Here’s a little primer..

Interview with Waacking Legend Tyrone Proctor

Willi Ninja clip from Paris is Burning. *required viewing*

There was a time when being able to flawlessly match beats and select killer tracks that flowed like butter wasn’t only difficult, but rare and special. Putting that on a mixtape and getting it into the right hands secured you a gig, which could lead to great things.

However, the digital revolution in DJing has changed the game in many ways – some great, some not. Perhaps the largest change, however, is how to go about making a name for yourself in an extremely competitive and highly international market.

This site has gone into great detail on how to market yourself, secure your first gig, and be a better DJ all-round. But this still mostly deals with things on a local scale. And if you are looking to take your talents to an international market, the best way to do that is by making your own music. Here’s why:

1. You can achieve instant global recognition

Online mix hosting services have helped the “mixtape” trend continue into the digital age, and some DJs have even mixed their way to thousands of fans through brilliant social networking.

But what is the most surefire way to get noticed by the biggest jocks in the industry, and of course, by their fans? Make a hit record. If your new hit winds up on Radio 1, you can be sure people from around the globe will know your name very quickly.

A fairly famous DJ once told me: “OK man, I’ll be straight up. You won’t make it through DJing. You will make it through productions. That’s the only way people around the world will recognise your name; otherwise why would someone in Romania know about you? No matter how good a DJ you are in your home town, unless you’re part of a residency to one seriously world-famous night, like Panorama bar or Fabric, it won’t happen through DJing.

“So get in there and get producing, then go to gigs and put the CDs of your tracks in the hands of the guest DJs who would play your sound, and then when you get signed to big labels people will take notice. Get what I’m saying mate?”

2. You’ll get respect

If it’s been said once, it’s been said a thousand times: it’s easier than ever to be a DJ today. I won’t beat a dead horse, but it just isn’t enough any more.

So when you’ve spent years of your life (not to mention several grand) holed up in your apartment learning to make high quality dance music that one day gets released on Beatport, people respect that.

It shows you are truly serious about the music and about your craft. It shows you understand music on a fundamental level, which of course translates into “he’s probably a pretty good DJ, too”. It shows you have dedication, and are serious about being a part of the music scene on a deeper level.

The big jocks know this; they’ve been there too. And many of them love seeing new dedicated and talented young producers work their way up, and are willing to support them.

3. It’s more about raw talent

You have to analyse your strengths and weaknesses. I’m not brilliant at networking, and the only way to get gigs where I live is to spend countless hours out at the clubs making nice with the right people, then countless more trying to get people come to your show. You’re a promoter, DJ and PR agent rolled into one.

I realised this a few years ago and knew this wasn’t for me. I figured I could get much further by sitting at home in front of my computer and learning a craft. Networking is a craft to be sure, but for someone like me, reading books and blogs on things like sound engineering and being able to set my own hours and work from home is how I can best spend my time achieving the results I desire, and it’s starting to pay off.

I know a vast amount more about making music than I did two years ago, and I’m learning more every day. And hopefully with enough work, one day I’ll have tracks big enough to make real waves. Then the sky is the limit.

4. You gain musical understanding

Putting in countless hours learning what instruments, percussion and synthesisers are used to create a desired musical effect has given me a much deeper understanding of the music than I had when I was only a DJ. And if you are a serious DJ, you know how much time you spend analysing tracks to begin with.

As a result, my DJ sets have gotten tighter and cleaner over time, with much less effort spent combing though Beatport. I recognise keys, rhythms, instruments, and basslines that will work together much easier than I used to.

This of course comes to anyone who spends enough time around music, be it through DJing all the time, or just constantly having Pandora going in the background – but producing amplifies it.

5. It gets you gigs

What’s the easiest way to start touring the globe as a DJ? Do what they used to do in the rock’n’roll days: Write a huge single that sells like crazy. Promoters see a rabid fan base and know you will pack a show.

The evidence is currently clearest with some of the overnight sensation dubstep acts. Instead of slowly working their way up gig after gig, they spent a few years in the studio, and by 19 or 20 had a hit record on their hands.

Now of course there is a bit more to it than that. Getting your hit track into the right hands can be tricky, for instance. But if you do happen to write the next mega-hit, you can guarantee that with proper marketing and exposure, eventually that right person will hear it.

Easier said than done….

I do understand that when you are just starting out DJing, music production can seem to big a task to tackle. Learning an in-depth, high-end workstation like Ableton Live or Logic is difficult, and can take years to start getting good at.

But just as you worked hard, learned your DJ software inside and out, and eventually learned to mix and maybe even got some gigs, with dedication and hard work you can learn to make your own music too.

http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2011/11/5-reasons-why-producers-make-more-successful-djs/
By: Chandler Shortlidge

The Mechanics of Music

There isn’t a single music center of the brain, in large part because listening to even very simple music combines a bunch of distinct neurological processes. Let’s first look at the more strictly mechanical aspects of listening to music. As you might be able to guess from its name, the auditory cortex is an important part of processing the sound of music. Part of the temporal lobe, the auditory cortex takes in information from the ear and assesses the pitch and volume of the sound.

Other parts of the brain deal with different aspects of music. Rhythm, for instance, is only connected in a relatively minor way to the auditory cortex. A lot goes into keeping even relatively simple, regular beats – tapping along to something as basic as a 1:2 rhythm brings in the left frontal cortex, left parietal cortex, and right cerebellum, and more unusual rhythms bring in still more areas of the cerebral cortex and cerebellum.

Tonality – the building of musical structure around a central chord – is another crucial part of musical understanding, and it reels in still more parts of the brain. The prefrontal cortex, cerebellum, and many parts of the temporal lobe all go into our ability to recognize the tone of a given piece of music. Taken all together, this means that music already brings in three out of four of the lobes of the human brain – frontal, parietal, and temporal, with only the visual processing occipital lobe unaffected…and there might be a bit more to say about that in a moment.

Music is sometimes given a quick and dirty classification as a “right-brained” activity, meaning that the act of processing music is centered on the right hemisphere of the brain. While this fits nicely with the general dichotomy that the left side of the brain is more engaged in logic and the right in creativity, these are all pretty big oversimplifications. While it is broadly true that music involves more of the right hemisphere than the left, the fact is that the processing of music is so diffuse and decentralized throughout the brain that it’s hard to come up with any single category for all the different areas involved.

The Deeper Impact

Those, however, are just the basic mechanical aspects of listening to music. A good song can trigger a cascade of secondary responses, often involuntarily. An obvious example of this is the propensity to move in time with music – not so much dancing, which is an active, independent process, but simple motions like tapping one’s toe along with the song. This is caused by stimulation of neurons in the motor cortex.

Another intriguing side-effect of listening to music is the activation of the visual cortex, found in the back of the brain in the occipital lobe. Research indicates that some music can provoke a response in this part of the brain, as the engaged listener tries to conjure up appropriate imagery to match the changes and progression in the music.

Part of the reason that music tends to be so meaningful to us is that it’s deeply intertwined with memory. Because the brain is so completely engaged in listening to music, it’s one of the parts of a situation that is remembered most clearly later on. Songs and pieces of music can serve as powerful triggers for memories – hence the cliche about couples and “their song.”

And let’s not forget the language aspect of music. Obviously, not all songs have lyrics, but those that do draw upon the language centers of the brain. The two main parts of the brain associated with language are Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area, the former of which is found in the temporal lobe while the latter is in the frontal lobe. Previous research has tended to indicate that Wernicke’s area is more crucial to language comprehension, while Broca’s area is more tied up in language production, though it now appears that there’s significant overlap. In any event, we can add them to the list of brain regions tied up in music comprehension.

The Subjective Sounds

So just why does music carry so much meaning for us? Because music draws on so many different parts of the brain, it’s hard to say with certainty, but that might actually help give us an answer. Music is extraordinarily complex even before it enters the brain – the pitch of music, for instance, has to be much more stable than frequencies we normally sound, or else it would just devolve into chaotic noise. The same is true of rhythm, tone, and other musical properties – these have to be highly complex to cohere into anything even vaguely musical in the first place.

And it’s not as though there’s any real objective measure of what counts as “musical” and what doesn’t. That shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone who’s ever read a music review, but it’s crucial to remember just how much the brain is involved as an active participant in shaping our interaction with music. Memory is one of the most obvious influences here – you’re more inclined to like a particular piece of music if it carries positive associations, for instance.

It’s also possible that a person’s particular brain chemistry can affect his or her appreciation of music. Considering how many different parts of the brain are activated by listening to music, even one unusual link in that chain can drastically alter the person’s response. There’s also plenty of more everyday factors to consider – how much a person knows about music, whether they themselves play an instrument, whether the music has lyrics, and even whether it’s a recording or a live performance can all dramatically change the particular neural response to the same basic piece of music.

The Hardwired Responses

If there’s one constant in all this, it’s that songs carry a tremendous ability to provoke emotional responses – indeed, it can even seem that that’s our brain’s primary concern when it comes to music. Brain imaging studies have shown that “happy” music stimulates the reward centers of the brain, causing the production of the chemical dopamine. That’s the same chemical produced from eating great food, having sex, and taking drugs.

Even better, the brain hangs onto the ability to understand the emotional impact of music, even if the finer points of comprehension are lost. One study, for instance, focused on a woman with damage to her temporal lobe – and, by extension, her auditory cortex – that made it impossible for her to comprehend different melodies and other basic parts of musical structure. Even so, she was still able to read the basic emotional content of the music, respond appropriately to “happy” and “sad” music in turn.

This process seems to start early, too. Researchers at Brigham Young University found evidence that infants as young as five months are able to discern when a happy song is playing, and by nine months they’ve added comprehension of sad music to their repertoire. Interviewed in 2008, BYU music professor Susan Kenney explained what the babies were responding to:

“The happy songs were all in major keys with fairly short phrases or motives that repeated. The tempo and melodic rhythms were faster than any of the sad selections, and the melodies had a general upward direction. Four of the sad songs were in minor keys and all had a slower beat and long melodic rhythms. For an infant to notice those differences is fascinating.”

And the effects of such music only increases as we get older. (Considering the babies’ responses to the music involved turning their heads slightly, you’d sort of hope it would.) We actually can have physiological reactions to music – happy music with a fast tempo and major key can make us breathe faster, while sad music in a slow tempo and minor key can slow down our pulse and cause blood pressure to rise.

Of course, the roots of those reactions are found back in the brain. It’s just another indication of how powerful and multi-faceted our relationship with music really is, and how it’s able to change our brains in ways both obvious and so subtle that we can barely comprehend what’s happening.

By Alasdair WilkinsSep 7, 2011 9:36 AM

http://io9.com/5837976/what-happens-to-your-brain-under-the-influence-of-music

With that in mind, as many of you have expressed to us that Crawford is an unsuitable location we have made the decision to once again move BANG THE PARTY! We hold no ill will towards the managers and owners of The Crawford but continued issues have forced us to make the decision. Beginning October 22nd. BANG THE PARTY! will be continuing at The Drake Underground.

For this new and exiting venture ANDYCAPP will be manning the decks while THE MAKEOVER will be performing a live set in between.

THE MAKEOVER is made up of two DJ/Musicians, Todd-Rod Skimmins (Bang the Party) and Jeremy Glenn (Instinct, Makeshift) revitalize the everyday way of DJing. The Makeover combine self-produced and existing instrumental tracks in a live performance/DJ set. Makingover artists like Janelle Monae, Gino Vannelli, Arcade Fire, Jimmy Edgar, Young Empires, Aly-Us, Washed Out, Toots and the Maytals and Siriusmo with their patented brand of rapturous grooves and soul penetrating rhythms.

Watching them play is at once mesmerizing and fun -not too hard, not too soft. These buddies know how to get the balance right. Also, Todd plays steel drums and Jeremy’s voice is like an angel. Say no more, right?

We hope you can join us at the Drake October 22nd for the continuation of BANG THE PARTY!

“I wanna see, all my friends at once…”

Jamie xx – The sounds of a reluctant superstar DJ

Finding yourself at the forefront of the British dance music scene can prove rather daunting, especially if you’re as shy as Jamie xx. It seems like just about everyone wants a piece of the 23-year-old producer and remix artist. “I’ve just got a message from Thom Yorke,” whimpers a third of last year’s Mercury Music prize-winning outfit The xx, as he bashfully glances down at his phone. As it transpires, Jamie xx’s (or Jamie Smith’s) remix of Radiohead’s “Bloom” has just been mastered, and it’s a remix which is due to appear on the internationally renowned band’s next album.

And Radiohead haven’t been the only musical heavyweights desperate to get their hands on his distinctive post-dubstep treatment; since going solo less than a year ago he has worked on tracks for the likes of Adele, Jack Peñate, Florence and The Machine, and Canadian rap giant Drake. If all this wasn’t enough for the nervous young man responsible for The xx’s beats and production, his ever-burgeoning solo efforts reached a peak with a reprise of the Gil Scott-Heron album I’m New Here; a stunning venture which earned him a joint album credit with the American godfather of hip-hop, just months before he died earlier this year.

In the past two weeks the South-west Londoner has travelled extensively, playing his trademark broken dubstep beats, funky rhythms and spaced out melodies in DJ sets from Singapore and Tokyo, to Montreal and New York, but it’s in East London’s humble Hackney Wick we meet today.

We’re in the studio of the visual artist Davide Quayola where the pair are working on their upcoming collaborative performance Structures. It’s the debut joint project from RizLab, an organisation which aims to bring together the most innovative artists to create new and ground-breaking material.

In a one-off live experience at The Classic Car Club in London’s Old Street, the producer and DJ will debut tracks from his forthcoming solo EP while digital artist Quayola works alongside him, interpreting the music visually and screening it in real time onto three giant HD screens. Guests will be treated to a four-hour DJ set amid an all-encompassing cinematic show of flowing computer-generated artwork.

Smith first became interested in Quayola, a London-based artist whose work encompasses photography, geometry, time-based digital sculptures and immersive audiovisual installations, when he saw one of his projects earlier this year in Paris. Since then, together with artists Abstract Birds, Quayola has finished creating Partitura, software which can both interpret sounds and transform them into visuals inspired by the geographic artwork of Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Oscar Fischinger.

The digital artist talks freely about the inaugural RizLab project which aims to create the ultimate in music experiences by bringing togethre progressive artists and pushing creative boundaries. “I’m really looking forward to finally seeing it, to seeing your music,” he chirps gesturing towards his awkward musical collaborator, who nods sheepishly.

It seems that the only non-singing third of the indie buzz band The xx doubles up as the only non-talking half of this RizLab project, but the producer eventually opens up on the subject. “At four hours, it will be the longest DJ set I’ve ever done”, he says.

The xx producer also describes the awe of discovering Quayola’s work in Paris. “I could really see how this could be a totally immersive experience,” he murmurs with discreet enthusiasm.

Likewise, Quayola is a fan of Jamie xx’s. He confesses that it was his girlfriend who first got him into The xx, but adds, “It would have been difficult not to have discovered Jamie’s music over the past couple of years.”

He’s right. As well as his and The xx’s records receiving airplay all over the radio, there’s hardly a BBC montage on television that hasn’t featured The xx’s “Intro”. But as the biggest artists in the industry clamour for his personal hallmark the reputation of this producer-of-the-moment is quickly exceeding the fame of his band. After walking off with the Mercury Music Prize for The xx’s self-titled debut, Jamie got to work on Scott-Heron’s album of remixes. And as the buzz surrounding the award-winning indie band died down, the Jamie xx hype began to reverberate.

Yet the man himself hardly exudes the confidence instilled by a string of critically acclaimed records. “Every time you do a release it sort of stamps you with this thing, you feel like the next thing you do might just be worthless.”

It seems that the huge amount of pressure that accrues when everything you touch turns to gold is taking its toll on the hottest DJ in town. How does an artist maintain creative momentum in the wake of a success that has come relatively quickly? “Making music that you love takes longer and longer in-between every release because each time you’re trying to progress,” he admits.

Though he “tries not to think about it”, he shares the mounting burden of anticipation surrounding the sophomore album from The xx with his fellow band members, Rommy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim. “We are all very similar people,” he explains. Familiarity is important to the band. The sole barrier preventing the recording of their follow-up album (already written) is the sourcing of a studio in which they’ll all feel at home. They used to record in Jamie’s bedroom.

Still, success has, to an extent, brought Jamie out of his shell. “It’s definitely changed me. I’ve gained more confidence, I’ve had to,” confesses the introverted DJ. Yet, his social profile remains in stark contrast to the buzz he’s generating. “I’ve been forced to meet a lot more people than I ever would have liked to meet,” he declares, with startling sincerity.

Garnering a reputation as the producer-of-the-moment has lured many others out from the shadows and into a spotlight that they’ve gone on to embrace. The likes of Mark Ronson, Pharrell Williams, Timbaland and Calvin Harris, have all gone on to become more famous than the artists they produced. But finding himself the UK’s hottest commodity seems to have caught Jamie xx like a rabbit in the headlights.

Perhaps the decision to swap Smith for xx when marketing his solo work was intended to manufacture a ferocious persona more capable of thriving in the spotlight. If this was the case, it hasn’t really worked. His refreshing lack of ego and insistence on sticking to what he’s good at, though, points to a character that is unlikely to fall prey to unashamed over-exposure. And crucially, this might ensure him a degree of longevity in the ever fickle industry of music production.

Perhaps the fact that the only one not buying into the Jamie xx hype is Jamie Smith himself will be what keeps the producer’s head above water and ultimately save the man-of-the-moment from disappearing in the waves of his own success.

Words by:Morgan Durno
http://ind.pn/pWjAht