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First of all it depends on what your intent is with your DJing. If you do it as a hobby and have no intention on playing anywhere except at home or a friends party, I would say do whatever works for you.
If you are planning on being a club DJ then you had better get used to do it as many ways as you can.
I get to play in some nice clubs and sometimes some really sh*tty ones too.
You never know what you actually will encounter, what state the mixer will be in or if the club owner/promoter will even know what you are talking about when you mention monitor.
When I started out I had to play some places where a mix wasn't even to be considered.
So many things change when you play a club. Firstly the sound is so damn huge! It can actually be quite a shock for some people (I know it stunned me first time).
My prefered method is hearing everything in both ears. Quite useful as most mixers will give you the option of doing that if nothing else. I have been doing that for years now and don't have any problems sorting out the different sounds from one another. It also helps me judge the volume differences between the two tracks. What I mean is that I hear Cue from both channels in both cups. You get used to it.
As stated earlier, a lot of the top DJs do use the one ear on, one off method but you have to realise that they also have damn good monitors at the types of gigs they play. Us lesser mortals get all sorts of mad crap to put up with
Sound 'lag'. Yes you do get it without question but you can get used to the difference. I have known some DJs to compensate by pulling the can away from the ear just a bit. Not sure if this works, too busy working eqs and stuff to try it.
Whatever method you use, just be sure to check the sound on the dance floor every so often, it's not allways what the monitor or head phones tell you.
My advice to the young DJ would be to get used to the idea of matching records first, that can be confusing enough to the untrained ear. Use the method that works best for you so that you get comfortable with the concept. After that you will be better at hearing it so you can start experimenting with various ways of doing it.
Also remember that a big set up can be more forgiving on your mixes than your speakers at home so you will actually get away with more. DJs also tend to give punters more credit for hearing a bad mix than they actually deserve. Other DJs will hear it, but the majority of clubbers are there for the music and your selection of tunes, not so much how well you beat match (within reason of course).
All the best
Nemesis44
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https://www.mixcloud.com/Calvin_Karass/
Last edited by Nemesis44 on Aug-21-2003 at 00:11
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