Gig log 5th December 2014

0:02 Another gig log for you and today it's a Christmas party in Talford

Alright guys, another gig log for you and today it's a Christmas party in Talford. Hopefully there's a guy by the name of DJ Show La Rocca who will be coming along and helping me and just let's see what happens. It should be good fun. Always have a chat about stuff DJ related prior to and then there's always a rant after the gig. When it's really dark and I'm sweating. But I'd like to talk about today, VJing, video DJing. Let's go back, not that long ago, maybe six, seven years ago, which is not that long actually. You could VJ but it would cost you a lot of money. You'd have to buy DVJ players, you'd have to buy the correct hardware. Pioneer brought out the SVM 1000 that started off at about £4,000 and then it went up to £6,000. My god! The players were £2,500 each and it was just a crazy amount of money. The DVDs when you put them in the players it would take a long time to read because it had to read audio as well as video. Most of the tracks were three and a half minutes so by the time you'd found the track, loaded it, you had pretty much two minutes left.

2:33 The video will be playing in the background but it doesn't matter

So there was very little time to sit down because you were always on the go. Nowadays, you can buy the Pioneer WeGo3, the Numark Mixtrack Pro, the Numark NV, that's pretty much penny, it was not pennies, but you can do the same, you can video mix. Now, there is a company out there called Extendermix.eu and they sell videos They're roughly about 40 pence each. And if you're not into video DJing, I'd like you to consider this. When you buy an MP3 file, a music file, that's it. You're buying the music file. But if you buy the video and you're using a controller, then you can use the video, but also if you don't want to have a projector or do VJing, you can still just use the audio file. Now that to me makes perfect sense because it means you've got the best of both worlds. So for example, if you're just doing a normal set, not a video set, and half of your files are video, the other half are audio, it doesn't matter because you're always going to have the audio playing anyway. The video will be playing in the background but it doesn't matter. You may have to upgrade your software so it's video compatible but then that's no big deal.

I'm spitting now. I spit when I talk. You've got the best of both worlds. So, alright, it's a lovely sunny day. It's pretty much getting on to the middle of December. Only a couple more weeks and then the nights are going to get longer. Sorry, the days... Oh dear. I think there's one part of being dyslexic. You get things muddled up. Anyone out there who's dyslexic will understand. I mean, I'll write things down and I'll be putting... Letters before the other letters and I'll be, I mean sometimes if people give me a form, fill this form, quick, hurry, it's like mind blank, can't do it. You might as well just give me jelly babies, I've got the foggiest. So yeah, dyslexia, it's not very good. And what you do tend, what happens is you do get sort of muddled up. Things get jumbled up, things in front of you, words, letters, numbers, just jumbled. It's like someone stuck them in a washing machine and gone boom, like that.

5:03 Some people, there's always been this argument that you need to underp

So you do have to sometimes sit and concentrate, but if you concentrate too much, you can't do it because you're concentrating too much. And quite often if people are around you expecting you to do something really quickly, you panic and you just can't do it then. It's like, look, leave me alone. Let me do it on my own time. Anyway, digressing slightly. Okay, so what have we got tonight? We've got the Wharfedale PA, which is four Delta 15s, 500 watts each RMS, So I'm really underpowering them. Now some people, there's always been this argument that you need to underpower your speakers. Well no, you need to overpower them. I will explain. Let's say for example you've got a cab that's 2000 watts RMS and you have got an amplifier that's 1000 watts RMS. You may think you'll never blow the cab because even if you crank it up and push that 1000 watts to the extreme

The speakers can take 2000 watts. Well, you can still blow them because once an amplifier gets to its maximum, you're no longer putting a nice curved signal into it, audio signal. You will start to put electricity into that speaker, those speakers. Now speakers like audio signals, they do not like electricity and as soon as you do that, bang, you can pop them. So you need to be very, very careful. Pretty much NACA 1000 watt speaker with a 10 watt amp. If you turn that 10 watt amp up too much, the amp is just pushing electricity into the speaker. You've got to remember in that speaker there's a tiny coil and the wire in that coil is very, very thin and it can't take much power. It's very similar to a fuse for example, a 3 amp fuse. The wire in the fuse is a lot thinner in a 3 amp fuse

7:35 Wherever that light hits is the effect

Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time. Sound by 3DB. Very, very sad, but I can't use any smoke. I'm sorry, but that is just so bloody annoying. I did a video a while ago explaining how much of the effect you lose with not being able to use smoke or haze. And you lose, I would say, 80% plus of the effect of that light. You have the light itself. You have the wall. So you have the light that is shining. And then it's shining against something. So wherever that light hits is the effect. But the effect is only 1D, it's not 3D. If you can get smoke in the room, you will get a 3D effect and you do! You literally get a 3D effect. And the effect is dependent on the distance in between the light and where it's going to. So of course, the better the light

The greater the distance, the more the effect. So what we're losing is we're losing a major part of the effect. So this is also something else you must listen to. Very important. Could save you a lot of money. These companies out there are very good at saying, wow look at this new light. And they almost try and entice you into buying them because if you don't, you feel you'll be behind the times. You know, you won't be as good as anyone else. Well let's be honest. Apart from a lot of other DJs, 99% of the public who go to your event couldn't give an absolute monkeys whether you've got the latest moving head from whatever company or an old abstract Twister 4 that probably stopped being made 20 years ago. Just so long as there's some effects and flashy lights, they don't really care. So don't think that you have to

Keep on upgrading, upgrading, upgrading. The only time you do have to is all of a sudden when you turn that light on and it goes bang. And then during some part of the evening you do have some smoke in the room. But it just happens to me, smoke from the light that's gone bang and smells rather bad. Right, I'm at a roundabout now by Morrison's in Aberystwyth. Alright Morris, and off we go. So there you go. Right, I'll pause the camera and... I've got a bit of a journey to do now. Practice and enjoy in a bit. Right, here we are ladies and gentlemen at the event. I'm with DJ Shola Rocker. How are you sir? Fine and you? Good. So tell everyone where you're from. I'm from Venezuela, South America. Yeah, and you replied to my request for someone to help me because we know each other anyway. We've been chatting and whatnot. So just explain how long have you been a DJ?

10:05 I started DJing in the year 86

I started DJing in the year 86. Wow, cool. So I was like 16 years old. Yeah? And you enjoy it, yeah? Yeah, I love it. Alright, this guy has been a big help tonight because we've had two problems. First of all, one was with connecting the projector. We couldn't, I mean I've used it before and we just couldn't work out why it wasn't noticing the other screen which it has now but... The projector I've got is one of these that needs a great deal of space in between the projector itself and the screen, so the actual image isn't very big, but never mind. The other one was Serato. No disrespect, but all of a sudden it just went off because the track I put on wasn't analysed. Now, alright. This is my argument. You shouldn't have to analyse every single song, you should just be able to drag a song in and for God's sake, you shouldn't want or the program shouldn't stop, should it? I mean, it's a fast computer, it's not full of crap, Skype isn't on, it's turned off onto aeroplane mode so it can't pick up any signal anyway, so what I have done is I've got a couple of CD players as well just in case the shit hits the fan.

12:02 We've got the Intimidate Spot Duo, and we haven't got those on yet

So I'll always make sure there's some form of music ready, so if the PC does freeze, I can just press play and go, I'm sorry! Yeah, alright, so what we've got, we've got the DDJ-SX, we've got the couple of 2000s, we have this little beauty here, the Cam Power Bar, which is exceedingly bright. Over here, the Chauvet Core Bar 4. So I've actually got three of them. So there's one there, and one here. Down there. And then one over the other side there. We've got the Intimidate Spot Duo, and we haven't got those on yet. And we've got the mighty Intimidate Spot 450s. And we've got the Spot 100 IRC there. We've got this little beauty here. Check it out. It's the Kemp K-Strip. That's very bright for...

Over here, times three watt. It's a UV light. That is very, very bright. Another one of the Cam power bars. There is a very nice screen. It's from Expander. It's stretch covers and that is their biggest screen they do. It's a shame actually it's quite dark but that is absolutely stunning. Up there by the way is the Circus from Chauvet. The screen itself is absolutely huge and normally The frame that it's on, I just used two parts at the top but this time I've got three. So it can stretch to just about four meters and it's a shame really because as you can see the video projection is quite small so it's lost on that really. Behind us or behind the screen You've got what can only be described as a monstrous star cloth that is not mine. And if I had room in my van, I'd probably take it with me, but I'm not allowed to. So there you go. All being well, we won't have idiots on the dance floor, but you never know. The PA is Wharfdale, so you've got two 15 deltas and you've got twin 18 subs there. I've just set them centre stage and it's very loud. So yeah, you'll notice as well I've set on the...

The side, a lot of people would set sort of center stage on the dance floor but I've used that for the projector so let's see what happens.

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