My Record Bag
How do you organize your music?
My record bag is always organized by exact speed, slowest at the front to fastest at the back. How do I do this? I time my records, not by BPM, but in Real Time. What is the difference you ask? Well, BPM is not fully accurate because a record timed at say 140 bpm, isnt necessarily going to have that 140th beat land at presicely 60.0 seconds. Therefore two records that are both 140 BPM can be off enough to still require time, attention and effort to match the beats. Realtime measures the exact time it takes for the beats of 16 bars to land. It can measure the temp of a song to one tenth or even one hundredth or more of a second, and is deadly accurate. How is this Done? Using a stopwatch start on the first beat of your record and then count the bars, so 1-2-3-4, 2-2-3-4, 3-2-3-4, etc....up to 16-2-3-4 then stop the clock on the 4th beat of that 16th bar. The result will be your timing in seconds for that track. It will be something like 27.1 or 27.0 (which is around 140 bpm) write it or stick it on your record and you are done.
Why do I do this? One reason is for organization as I said, my record bag goes slowest in the front to fastest in the back. This helps me to know quicker where to look for tracks depending on what tempo I feel like playing (I wont be looking through the prog to find the techno) The other reason is so that if I need to, I can mix in a record much faster than otherwise. For example, you are playing out in a busy crowded club, people are all around you, talking and buying you drinks, you are getting attention (hopefully from the ladies), you are having a blast and time is forgotten...suddenly you realize that your track is just about to end! You are facing sudden dead air (a mixing DJ's nightmare) or a total trainwreck, oh boy! In this situation most average DJ's are done for. In my case all I need is about 3 seconds to mix in the next record because I can pull up a track that is precisely the exact speed as the one playing. Really its just about being smart and prepared which will always make you a better DJ, and have more fun which is really why we all do it.
for all those who want REQUESTS...
Shot!!!
