Don Diablo Interview in MGM Grand Las Vegas 2015

0:00 How long have you been a producer for?

We're going to do this. Okay, so how long have you been a producer for? I've been producing for I think about 20 years. Okay, what made you want to produce? There was nothing else to do man where I grew up. So it's like actually I started making short films. So there was one scene where there was no way of finding the right song for it. So I just sort of bought a computer and started making music. Okay. And a friend of mine sent it to a record label and flash forward, I was 14 then, I'm 34 now, to now, we're here in Vegas in a hotel room doing God knows what and I'm DJing here, so. Okay. It wasn't born out of necessity. No, your first like spike where someone said, we like you, we want you to work in this place and then your life went boom. Where was it? What happened?

Ooh, that's a good question. Probably, well I first started like just producing and nobody wanted me as a DJ. So I just, I think I was 19 and there was a club in the UK, in Manchester, and that's where I had my first gig and they offered me, I played there once and they were, they liked what they heard and they offered me a residency. And yeah, just from there on it was a very prestigious club at the time. So from there on we had the ads and the DJ mag and so other clubs in the UK started booking me and then the rest of the world sort of followed and then at a certain point you get stuck because, you know, you need to have hits. So I just stopped DJing for a while and got back into the studio and started focusing more on music. So yeah, and then I think two years ago...

1:53 You feel absolutely miserable when you're on the stage

DJ tutorial by Ellaskins It can be very dark, nobody wants to hear your records and it's just painful. You feel absolutely miserable when you're on the stage. I did that for a few years and I felt like I need to either get another job or I need to step my game up. I had this very insightful conversation right before my dad passed away and I learned a lot from that one conversation. And I just changed my whole life mythology. Good. Yeah, I just started thinking more pragmatic and I started making music that other DJs could play and that's kind of how my career started rolling. Do you think his spirit went inside you? I know, yeah, absolutely. That's good. I believe in things like that actually. Yeah. I believe that sometimes you have these points in your life where something flicks, something changes and then you become...

4:12 You know, other DJs, tracks, you know, what sort of percentage would y

Something completely different that puts you on a new path. Yeah, it's a paradigm shift. You have to have two or three of those in your life or else you're already dead before you left the planet. I think that's kind of what makes you feel alive. For me, music has to grow, it has to evolve. I think creatively I tried it all. I did all sorts of music. And the next challenge for me was to find a way where more people would actually like what I do rather than just myself and my two best friends. So yeah, we're here in Vegas and this is like the biggest challenge for every DJ because it's a typical crowd. Awesome. Just two more. With your set, is it mainly all your music or do you add... You know, other DJs, tracks, you know, what sort of percentage would you say? I'd say 70-30. Okay, to your... I play 70% of my own tracks. Oh, that's good, great, fantastic. Yeah, I think like as an artist, like nowadays, you need to really have a distinct, you know, you have to distinguish yourself from the others. Just playing other people's hits, I think that's cool, but that whole...

The DJ tutorial by Ellaskins, The DJ Tutor A lot of people are always asking, you know, read the crowd, what should you play, have you got a set playlist, what do you do? Do you go in with, right, I'm going to play my first track here and you know 3, 4, 5, or do you go in and look at the crowd and think, I'm going to do this one first, then that one. You know, you work with the crowd. I mean, you always know the opening track because, you know, my tour manager sets it up and I'm not in the DJ booth yet. So I know which track I'm opening with. It's, you know, always one of my new tracks. And then from there on, the first reactions you just sniff the atmosphere in the room and you kind of decide direction from there. But it's come to a point where if you produce a lot of music, you have to play a lot of your own records anyway. So it's just the way you're building it, I guess. But yeah, I think that's the difference between the 30% we were talking about, 70-30. Depends on like how...

DJ Tutor, in the house!

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.