One Way of Designing Your DJ Set to Make It Unique and Stand out Above the Others

0:00 This video potentially could change your set forever

Right, ladies and gentlemen, this video potentially could change your set forever. This video very possibly could make you stand out from all your buddies. And this video possibly could waste your time. And after watching this video, you think, why did I waste my time? OK, got to put that in. Anyway, you are a hip hop DJ. You are, say, a drum and bass DJ. You're a house DJ. You're an old school DJ. Let's imagine you have got a pigeonhole for your music. So if you open up rekordbox, Serato, Traktor, whatever, and you look at all your files, they're all just one genre. It's all just techno because that's what you like. That's what you play. You don't want to play anything else. You just want to play techno because techno is being embedded into your soul. There's nothing wrong with that. Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. But what I want to explain in this video is how potentially you could take your set to the next level and be heard and seen. When I say be heard and seen...

Be heard by a lot of people and then be seen by loads more people because you could bung that mix out on Mix, Wavy Sounds, Cloudy Whatever, sorry, and get noticed. Or you could do a video on YouTube or just go to your regular club and play your set. Now let's just imagine that you have a set in a drum and bass nightclub and of course... All of a sudden you start playing house music. Well, you probably won't have a set there ever again because people are going to think you're an absolute idiot. Excuse me, I've just been on a bike ride so a bit snotty. Anyway, don't come too close. You don't want to catch the leg, you know. I see. I think. See, am I kind? I think of everything. So there you are in your drum and bass club and all of a sudden, you know, you're playing...

2:41 Drum and bass first

A house tune, and then you decided to play an R&B tune, and then you play a techno track. Well, very soon, apart from the crowd possibly potentially throwing bottles at you, but nowadays they're plastic, so don't worry about it. The manager probably would politely say at the end of the evening, thank you very much for coming, here's your money, that's if you get it, don't bother coming again. So, what is this video all about? Now I've given you the premise. Okay, because it's about you taking your set to the next level. And it's really simple. Now let's look at drum and bass first. What is drum and bass? It's basically fast hip hop. That's it. Hip hop, you know, drum and bass. You know, hip hop is around about 100 BPM from sort of 79, 80, 90 to maybe 110 faster.

You know, you get it into more sort of 80s groove there. And then drum and bass is sort of anything from 150 to about 180 BPM. Now, if you've got the correct software, if you think about it, it's almost like half time. So I would like you to try this. And if it goes wrong and the manager boots you out, don't come and try and find me, OK? Because again, this is entirely up to you. I can't make you. Hey bugger, you just do this right now, mother frigga. Anyway, why don't you try this? You start off with your drum and bass tunes and then you mix in a hip-hop tune, okay? Because hip-hop is still broken beats. It's still that genre, that style of drum and bass because I'm quite sure that's probably where drum and bass came from originally, jungle style. Someone thought hip-hop's pretty good but how about if we just add a little bit more sort of percussion to it and we speed it up.

There you go. So if you think about it now, you've got yourself a hip hop tune during the mix in your drum and bass set, but you don't even have to do that. You could overlay a hip hop tune while your DMB track is playing. Now not only that, but you could start adding a bit of soul tracks. Now you may think, hold on Jonathan, drum and bass and soul, you must be stupid. Well, I am nuts, but I don't think I'm... Anyway, think about it. A soul tune, an old R&B classic. Again, it is in the BPM realms of hip-hop, which is half time of drum and bass. Add that to your drum and bass set. So while you're playing some dark kind of drum and bass, you can lighten it up. By adding a soul track. Now again, you may be thinking, yeah, but that's very difficult. Okay, possibly it is. Add an acapella onto it, okay? What I'm trying to do here is just open your mind to the ways in which you can expand your set and make it so much more lively. Funk.

5:24 You may have heard of African Bombata, James Brown and so on

OK, now you may have heard of African Bombata, James Brown and so on. There are a myriad of funk tracks out there that are again around about the same BPM as hip hop. Half time to drum and bass, add a funk track in there. You don't even have to add the whole track. Just add snippets of. So instead of going from one drum and bass tune to the next every 16 bars because drum and bass is the most formatted Genre out there. If you do a little bit of research, you will find 16 bars change, 16 bars change, 16 bars change. If you understand drum and bass and you've been mixing it for a long time, you could do it with your eyes closed. Well, you should be able to. Anyway, let's move to house music now. Let's say you like techno. You like that twisty bendy sound, casual relief, that I love it.

Last night I did a live set. Go and check it out, it's using vinyl. A bit of a mishmash of all sorts, couple of dodgy moments there but whatever, I don't care, we all make mistakes, even the pros do. Actually they don't because they probably just use the software all the time and that does most of it for them. God, so good job you don't listen to what I think. Anyway, so you're playing your techno set and all of a sudden you think... I'm bored of this now because it's just, I need something extra. I need something else to put in that techno set. Well again, why don't you consider adding acapellas to it? Why don't you consider something like this? If you remember way back in the day we had a guy called Little Louie and he did a track entitled French Kiss. Now that track is an absolute classic. That was made...

8:07 Acapellas, old school tunes, let's hear a basic house mix now

30 or so years ago, probably even more than that. Yet you can still play that today and it blows people's minds. So why not chuck in a classic twisty bendy kind of track from years ago instead of thinking I must go on Bport and I must only play the latest tracks otherwise I'm not going to be a hip DJ. Don't want to go... Too much into great detail because I have talked about this before, but there are so many dance tracks out there now. You could play tracks from 20 years ago, really have a dig through the collection and you could put a set together and play it in front of a crowd and no one would probably know that they were 20 years old because there's millions of tracks out there. So that's techno for you. Acapellas, old school tunes, let's hear a basic house mix now. Okay, so you may think, what is it? You spin me right round baby like a record. You spin me right round baby right round like a record baby right round. You watch YouTube will get me an eye for copyright issues. Oh dear. Anyway, yeah, great at singing. Not. Anyway, so...

That tune is an absolute classic from years gone by. And something like that, if you put that into your house set, right time, right place, people will go bananas. An old Madonna tune, people are going to go nuts. Something like, I love to play reel-to-reel, I like to move it. Just what you've got to think of here is when you want to put a set together and you want to make it fresh, you want to make it unique. The irony is, if you're just playing modern tracks, it isn't fresh, it isn't unique, because probably everyone else is doing that. How to make it fresh and unique is to add some old classics. New Order, Blue Monday, early 80s. Still to this day, that track absolutely kicks ass. You play that track...

Right time, right place in your set. And I guarantee the crowd will go frigging nuts. Not only that, but then you imagine you're playing the latest house track, you bring in New Order Blue Monday. I feel like Bob the Builder. Big fish little fish cardboard box. Big fish little fish cardboard box. And hey, back at it. Sorry, don't do that. Anyway. So you're playing that. How does it feel to treat me like you do? You know, so you've got the vocals and then after the vocals finishes, when it comes towards the latter part of the track, don't just think, oh, I'll leave it, walk away and just wait for five minutes. So actually that's quite a long 12 inch anyway, but probably haven't got five minutes left towards the end of the track. You've probably got more like two or three minutes. Anyway, as soon as the vocals finishes.

10:55 Any venue, any place, any age

Bung in an acapella of something else. Just, you know, you've got to try and open your mind and realise that a good DJ set isn't about playing track one and then playing the next track and then waiting for the end of the next track and bringing in the third track. A good set is about diversification. Now, the last set I'm going to talk about is something that a lot of DJs do. Yet they don't really know they're actually doing it, but you are. There's a big irony here and it's about mobile DJing because a good quality mobile DJ should not have to compile a set before the gig. They should be able to go to any venue, any place, any age group and go, I know what to play. Because a good quality mobile DJ will be able to play for the crowd

Every single genre. All of a sudden you've got an 18-year-old coming up, can you play some drum and bass? Yes I can. You'll have to wait a minute. I can't just put it straight on, you know, while I'm playing Madonna, but I can. So a good mobile DJ would be able to play like the likes of Madonna or Erasure and then maybe go into New Order Blue Monday and then maybe go into, I don't know, Little Louis French Kiss and when it goes... slows down, goes into some hip-hop and R&B, a bit of funk and then... Into drum and bass, because like I said earlier on, you're now in the realms of the broken beat hip-hop styley. Got a bunch of drum and bass on, and then you go fat maybe to techno, and then maybe some house music. Please don't play modern day Top 40. And then so on. So what I'm trying to say here is a lot of good notable... Notable? Noticeable DJ. Notable. I've just invented a new word, not.

A lot of good DJs out there that are known worldwide, they're able to play anything. They're able to play some classic house tracks, bung in some modern day stuff and before you know it, they're playing Madonna into the groove and the crowd are going bananas, alright? So I hope this has been a help. Now in a comment, let me know if this has helped you. In a comment, let me know if you already do this. Let me know in a comment if all of a sudden you've had a eureka moment and gone, my God, I'm never going to watch Ellaskins again. I'm going to take up needlework because he's an idiot. I don't mind because I know I am. Or am I? Or am I? You know. I don't know. Anyway. I hope this has been a help. If you do like the video, don't hit the thumbs up and don't forget to not subscribe. Thank you for watching. I hope that's confused you. It's confused me. Practice and enjoy. Thank you.

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