6:47
Records chosen purely because they make you smile
On YouTube this video is called The Lounge Vol 5 Music that makes you want to smile
What this lesson teaches
Not a tutorial. A listening session, and it is in a selection course because listening is how selection is learned.
What it is
He occasionally does these - a chill-out set of older material, played for its own sake.
Three cuts here: Chanson, Don't Hold Back, 1978; Donald Byrd, Love Has Come Around, 1981; and one from 1982.
The two audiences
He names them, and the pairing is the point.
DJs who have been doing this for years, who will hear the first bar and remember.
New DJs, who should hear how it was - and that is the one that matters, because this material is not reaching them any other way.
The argument
Stated plainly: modern music is fantastic, and a great deal of it was sampled from this sort of stuff.
That is not a complaint. It is an instruction about where to look. If the records you play are built from samples, then the sources are the raw material of your own genre - and hearing them changes how you hear everything downstream.
You start recognising where a bassline came from, which producers borrowed from whom, and why certain combinations of modern records work: they are cousins, because they were cut from the same cloth.
Why a listening session is a lesson
Because taste is the part of this job nobody can teach you directly, and the only mechanism for developing it is hearing a great deal of music chosen by somebody whose judgement you have reason to trust.
That is what a lounge set is: a recommendation list with the records attached. The technique content is nil and the value is real.
How to use it
Do not watch it. Listen to it, and write down the names.
Then go and find them, and find what else those artists did, and what those labels released. Three records becomes thirty, and thirty becomes a part of your collection nobody else in the room has.
Contents of the video
0:00 I've got three cuts for you
Alright folks, it's Jonathan here. If you don't know me, I'm known as the DJ Tutor and occasionally what I do is something called The Lounge, whereby we have a bit of a chill-out session and I play tunes for the DJs out there who've been DJing for probably 6 million years and will think, yeah, I remember that cut, that's a bit of a cool one. And also I like to play them for the new DJs out there to show you exactly how it was back in the day a long time ago, okay? I've got three cuts for you. One from 1978, one from 1981 and the other one from 1982, alright? We'll kick off with an original cut from 1978 by Chanson, a track entitled Don't Hold Back. And I'll tell you what, this is an absolute monster, okay? Love it.
2:24 By Donald Bird
This is The Lounge and this is where we chill out. We'll chill out and play some serious, serious disco vibes. Seriously though folks, like I've always said, okay? All the modern day music is absolutely fantastic, but a lot of it was sampled from this sort of stuff from years ago. The next one is by Donald Bird. I mean seriously though, this is back in the day. Love has come around. It's the sounds of Mr Donald Bird. Seriously though, I just love the beginning of this. It's just so... I don't know, there's something about it. It's shiver up the spine material as well.
4:56 Next cut, what we're going to do, from 1982
Next cut, what we're going to do, from 1982. Okay. It's the sounds of raw silk, okay? I'm sure it's been sampled many, many times. It's entitled Do It To The Music, okay? And for all you disco heads out there, again, it's a tune to melt to, okay? By the way, this is Jonathan, known as the DJ Tutor. Just tell me now, alright, if you've got a few cuts and you'd like to spin them by yourself in your own room and share it with everybody else, then please do so, okay? These are The Lounge, alright? They're called The Lounge where we sort of chill out. Lights down low. Always got a glass of brandy or something like that. And this is where we play some seriously good cuts, okay? Keep it locked. Don't forget, practice and enjoy.
Yeah, glass of brandy and the occasional cup of tea as well, courtesy of my wife. Thank you very much, dear. And that was my son earlier on, you saw him, yeah? No time for criticising, hypnotising, church-vising. So get down.
When you're moving, when you're really got your body, you're not faking.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
