Mike’s Gig in Phoenix
Phoenix, AZ is spectacular place to play. I’ve played there 3 times now, and each time its been awesome. This was without a doubt one of the best gigs I’ve had in years, and is certainly top 5 all time. Here is the story of what went down in the desert.
I spend Saturday morning practicing and reviewing my controller set up, followed by some packing and then it’s off to Palm Beach Int’l Airport. I get there a little early because trying to get through security with a DJ setup it typically not easy. I find a cool looking TSA guys and when he looks at the bag, I tell him he might as well just take it off the conveyer belt now. He looks in and instantly says “are you a DJ”? He then asks me if I like David Guetta [which I don’t] so I just mention he’s been very successful, collect my bag and go. Easiest security screening ever. With time to kill I grab a beer and jot some notes in my DJ diary.
After a layover in Austin, TX, I make it to PHX. This airport is basically 4 airports in 1 and finding someone is always a challenge. One of the local DJs, a cool dude named Nick who goes by Skeltaboy, picks me up and we head to the venue. Unlike previous trips, in which we drove up into mountains then out into the desert, this time the party is in a warehouse district fairly close to the airport. As we pull up, I notice some seriously long lines. I ask Nick how many people they are expecting and he replies “about 2000 to 2500”. I knew right then and there I was in for one serious evening.
I find the VIP area, change, stash my equipment, and head out. The sound is quality, lighting is very good, and the stage is real nice. I wander and check out some local DJ sets. It’s early, but already the party is in full swing. Out front, the lines have grown quite large. At some point the main room gets so crowded and you can move, at all. Pushing doesn’t even help. I have to sneak out a back exit, walk around the block and re-enter through the main gate to get back to the VIP area. Meanwhile the line out front… still huge. I decide its best to stay in the VIP room for a while. I hang out with the ArcAttack boys, and then have a beer with Showtek [the popular dutch hard dance act]. We all b/s and talk shop. The venue owner was in and out as well, and let me say this: he’s the coolest venue owner I’ve ever met.
As the evening progresses, it’s getting to be time for the Charles to take the stage. The place is now so packed and wild that 2 security staff have to be called to escort me to the stage. DJ D-Lyte it banging some serious NRG style 150 bpm stuff, and I’m not sure how I’m gonna get down to 130 BPM electro. Mike Saga has the mic so I tell he, let the track play out and ask the crowd if they like electro. They bite. They are so amped up I think they might have cheered for an Irish Polka. Either way I have my in and we go straight into some heavy electro.
Several times early I come out from behind the decks and amp these people up. I’m slapping hand with everyone behind the barricade like some sort of rock star, and we really start to connect. I feed off the energy and we have some serious fun, with some great tunes that are not at all what they expect. I’m happy I was able to win over a hard dance crowd early, or it could have been a long night. On a couple occasions I try to hand out stickers but there are so many people, I end up just chucking them out into the crowd. After the night was over, none were on the floor.
At some point, my beats attract the full compliment of go –go dancers to the stage. They are great eye candy, and the crowd is rockin’. A staff member ask me if I want to clear a few of the girls off b/c the crowd can barely see me and I reply “No way, they’re a lot better looking than I am” and besides the current arrangement appears to working out just fine.
Now I was supposed to play Dubstep as well, but I really wasn’t focused on that at the time. A cute little dance come up to me and says “don’t you have some Dubstep?” and I say of course I do. I set up a mix, loop it, and lower the volume. I grab the mic and as the crowd about a rumor I head that they like Dubstep. The deafening roar of a response tells me they like it. I un-loop and drop into dub. It goes over very well and not a single person has left, despite this being the final set of the evening. When we do finally finish, I get a huge applause and I have that indescribable feeling that I’ve been chasing for years, and only experience very rarely. It’s the best feeling I’ve ever felt, the audience’s satisfaction with my performance is overwhelming.
I barely sleep because my body does know the time zone difference, but the next day I hang with the promoters and other headliners. It was a great way to chill and decompress, and crack jokes about the English, Welsh, and Americans. I have to give props to TMC for putting together a spectacular show. Special thanks goes out to GREM and Faye for bring me out, turning me lose on their crowd, and taking good care of their DJs. I hope to be back out west soon.
A&H Xone 2D Drivers Updated!
This one may save you a headache if you use any of Allen & Heath’s Xone Midi Controllers.
Any of you who care know that I use an A&H Xone 2D as my primary Traktor Pro controller with great effect. In preparing for my AZ gig next week, I’ve been refining the midi map in Traktor. In long practice sessions, TP would stop recognizing the midi controller and quitting TP would cause a kernel panic in OS X. As I’m sure you can imagine, this concerned me greatly with a big gig coming up next week. I first updated TP to the latest 1.2.4 version, which did not help. I realized that 3 weeks ago I upgraded to 10.6 Snow Leopard so I decided to check out the Xone website and sure enough, there are new drivers for 10.6.
Removing the old drivers and replacing with the new ones appears to have rectified the situation. Also FYI for those of you still using the borg OS, there appear to be new Windows 7 drivers as well.
iTunes Power Tips #4
So I haven’t been blogging that much lately, and I’m sorry for that. I’ve been real busy planning this move to Florida.
Anyway, two weeks ago I wrote part 4 of my iTunes series for DJ Tech Tools. Its about using the new smart playlist features introduced in iTunes 9 to make your playlists even smarter. Check it out here.
Q&A: Mike’s iTunes Workflow
The Question:
Hey Mike,
First off – thank you so much for your well detailed explanation of how you organize your music on djtechtools. I am going to re-do all my music and incorporate your technique. I have a couple of questions..
1) Once you tag all your songs with the proper genre and sub-genre, are they then placed in a folder with the same genre name? Like on House – Electro would then be placed in its own folder or would you just keep that all in a house folder and let iTunes sort it out in its smart playlists…
2) Once you have all your playlists and smart playlists set and you buy new music – do you then first place them in the proper folder on your computer and then just click on it so it plays in iTunes and then iTunes will sort them to their appropriate playlist? I dj many genres and on any given week ill have different types of house songs and hip hop songs newly added to my computer – where do u place them on your computer and then how do you transfer them to your itunes.?
Thank you for taking the time out to help… Im so confused and need to get my music collection in order.
Glad you liked them. Managing a digital record collection can be a real pain in the ass if you don’t organize up front. I couldn’t find anything out there to help, so I learned for myself and then wrote about it. Using the smart playlists & good tags, you can organize just about anyway you like. Anyway, let me try to answer your questions.
1. Personally, I will just have one folder for house. That folder will contain electro house, progressive house… you get the idea. You could have sub-folders for every sub-genre, but I find it unnecessary b/c all of my digital “crates” are driven by iTunes playlists, not folders. If I need to find a track in a hurry, I fire up iTunes, search for the track, right click it and choose “show in finder”. This automatically open up the folder containing the track and selects the track. I think iTunes has a similar function on PCs, but I’m not sure cause I’m all Mac.
2. Here is how I add new music to my iTunes library step by step:
A: Gather up new music in a folder on my desktop.
B: Select all, drag into iTunes.
C: Edit all tags with proper formatting.
D: Remove new tracks from iTunes**
E: Use iTag to rename the new tracks based on tagged Artist – Track Name.
F: Put new tracks into correct genre folders.
G: Drag new tracks back into iTunes.
H: Rate the new tracks [e.g. 1 to 5 stars]
I: Sit back and enjoy, because the smart playlists pick up the new tracks all by themselves.
** The reason I remove the tracks from iTunes after tagging them is because of a bug in Traktor Pro. If I kept the tracks in iTunes, but change the file names or move to a different folder then TP won’t be able to “find” the track to play it.
FYI: In case any missed any portion of my 3 part series on iTunes for DJing that i worte for DJ Tech Tools, here are the links:
If you DJ with a Mac, I highly suggest you check out this article that I wrote for DJ Tech Tools about optimizing your mac and using Automator to do it with one click.
MixVibes Cross Review
French company Mixvibes sent me a copy of there most recent product, and I reviewed it for DJ Tech Tools. You can check out the review here.
DJ Bites Headphones in Half!
On Saturday, April 25th, 2009 Room 960 in Hartford, CT played host to the annual club event known as the White Party. For one night, club-goers get dressed in white from head to toe and gather to dance to the music of Randy Boyer, Kristina Sky, and Mike Charles. Mike kicked off the night with a 2 1/2 hour set that slowly rose to a boil, before cooling to a simmer and handing the decks off to Mr. Boyer. It was during the boiling point of his set that madman Mike Charles chose to further instigate the already anxious dancefloor by biting his headphones in half [pictured above] right at the peak of one of his signature house tracks. The crowd responded with frenzied excitement after witnessing the sacrifice to the dance gods and the tone was set for evening. Mike had to finish his set using Randy’s headphones which met a much more humane end. After the night had ended Randy headphones were released back into the wild.
It figures that I just posted a list of my DJ gear last week. Here is what basically happened. I bought a pair of Denon DN-HP 1000 headphones for $150 about 15 or 16 months ago [remember that number for later] to replace a set of old worn out Sony MDR-V700 headphones. After years of use, the Sony’s were starting to crack and the sound quality was deteriorating.
Shortly after I got the Denon’s there was a problem with the wire near the plug and I would have to wiggle it to get sound in both ear cups. I found a good spot in the connection and then electrical taped the sh*t out of it to hold the wire in place. Problem averted, but unfortunately it was only the first of many. Read on to find out what else happened, see more pictures, and find out what Denon told me when I contacted them.
Q&A: Mike Charles DJ Set Up
I get asked this question a lot:
What equipment do you use in your DJ sets?
Or some variation of that. Currently my DJ setup consists of the following:
This setup has been road tested for a while now and works well for me. The padKontrol is a new addition that I’m still trying to figure out how to incorporate. If anyone has any suggestions, make a comment. The DJM 600 is my mixer at home, and on the road I don’t always have the good fortune of playing on something from the DJM series, but its no biggie. I just take the line outs on the Xone 2D and run them to two line inputs on the whatever mixer I’m playing on. I’ve been using Traktor Pro since it first came out in November 2008 and subsequently sold my serato set up on eBay.
As for incidentals, it is well documented that I use iTunes to catalogue and organize my music collection. I travel with everything pack up in a UDG backpack. I record my DJ sets using Audio Hijack Pro, a simple easy software that only takes me two clicks to record a set.
FYI on the backpack, UDG makes some great bags but the zipper pulls on this bag suck. Everyone has broken off and I’ve replaced them all with improvised zipper pulls made out of 550 cord. FYI on the headphones, they are great cans, put out great sound, but like most DJ headphones, they break. The size adjustment slider on on side cracked pretty bad so I just taped it closed with duct tape. The slider on the other side still works, so I’m good. Still, the search for a durable set of headphones continues.
Old DJs, New Tricks
A friend of mine emailed me the other day and asked me this:
I was wondering if you might be able to throw some suggestions my way. I’ve been wanting to get back into the swing of spinning, mostly just for me cuz I miss the music. The problem is my equipment is old and everyone seems to be making the transition to mp3 mixing. Is there any way to jump back into this…?
So responded with this advice:
I went digital about a 1 1/2 years ago. I hated CDs and vinyl is on life support. My setup now is a macbook pro and a midi controller. I then route the output to a mixer, and still use the mixer in a traditional sense. I use Traktor Pro. I used to use Serato, but sold it and went with an all midi set up. If you’ve got tables, a mixer, and a computer already, the Serato is the most painless way to easy into the digital age, cause you still spin vinyl or cds, just with the laptop involved now. Other stuff pretty much changes the game all together, and you start yo have to rethink DJing in general because what you can and can’t do changes the way you’d approach DJing. If you use Traktor Pro or Ableton live, you don’t have to beatmatch anymore… but a whole new realm of loops and effect are opened up.
I would say if you want to ease in and not reinvent the game, go with serato. A new box for serato just came out so the old ones should start to be pretty cheap on ebay. If you want to jump head long into the digital age. check out Traktor Pro or Ableton Live.