Lockdown restrictions seem to be a thing of the past. How nice is it to be able to say that? We are back doing what we love after just short of two years, a period that gave us time to review how we operate and to become more efficient. So, how well founded were your plans and what fruits have they borne?

Mine was to work on my music library, which is now uniform across Serato, Rekordbox, and Virtual DJ. Those who know me or have seen me working know that I like to mix my sets; I’m not known as someone who plays an endless house beat.

I am a vocal DJ, a retro DJ, or, as I was told by a sound tech last weekend, a “generational DJ” which I guess is code for old. My sets are generally seen as party sets and I have an interactive, call-and-response style. It is how I’ve always worked and how I made my reputation – a party DJ that beat mixes.

When I started DJing in this style, it set me apart from most others (and it was a long time ago!). There’s a downside, though. Constantly thinking of where I’m taking my audience on this musical journey, thinking of what will work, what won’t work, how to mix into the current track. It all pointed to one DJ pose: head down in the mix. This didn’t sit well with me – how do you engage a crowd if you aren’t looking at them?

The advent of digital DJing really helped. I was able to make my own edits and my own intro versions using 12” versions, but these were often clunky. Serato Flip really helped, as it enabled me to do live edits based on pre-programmed points on the fly. However, this is time consuming, and like many others, the pandemic meant I had to start a new career to allow me to pay the mortgage.

Then I discovered DJ Beats from Mastermix, which was a real game changer; radio edits with 16-bar intros that include a tease of the upcoming track, coupled with a similar outro. No more editing, less Serato Flip, just the work done for you, making mixing easier. Suddenly my sets got smoother and, more importantly, I’m now able to engage with my audience rather than staring at my CDJs or controller.

Of course, there are other options. For instance, for one client I work with music videos and use WeMix intro version videos. Whilst these don’t have the tease in the introduction, they are equally effective and work well when adding a visual element to my audio soundscape. As with DJ Beats, my head is up and I’m engaging with my audience.
There are other legal music sources for intro and outro versions, so it’s worth checking to see if your usual provider can include these.

How easy is it to switch from using standard edits to DJ-friendly ones? This is where I went a bit Blue Peter during lockdown. I got involved with online broadcasting during the unwelcome break and I took the opportunity to play a set that was completely unplanned, beat-mixing 60 tracks in 60 minutes using my new collections.