DJ Times February 2017, Vol 30 No 2

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WINTER NAMM ’17: DJ DEBUTS TO FLOOD THE FLOOR

By Jim Tremayne Anaheim, Calif. – As they do each New Year, members of the M.I. market—manufacturers, distributors and retailers—will convene at the Anaheim Convention Center for the Winter NAMM show this Jan. 19-22. With over 90,000 industry professionals expected to attend, the annual exhibition/trade show will see hundreds of product and technology debuts. Of course, the DJ segment of the market—playback, studio, PA, lighting and accessories—will enjoy its share as well.

As usual, Testa Communications—publisher of DJ Times and ClubWorld magazines—will be there with a dedicated exhibition booth. It will also produce Convention TV @ NAMM, which will provide on-thespot show coverage.

Onto the Exhibit Floor: Pioneer DJ will debut the DDJ-SZ2, an upgraded version of its flagship Serato DJ controller. Coming bundled with the latest version of Serato DJ, the plug-and-play unit also comes with Pitch ‘n Time DJ and Serato Flip expansion packs and it includes such features as dual USB ports, Slip Mode, Needle Search Pad, Sound Color FX, Oscillator (Noise, Drop, Laser and Siren sounds) and peak limiter.

Multi-brand company inMusic will offer several DJ- and studio-related debuts. Denon DJ will release three new DJ-specific products. The SC5000 Prime DJ media player in-

cludes a hi-def, multi-touch display, ability to analyze music files on the fly (including beatgrid and musical key), dual-layer decks and 8-inch jogwheel. The VL 12 Prime directdrive turntable features plus/minus 8- to 50-percent pitch adjustment, switchable low- and high-torque settings and an S-shaped tone arm. The X1800 Prime 4-channel DJ mixer includes dedicated Sweep and BPM FX controls, dual USB audio connections for software and audio devices, and Expressive EQ—DJs can choose Classic or Isolation modes and an Adjustable Filter Resonance Control.

From Akai Professional, another inMusic brand, NAMM attendees will see three introductions from its legendary MPC series of studio products. They include: MPC 2.0 music-production software; MPC X music-production center, which includes a full-color, multi-touch screen and 16 velocity- and pressure sensitive RGB pads; and MPC Live, which features 2GB of RAM and 16 GB of on-board storage.

American Music & Sound, U.S. distributor for a variety of pro-audio brands, will debut several products from key DJ-gear manufacturers.

From England’s Allen & Heath, AM&S will debut the Xone:P5 performance mixer, which features analog sound with digital connectivity. The unit’s Xone:Xcite FX suite includes delays, reverbs, modulators, flangers

Lights All Night

Dallas, Texas – Deadmau5 rings in 2017 at Lights All Night festival at the Dallas Market Hall this past Dec. 31. For more New Year’s party action, from Las Vegas, San Diego and Lights All Night in El Paso, please see Page 22.

Wireless: American Audio’s WU-419V.

Serato Control: Pioneer DDJ-SZ2.

Xone: P5: Allen & Heath’s new mixer.

and distorters. The 4+1-channel mixer also comes equipped with 3-band EQ, high-quality internal soundcard and Xone: Sync MIDI clock engine.

Another AM&S brand, Germany’s Reloop, will unleash three new products. They include: the MXON 4 hybrid DJ controller, a plugand-play unit for use with Serato DJ and Algoriddim djayPRO platforms; the RMX-90 DVS audio interface for Serato DJ, which features 12 Beat FX, channel filters, (continued on page 40)

Media Player: Denon’s SC5000 Prime.

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VOLUME 30

NUMBER 2

14 From the Deep

Well-Schooled & Infused with Ambition, Bass Prodigy JAUZ Has Become a Club & Festival Fave at 23.

BY CHRIS CARUSO

22 Holiday Report Card 2016

DJs from All Over the Country Tell Us How Their Season Went in Today’s Improving Economy

BY JEFF STILES

24 New Year’s Parties

DJs & Big Beats Rang in ’17 at Festivals & Clubs Nationwide

BY DJ TIMES PHOTOGRAPHERS

DEPARTMENTS 9 Feedback

39 Grooves

28 Making Tracks

41 Club Play Chart

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

30 Sounding Off JBL Pro EON ONE

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

32 Mobile Profile

6

Maryland Upstart Thrives

34 Business Line

Are You a Customer-Service Ninja?

36 Gear

New Products from ADJ, Mixware & More

SAMPLINGS 10 “808” Film

Doc Looks at a Legend

12 In the Studio With…

Bonobo

Contents Image by Rukes.com

KRK Monitor Subs

Phat Tracks from JES, Mr. G & More

Cover Image By David Higgs

As Always, the Answers to All Your DJ-Related Questions

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FROM THE EDITOR

The Next Generation Sam Vogel (aka JAUZ) is like a lot of newcomers to the DJ/electronic-music culture. He began making credible music before he was old enough to step foot into a nightclub. Of course, since the early-century advent of music-production platforms like Ableton Live and the recent popularity of massive EDM festivals, that’s become a case we’ve seen over and over again.

Only 23, the Cali-based DJ/producer found his musical voice—with help from Icon Collective, L.A.’s music-production institute—and has become one of bass music’s top attractions at major festivals and clubs. Before heading to Mexico’s BPM Festival—stay tuned for coverage—our Chris Caruso caught up with JAUZ and found out how an inspired and precocious teen could so quickly make his way to the top of the electronic-music ladder.

Also, for this issue—the first we’ve closed in the New Year—we were fortunate to be able to give you a slew of great images of clubs and festivals around the country ringing in 2017. So, with a four-page spread, we present you with good looks from: Lights All Night festival in both Dallas and El Paso, Texas; Decadence festival from Chandler, Ariz.; Omnia nightclub in San Diego; Surrender, Marquee and Hakassan nightclubs in Las Vegas. Ka-boom!

In Samplings, our longtime L.A. correspondent Lily Moayeri goes “In the Studio” with Simon Green (aka Bonobo), who discusses the creative process on his latest full-length, Migration, plus his approach to DJing. Lucky for me, the day I got her story I caught the re-launch of his bi-monthly DJ residency at Output in Brooklyn, and yes, he rocked it deep into the morning with a mix of his multi-layered tunes and a few classics. Additionally, I was lucky to interview Alexander Dunn, the filmmaker of “808,” a terrific new documentary about Roland’s seminal TR-808 drum machine, which set the music world on its ear and impacted the DJ culture in ways we’re still seeing today.

Additionally, at the 11th hour, I caught up with film interviewee Arthur Baker, producer of such 808-driven classics like “Planet Rock,” and we included most of that material in this month’s Feedback section. Hey, if we get a few minutes with a music legend, we gotta use that material.

From our review columns, Denver’s Wesley Bryant-King puts a pair of KRK monitor subwoofers (8s and 12s) through their paces in Making Tracks. Meanwhile, in Sounding Off, our eternal NoCal audio guru Mike Klasco teams with Tony Russell (aka DJ Tony Roxxx) to test out JBL Professional’s unique EON ONE linear-array PA system.

In the world of mobile entertainers, our Iowa-based scribe Jeff Stiles asks a panel of company owners: How did your holiday-party business go this past season? From their answers, we tally up the score card. In Business Line, we ask DJ-company owners another question: Are you a customer-service ninja? And accordingly, we offer some tips to get you there. In Mobile Profile, we meet with Maryland’s Patrick Eckrich, a youthful DJ who has made great strides working for Steve Moody’s Entertainment Connection.

Of course, you may be reading this issue at the Winter NAMM show in Anaheim, Calif., where DJ Times will maintain an exhibition booth with fellow Testa Communications titles ClubWorld, Sound & Communications and The Music & Sound Retailer. In addition to reading our preview story on Page 5, where we detail all the DJ-related previews we expect to see at the show, we hope you’ll stop by the booth for a visit. Here’s to a great show and a better 2017.

Cheers,

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

Jim Tremayne Editor, DJ Times

8

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

art director Janice Pupelis jpupelis@testa.com

editor-at-large Brian O’Connor boconnor@testa.com

production manager Steve Thorakos sthorakos@testa.com

assistant editor Chris Caruso ccaruso@testa.com chart coordinator Dan Miller dmiller@testa.com contributors Joe Bermudez Wesley Bryant-King Shawn Christopher Paul Dailey Reed Dailey Chris Davis Tony Fernandez Tommy D Funk Michelle Fetky Jennifer Harmon Josh Harris Greg Hollmann Mike Klasco Michelle Loeb Evan Maag Duanny Medrano Lily Moayeri Phil Moffa Natalie Raben Deanna Rilling Jeff Stiles Emily Tan Bruce Tantum 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

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DJ Times (ISSN 1045-9693) (USPS 0004-153) is published monthly for $19.40 (US), $39.99 (Canada), and $59.99 (all other countries), by DJ Publishing, Inc., 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 110503779. 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 © 2017 by DJ Publishing, Inc., and must not be reproduced in any manner except by permission of the publisher. Websites: www.

February 2017

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FEEDBACK Remembering David Mancuso

AMERICA’S FIRST MAGAZINE FOR PROFESSIONAL DJs ESTABLISHED 1988 JANUARY 2017

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and electronics—Afro and Germanic and Japanese. It was truly an interna‑ tional musical melting pot topped off with the new rap element.”

How did the 808 impact the DJ culture?

“Well, drum machines brought almost perfect tempos, which obviously were/are easier to mix. I’d guess that is the most obvious thing, along with making it easier

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to make records—you no longer needed to deal with drummers – ha ha...”

Was there ever a point where you thought the 808 sound was becoming played-out?

“A few years after ‘Planet Rock,’ it got played out for me because so many producers were copping the sound and beats. After [Bambaataa’s] ‘Looking for the Perfect Beat’ and [New Order’s]

‘Confusion,’ I stopped using it. So yes, for a time… but it always comes back just when you think it’s gone for good.

Some kid will come along and abuse the sound again.”

So, what did the 808 mean to your life and career?

“Without the 808, who knows? I’m glad it happened as it did.”

– Jim Tremayne

12/22/2016 6:28:30 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 question that is not asked.

“808”: Arthur Baker Q&A Just as we completed our Samplings entry (Page 10) on the splendid docu‑ mentary “808,” which details the story and legacy of Roland’s seminal TR808 drum machine, we were happy to receive answers to film-related ques‑ tions that we posed to Arthur Baker.

An interviewee in the film, Baker is the legendary producer of many big dancefloor records, including Afri‑ ka Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force’s “Planet Rock,” the 808-driven hit that seemed to re-set the music scene and lay the groundwork for its immediate future. It went like this: Was the TR-808 the most successful “failure” in pro-audio history?

“Well, it was only in production for three years, but its shelf life soundwise has been 35 years.”

What sonic qualities made the 808 such an alluring production piece?

“It had a new space-age electronic sound that the youth of the time was attracted to. It didn’t sound like real drums and each separate sound had real personality, so it lent itself to open-minded producers that were looking for something new with a unique sound. Also, applying effects to the different sounds made them even more individual-sounding.

“Without the 808 and its sound, dance music of all kinds would sound way different.”

Why does “Planet Rock” and the 808 sound stand the test of time?

“I think it was that combination of funk

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SAMPLINGS

Filmmakers: (from left) Alex Noyer & Alexander Dunn.

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

“808”: THE FILM, THE LEGEND

10

Whether you know it or not, almost every DJ in the world has been impacted

by Roland’s TR-808 drum machine. Only in production from 1980-83, the unit—with its futuristic percussion and booming bass tones—remains with us in all forms of music, from the shiniest radio pop to the dirtiest dancefloor flavors.

And now, filmmakers Alexander Dunn and Alex Noyer have brought us “808,” a deliciously entertaining and deeply informative documentary chronicling the unit’s brief life and lasting legacy.

Including fascinating commentary from producers like Arthur Baker, Rick Rubin and Hank Shocklee, from artists like the Beastie Boys, Phil Collins, New Order, and 808 State, and from DJs like Armand Van Helden, Diplo, and Jellybean Benitez, the doc adeptly explains the big records and big talents that helped make the TR-808 such a legendary production piece.

We recently caught up with “808” director Alexander Dunn to discuss the film and the TR808’s unique history.

DJ Times: Was the 808 the most successful “failure” in pro-audio history?

Dunn: The fact it just ended up being in the right places at the right times was hugely important. Its unique sound ultimately played a huge role in its enduring success, but really it was about how, fairly fortuitously, it found its way into the studios with producers that were making records that would change the course of music history.

DJ Times: Records like “Planet Rock” really put the 808 on the map.

Dunn: The sound Arthur Baker and the other musicians involved created on that record was so iconic, so game-changing for hip hop and electronic music, that people started looking into getting that sound for themselves. In the film, Rick Rubin says, “Because it was used on these great records and has such a signature sound, it lives on forever,” and I completely agree.

DJ Times: What made the 808 such an alluring production piece?

Dunn: It sounded completely unique, like something from the future, something new and different no one had heard before, certainly nothing like real drum sounds. I think that’s really important—the fact that it didn’t manage to sound like real drum sounds was a huge appeal. It defined it, gave the world a new, iconic sound.

DJ Times: Over time, the film examines how producers used the unit more for tone and bass than just beats. Quite an evolution…

Dunn: From the start, it was being used by artists that were perhaps considered more pioneering. People who were working in early electronic-music production and pushing the records, they were creating as far as they could to be different, to sound bigger. I guess that just transcended through time. Again, that’s the beauty of the 808 – its sound was so unique, it almost invited people to mess with it and create something new.

DJ Times: The 808’s history was built on that adventurism, not to mention a little serendipity—from Ad-Rock’s decision to buy an 808 instead of a Rickenbacker guitar to the inventor’s story of how he got the unit’s unique sounds.

Dunn: This is a huge part of the film and its narrative. So many times the 808 just happened to be in the right place to be used on an iconic record. It was always really important to me that this film didn’t just focus on the more techie aspects, and it would have been really easy to do that. It was so important that this was about human stories and how they are what brought the 808 to life. Without those unique human interactions, from a decision to buy an 808 rather than a guitar, the choice to call a man in an advertisement to supply a drum machine, any drum machine, to be used on “Planet Rock,” the 808 wouldn’t have led the life it has.

DJ Times: I love how the film details all the defining records of different genres—from Miami bass to MOR pop—which serve as “808 entry points” for the viewer.

Dunn: It was about working out a fluid history of the 808 and telling the human stories of how the music was created around it. Working with Arthur Baker on this was great.

He had some people he really wanted to push forward, to shed some light on and he introduced us to them for the film. Like Strafe, Man Parrish, some of the guys that made records that were very influential and hits at the time, but perhaps aren’t as widely known as “Planet Rock” and “Sexual Healing,” for example.

DJ Times: These landmark records and their backstories, I think, make the film’s most compelling moments. And the diversity is amazing. It’s like, “Here’s music of your life coming from one machine.”

Dunn: The central idea was very much that, yes. I very much felt like there should be something for almost ever yone in there. The 808 was definitely used on very wide, far-reaching records that straddle a lot of genres.

Somewhere within the narrative of the film is a story about the music you already love and it’s framed by a lot of other amazing stories about music you might not be that familiar with—but it’s all linked together by the 808.

DJ Times: Modern dance culture—house , techno, trap, etc.—still really depends on that 808 sound, and you still hear it at the biggest festival or the grimiest backstreet.

Why do you think that it has, for the most part, endured?

Dunn: Technological developments have allowed sounds made by a limited run of 12,000 odd machines to be available to anyone with the samples. An 808 beat is like nothing else and it still sounds like the future to me, even though it’s 30plus years old.

– Jim Tremayne

IN THE STUDIO

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

BONOBO: MAKING MIGRATION

12

Resident: Bonobo DJs bi-monthly at Brooklyn’s Output.

At the very top of one of the highest hills in L.A.’s Echo Park neighborhood, Simon Green is tucked into his sparkling and expansive home.

The U.K. native professionally known as Bonobo relocated some two years ago, but has only been in town for half that time due to high demand for live performances of The North Borders, his acclaimed 2013 album. Full of gorgeous, ambient textures, but loaded with memorable tunes, like the oft-licensed “Cirrus,” the album continues to find fans. The solid touring schedule that resulted from its popularity could have, says Green, “gone on forever.”

Accordingly, much, if not all, of his latest Ninja Tune album, Migration, was started on the road.

The extensive bus tour of North America, which included several DJ dates, was booked into traditional music theatres and featured a production rig for the live show. This ramped up into the first event for Green’s Outlier brand, a threeroom party held this past March at London’s Tobacco Dock. The A-list line-up of DJs including Maya Jane Coles, Gilles Peterson, and George FitzGerald were all allowed a generous length of time for their sets. It’s something Green approaches as a given, with extended DJ sets at his bi-monthly residency at Brooklyn’s Output being a prime example.

“For those long sets where you’re playing over five hours, you have to trust the room,” says Green sitting in his tidy home studio, which feels like its in the country even though it’s a two-minute drive down the road to Echo Park’s many trendy establishments.

“You can’t do that just anywhere,” he continues. “By 2 or 3 a.m., you’re in the zone, which is almost spiritual. You can’t get to that energy if you haven’t already been doing it for three hours. It doesn’t just turn on. The people that show up at doors, they will be there at 5 a.m. I feel their attitude is, ‘If you’re going to do this, then I’m going to do this with you.’ That’s the real beauty. Those core of people, they’re your people.”

What Green brings with him for a DJ set hasn’t changed much over the years, categorywise. He has a revolving playlist of his favorite right-now tracks, as well as upcoming material. That’s peppered with a few specials and throwbacks, particularly to music that he hears today’s sounds referencing, as well as some classics, like New Order’s “Blue Monday” and Lil Louis’ “French Kiss”—two late-night bombs he dropped recently at Output. His selections incorporate some of his original material, but that’s not the objective, either for Green or for his fans in-the-know.

By that same token, Green didn’t concern himself with filling Migration with dazzling feature after dazzling feature. He has a few—Nick Murphy (aka Chet Faker), Rhye, Hundred Waters— but that’s not what Migration is about.

“There are so many albums that are compilations of vocalists, it’s like they are a competition of who can get the biggest feature,” says Green. “This is supposed to be my album. When features happen, they happen at the right time and for the right reason. There is a lot of vocal texture: samples and flipped things where it’s not necessarily about the narrative. It’s all about (continued on page 40)

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WELL-SCHOOLED & INFUSED WITH AMBITION, BASS PRODIGY JAUZ HAS BECOME A CLUB & FESTIVAL FAVE AT 23.

By definition, a 4/4 beat is repetitive.

What was an indelible tenet of the disco revolution of the ’70s has become as essential to the nightclub as the beams holding its walls upright.

Now powering seas and seas of house and techno releases, the four-to-the-floor beat rolls on and on, regularly and consistently.

And more often than not, life happens to mirror art.

Pick up an issue of DJ Times from 10 years ago and peep the cover feature and you might find a DJ recounting an origin tale that involves some variation on the following theme: 1) Wide-eyed youth sneaks into a club underage; 2) Youth is transfixed by a deity-like jockey’s mastery behind the decks; 3) Youth goes home inspired to scrounge together

FROM THE

DEEP

BY CHRIS CARUSO

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

PHOTOS BY RUKES.COM

14

enough coin to buy a cheap mixer and a pair of turntables in order to work toward building a legacy as a DJ. That’s not to knock these artists. Their stories are their truth and are just as compelling as they were when they were first told. However, it does befit a certain narrative that was as commonplace as the beats driving the music at the time.

Now, the landscape has changed considerably, with the onslaught of technological advances in social media, music sharing, and production software, a brand-new generation of electronic producers has ascended to festival main stages without ever needing to have stepped foot into a nightclub.

One of the biggest forces leading this pack of fresh-faced crowd-slayers is 23-year-old, Los Angeles-based producer/DJ JAUZ (pronounced like the shark). Born Sam Vogel, the bass prodigy came to prominence just as he turned 20 with the runaway success of two nascent cuts in 2014: the career-launching “Feel The Volume” on Mad

15

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

FEBRUARY 2017

DJ TIMES 16

Decent and the Ephwurd collaboration “Rock The Party” on Spinnin’ Records.

The success that came hot on the heels of these festival mainstays might seem like it came overnight, but Vogel’s been toiling away since his early teens when he first started producing music himself. Further down the line, he traded in film school for a desk at Icon Collective, L.A.’s famed music-production institute.

Today, Vogel stands as one of the festival circuit’s hottest commodities, and that notoriety has also made one of the biggest draws on the Las Vegas strip at megaclubs like Hakkasan and Omnia. Combined with a staggering cascade of top-tier productions to his name (including collabs with Marshmello, Tiësto, and Skrillex), Vogel’s rapid ascent to the top of the proverbial mountain is a prime example of just how far a self-described bedroom producer can come when lightning—and hard work—strikes.

We caught up with JAUZ on the eve of launching his new Off the Deep End Tour, an offshoot concept Vogel describes as “going as far as [he] can” musically, to get the story of his meteoric rise in his own words.

DJ Times: What sort of musical upbringing did you have as a child?

Sam Vogel: My parents weren’t really musically inclined. They were big fans of music. My mom is the biggest Rolling Stones fan I’ve ever met in my entire life, which ironically made me not a fan of them. I think the earliest memory I have is me deciding that I was going to be one of the guys in NSYNC or Backstreet Boys, and my mom being like, “That’s cool, but you have to learn how to play the piano.” I was like, “No, fuck that! I’m going to sing and dance and be a pop star and it will be great!” When I was one, I wanted to be a firefighter, and when I was three, I had already decided musician—that’s it.

DJ Times: A natural progression, obviously.

Vogel: In elementary school, me and my friends got really into hip-hop. I remember going to school when Master P had come out with this full velour jumpsuitsweatshirt-sweatpant combo and me and all my friends wore it. It was probably the biggest mistake I’ve made in

my entire life. No white kid under 10-years old should be wearing that, but that was how into the music we were. In middle school, I was still into hip-hop, and in high school I got really into rock and roll: I started playing guitar.

DJ Times: What were you into?

Vogel: I knew every single Metallica song on the guitar by heart, and that was really where creating music [came]. I was a nerd, so I had played around with Fruity Loops and Ableton [growing up], but it wasn’t really until I started playing guitar when I was 12 that I really was like, “OK, I can really make music on my own.”

DJ Times: Production itself came to you in your mid-teens. How did it start and how did you first dive into it?

Vogel: I started producing when I was 15. It was this transition from when I wanted to be in a band, no one I knew was serious enough to be in a band, I started to try and record my own band myself—I’d play the guitar, I program the drums, and all that stuff—and that led me to learning about the whole world of electronic music. Then I found one of my friends making beats on Reason, and I was like, “I can make electronic music, and all I have to do is rely on myself. If I work hard enough, it’s only up to me how far I’ll go.”

DJ Times: Were there any electronic artists guiding this inspiration or were you just finding your own sound?

Vogel: That was the cool thing about how I got into electronic music. I didn’t have parents that were raving, I didn’t have a group of friends that was really into electronic music until me, and one other friend brought it to them. For me, I really only learned the music and the scene as I farther into making the music. That’s what was important to me: figuring out how to make the music well and express myself how I would on guitar equivalently on the computer. I was a metal kid—I played really heavy guitar, so I got into the dubstep side of things.

DJ Times: Which artists?

Vogel: One of the first people I listened to was Getter. He’s my age, and I didn’t know that until we became friends a couple of years ago. He grew up in San Jose, I grew up outside of San Francisco—we were maybe an hour-and-a-half away from each other. I was listening to his music thinking, “This is crazy,” while he was in high school in my same grade making it on his computer. I was into him, obviously Rusko, Caspa, Benga, Skream, Excision—all those guys. Skrillex, obviously—I feel like that goes without saying. The guys that were pioneering that heavy sound and bringing it to the masses back then.

DJ Times: After dropping out of film school, you enrolled in Icon Collective in L.A. It’s an interesting part of your story: Taking an education approach to your music. What sort of lessons did you learn from there? Just technical stuff or processes that affected your whole creative process?

Vogel: It was less technical stuff and a lot more the creative mentality side. There are a lot of kids at shows who will come up and say, “I’m going to Icon” or “Should I go to Icon?” I always explain to them that Icon taught me a ton about the technical side of things, but it was more that they were re-teaching me the basics. They give you this foundation technically for you to do as much or as little as you want.

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DJ Times: Looks like it worked.

Vogel: Me, MAKJ, Protohype, NGHTMRE, Kayzo, yadda yadda—if you took all the kids that came out of Icon and were really successful, the one key element between all of us is that we all worked our fucking asses off. There’s no substitute. Yeah, we went to Icon, but we there 13, 14, 15 hours a day. There were times I would get to Icon at 10:30 or 11 in the morning—[MAKJ] and Kayzo would be there—and I wouldn’t leave until 4:30 or 5 in the morning to go home, sleep, and do it all over again.

DJ Times: Were there lessons you didn’t learn there? What did you have to find out while being in the real world, so to say?

Vogel: That’s the beautiful thing with Icon: They teach you how to learn that stuff on your own. They give you the tools to go into any situation, any platform and at least be comfortable, and then be able to on your own be like, “I want to go do more of this. I want my music to

sound like this,” and not feel like you’re scrambling in the dark. It makes you excited to push yourself and learn more.

DJ Times: The networking there must be unique as well...

Vogel: When you’re sitting around Icon, you have all these different producers sitting in this building together. You have all these different kinds of ideas, with one person’s way of doing something being completely separate from the next person.

That’s what they tried to build and I think what helps me and so many other people… getting influence from hundreds of other kids who are all trying to do the same thing [in different ways].

DJ Times: What do you think was your biggest break on your career path?

Vogel: Normally, when someone asks me about this, I would say it was the HARD Summer [festival] before I played. I went there with my girlfriend and one of my really good friends and his girlfriend just to go hang out and party at the festival because that’s what we do. Jokingly, one of my buddies said, “Oh man, who’s going to play your song today? Haha-ha-ha-ha…” I think “Feel The Volume” had come out a few weeks before this. That’s it. My manager had gotten it into an email chain with tons of DJs, which I had no idea about. Tchami must have picked it up from there or heard it on Soundcloud…

DJ Times: And he dropped it?

Vogel: His was one of the first sets we went to see that day since it was his first time in America.

About halfway through the set, I heard the lead come in from “Feel The Volume” come in and I was like, “What the fuck is going on?” My girlfriend shoved me into the crowd. Man, I wish I had this video still—it’s literally a video of me barging through the crowd to the front of the stage, and the second I get to the front, the song drops, I turn around to see the crowd, and it’s just this fucking eruption. None of them had heard the track before.

None of them. It hadn’t really picked up steam yet.

It had gotten a couple hundred thousand plays on Soundcloud maybe. That was the first time I was like, “Oh shit, maybe we’re onto something.” It snowballed from there.

DJ Times: And it snowballed into touring with Borgore, right?

Vogel: I had been working with Buygore and [Borgore] for a while; my manager was on Buygore management when they picked me up. I had put out a lot of songs with them—they’re still family to this day—but “Feel The Volume” was actually supposed to be the first track of an EP I was going to do on Buygore. It just never really happened because the song did what it did [laughs]; I didn’t have time to plan an EP around it. We saw our moment. We either put out as much music as we can right now and capture that attention or it’s all going to go away.

DJ Times: What was the next move?

Vogel: From that point, there was about six, seven months where I didn’t play a single show.

We turned down 45 show offers and just put out music, and built the hype up so when we finally did that Borgore tour, that was my “we’re going to start touring.” We had pushed me being a broke ass on a couch for as long as we possibly could. That was the turning point of being a bedroom producer, so to say. Even if people knew who I was, I had never really played a show.

DJ Times: So when did learning to DJ come into the mix?

Vogel: I was always a producer first and a DJ

second. I lied [laughs], I [actually] did three whole shows in eight months. I did this one MySpace party with Borgore, and that was the first time I had ever DJed on CDJs. I practiced for like 24 hours beforehand. I had used controllers and I made music, so I understood counting to four and that kind of stuff, so once I figured out where all the buttons were, beatmatching and all that stuff came pretty naturally. When I did the tour with [Borgore], we did 28 or 30 shows in like a month and a half, so I went from barely knowing how to DJ—I didn’t know how to use any of the effects, any of the filters, nothing—to being really comfortable behind the decks. I went from never using the mic and thinking people would think I’m stupid for talking on a mic to really being able to be confident and get into it with the crowd. There are people who say I might talk on the mic a little too much now, but I’d rather be that than silent and shy.

DJ Times: Do DJing and production give back to each other?

Vogel: I try and keep them as separate as possible because I know that’s a very likely thing to have happen. I think it’s the natural curse in the progression of a producer-DJ’s life: the more shows you play, the more you want to hype the crowd, the more you see what works and want to write that kind of stuff. For me, it’s almost worked in the opposite way; I’ve felt like that for a while and then I’ve gotten it out of my system because it’s fucking stupid.

DJ Times: Why? Vogel: I never wrote music for a live setting.

There were even songs I wrote back in the day when I was coming up that I knew I would never

play live—or at least not for a really long time until I have my own platform—and I know it’s something that’s not going to hype up a crowd, but it’s my music and it’s me and I want people to hear it. That they’re hearing it on SoundCloud is good enough for me; it doesn’t have to be a banger that the DJs are playing in the club. Back then, it was just I wanted people to hear what I had to say through my music—and I still do feel that—but it’s hard to remind yourself of that and not be like, “I should put this one out because it goes off in the club!”

I’m getting to this point now where I can say what I want to say.

DJ Times: How’s that?

Vogel: There was a period of time after “Feel The Volume” and “Rock The Party” where I got a huge number of fans who knew me through those two songs. It was really hard to push something else on them when they’re like, “You’re the ‘Feel The Volume’ guy.” I never wanted to be that guy; I never wanted to be a one-genre one-trick-pony, so to speak. I think now finally—especially with all the music I’ve written and have sitting—I’m really getting to the point where I’m doing what I did at the beginning of when I started JAUZ that got me noticed not by a massive crowd, but enough to get picked up by management: whatever the fuck I wanted and not caring what anyone else said.

DJ Times: One of your signature production hallmarks is just how un-pigeonholeable you are.

You’ve dipped from Future House and Bass House to trap and Big Room. What ties everything together?

Vogel: Honestly I don’t know, but it’s just the (continued on page 42)

HOLIDAY REPORT CARD 20

By Jeff Stiles

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

Adam Weitz, executive producer and CEO of A Sharp Production in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., has always said his company offers “energy, elegance and excellence.”

For the holiday season 2016, those attributes paid off.

“This past holiday season was what I like to call a ‘beacon of hope,’ because since 2011 we’ve not seen our holiday market blossom,” says Weitz. “Of course, that’s primarily because we hadn’t delved 100-percent in the corporate market, so the weddings and mitzvahs that we’d done during those holiday times had to pick up the bill.

“This year, A Sharp Production had a five-year record-breaker season which consisted of all the basic and easy productions—consisting of DJ and karaoke artists, plus a slew of Santas going out to personal home visits. We enjoy assisting our venues with our media lighting and design rentals as well.”

His company’s New Year’s Eve ended up with a last-minute call for 50 pieces of lounge furniture, which Weitz says that, if it weren’t for Bobby Morganstein assisting him with the order, he’d have been heading to IKEA to fill in the gap.

“A Sharp’s future is so bright,” says Weitz, “that I’ve got to wear shades.”

In preparing our annual holiday gig report, we asked DJs from the East Coast, West Coast and Midwest about how their season went in today’s economy.

Were corporates spending more money? If so, what were they buying? What upsells were hot? And did DJs have to market more aggressively?

“In terms of 2016, my corporate holiday events remained the same as in 2015,” reports Artem Lomaz of NinetyThree Entertainment in Roxbury, N.J. “We were challenged with coming up with fresh ideas and various ways to present familiar elements to repeat audiences.”

While he worked a few high-end holiday parties this past season, John Donovan of The Party Percussionist in Stroudsburg, Pa., one in particular did stand out.

“This one was in Brooklyn for a financial-investment company,” he says. “The coolest part of the event was a cash-raffle giveaway. What I saw was a rectangular stack of cash with security guards. There were hundreds on the top, wrapped in $10,000 bands—five across by nine across and 10 stacks deep.

“At first, I assumed it was $4.5 million, until we were told it was padded with ones below the $100 bills, making the total only $50,000.”

But still.

“The economy has been pretty good as well on the West Coast,” says Mark Haggerty, director operations for Denon & Doyle of Pacheco, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“In fact, we had our biggest December ever in our 33-year company history, in terms of dollars,” he says, adding that the number of actual gigs was 163 from December 1 to New Year’s Eve. “I think a big part of the reason of growth is that we’ve tapped into the large corporate Bay Area entities like Google, Intel & Genetech, etc. They have huge budgets, and

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once you’ve made your connections you’ve just got to keep them happy.”

A big new upsell for Denon & Denon this past year, Haggerty says, is their new LED light-up dancefloor—along with a number of upsells.

“We also did a ton of photo novelty stuff like photo booths, photo backdrops, green-screen sets and flip books.”

Back over on the other side of the Mississippi River, Keith KoKoruz of The Keith Christopher Group in Chicago reports that holiday gigs in 2016 were pretty much dead even with 2015.

“Even upsells were about the same as 2015,” says KoKoruz. “Uplighting, the projection of company logos projected and photo-booths were pretty much the norm for upsells.

“Of course, we were not really aggressive in our marketing, as it’s so incredibly difficult to proactively market to for such a small market. There were only three weekends to the holiday season this past year, so it isn’t truly worth putting a crazy amount of effort into.”

Back over in the northeast corner of the United States, 2016 tended to be more of a blockbuster season in terms of holiday gigs.

“2016 was a great year in terms of growth and expansion for Signature Sounds,” says Jay Friese in Bristol, R.I. “We did 56 weddings, up from 42 in 2015, and added nearly $500 per average client spend.”

DJS FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY TELL US

HOW THEIR SEASON WENT IN TODAY’S IMPROVING

FEBRUARY 2017

ECONOMY

DJ TIMES

In order to achieve this success, Friese said they focused on aggressively marketing their photo-booth and lighting add-ons.

“We also instituted an event minimum, which meant we wouldn’t take a prime-date booking for under $2,000. And this turned out to be the best thing we could have done.

“Our corporate clients really wanted the usual as far as holiday events—basic lighting and a DJ— but we did add $100 or so to those clients for which we thought we could squeeze it out of.”

For Signature Sounds, their event minimum for holiday parties in 2016 was $795.

“As DJs, our dates are our inventory and there is only so many prime dates for holiday parties,” explains Friese. “We tell our clients that the event minimum for your date is that amount, but only if they’re not already asking for production elements to make the package price more.

“For example, we had a company call us to re-book their holiday event. While last year we charged them $495 for four hours of basic DJ services, this year we quoted them $795 for the same package, and advised that because of the time of the year and the activity we have had for prime holiday dates, we’d instituted our event-minimum policy.

“We explained to them as nicely as we could that we loved them last year and want nothing more to work with them again—and we then threw in a surprise monogram for this client, and it actually blew them away.”

Every holiday season is an “orgy of acquisition” for Silver Sounds DJs in Philadelphia, says owner Steve Croce.

“Flustered administrative assistants arrive at their desk on a Monday morning and are greeted with a note from the boss, who probably watched ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ over the weekend, asking them to organize a holiday party for the employees.

“It should feature mandatory attendance,” says Croce. “Get a DJ or a balloon sculpting clown or whatever, and schedule it for a Friday.

Ergo, someone is handed a terrible

job that demands perfection and is given zero guidance on a budget.

“But despite that annual repeating cycle, we get a pretty good share of Christmas parties. This year, I’ve personally seen a few strange additional deviations. Namely, a digital caricature artist, a table magician, an Elvis impersonator, a cigar roller and even bourbon tastings.”

While Croce says his company had a little success with motivating people to bundle uplighting, he reports the Philadelphia market is literally swamped with photo-booth competition.

“In fact, I’m very tempted to start an anonymous Twitter account, posting photos of the DIY booths I’m seeing at these events,” he says.

“The ramshackle setups seem to have been slapped together by Fat Albert and his friends, sometimes even including shower curtains as the enclosure and unfinished plywood sawhorses holding up an old iPhone clamped with a gooseneck.”

On a brighter note, because so many of Croce’s events take him into the heart of downtown Philadelphia, he’s often greeted by homeless folks panhandling at nearly every red light.

“Instead of handing them cash, I’ve been handing a care package out the window,” he says. “It’s a gallon-size Ziploc bag containing a clean pair of wool socks, sanitizing wipes, deodorant, a toothbrush and paste, a first-aid kit, lotion, ChapStick, a protein bar, and some other stuff.

“I think it’s better than handing a few bucks out the window for n them to blow on a Big Mac or something worse.”

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DJS & BIG BEATS RANG IN ’17 AT FESTIVALS & CLUBS NATIONWIDE

NEW YEAR’S PARTIES

By DJ Times Photographers

This past New Year’s weekend, DJs of all stripes rang in 2017 with style. In Dallas and El Paso, Texas, we saw simultaneous versions of the Lights All Night festival; in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., fans enjoyed three nights of SnowGlobe Music Festival; in San Diego, Omnia nightclub ruled the roost; outside Phoenix, Decadence rocked fans for two evenings; and in Las Vegas, venues like Omnia, Surrender and Marquee blew it up bigtime. It all looked like this: 1 SnowGlobe: A Tahoe Happy New Year!

Brian Walker 2 Big Leap: 12th Planet in Dallas. aLive Coverage 3 On Fire: RL Grime at SnowGlobe.

Brian Walker 4 Big D: Lights All Night fans. aLive Coverage 5 Decadence: Zedd in Arizona.

Jacob Tyler Dunn 6 Trance Titans: Tritonal at Decadence.

Jacob Tyler Dunn 7 Desert Beats: Green Velvet at Decadence.

Jacob Tyler Dunn

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8 Vegas, Baby: DJ Snake at Surrender.

Paul Garcia 9 Party Rocking: Wolfgang Gartner in Dallas. aLive Coverage 10 Party Hat: Eric D-Lux at Omnia San Diego.

Ryan Campbell

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11 11 In Dallas: G-Buck drops a beat. aLive Coverage 12 A.I.: Above & Beyond in El Paso. aLive Coverage 13 Omnia Vegas: Calvin Harris on the decks.

Aaron Garcia 14 All Lit: Sam Feldt at Decadence.

Jacob Tyler Dunn 15 Lights All Night: Ball drop in El Paso. aLive Coverage 16 We Global: DJ Khaled at Marquee Vegas.

Al Powers

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17 Hypno-Goggles: Rezz in Dallas.

Christopher Lazzaro 18 Applause: Tchami in Dallas.

Christopher Lazzaro 19 Omnia: Porter Robinson in San Diego.

Ryan Campbell 20 Outdoor Fun: Snails at SnowGlove.

Brian Walker

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

21 To a Better â&#x20AC;&#x2122;17: Happy New Year!

Brian Walker

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MAKING TRACKS STUDIO…HARDWARE…SOFTWARE…

BIG STUDIO PUNCH: KRK MONITOR SUBS

By Wesley Bryant-King

room in the past few months, and it tips the scales at 66.5 pounds. Resistance training aside, it was an awkward unboxing, and hefting it into place in my studio was a workout by itself. But once it was in-place and connected… wow! Features include bass management using a full phase adjust and reverse, LFE input capability, internal and defeatable limiter, both balanced/unbalanced inputs and internal crossover.

The 8s was considerably more manageable. At just over 25 pounds and much slimmer all around, it proved itself quite capable, as well.

12s Sub: A monster studio monitor.

The connectivity and configuration options for both the 8s and 12s were the same, and extensive, and both units featured a front-firing bass port, and the usual KRK trademark yellow drivers (constructed of Kevlar in these units), protected by a painted metal grille.

Set-Up & Use Connecting the 8s or 12s to my existing set-up was, for me, exceptionally easy, as it involved unplugging my existing studio sub, and dropping one of these in place. For those not currently using a studio sub, master-output cabling will travel

first to the subs, and then to your studio-monitor pair. You can wire everything up with standard XLR cables, or ¼-inch TRS cables, whatever your preference. (They do provide RCA connectors too, although I’m hard-pressed to understand why a professional user might avail themselves of those.)

Also provided is ¼-inch jack for a footswitch which lets you bypass the sub, and hear the full frequency spectrum from your top units — something that’s useful in evaluating your mixes under a range of conditions, and highly recommended. (continued on page 42)

KRK 8s: Bigger bang for your buck.

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

It wasn’t that long ago that for these pages I reviewed the thennew ROKIT 4 studio monitors from KRK Systems, part of the Gibson brand family.

Those units have a relatively tiny 4-inch main driver (paired with a 1-inch dome tweeter) and, while the sound is excellent, as I mentioned in the review, any serious user would want to match them up with a suitable subwoofer. I recently had the chance to do exactly that, testing those same ROKIT 4s with two different active subs from KRK: The 8s and 12s. (There’s also a 10s model.)

First Impressions The 8s and 12s, as the names suggest, sport 8-inch and 12-inch subwoofer drivers, respectively. For all intents and purposes, the basic design, shape, overall approach, connectivity and configuration options are identical. The variation is in the driver and cabinet size, along with the frequency response range.

KRK reports that the 8s reproduces between 35 Hz and 133 Hz, while the 12s pushes the low-end down another 6 Hz, all the way to 29 Hz, while the top rolls off at 97 Hz. Either option, then, would obviously complement the ROKIT 4s, given their 53 Hz bottom-end limit, and the ability to give that low-end significantly greater punch.

The 12s is, to be blunt, an absolute monster. Just getting it out of the box made me a bit smug for spending more time in the weight

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Studio Boom: KRK’s sub family.

SOUNDING OFF PLAYBACK…PRO AUDIO…PROCESSING

JBL’S EON ONE: UNIQUE PA

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

By Mike Klasco & Tony Russell

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JBL Professional’s EON ONE is a portable, powered, micro-array PA system, and a very unique one at that.

Perfect for DJ gigs with prerecorded material and master-ofceremonies duties, the 40-pound system also can easily handle events with a singer and some instrument accompaniment or perhaps a meeting-room presentation.

Unpacked and working in minutes, this column speaker (an angled six-speaker linear array) stacks up on its carrying case/10inch woofer section. Built into this woofer section is the power amp (380 watts) and six-channel mixer with wireless Bluetooth.

What’s amazing for some users is that, for some applications, you would only have to take the EON ONE and your smartphone— when you are not performing, you can stream. It can be just one trip from the car to the club. If your main entertainment function is as MC and the music is a pre-made mix, you only need to set up the one speaker for the room and you are covered – all for less than $1,000.

Additionally, the EON ONE could be ideal as a secondary sound system for covering a second dancefloor, a remote bar area, or a patio. And what’s more, the rated maximum SPL output is a healthy 118 dB (peak).

But most of our readers will want to know how the EON ONE fits into typical mobile DJ work – either as the complete audio system or, more conventionally, as powered speakers to be used with a DJ mixer.

I will let you know upfront that the EON ONE’s stereo six-input mixer provides great flexibility for selecting and tweaking different input functions. But it is not a functional DJ mixer, as there is no

EON ONE: Portable & perfect for a variety of apps.

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pre-cue function for the inputs – just pre-recorded playback, vocals and announcements. Channels 1 and 2 provide XLR/quarter-inch jack combo connectors (XLR is a mic-level input, quarter-inch is a line-level input), while channels 3 and 4 offer a ¼-inch balanced TRS jack or RCA jack each. The input for Channels 5 and 6 is via a 3.5-mm stereo jack.

The EON ONE’s mixer is stereo, while the amplifier and speaker is a mono Class D amplifier: 250 watts bass, plus 130 watts for the line array.

This is workable for stereo program material by sending left and right to mono and then out of the ONE’s speaker and woofer.

One might question a single speaker enclosure providing coverage, but the EON ONE’s angled array can deliver even 100-degree horizontal coverage with ideal, tight, vertical-pattern control. Still, this is not the same as the open spatiality of a stereo pair. On the other hand, the smooth, balanced sound and freedom from horn squawk on vocals of the array of cone speakers is real.

JBL Professional has not missed the boat on powered, highly portable, stereo-pair speakers – after all, JBL inspired the entire category 22 years ago, when it developed the original EON system. But, as most DJs know, two of JBL’s present-day active speakers (EON 615s) is priced similarly ($500 each) as the single-column EON ONE. The 615 system gets you a pair of 15-inch powered speakers and this makes the most sense to me if you are buying your primary, core-powered, speaker system. Yet, if the sound quality and smooth wide coverage of a line array is what you want – but with stereo spatiality – you can use the EON ONE Dual package, which is simply a pair of these speaker systems.

All this talk aside, Northern California DJ Tony Russell (aka Tony Roxxx) pushed the EON ONE system pretty hard on some jobs, and it held up well. So, let’s hear from Tony…

“When I took the EON ONE out of the shipping box, the first thing I thought was, ‘This is a pretty small speaker – they aren’t going to be able to squeeze much bass out of this thing.’ I was wrong. For its size, it is considerably robust and they even use the rear portion of the speaker to house the high-frequency unit, which means even less space for the low-frequency enclosure.

“The sound is very even across frequencies to my ear. Once the speaker’s high-frequency portion is inserted, it looks pretty killer. My one concern might be how the inserts that house the speaker connections in the high-frequency unit hold up over time.

“So, yes, it sounds good, but what sets this speaker apart is the addition of Bluetooth. It can handle up to six inputs, so this is a very versatile and nice-sounding piece of equipment for its size. Talking about size, it is a well-made unit, so it’s not as light as one might think at first glance, but it’s not too heavy to keep one from carrying it around.

“Once you get where you are going, set-up is super-easy and gets faster each time you set it up. As a DJ, I can see a lot of applications for this unit, but I think—and judging from the photos JBL uses, the company agrees—that this unit would really shine for a street performer or an application where multiple instruments need to be plugged into the mixer.

“I would definitely use this unit for DJ gigs like weddings or corporate events where I wanted dope sound and a very cool-looking set-up, but didn’t need the room-filling boom of larger subwoofers. Overall, I give JBL Professional’s EON ONE a big thumbs-up.”

As Tony observes above, EON ONE is an appealing and innovative portable DJ rig with wide coverage and cone speaker-array clarity that can be delivered by a line array, with more than sufficient power for most applications. While the built-in mixer won’t hack it as the primary mixer, it does have very flexible capabilities that will come in handy. Check it out.

If you have any questions for Sounding Off, please send them to djtimes@ testa.com.

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MOBILE PROFILE CAREERS…INNOVATIONS…SUCCESS STORIES

NEWBIE BLOOMS IN MULTI-OP OUTFIT

By Stu Kearns

Upstart: DJing for Steve Moody (left), Patrick Eckrich has thrived.

“When people come up to you and tell you they had an awesome time, that makes you feel pretty good about what you did.”

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

– Patrick Eckrich

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Easton, Md. – For multi-op DJ owners, it’s always a challenge keeping a stock of talented entertainers. They either venture out on their own, or they’re young college-age kids who graduate into different careers.

The latter is true for Patrick Eckrich, Steve Moody’s 19-year-old DJ phenom who was recently awarded the company’s DJ of the Year Award, for receiving the most 5 Star Reviews on WeddingWire and The Knot, combined with thank-you letters and referrals from clients.

“In his initial season of 2015, he won our Rookie of the Year Award,” says Moody, who owns the Entertainment Connection in Maryland’s Eastern Shore area. “This year he also won a small cash bonus as he had the best ratio of weddings to reviews. There is no doubt in my mind he is just going to head for the stars. All of the workers at the venues tell me privately how amazing he is when he works with them. He is the kind of employee that everyone dreams of having on their team.”

But if you had asked Eckrich a few years ago that he’d be a DJ, working weddings, he would have told you, “No way!”

Says Eckrich: “But once Steve asked me to come on board, I fell in love with it immediately. I like the positive energy that comes out of working with everybody in the wedding industry. When you show up, right from the get-go, everybody is so happy and positive. Obviously it’s the bride and groom’s big stressful day, and Steve, obviously, has a lot of positive energy, and always does. I love that—going in there and having fun and making sure everyone has a great time. When people come up to you and tell you they had an awesome time, that makes you feel pretty good about what you did.”

Two years ago, Eckrich was in high school, and lived three doors down from Moody’s family. They went to the same church together.

“I got to know him, and he came around and asked if I’d like to come on board as a DJ assistant,” says Eckrich. “I thought that’d be great. And then when I saw what he actually does, and how happy he made people feel, I definitely wanted to do that.”

So Eckrich started as an assistant, loading in and tearing down, and also helped with music for intros, for cocktail hour and dinner. “And then when we got to the dancefloor part,” he recalls, “I picked up on how to read a crowd and program the night, keep them on the floor, and more importantly, stick to the timeline and coordinate with everybody.”

Eckrich says there was a learning curve, but he picked up on it pretty easily. “I think that’s why I love this job so much,” he says.

When Eckrich graduated from assistant—he did more than 200 gigs—to lead MC, there were jitters. “Any time you get up to the major leagues you feel nervous,” he says. “You always remember your first wedding, they say—and, for me, thank God it was smooth. The night went well and I got a good review from the bride. I couldn’t wait to do it again. It was so much fun.”

Now, 40 weddings later, he feels like a pro. Sure, there was that one event where the ceremony portion was far from where the reception was going to be. Usually, that’s not a big deal, but the power source was more than 100 yards away. “If I knew that in advance, I bring a battery box,” he says, noting that he ran 100 yards of extension cord to get power. “That caught me off guard.”

But otherwise, it’s been smooth with packed dancefloors and positive reviews. “I look at the crowd and see what they’re responding to,” he says. “I’ll ask the bride what kind of music she’s into, and that’ll give you some guidance.

But be it a rock-n-roll crowd, oldies, current pop, whatever, whatever they fill the poor with, I play more of that! If they fill the floor for slower songs, I program more slower songs throughout the night.”

And for his company’s DJ of the Year Award? I was really surprised,” he says. “I honestly didn’t know I had that many reviews. I’m super-fortunate and blessed to know I’m doing a good job at what I’m doing.”

Alas, DJing, at least full-time, won’t be in the cards for Eckrich. He’s currently an intern with the Maryland State Police, with an ultimate career goal of being a Maryland state trooper. Next year, when he turns 21, he’ll be old enough to go into the academy.

“I’ve always known since I was little that I wanted to be a cop,” he says. “I have a lot of family members in law enforcement and in the military – it’s another job where I can help people.”

And are there similarities between being a state trooper and DJing? “Absolutely,” he says. “You can have a very positive effect on someone’s life. I’m a big believer in loving what you do. Both jobs are fun. You don’t want to do a job that you don’t like, because if you do, then you won’t do a good job at it.”

Are you an equipped DJ? At Full Compass, being Equipped means getting the very best gear at the very best prices. Let us help you get equipped â&#x20AC;&#x201C; visit our website at fullcompass.com/dj or call our experienced team at 888-798-4770.

BUSINESS LINE SALES…MARKETING…SOLUTIONS…

ARE YOU A CUSTOMER-SERVICE

In the service economy, customer service is usually the difference-maker—repeat bookings for DJ companies just don’t happen by themselves. If the clients feel like they’ve been treated exceptionally well, that’s the first and most crucial step towards building trust.

Here are some customer-service tips to help build that trust.

By Stu Kearns

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FEBRUARY 2017

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WHAT’S YOUR PROSPECT’S FIRST IMPRESSION? We all know we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but still, we do. A first impression is important because it will linger in a prospect’s memory. What’s the first impression a potential client gets from you? For your prospect, they get it on the phone, in person or through your website.

That means you need to be well-spoken, well-dressed, and equipped with a website that doesn’t look like it was built in 1985.

WHAT’S THEIR LAST IMPRESSION? The “goodbye” is an important stage of the customerinteraction cycle, because it, too, tends to linger in a client’s memory. What kind of follow-up do you employ? A thankyou e-card? Or do they simply get on to your email list?

Remember, the final impression may be the one that gets you the referral.

ARE YOU USER-FRIENDLY? Try this: Go to your website and pretend you’re a potential client. Is it easy to navigate? Or a pain? Similarly, if you’ve got a storefront, come in the front door and see if the door swings open easily, or whacks you on the shoulder.

IS SELF-SERVICE AN OPTION FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS? Many customers today, especially millennial brides, want conveniences: It’s impossible to be open around the clock, and many people appreciate a downloadable form where they can input their song list or special requests. For wedding customers, they have a lot of other things to tend to while planning their special day, so a form they can fill out—at their convenience—strikes the right customerservice tone.

DO YOUR SELF-SERVICE OPTIONS INCLUDE “ESCAPE HATCHES”?

If the downloadable form isn’t working, you need to provide the prospect an easy way to reach a human. Make it obvious, like a “contact us” prompt on your website, or hitting “O” on the phone.

DO YOUR CUSTOMERS HAVE TO ASK YOU TO ANSWER OBVIOUS QUESTIONS? Customers would rather not contact you for information that could easily be provided for them on a self-service basis. Do the FAQs on your website include the questions that customers want the answers to? Hint: Go through your customer-service records or phone bank to determine their most asked questions. Don’t rely on your web developer for that. Also, do your prospects get an auto-confirmation when they’ve ordered or downloaded something?

VALUE THE FEEDBACK YOU RECEIVE FROM YOUR CUSTOMERS. This is information of great value—worth money, actually. It’s what Forbes calls “free customer-service consulting.”

What could be better than to get information directly from your customers? It’s like a focus group but better, because it’s rooted in a customer’s real experience with your brand or business. Also: If you’re doing surveys, Forbes recommends you don’t batch surveys and then review them at the end of the month—scan them immediately to see who needs to hear from you now.

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BENCHMARK OUTSIDE YOUR INDUSTRY: YOUR COMPETITION IS NOT IN THE DJ INDUSTRY. Your competition is anybody creating experiences for their clients. Clients are comparing their experience with your DJ service to their experience with Nordstrom, or Disney. And the most challenging part of that? They are comparing you—incident to incident, phone call to phone call, web navigation to web navigation.

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COMMIT TO IMPROVEMENT. At the end of every week, ask yourself, “What is the thing I can do next week to make our team better?”

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LANGUAGE MATTERS—AND SO DOES LISTENING. It is extremely easy to say the right thing, but to say it wrong. Also, all of us—DJs and otherwise—can work on our listening skills during a consultation. It’s like a job interview. Allow your clients to talk without you interrupting.

Sometimes the clients just want their vision—no matter how chaotic—to be heard. It’s your job to guide and plan with them so they are in great hands with you.

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FIGHT ACTIVELY–EVERY SINGLE DAY, EVERY SINGLE GIG–AGAINST GETTING IN A RUT. Forbes says the “principle of hedonic adaptation means that your hundredth day on the job, naturally will not be as intense—as exciting, stressful, and so forth—as the first day.”

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We’ve all been there. How can you get excited about your 100th wedding? That’s what many DJs need to work on. Is it enough that you have a job that helps people celebrate the happiest days of their lives? Or that, in many ways, you are the facilitator of happiness for so many people.

If you have any questions for Business Line, please send them to djtimes@testa.com.

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GEAR AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

Turbo Charge Blizzard Lighting N16 W23390 Stoneridge Dr. Suite E Waukesha, WI 53188 (414) 395-8365 www.blizzardlighting.com Turbo Scan is a new LED scanner from Blizzard Lighting. The unit comes equipped with a 150-watt LED light source, as well as

two gobo wheels that each hold seven gobos, including seven rotating, indexing and interchangeable gobos. The three-phase motor is capable of 180-degree pan in 0.8 seconds, and 90-degree tilt in under 0.5 seconds. In addition, the unit comes with multiple built-in programs, a sound active mode, and three- and eight-facet rotating, indexable prism features.

On iZotope of Old Smokey iZotope 1 Kendall Square Cambridge, MA, 02139 (617) 577-7799 www.izotope.com iZotope released a new free Neutrino effects plug-in that “analyzes the incoming audio and applies gentle amounts of dynamics processing across dozens of psychoacoustically spaced frequency bands,” according to the company. These include: a Voice Mode that focuses processing on mid and high frequencies; an Instrument Mode that smooths resonant frequencies; a Bass Mode designed to attenuate notes that stick out and add punch to electric, acoustic, and synth basses; and a Drum Mode that emphasizes transient detail across the spectrum.

Get in Formation

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

Zero-G www.zero-g.co.uk

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Zero-G FORMATION is a Kontakt instrument that features more than 250 Kontakt nki files, including pads, atmospheres, synths and sfx with custom GUI controls and an eight-note arpeggiator. This flexible hybrid synth instrument allows users to play either the original sampled sounds or to use them as the source for new synthesized and modulated sounds. A variety of effects—including filters, EQs, Chorus, Flanger, Convolution Reverbs and distortions—are available. Additional features include unison mode, envelope and gate controls, and amp and pitch LFOs.

AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

GEAR

Caught on the Knob Mackie/LOUD Technologies 16220 Wood-Red Road NE Woodinville, WA 98072 (866) 858-5832 www.Mackie.com Mackie has expanded its Big Knob Series of studio monitor controllers with three new models – Big Knob Passive, Big Knob Studio and Big Knob Studio+. Passive, the series’ most compact unit, allows users to choose between two sources, two monitors and control it with one Big Knob. The Studio unit adds USB recording/playback and expands on the I/O, offering a routing choice between three sources and two monitor pairs. The Studio+ adds more features, including flexible integration into professional studios.

Rompin’ & Stompin’ StompLight International 20 Avenue Portola, # 365 El Granada, CA (650) 533.1408 www.stomplight.com StompLight has introduced StompLight DMX Pro lighting effect pedal for mobile DJs and musicians. The battery-operated unit offers pro stage lighting with simple foot control in a single, fully integrated lighting device. The unit operates as a stage light or as a light/controller capable of cascading with the StompLight Pal DMX slave light or other DMX lighting products. The sound-activated unit features an internal mic and I/O jacks, each channel with adjustable gain. An internal spectrum analyzer creates lighting tied to the ambient sound or audio output. Other effects include color organ, color wheel and strobe.

Icon Pro Audio’s Platform M is a compact MIDI control surface designed to fit any studio setup. It features nine touch-sensitive motorized faders with 10-bit resolution, eight dual-function encoder knobs and rotary encoders for controlling EQ frequencies, Q and gain.

Platform M integrates with most popular Digital Audio Workstations, operating as a plug-and-play control surface for Pro Tools, Cubase, Nuendo, Samplitude, Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Reason, Reaper, Studio One, and Bitwig via USB2.0.

DJ TIMES

Mixware, LLC 11070 Fleetwood St, Unit F Sun Valley, CA 91352 (818) 578-4030 www.mixware.net

FEBRUARY 2017

Dial M for Mixware

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GEAR AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

Karma Chameleon ADJ Products 6122 S. Eastern Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90040 (323) 582-2650 www.americandj.com ADJ’s Chameleon QBar Pro produces wall-washing effects and mid-air beams using three 30W RGBA (4-in-1) LEDs, each positioned behind a separate angled lens to project three separate beams of light in a fan-shaped pattern. The lenses are mounted on an adjustable yoke, allowing the unit to also be used as a mid-air effect. The Chameleon QBar Pro features 64 color macros, 19 builtin programs and six operating modes. It is fitted with ADJ’s WiFLY EXR “Extend Range” wireless DMX, which allows connectivity from up to 2,500 feet away.

The Gang’s All Ears Ultimate Ears Pro 3 Jenner Street, Suite 180 Irvine, CA 92618 (800) 589-6531 pro.ultimateears.com The UE 18+ Pro from Ultimate Ears Pro is the company’s secondgeneration flagship custom in-ear monitor. Building off its predecessor, the UE 18 Pro, this new model adds the company’s proprietary True Tone Drivers to a redesigned acoustic system. The drivers feature an adjusted midrange gain, as well as a frequency range that is extended by 3kHz. The UE 18+ Pro can be plugged into any audio interface with the ⅛-inch (3.5mm) headphone jack or included ¼-inch adaptor.

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

iPhone Home

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Pioneer DJ Americas 2050 W. 190th Street Suite 109 Torrance, CA 90504 (424) 488-0480 www.pioneerdj.com WeDJ for iPhone offers all of the same features as the iPad version of the app, allowing users to mix and add effects to the music in their iTunes library in a layout that is optimized for the iPhone’s display. Users can connect the DDJ-WeGO4/WeGO3 controller to get tactile control over all of WeDJ’s features, including Hot Cues, loops, Pad FX and Combo FX. There is a Sync button to get tracks perfectly in time, as well as Auto Gain to automatically set the volume to the right level.

TRACKS…MIXES…COMPILATIONS

BARGROOVES DELUXE EDITION 2017

Various u Defected The Bargrooves brand returns with an extended collection of 40 quality house tracks.

Two full-length DJ mixes deliver the best in contemporary club grooves, including tracks from Sonny Fedora feat. Kate Elsworth (“Wasted”), Duke Dumont (“Be Here”), Arnold Jarvis (“Take Some Time Out” [Ilija Rudman Reconstruction Mix]) and Sublevel & Blakdoktor feat. Lillia (“Promise” [Atjazz Vocal Mix]). Great grooves, terrific comp.

– Tommy D Funk “G’S JUICED UP?” EP u Mr. G u No Idea’s Original Hot off his 2016 album release, Mr. G joins Huxley’s label roster for an EP of four solid house/techno cuts. Opening track “Can’t Stop” is straightforward big-league techno, while the highlight, “4am NYC Downlow (TS Version),” is a dark, druggy, insomniac masterpiece. “Make Me Mad” exemplifies Mr. G’s rigid, dark sound, and there’s even a dub version to complement it.

– Chris Davis “CLOUDS” u Luca Debonaire u Enormous Tunes This hard-charging house workout features two strong mixes including the sick Croatia Squad Remix. It’s an upfront, bass-driven house banger that delivers some very cool spoken-word vocals. Really hot!

– Phil Turnipseed “RETURNING” u Maor Levi

Anjunabeats u This track charges full-speed ahead with a chugging, electrified bassline for the first 40 seconds, then floats into a dreamy, melodic trance breakdown that almost makes you forget about the overall intensity of the track. Around the threeminute mark, the track morphs into a massive climax building on the layers of intensity it started with. It hits like a freight train – bodies will be bouncing!

– Jennifer Harmon “FEEL THE SAME” u Lika Morgan u No Definition Morgan, who’s been killing it over the last year or so, drops another floor-burner that’s sure to please. With radio and club remixes by producer EDX, the vibe is splashy, funky and hot. The vocals are on point and this definitely has hit potential. Not to be missed.

– Phil Turnipseed “FALL INTO YOU” u Cosmic Gate & JES u Wake Your Mind Records The entire first-half of this gorgeous track is a piano-driven love ballad highlighted by the angelic vocals of JES. But, wait – Cosmic Gate comes crashing down and this gentle number transforms into a tough, yet gloomy, gem of a dance tune. Beauty meets electro-banger.

– Jennifer Harmon STRUCTURES u Gentoo u Gentoo Music Ambient/electronic artist Damon Kelly (aka Gentoo) drops a beautiful, ambient, trip hop/experimental full-length that takes the listener on a very soulful journey. A lot of really cool cuts to like here, including the light trippy beats of “Listen,” “Strings” and “Oslo.” Adventurous and addictive, Structures is future music.

Maor Levi

Mr. G

– Phil Turnipseed “LONG LEGS RUNNING” u Matt Caseli u Enormous Tunes Legendary Ibiza DJ Matt Caseli drops a new remake of his 2011 rework of the Doobie Brothers classic (“Long Train Running”) with this new house killer. Bringing a rugged progressive house beat and some serious percussion, this cut really works it. Love the Doobie vocal samples and unrelenting energy.

– Phil Turnipseed

Duke Dumont

GUEST REVIEWER: Ricky Morrison “CAN’T FAKE THE FEELING”

Geraldine Hunt u White Label A stone-cold classic here from back in the day, re-touched and re-edited by The Don—the one and only David Morales.

Check his sick intro hook for the DJs to mix neatly and a hot outro to die for!

House jocks, you need this—it’s a must for all the underground DJs. JES

Matt Caseli

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Bonobo

(continued from page 12) balance.“ Migration floats on a bed of quiet ambiance which leaves plenty of space for a variety of styles, from the Middle Eastern elements on “Ontario” to the breakbeats of “Outlier.” These recall Green’s prior albums, with characteristics of each turning up at intervals on Migration. While the album was started on a laptop running Ableton Live on the road, even when Green is at his nicely kitted-out home studio with its generous supply of beautifully maintained vintage outboard synthe-

sizers plus a plethora of other toys, Ableton is still at the center of its sounds.

“People think what they see onstage is how the record is made,” says Green. “I use the [Sequential Circuits] Prophet-5 and [Roland] Jupiter-8 all the time for writing, and some pedals and noisemakers find their way in. The acoustic sounds on the album are recorded, whether it’s a sample or I make something myself, at some point everything has travelled through air and into a microphone. But the

amount of time I actually have my hands on the synth, or any instrument, compared to how much of it is programmed, sound design, mixing, or mouse work, that ratio is massive.

You spend a fraction of time playing an instrument. Most of it is just laptop and speakers.”

Migration is almost a solo listening album, highlighted by introspective songs full of soundscapes like “Second Sun” or moody tones like “Figures,” and even nudging, pretty bubblers like “Kerala.” This is a move away from the

accessible, song-oriented essence of The North Borders, inarguably Green’s most successful album. That didn’t figure into his approach for Migration—rather, he didn’t worry about what anyone thought.

“It’s gotten to a point where I don’t have that need for validation,” he says. “I’m at a point in my life where I’m happy. Because I didn’t care what people thought, being in that mind space, that’s where the music really flourished.”

– Lily Moayeri

tioning in my space is also the generally recommend one — straight in front of me, under my desk, on the floor. Both the 8s and 12s performed admirably, providing plenty of low-end that’s otherwise missing from the bare ROKIT 4s, and allowing me to work on studio projects with confidence.

It’s always difficult to objectively evaluate speakers without a rack full of high-end diagnostic gear — something I don’t happen to keep around in my closet. Let to the best tools I have available (my ears), subs are one of those things that are perhaps not “in your face” when they’re present, but their absence is certainly noteworthy.

Regardless, I found both the 8s and 12s did their assigned job well.

Adjusting subs (primarily the level) can be a little tricky; of course, you want the bass response to be authentic, not exaggerated or under-represented. The owner’s manual has some tips for setting them up, but at the end of the day, the key in my view is to listen to plenty of known material, make adjustments slowly and deliberately, and listen carefully to a wide range of material to evaluate the effects before performing more tweaking.

Conclusions I was impressed with the performance of both the KRK 8s and 12s studio subwoofers, and frankly, either would make a great choice for virtually any producer. Pressed to pick a favorite, I’d have to go with the 8s. It

has almost as low of a low-end as the 12s, but is easier to handle, takes up less space, and, of course, comes at a more favorable price point — about $350 street price.

That said, if you have the space, want even more punch, and need that very low-end better represented, then by all means consider the 12s, which will set you back about $800, street price.

Given the two-drawer-file-cabinet dimensions of my current studio sub, I’m pretty sure either option would be a welcome replacement in my own studio.

If you have any questions for Making Tracks, please send them to djtimes@ testa.com.

activated, battery-powered unit offers stage lighting with simple foot control and four effects.

Electro-Voice, celebrating its 90th year in business, will exhibit its new ND Series of microphones, while showcasing its range of portable speakers, including ZLX, ELX, EKX and ETX models.

HARMAN Professional Solutions will introduce the HARMAN Connected PA, a complete, integrated ecosystem of live sound products that bring together units from Soundcraft, AKG, dbx and JBL Professional. AKG will show two new products—the P5i vocal microphone, which fits into the HARMAN Connected PA ecosystem, and the C636 master reference handheld condenser mic. Soundcraft will introduce the Ui24R digital mixing and multi-track recording system and JBL Pro will debut the 7 Series powered studio monitors.

Loudspeaker maker RCF will debut several products.They include: the ART 708-A MK2 active 8-inch twoway cabinet; the HDL6-A active linearray cabinet; the SUB9006-AS 18inch active subwoofer; the TT45-CXA active stage monitor; and the TTL6-A active three-way array module.

As well as showing its DJ-808 hy-

brid DJ-controller/instrument, Roland will debut its SYSTEM-8 PLUGOut synth, which features the latest generation of Analog Circuit Behavior technology.

In addition to showing its new XR Series studio monitors, Mackie will debut several other studio-oriented products, including three new models to its popular Big Knob Series of monitor controllers—Big Knob Passive, Big Knob Studio and Big Knob Studio+.

Yamaha Corporation’s Steinberg Media Technologies will showcase its flagship DAW, Cubase Pro 9, as well as Cubase Artist 9 and Cubase Elements 9. Also, Yamaha will debut the MPH-MT5 and MT8 studio monitor headphones and the TFRACK, a compact rack-mount version of the company’s TF Series digital mixing consoles.

In addition to FaderPort 8 Mix Production Controller and the StudioLive 16 digital console/recorder, PreSonus will show the new 1,300watt ULT10 active speaker for mobile and permanent apps.

Sennheiser will launch the XS Wireless 1, a series of wireless mic sets for budget-conscious users, and the XS Wireless 2 radio mic series, plus the HD 200 Pro headphones and

the Neumann KH 80 DSP monitoring loudspeaker.

Avid will launch Pro Tools 12.7, an updated version of the fully cloudenabled DAW software that will allow producers to find audio samples faster, bring them a new Loopmasters sample library and afford them overall faster workflow.

Blue Microphones, makers of products popular with podcasters and more, will show an updated Essentials Series of mics (Spark SL, Bluebird SL and Baby Bottle SL), plus two new headphones—the Ella premium planar magnetic unit and Sadie, a nextgeneration hi-fi unit.

Tracktion Corporation will debut: the Waveform DAW; the Raspberry Pi I/O card and DAW integration; the Copper Reference Pro stereo I/O device; the Waverazor VST

by MOK; and the DAW Essentials Collection of plug-ins.

SKB Cases will break out a slew of new solutions. They include: the 3i-5616-KBD iSeries case for 88-note keyboards; the 3i2222-12QSC iSeries case for the QSC TouchMix-30 mixer; and the 1SKB-iSF2U Studio Flyer 2U injection-molded, waterproof carryon studio rack case.

Seca Group will show headphones from Floyd Rose’s Pro Audio

Making Tracks

(continued from page 28) Both units have internal crossovers to manage frequency, making it relatively foolproof, but you do have an ability to tailor the behavior of the subs, and that crossover frequency point is variable between 50, 60, 70 and 80 Hz, depending on your preferences or response of your topend units. Switches are also provided for enabling and disabling the auto standby feature, ground lift, polarity reversal, and input sensitivity. There’s also a gain knob provided. The owner’s manual provided gives the details on how to utilize the various switch options; in my case, factory defaults were appropriate.

The only viable option for sub posi-

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

News

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(continued from page 5) USB hub and MIDI support; and the Ortofon Concorde VIBE turntable cartridge, which includes an elliptical stylus.

L.A.-based lighting manufacturer ADJ expects to introduce the POWR BAR65 power block, which includes six surge-protected AC power sockets, a 4-port USB 3.0 hub for mobile device and a 6-foot cord. Related company American Audio will debut its WU-419V 4-channel wireless microphone system, which includes four mics, four color-coded rings, a wireless receiver, two detachable antennas and a power cable.

Blizzard Lighting will debut three new products. They include: Turbo Scan, a 150-watt LED scanner; LOOK, a dual-beam LED fixture with aura effects; and Kryo Mix CMY, a 3-in-1 beam/spot/wash moving-head fixture.

Cosmic Truss, a subsidiar y of GLP, will debut a pair of lighting truss accessories. They include the F31 Modular Stirrup drop-down accessory and the F34 Top Mount substitute for the generic truss totem.

StompLight will debut its innovative StompLight DMX Pro lighting effect pedal. Perfect for mobile DJs and musicians alike, the portable, sound-

MP3s in 6

Compiled As January 10, 2017

NATIONAL CROSSOVER POOL CHART

NATIONAL URBAN POOL CHART

1 Bruno Mars 2 DNCE 3 Tinashe 4 Rihanna 5 Lodato & Joseph Duveen 6 Weeknd F/ Daft Punk 7 LeAnne Rimes 8 Ralphi Rosario & Aneeta Beat 9 John Legend 10 Crystal Waters F/ Stedie E & Hybrid Heights 11 Dirty Disco F/ Pepper Mashay 12 Tony Moran F/ Jason Walker 13 X-Ambassadors 14 Ralph Rosario & Frankie Catalano 15 Christina Aguilera F/ Nile Rodgers 16 Betty Who 17 Lady Gaga 18 Four Kings F/ Sybil 19 Jonas Blue F/ JP Cooper 20 Kim Cameron 21 Salt Ashes 22 Arianna Grande F/ Nicki Minaj 23 Chainsmokers F/ Halsey 24 Galantis & Hook N Sling 25 Alessia Cara 26 Pet Shop Boys 27 DjGozzi & The Extraordinary Gentlemen 28 Hailee Steinfeld & Grey F/ Zedd 29 Dua Lipa 30 Bello Boys And Dan Donica F/ Seri 31 Gia 7 32 Stonebridge F/ Therese 33 Dawn Tallman 34 Martin Garrix & Bebe Rexha 35 Vassy 36 Fifth Harmony 37 Galantis 38 Bonnie Anderson 39 Chainsmokers F/ Phoebe Ryan 40 Calvin Harris

1 Lil Uzi Vert 2 Partynextdoorf/ Drake 3 Rae Sremmurd F/ Gucci Mane 4 Weeknd F/ Daft Punk 5 Beyonce 6 Rihanna 7 Steven Streeter F/ Gucci Mane 8 J-Soul 9 Drake 10 Gucci Mane F/ Travis Scott 11 Dj Luke Nasty 12 Amine 13 Dj Khaled F/N.Minaj & C.Brown & A.Alsi 14 Big Sean 15 21 Savage & Metro Boom F/ Future 16 Kanye West 17 Rob $tone F/ J.Davis & Spooks 18 Mila J 19 Twista F/ Jeremih 20 Future F/ Drake

Most Added Tracks

1 Donna Summer & Barbara Streisand 2 X-Ambassadors 3 Vassy 4 Joe Gauthreaux F. Inaya Day 5 Offiah 6 Chainsmokers Ft./ Victoria Zaro 7 Dirty Disco F/ Pepper Mashay 8 Four Kings F/ Sybil 9 Emeli Sande 10 David Guetta

24K Magic Body Moves Superlove Love On The Brain Older Starboy Long Live Love Button Pusha Love Me Now Believe Not Much Heaven Say Yes Unsteady F*ck Your Boyfriend Telepathy I Love You Always Perfect Illusion Together You And I Perfect Strangers It Starts Raining Save It Side To Side Closer Love On Me Scars To Beautiful Say It To Me Beautiful Life Starving Blow Your Mind It Ain’t Over Sweet Something Put ‘Em High 2016 Teardrops In The Name Of Love Nothing To Lose That’s My Girl No Money The Ones I Love All We Know My Way

Enough Is Enough Unsteady Nothing To Lose The Urge In Me Trouble New York City Not Much Heaven Together You And I Hurts Would I Lie To You

Atlantic Universal Republic RCA Roc Nation Overdrive Republic Audacious Carrillo Columbia 418 Music Dirty Disco Sugar House Interscope Carrillo RCA RCA Interscope I Am House Capitol Side FX Radar Republic Columbia Atlantic Def Jam Kobalt Overdrive Republic Warner Brothers Radikal Stiletto 7 Stoney Boy Slaag RCA Mushroom Epic RRP Radikal Columbia Columbia

Casablanca Interscope Mushroom Popsicle Positiva Columbia Dirty Disco MPG - I Am House Virgin Atlantic

You Was Right Come And See Me Black Beatles Starboy Hold Up Love On The Brain Prolly Slow Wine Fake Love Last Time OTW Caroline Do You Mind Bounce Back X Bitch Father Stretch My Hands Chill Bill Kickin’ Back Next To You Used To This

Most Added Tracks 1 Aminè 2 Chris Brown F/ Usher 3 Migos F/ Lil Uzi Vert 4 Drake 5 D.R.A.M.

Caroline Party Bad And Boujee Fake Love Cash Machine

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Rey Chavez ft El Chacal Adassa feat Ayrin 24 Horas Hector Acosta Prince Royce ft G Ortiz Toño Rosario LT ft Don Omar, Maluma, Sharlene Kinito Mendez Grupo Niche J Balvin ft Pharrell Juanes Eunel Nueva Era Yanel Cruz ft Neyo & J Alvarez Jerry Rivera Daddy Yankee De La Ghetto Gupo Mania Pirulo ft Ozuna Sebastian Yatra Silvio Mora

Ella Tiene Tu Complice Por Favor Amorcito Enfermito Moneda Dale Vieja La Fila Las Mujeres El Coco Safari Fuego Si Tu Te Ves Sin Miedo Vuelve Shaky Shaky Acercate Otro Loco Yo Soy Yo Traicionera Como Duele

Dan Miller n Mixxmasters - Lithonia, GA; Brian Stephens n Pacific Coast - Long Beach,

REPORTING LATIN POOLS

Washington, DC; Al Chasen n Dirty Pop Productions - San Diego, CA; DJ Drew n New

CA; Steve Tsepelis n Dj Stickyboots - Goshen, NJ; Blake Eckelbarger n Nexus Radio Chicago, IL; Manny Esparza n Soundworks - San Francisco, CA; Sam Labelle

RC Music Warner/Vale/Kult La Oreja Media Group Dam Music Sony Cerro Music Universal J&N Select O Hits Universal Latin Hits EQS Universal Crossove Universal Warner Music GM Latin Hits Universal Mayimba

Most Added Tracks

York Music Pool - New York, NY; Jackie McCloy n Dixie Dance Kings - Alpharetta, GA;

Peter K. Productions - ;Peter K n Masspool - Saugus, MA; Gary Canavo n OMAP -

Republic RCA Quality Control Republic Empire

NATIONAL LATIN DANCE POOL CHART

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REPORTING POOLS

Atlantic Warner Brothers Interscope Republic Columbia Roc Nation Atlantic Cash Money Republic Atlantic OTHAZ Republic Epic Def Jam Slaughter Gang Def Jam RCA Capitol Empire Epic

Osmani G ft J Quiles Piso 21` ft Maluma Vakero Feid ft. J Balvin Oscarcito

Baila Toma Me Llamas Oh Miami Que Raro Al Baile

Latin Hits Warner Mayimba Universal 360 Music Group

n Latinos Unidos Record Pool n Salsamania Latin Record Pool n Lobo/Bass Record

Pool n Urban Tropics Music Pool n North East Record Pool n Mixx Hitts Record Pool n Ritmo Camacho Record Pool n Ritmo Internacional Record Pool n DJ Latinos Record Pool n Mass Pool n Record Pool Latino n V.I.P. Chicago Record Pool.

LOOKING FOR THESE TITLES? YOU CAN HEAR THEM AND BUY THEM AT WWW.DANCEKINGS. COM. JUST CLICK ON THE LINKS IN THE CHART. DDK HAS LIMITED MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE

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

Collection, including the handmade FR-18 wood units and FR-36 Bluetooth units.

Sythnax, distributor for digitalaudio-solution manufacturer RME, will show three new products. They include: the RME Fireface UFX+ Interface with Thunderbolt and USB 3 connectivity; the RME ARC USB remote; and the ADI-2 Pro High-End AD/DA converter.

VocoPro will debut three products, including the Digital-1 wireless microphone system, the UDH-4-ULTRA and UDH-8-ULTRA wireless systems, and a new package of its KaraokeDual-Tablet wireless karaoke system with two wireless mics and a MS-UT mobile tablet stand.

JAUZ

(continued from page 19)

way that I write music. Before I was JAUZ, I wanted to make my music sound like other people’s music, and I could never do it. I could never get it to sound like them. I was like, “This doesn’t sound like this or that, so no one’s going to like it.” When I started being like, “Fuck it—it’s my music, if I’m happy with it that’s all that matters” and started putting out that music, that’s when I started to build that cohesiveness.

DJ Times: What is your preferred production setup?

Vogel: I’m on Ableton. I can use Logic and Reason and all the other ones, but I really don’t like to. At this point, I don’t know why you wouldn’t be on Ableton, but that’s just me.

Since I started producing, I’ve only been on a laptop because, when I was first learning how to produce, I remember watching a video of Skrillex on a private jet flying to a show.

He was sitting there working on new

tunes on the plane, and then went and played it at the festival: “I wrote this on the plane over here!” I was like, that is so fucking cool, man, so I trained myself to be able to do that.

DJ Times: So that’s how you work, then?

Vogel: I always work from my laptop speakers and headphones. I never worry too much about studio monitors and whatever. When I did try to get into working in a studio, my production went to shit because I would sit there in the studio trying to make a kick drum sound good for literally—I shit you not—seven hours. Fuck this! If it sounds good on my laptop speakers and my headphones, I’ll play it on the monitors once or twice and, if the song sounds good, then I’m happy.

DJ Times: But you still work at home…

Vogel: Admittedly, I just built a gnarly PC tower that stays in my studio, like I just finished it yesterday.

The thing is a fucking tank. It’s only because now when I’m home, this tower is here so that I can do all the really gnarly processing that might be too much for my laptop on the road, get all that shit out of the way, and then bring it back to my laptop so all I’m doing on my laptop is all the creative stuff.

DJ Times: Sounds like a bit of a paradigm shift.

Vogel: It’s something I’ve been debating for a long time, and I didn’t really want to have a system that was tied down somewhere that I couldn’t transport, so I spent a lot of time making sure that I could still be as portable as I have been. I think we figured out a pretty good solution.

DJ Times: What’s the key to working with someone, especially if you might not know them that well

to begin with?

Vogel: I would say that right there is the key – you should probably get to know them. I’ve had a lot of studio sessions where I go in with someone I don’t know, and we spend more time just talking and hanging around than working on music. If we sit there and just try to work, both people think whatever they’re going to do to the track the other person is going to think is stupid, so neither of you wants to go too far down the rabbit hole. Whenever I’ve tried to do that, it’s never worked, so now what I do when I’m working with someone I don’t know is go into a studio session completely expecting us to make no music. Just hang out, dick around, get to know each other, have fun, and if music gets made, cool.

If not, then we’ll work on it on our own, send it back and forth, and now we’re comfortable with each other we have that communication, and then when we get back in the studio we’ll finish it up.

DJ Times: It’s worth noting that you’re part of this “next generation” of electronic artists who are playing to kids that may have never stepped foot in a club in their lives. Do you think there’s something tying your rise and festival culture together?

Vogel: That’s a good question. I think whether it was festival culture or underground shows that were all ages, it was just a natural progression that was going to happen because there’s a new generation of kids coming in. I think it’s more that those same kids have migrated to the festivals and all of the festivals started doing so well that more of them popped up than just the festivals bringing out those kids. Maybe it’s a little bit of both, but I think regardless of all that, my music got out to people not because of festi-

vals, but because of the internet.

DJ Times: You’ve got DJ residencies in San Diego and Las Vegas at Hakkasan and Omnia. Are your sets at those clubs different than what you might play at something like Ultra Miami?

Vogel: I always say that they are, but then they end up being very close to each other. The difference is when you’re playing a big club, a lot of those people—even if they’re going because my name is on the billboard— might not know what I’m about or who I am. It’s been fun for me to have that challenge of figuring out tying in the shit that I really love to making random clubgoers and also really rich people who are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on tables have a good time. It’s nerve-wracking. It’s a big honor to be considered someone who can do something like that, but it’s also definitely out of my wheelhouse and my comfort zone.

DJ Times: What’s the progression been like for you?

Vogel: I’ve become a really good DJ since I started in Vegas. My normal festival set, I’ll know what songs I’m going to play; I’ll have 50-80 songs in a playlist and run through them. When I’m in Vegas, I’ll have a 300-400 song playlist. I start at one point and I have no idea where I’m going to go from there. I’ll feel out the crowd. Outside of Vegas at clubs and festivals, if [attendees] aren’t there to see me, I’ll do my thing. I’m going to do exactly what I want. I look at it like if I was a metal band: I’m not going to change my setlist because some kid wants to hear whatever. I’m there to play my setlist, my tracks—I’m going to play it. However, Vegas is where you have to be a real DJ. It’s been fun to go that far outside of what I’m comfortable with, and I can now do it. n

Adventure Club: View from the Top What? You think we just fell off the turnip truck?

DJ TIMES

FEBRUARY 2017

We’ve scaled the EDM ladder.

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By remixing hits for top acts…

ADVENTURE CLUB, Next Month in DJ Times

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