so im pretty new to dj'ing and am having some trouble w/ choosing new music. i like a lot of different styles and find myself with a lot of mis - matched records that dont really sound great together. on one hand i love trance and have some good progressive/melodic trance tunes. on the other hand i also love house and find myself buying a lot of tech house stuff. when you guys first started out did you try and stick to a specific style or just pretty much get whateve you liked?

I'm sorta in the same boat as you, having just gotten my new gear. I like prog/melodic trance and even some more epic stuff, but I'm finding myself getting into prog house lately. It's def tough at first to switch styles in a set, but just give it some time and you'll find creative ways to take a standard trance set and throw a little "funk" into it.

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I am in the same position. But I think it puts us at an advantage because you will learn to mix with different styles, which can only make you a better dj. Also, it helps you progress your mixes better. Starting out with the slower House and Progressive and working up to Trance and Techno. Shit, sometimes I even do it backwards for fun! It will make your sets a lot more interesting and you will never get bored of a genre.

what doombot said...

but yea a good idea is to get creative and see what tracks you can use to interpolate if your mixes arent that strong yet...

for example, if you use some ferry corsten between some trancy house to get to trance you will find that your natural ability to mix will shift and youll just develop newer techniques overall...dont worry there's always a way man...the idea of being a dj is that you MAKE it work

good luck

having a nice varied collection is good and all, but just make sure you're buying stuff you WILL PLAY. i mean, i have some good tracks i have never spun, and probably never will.

i started with the good ol' prog house/prog trance, a little tribal. you know, that sound that was really big in 2002. by 2003 i had migrated to a lot more breakbeats, and by mid 2004 my collection resembled nothing of the past. i still had some prog records, but i had moved over to a lot housier and techier terrain.

today, i have perhaps 1 or 2 tracks from my initial collection i might still play. ended up playing a lot more acid and electro than i ever thought i would. minimal techno? never thought i'd be into that shit. it's amazing how it's so cool to spin now tho, even when 2 years ago it got me really weird looks behind the decks. heh.

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Last edited by Inertia on Jun-13-2006 at 14:49

Ahhh yes, choosing styles!

By far one of my most ever changing things to happen. In just over a year I've jumped from straight trance off Anjuna and Vandit to really funky\progressive house, into dirty\glitchy house, and yess...minimal techno. Living in Grand Rapids just a few hours outside of Detroit with all the big techno names has really crossed over on me, but there is always Kenneth Thomas for some gooood trance!

Its so strange how that happens and I guess it does make one wonder, should we as DJ's pursue one format and genre to focus on and release mixes under to try and get somewhere??? Or do we work on everything and hope something pops up?

I would say practice everything so your ready for anything, but at the end of the day, a solid style is definitley something to consider.

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if you are moving from Riverside to LA, get a gun
if you are moving from LA to riverside, keep the gun, but put on a Panic@the Disco shirt. If you ever get caught without your shirt, your gonna need that gun

After a few years it will all sort itself out.

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I started off with hard trance and trance then started to get interested in other styles.

Now Im getting a collection of Electronica, Electro House and a little bit of breaks. + Still keeping my trance collection up to date.
And I just recently started.

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Personally I went with the flow. I like a lot of different types of music. I love AvB and Sander Van Doorn but i also enjoy sandra collins, erick morillo, roger sanchez, desyn masiello, steve porter.... a wide variety of stuff

I just played what i enjoyed which at first was a wide variety of things and i didnt conciously decide to narrow my focus but the more i played the more i found myself drifting in one particular direction. Now I play mostly funky, 80ish and baleric house. Just go with the flow and see where you end up

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thanks for all the great replies guys. it seems like this is probably a really common for most beginngind dj's. i think the best thing to do is just take it slow and feel out my own musical taste (which is bound to evolve with time) and see where it takes me.

another thing i find myself doing is listening to mixes i like and being all "i want that track". but i dont want to just copy the mixes i am listening to, i need to make more of an effort to discover new tracks. but really im not even playing for many people right now so i may as well just do what i feel like ...

with me.. i have to find a transitory track. that sort of cross' between the two styles im about to mix. but id ont make blatant crosses. i'd find a track that has melodic and possibly deep influences then switch from deep to melodic.

quote:

Originally posted by bpm141 with me.. i have to find a transitory track. that sort of cross' between the two styles im about to mix. but id ont make blatant crosses. i'd find a track that has melodic and possibly deep influences then switch from deep to melodic.

this is definitely something i have put a lot of thought into. or even using several tracks to make a smooth transition. maybe starting out with some prog/tech house stuff and ending up with a more melodic trance sound. the key is definitely finding tracks that make this process seem "smooth".