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How often do you go out to clubs to hear music? (pg. 3)
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| Beatflux |
| quote: | Originally posted by Stu Cox
Sorry to be the one to ask the obvious, but if you never go out and you're trying to write dancefloor-oriented music, how do you have any idea if what you're writing would work on the dancefloor? |
Try dancing to it? |
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| Stu Cox |
| quote: | Originally posted by Beatflux
Try dancing to it? |
Yeah well it's a start :p
But there's so much more involved in whether a track will work on the dancefloor than whether you can dance to it in your bedroom.
When you listen to a record you can try to picture yourself in a club with it playing over the system. Even more specifically than that, you can try to imagine it dropping at a certain point in the night, in a certain venue with a certain number of people of a certain disposition. If you can't imagine the record working in that situation, it may well not work if it was played in that situation. If you can't think of any situation in any club when it would work, it's probably not suitable for clubs, so you may have a hard time getting DJs to play it.
This is the thought process a lot of DJs go through when picking their music (albeit sometimes subconsciously) - Will this record work in a warm-up? Will it work peak time? Will it work in the next venue I'm playing in? Will it work on my radio show?
So if you want DJs to play your music, it can help to go through the same thought process. Would you pick your track to play if you were a DJ?
But I think you need to make sure your sense of whether or not a track will work in a given situation stays fresh, which you can do by putting yourself in those situations, amongst the current crowds. |
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| dj_alfi |
| Go out alot in the summer, barricade myself in during the winter to make music. |
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| Rodri Santos |
| depends, to see an artist i like once a year or so, usually i go to a festival somewhere in Europe, but i go to clubs weekly, just to listen whatever they play... usually , i'm there for the girls not for the music :D |
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| psymon.d |
| generally speaking the clubs around me are . there are a few venues, however, that attract some proper artists/djs, and when they come, i don't really count that as going to a club to hear music, as that implies going without a specific purpose, i.e. to see X Y or Z play. every now and then i'll give one a chance when i hear, by reputation, of a decent dj on for a night (which is a different entity to going specifically because i know of the person playing) |
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| kitphillips |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fledz
There's a tonne of great places in Sydney as well as international DJs all year round. I just don't get out to many of them.
You at Laundry mostly? |
Not really so much these days. I go through phases with places. It was bunker/The Cross for me for a long time (was there at least once a weekend) then laundry for a year, then civic and Tao Lounge for a while, now I'm going everywhere a bit... Tone, Racket/Haha, La Campagna/goodgod, Phoenix, lots of little warehouses and stuff too. |
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| EddieZilker |
@ cryo - The Bird is still open, even though I'm not sure if they still do rave night.
| quote: | Originally posted by Stu Cox
Sorry to be the one to ask the obvious, but if you never go out and you're trying to write dancefloor-oriented music, how do you have any idea if what you're writing would work on the dancefloor? Are you surprised if DJs aren't playing your tunes? |
Honestly, I used to be a prolific clubber. Even after I quit drinking, I still went out on a fairly regular basis. I just want to make clear that even though I don't go to clubs, now - 100% of that fact having to do with current location and finances - I still think there's enormous value in doing so.
Anyway, that's the reason for my vote, even though I've read far too many people - and not just in this thread - trying to maintain that clubbing is irrelevant to making dance music. Watching how a crowd of people react to the music and how the DJ employs it, is quite important. If you're harboring some notion that, even though you haven't, don't, and/or won't go out, yet dismiss DJ's who don't play your music as clueless, in my opinion, you're operating on some vastly fallacious assumptions.
| quote: | Originally posted by psymon.d
generally speaking the clubs around me are . there are a few venues, however, that attract some proper artists/djs, and when they come, i don't really count that as going to a club to hear music, as that implies going without a specific purpose, i.e. to see X Y or Z play. every now and then i'll give one a chance when i hear, by reputation, of a decent dj on for a night (which is a different entity to going specifically because i know of the person playing) |
I agree with the principle of this. If the scene is mostly garbage, the value in that can wear out, relatively quickly. There's only so much value one can derive in watching a DJ chase a crowd off the dance floor or watching a crowd's reaction to music you can't stand. |
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| Zombie0729 |
really exciting times in San Diego right now, the scene is on the cusp of something amazing! That said, i play here at least twice a month and i'm out maybe another 1 or 2 times. It's definitely helped w/ my productions, the more i play the better the reference tracks i study the better my music sounds in a club. Sometimes i am SHOCKED at what gets a better reaction in a club and that really makes me go back in the studio and study that record.
In my honest opinion i think a lot of big DJ's sounds change because of this, they make something ridiculously over the top in the studio then they go into the club and it doesn't transcribe but then they play another record, that's far simpler and it has the most reactions. At least that's my opinion, I think if you want to stay current you need to go out once a month and to see what's working. |
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| Andy28 |
| quote: | Originally posted by kitphillips
And if there isn't one, then ffs, get 20 friends together and start a night in your local bar, 15 people is a good number for most small club nights, if you can pull a few randoms in off the street. |
Thats what we done in newcastle, takes time but you can make it work. We now get approached by labels to host tours, done our first in march and more lined up. It cost's you like but you get the people in to cover it
| quote: | | Educate her then... I got my girlfriend away from hardcore. |
That what we play
She's already well educated! |
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| Stu Cox |
| quote: | Originally posted by EddieZilker
I agree with the principle of this. If the scene is mostly garbage, the value in that can wear out, relatively quickly. There's only so much value one can derive in watching a DJ chase a crowd off the dance floor or watching a crowd's reaction to music you can't stand. |
Oh yeah I mean there's little point in going to a night you're going to hate, because you'll just be thinking about how it is rather than looking at what works and what doesn't. And you're probably not going to pick up ideas of how to arrange a massive supersaw trance breakdown from a commercial R'n'B night.
It can still be valuable though... it was by playing chart hip-hop to a room of 100 people (and hating every minute) that I realised how hard it is to get longer records with less frequent changes to work in a small room, which is something I think applies to house, techno and trance as well. So the producer in me starts to think, "There's a market for shorter tracks which are more about the funk than lush breakdowns, which can still be played by 'trance' DJs in small clubs - I should make some." |
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| Zyklon_Jay |
i rarely go to afterhours at all anymore, but i'll go to a few lounges and regular hour places once in awhile without caring who is playing.
Mutek and Piknic Electronique (not a club, outddors every weekend) season is upon us, so my live musical intake is about to sky rocket.
It doesn't surprise me that never is winning:p |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Stu Cox
Oh yeah I mean there's little point in going to a night you're going to hate, because you'll just be thinking about how it is rather than looking at what works and what doesn't. And you're probably not going to pick up ideas of how to arrange a massive supersaw trance breakdown from a commercial R'n'B night.
It can still be valuable though... it was by playing chart hip-hop to a room of 100 people (and hating every minute) that I realised how hard it is to get longer records with less frequent changes to work in a small room, which is something I think applies to house, techno and trance as well. So the producer in me starts to think, "There's a market for shorter tracks which are more about the funk than lush breakdowns, which can still be played by 'trance' DJs in small clubs - I should make some." |
Agreed. I also think you shouldn't limit yourself, where musical style is concerned. Just because you might not like Top 40 Hip Hop, doesn't mean you should forgo Hip Hop, as there's a lot of stuff that isn't in Clear Channel Communications music rotation. If you're a trance producer, only listening to trance is just sticking yourself in a feedback loop. It may take a little effort to find venues that play music you can appreciate, regardless of genre, but it can be done.
I worked as a bar-tender in one club and the club owner, who was a raving alcoholic from Iran, was auditioning DJ's. Of course, it's the perfect night for him to go clubbing so I wind up, the sole bartender, alone with this idiot in the booth and one bouncer, working the door. The guy started off with a Debbie Gibson track and I looked at my tip jar and winced a little. He continues on, gets a small crowd, with more girls than guys, and they're dancing on the dance floor and some are looking at the bar and digging into their purses. Crowds attract crowds, and people are trickling in with the bouncer checking ID's for the occasional line - and it's like that for all of twenty minutes with him playing a lot of polished remixes of some Top 40 stuff, in addition to the typical 1992-93 dance anthems.
Then the decided to drop the same Debbie Gibson song. Everyone leaves. No one comes in for the rest of the night. No one. And when he was done, what did he do? Threw that mothering Debbie Gibson song on, one last time. I was outside, talking to the bouncer, when the owner returned. He asked me what I thought of the guy. I just pointed inside where Debbie Gibson would belt it out to an empty room, one final time at 110Db SPL. |
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