11 Dua Lipa Physical 12 Lady Gaga Stupid Love 13 Katy Perry Daisies 14 Benee Supalonely 15 DJ Regard Ride It 16 Loud Luxury ft. Morgan St. Jean Aftertaste 17 Trevor Daniel Falling 18 Anabel Englund So Hot 19 Black Eyed Peas RITMO 20 Harry Styles Adore You 21 Becky Hill Better Off Without You 22 Bimbo Jones & Thelma Houston Turn Your World Around 23 Hilary Roberts Good Man 24 Molella F/ KT Tunstall Starlight & Gold 25 Drake Toosie slide 26 Bombs Away You Gotta Be 27 Powfu Coffee For Your Head 28 SAINt JHN Roses 29 Jonas Bros F/Karol X 30 Doja Cat F/ Gucci Mane Like That 31 Michelle Kash Personal Jesus 32 Conro Fighters 33 Justin Beiber F/ Quavo Intensions 34 Afrojack F/Ally Brooke All Night 35 Debbie Gibson Girls Night Out 36 Topic & A7s Breaking Me 37 Watermelon Sugar Harry Styles 38 Surfaces Sunday Best 39 Alan Walker & Ava Max Alone Pt. II 40 Ladi Rosa Ain’t No Taylor Swift

Most Added Tracks 1 Yung Bae F/bbno$, Wiz, Max 2 220 Kid & Gracey 3 Conro 4 Molella F/ KT Tunstall 5 Gloria Gaynor 6 Man 7 Hilary Roberts 8 Watermelon Sugar 9 Regard & Raye 10 Brando

REPORTERS

Bad Boy Don’t Need Love Fighters Starlight & Gold I Will Survive 2020 Jolo Just Let Go Harry Styles Secrets Look Into My Eyes

Warner Bros Epic Interscope Republic Kemosabe/RCA Peaceman Defected 300 Spinnin’ Elektra Warner Bros Interscope Capitol Casablanca Epic Armada Warner Bros. Ultra Epic Columbia Interscope Radikal Dauman Radikal Republic Radikal Columbia HitCo Republic Kemosabe/RCA Love Animal Monstercat Def Jam Spinnin’ Dauman Capitol Columbia Capitol RCA Circle 11

NATIONAL LATIN DANCE POOL CHART 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Tony Succar feat Angel Lopez Crocro y su Tumbaka Black Eyes Peas X J Balvin Static & Ben El ft Pitbull Josie Esteban Kalimente y Fulanito Bad Bunny Van Lester Tito Rojas Ricky Martin Willie Gonzalez Sociedad 76 Charlie Cruz Circobeat Band Lusito Rosario Alfonso Lugo Puerto Rican Power Mambo King Gente De Zona & Becky G La Resistencia ft. Luisito C

Mas De Mi Pa’ San Agustin Ritmo (Bad Boy For Life) Further Up La Maleta Sueltala (Remix) Yo Perreo Sola Ya No Queda Nada Los Años No Pasan Cantalo No Te Olvido Si Ella Me Quiere La Vida Da Vueltas Yo La Queria Belen Loca Remix Por Estar Pensando En Ti Mambo 20 Muchacha Naci

Unity Ent. CO Epic Saban Music Group LLC JE Sueños Rimas Cookita TR Sony MZ Artists JZ Prod. Get Crazy Note, LLC J&N Records LR Pulp Music J&N Records Mr. Street Prod. Sony

Most Added Tracks 1 2 3 4 5

Oscarito Zion & Lennox Norbert feat. Elvis Crespo Maffio & Don Miguelo Justin Quiles feat. Daddy Yankee

Dime Que Tu Quieres De Mi Mujer Satisfecha Yo No Se (Remix) Carne Pam

Flame Warner Norbert Sony Warner

REPORTING LATIN POOLS n n n n n n

Latinos Unidos Record Pool Salsamania Latin Record Pool Lobo/Bass Record Pool North East Record Pool Mixx Hitts Record Pool Ritmo Camacho Record Pool

n n n n n n

Ritmo Internacional Record pool DJ Latinos Record Pool MassPool Record Pool Latino Latin Beat Chicago Record Pool All In Music Pool

ATTENTION DJ TIMES READERS: DJ Times is currently looking for DJs that are interested in reporting to the DJ National Dance/Crossover chart and the DJ Times National Urban Dance chart. Reporterships are open to Record Pools and individual DJs. For more information contact: Dan Miller, dmiller@testa.com

Arista Capitol Monstercat Radikal Universal Warner Bros. Red Songbird LLC Columbia Epic Armada

Gary Canavo

Masspool

Saugus,MA

Blake Eckelbarger

Dj Stickyboots

Syndicated

The Dance Environment

Los Angeles, CA

Manny Esparza

Nexus Radio

Chicago,IL

Howard HK Kessler

In The Mix With HK

Minneapolis,MN

Brian Stephens

Mixxmasters

Lithonia,GA

Peter K. Productions

Peter K

Syndicated

Kidd Leow

Vindictive Vendetta

Tampa, FL

DJ Ilan Fong

Kahoots

Columbus, OH

Randy Schlager

Soundtrack Your Band

Seattle, WA

Dan Mathews

KRYC

Sacramento, CA STREAMING ISSUE

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DVRKO

forward to checking out the new Pioneer DJM-V10, though! I used to DJ with Ableton Live for a while, but found it way too powerful a tool for such a job. DJ Times: Any advice for up-andcoming DJs? For up-and-coming producers? Wisternoff: The most useful advice I can give, I suppose, is… if you hope to make a career out of this, give it all of your time! It has to be your hobby and your passion, your wife, your absolute, favorite thing to do in the world – you need to be dreaming about drum machines [laughs]. But also, on the flip side, maybe just enjoy the process and treat learning how to make music more like playing a video game. The main thing not to do is approach it from the business side of things and try to make music that you think will sell. That way you will always be two steps behind the game. When it comes to DJing, the major skills can only really come through experience – how to read the crowd/ people’s body language and guide the room. Whilst technical skills can be perfected in the bedroom, the true lessons learned come from building confidence in front of a crowd. n

(continued from page 10)

the fine carving on the frequencies in the mix. ATC SCM45A monitors, these I use for the overall scope of the mix. Augspurger dual-15s with dual-18 subs, these bad boys are for getting the low-end right along with the overall vocal balance. DJ Times: “This Is How” has a real hooky, warped bassline. How’d you get that? DVRKO: Originally, the track was not focused on the bassline. But Rama and Sarah’s topline process diverted and pushed the bassline to go with her vocals, so the chords under the topline were re-harmonized and it came out great. DJ Times: What’s next for you? Any post-quarantine shows? DVRKO: After the next single, “Lights Up,” we have several more singles dropping in 2020 and working on a concept album that may come out in 2021. Once the quarantine is over, I’m finally going to dust off and put this face in front of some crowds that won’t get to see it. – Jim Tremayne

Wisternoff

(continued from page 22) I had more focus to complete it as a project, even though I actually had less time – as my DJ schedule was packed. Also due to dealing with the illness and death of my dad during the writing process, I felt the focus obtained from being creative really helped my state of mind. DJ Times: What’s your DJ set-up? Wisternoff: I’m pretty un-demanding when it comes to my tech rider… just the standard four [Pioneer DJ] CDJ-2000NXS2 players and a DJM-900NXS2 mixer. Looking

D-Nice

(continued from page 17) D-Nice: I haven’t dealt with any copyright issues – I don’t know if they had to deal with any copyright issues. But, I was getting flagged on March 21 – and I still get flagged. I didn’t play nine hours straight – I was flagged a lot. Even when Mark Zuckerberg’s name popped in, I kept saying, “Please don’t flag me” [laughs]. DJ Times: Let’s revisit the idea of brands trying to get involved with “Club Quarantine.” What’s that ac-

tion been like? D-Nice: I’ve received offers from multiple brands. But, I’m not a billboard – that’s not who I am. The only things I’ve done was use footage on an Apple commercial. I did a Bud piece with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. I did something for ABC, a DJ set for “The Bachelor.” I did a prom. But other than that… I had to sit back and think about what I wanted it to become. It’s a dangerous line of just becoming “that quarantine guy.” DJ Times: This wasn’t planned, but you were prepared for the opportunity. D-Nice: I started doing this because I was lonely – I wasn’t with my family. DJing is the one thing I love the most and all of our gigs were being cancelled. I lost gigs at Coachella, Miami Music Week, Essence Festival… everything was being cancelled. Just to see these opportunities going away had me slightly depressed. What is life going to look like? The market was tanking, so my investments were tanking. I’m stuck at home. Relationships are hard enough to maintain with a life on the go… and that was the craziest feeling. I did this because I wanted to be connected to people. Also, this is a time when people are suffering, so I don’t want to be perceived as someone who is just monetizing this situation. DJ Times: But you put your platform to good use, as well. D-Nice: Yes, I’ve given a lot of myself. I raised money with Will Smith for the CDC. For healthcare workers, we raised $4 million [for Direct Relief] with Diddy for his Dance-A-Thon. For HBCUs, we raised money for scholarships and books – $300K for that. I did some-

thing for the teachers, and twice I did something for Michelle Obama to get people to register to vote. So, now I do feel more comfortable entertaining offers. We should get back to some kind of normalcy. DJ Times: Well, you’ve put yourself in a good position going forward. D-Nice: Right, all the big gigs I had before – whether it was Vegas, Atlantic City, Miami, whatever – were great, but I wasn’t being 100-percent who I am. Still, they set me up for this. I’m not an overnight success – no, I’ve been playing music all my life as a producer, an artist and a DJ. But because of this Instagram Live platform, I was 100-percent me and it resonated with people. I went from 198,000 Instagram followers to 1.1 million, then 2 million. Unbelievable. DJ Times: Any advice for DJs, in the midst of this? D-Nice: This digital platform isn’t going away – embrace it and you can build an audience for now and the future.Also, use this time to re-connect with the reasons why you love music. This is the time to learn to play from your heart. If you do, it’ll resonate with people. The landscape is going to be different – no tours ’til next year, probably – so this is the time to be creative. For me, I’ve been so inspired by the music I’m playing, old and new, that I’m looking forward into setting up a studio here and getting creative again. Now’s the time to let the juices flow and let the ideas pop. DJ Times: So, what’s it going to be like when people can gather again? D-Nice: I think those first gigs are going to be magical. It’s going to be nuts for a lotta people. It’ll be insane – as long as it’s safe [laughs]. n

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STREAMING ISSUE

2020

We’ll see you Nov. 16-19!

DJ Expo has new fall dates. Josh Kerman

Ronald Mungo

Guess what?

Ronald Mungo

DJ Expo’20: Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City

DJ Expo Preview, Next Issue of DJ Times

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DJ Times 2020, Vol 33 No 4

Articles inside

Grooves

Club Play Chart

Gear

Business Line

Making Tracks

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