Daniel Sokolovskiy’s Blog: posts tagged Pioneer

Insta DJ

Fri, 18 Oct 2019 14:06:00 +0100

A good documentary from Pioneers about the impact of social media on DJs and the industry. I liked the fact that the view is not one-sided, but both pros and cons are expressed.

I tend to lean more towards the “everything is good in moderation” approach: if a DJ spends every minute of his free time on social networks, something has gone wrong; if people on the dance floor don’t let their phones out of their hands, something is all the more wrong.

I’ll leave these quotes from the film here:

‘Being at the clubs for a moment itself is all about being amazed by the music, feeling the atmosphere, meeting other people who feel the same as you do about the tracks being played. As soon as you pull your phone out, you lose all of it, you lose the essence of the reason why you’re there.’

There’s definitely a danger that we’re losing human connectivity as a result of living through our screens. When you used to go to a club, it was about the music but it was also about meeting people. And now it’s about the music and taking photos of that music and posting it in real-time and not about people around you. And I think we’re all missing some of the magic of the moment because of it.’//

Highly recommend watching the whole thing.

How I prepare my DJ playlists

Sun, 19 May 2019 09:29:13 +0100

Organising playlists by energy levels, vibe, and flow

It would be interesting to know how you prepare your DJ sets, how you decide which track will be mixed well with the previous one, how on stage you choose such tracks that were not included in your planned tracklist, etc.

Vlad Zabolotsky

How to organize your music collection in order to quickly pick the right track at the right moment out of tons of material?

Dj Nerva

Preparing for the performance includes a lot of things: negotiating with the promoter, visiting the venue (when possible), agreeing on a technical and domestic rider, researching the lineup and communicating with other artists, thinking through and launching an advertising campaign, recording a video invitation or a promo mix, working on social media and much more. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about it, but today is all about the “creative” part, the music.

I don’t think of DJ as a creative profession, hence this word is quoted. I’ll write my thoughts on this later

Vlad, to answer the question of how I decide which track will be mixed well with the previous one, I have to explain the structure of my DJ collection first. A similar question was sent by Dj Nerva, so I will combine them into one.

Rekordbox and playlists

DJs play on various media, apps, and gear: laptops, disks, flash drives, vinyl, smartphones; on Pioneers, in Ableton, Traktor, Serato, and many more options. Speaking of myself, I use three things: Recordbox, USB sticks, and Pioneer media players.

On audio formats support

Here is how it works. First, I add music to Rekordbox on my laptop. Then I carefully tag the tracks so that they are automatically distributed among the ‘intelligent’ playlists, and sync these playlists to the USB sticks. Then in the DJ booth, I connect my USB sticks to the Pioneer players, and inside I see all the playlists exactly as I structured them on my laptop back home. And this is the key moment because thanks to these playlists I can easily find that very track I want to play next within a few seconds.

Now I’ll tell you about the key playlists that make up the structure of my collection.

Energy levels

First of all, after adding tracks to Recordbox, I assign them the energy level. This is the main criterion. The most important thing here is that the level of energy is how I feel the tracks and not a formal thing like the tempo or anything like that.

How DJs usually do

Here I want to make a little detour and tell how DJs usually do. Most DJs pre-select the required amount of tracks in advance and arrange them in the order in which they plan to play. So that is complete predestination. Of course, such pre-planned sets can sound great at home, but they might be completely inappropriate on the dancefloor.

It may seem that only newcomer DJs do this, but no: even those who have been performing for more than a decade are doing this, so it’s really common. Some DJs even record the whole mixes in advance and during the performance they basically fake, but this is just so wrong so I won’t even discuss it.

More proficient DJs don’t prepare sets in advance in such a way but select tracks right during the set looking at the crowd in front of them. Most often, they use tempo as a plain simple criterion for choosing the next track.

So it turns out about the following. Let’s assume the following track is playing on the dancefloor:

Dylhen, Paul Thomas — Diablo (Original Mix) 122 BPM, Em

A DJ thinks: “Aha, 122 BPM. The dancefloor is going on well, everything is fine, let’s not slow down the pace.” He is looking for the next track in his digital library of hundreds of tracks, scrolling and scrolling that rotary knob, and he finds this — a track in the same key and even two BPM faster:

R3cycle, Roy Lebens — Babylon (Rise & Fall Remix) 124 BPM, Em

Obviously, the energy on the dancefloor went down; people going out. Lowering the energy during a set down is fine if you know why you are doing this. But if the DJ from the example above wanted to keep the driving vibe, then this is a failure.

Or here’s the opposite example. Suppose a DJ is playing such melodic progressive:

Tim Penner — Oceans Between (Original Mix) 125 BPM, Gm

He does not want to speed up the tempo, so he finds the track in the same key and even one BPM lower, and in addition also from the same record label:

Aaron Cullen, Tommy Conway — Glack (Original Mix) 124 BPM, Gm

Do you get it?

It is clear that the energy is partially correlated with the genre, and as a result — with the tempo. However the relationship of energy level and the tempo is not always that obvious, and it is not always predictably linear.

This is why relying simply on the tempo of the tracks and thus mechanically selecting the next track for mixing is clearly not worth it, and hence I organise my tracks by the energy levels instead.

So, now going back to the energy levels I use in my Rekordbox. In total, I make five levels:

★	Opening
★★	Build-up
★★★	Driving
★★★★	Peak-time
★★★★★	Banging

Experienced guys might have noticed that these names resemble a type or time slot of a DJ set: opening, warming, “peak-time” and so on. Indeed, speaking of the energy level, I immediately think about the scenarios for using a particular track. In other words, I ask myself: “At what point of the event would it be appropriate to play that particular track?”.

For example, I can easily put a driving track in the middle of a warming-up set if I realise that I need to cheer up the dance floor a bit, or vice versa – put a warming-up track in the middle of the night, if I decide to give the crowd a little rest.

energy level is how I feel the track

Update from February 2024

I’m now sharing my entire DJ collection and all of its 80+ live-updating playlists as one of the exclusive benefits for my Patreon subscribers. It’s a great material for learning and inspiration to see how I organise my playlists, a real behind-the-scenes peek into the mind of a DJ. If it sounds interesting to you and want to get access to it, consider joining me on Patreon (and have many more goodies besides this DJ collection). For more details, visit dsokolovskiy.com/patreon.

Inside the energy level playlist, I make four more sub-playlists nested according to what I call vibe and the flow:

Dark Hands-up

Dark Heads-down

Melodic Hands-up

Melodic Heads-down

And here the most interesting part begins.

The vibe

“Dark” and “melodic” are more or less intuitive terms, although the names are very nominal. This is the emotional ‘colour’, the mood of the track.

First, a couple of obvious examples. Here is the “melodic” — think of rainbow, butterflies, flower meadow:

Ivan Nikusev, Platunoff — Aura (Original Mix) 121 BPM, Cm

And here’s the “dark” — twilight, anxiety, hypnotism:

Don Argento, Paul Angelo — Final Sentiment (Alfonso Muchacho Remix) 122 BPM, Cm

Please note that these tracks even have the same key, but how different their mood is.

But there is also a less perceptible difference. This is especially true for Techno, where a pronounced musical part is not always present.

Listen to this:

Section One — Arcadia (Roby M Rage Remix) 132 BPM, Gm

Is it “dark” or “melodic”? Someone can say, “what are you talking about, there are just a kick, bass, and hi-hats, how can you understand anything?”. For me, the answer is clear: if while listening to the track I’m smiling like an idiot, then this is “melodic”.

Now listen to this track. I specifically chose a similar style and even the same artist to shift the focus of attention only to the vibe:

K-Hate, Roby M Rage — Floating (Original Mix) 130 BPM, Am

To me, this track is colder and more aggressive, hence clearly “dark”. And if you think there’s not much of a difference when listening at home, there is a huge difference on the dancefloor.

The flow

“Hands-up” and “heads-down” are pretty unique entities, and I didn’t see anyone using these terms for their music libraries.

To me, this is all about the structure of the tracks: build-ups, breakdowns, pitch-rising effects, big drops, climax etc. In other words, how the tracks flow.

If the track goes smoothly, and you can just dance and keep dancing without being distracted by the breaks and big drops every minute or so, then this is the “heads-down”. In a sense, we can say that the heads-down tracks are more monotonous. This is not very accurate, but sufficient for a general understanding.

What is Progressive

If there are constantly some breaks, new leads, intense breakdowns and all those big things where people literally put their hands up, literally, then it’s “hands-up”.

Below are a few examples:

Filterheadz — Synergy (Sisko Electrofanatik Remix) 128 BPM, Fm

Pay attention to the breakdown in the middle and drop at 1:30. This is “hands-up”.

Another example:

Proff — What It Feels Like (Original Mix) 127 BPM, Dm

You probably realised by now that this is “hands-up” too.

From the two examples above it may seem that the hands-up is always something melodic and cheesy. But for the vibe, we have another criterion, and here we are talking only about the structure. Just both of these tracks are “melodic hands-up.”

Here is another “hands-up”, but this time it’s “dark”:

Dylhen — The Upside Down (Extended Mix) 124 BPM, Fm

And now let’s take a listen to “heads-down”, for contrast:

Chris Sterio — Zen (Matter Remix) 121 BPM, Fm

Can you feel how much smoother this track is?

If it seems to you that heads-down is necessarily something slow and deep, here’s a driving Psytrance example:

Sonic Species — Smashing The Veil (Original Mix) 142 BPM, A#m

Note how this track just is going and going without interruption, you can close your eyes and just dance without the breakdowns.

Speaking of breakdowns, listen to this track:

Union Jack — Cactus (Jonno Brien Remix) 125 BPM, F#m

Here the breakdown is stretched for a minute and a half, but notice how smooth and even monotonous it is, again, if we compare it to breakdowns in the hands-up tracks.

Therefore, knowing the energy level, the vibe, and the flow of the track, I can fully control the direction of the set. And thanks to the playlists, I know exactly where the next track is. This classification of all the tracks and new arrivals in my media library is the main work on the preparation of my DJ sets.

On audio formats support and DJs

Sun, 03 Jun 2018 08:01:45 +0100

CDJ-2000NXS2 plays everything on anything, but you probably won’t see this player on every venue

I’m wondering, do DJs play MP3s? As far as I know, there aren’t many models that support FLAC or WAV?

Is there any point in playing music with a higher bitrate than 320kbps? Does it make a difference at all? Or it’s up to the gear?

Sergey Khivuk

Sergey, let’s go through your questions and statements in order. At first, we go on the formats support, then what DJs play, and then about the bitrate.

Audio formats support

Let’s find out what DJ players support WAV. To do so, just go to the PioneerDJ official website and look at each model’s specs.

Pioneer.com

I’ll put it here at a glance and also add archived products as some of them still might be used at some venues:

Model	Plays	Sources
CDJ-2000NXS2	MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC, FLAC, ALAC	USB, CD, SD, Mac, Win, iOS, Android
CDJ-2000NXS	MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC	USB, CD, SD, Mac, Win, iOS, Android
CDJ-2000	MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC	USB, CD, SD, Mac, Win
XDJ-1000MK2	MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC, FLAC, ALAC	USB, Mac, Win, iOS, Android
XDJ-1000	MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC	USB, Mac, Win, iOS, Android
CDJ-1000MK3	MP3, CDA	CD
CDJ-1000MK2	CDA	CD
CDJ-1000	CDA	CD
CDJ-900NXS	MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC	USB, CD, Mac, Win, iOS, Android
CDJ-900	MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC	CD
CDJ-850	MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC	USB, CD
CDJ-800MK2	MP3, CDA	CD
CDJ-800	CDA	CD
XDJ-700	MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC	USB, Mac, Win, iOS, Android
CDJ-400	MP3, CDA	USB, CD
CDJ-350	MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC	USB, CD
CDJ-100S	CDA	CD

We can make two conclusions by looking at that table.

First, you shouldn’t really worry about WAV support: even among the archive lineup, only three models playback MP3 by doesn’t support WAV: CDJ-1000MK3, CDJ-800MK2, and CDJ-400. All the rest are either newer hence and support several file formats, either older and hence playback audio CDs only.

Second, your audio source of choice is what you should be aware of the most. Let’s say all your music is on SD cards, but there are no CDJ-2000s at the venue, you screwed. Or if you have all your music on a flash drive, but there are CDJ-1000s in the club, you screwed too. Or if you have all your music on CDs, but at the venue you see any model of the XDJ range, you screwed again.

always have your music on several media sources

A simple rule that every professional DJ should know about: always have a backup. Even if you have CDJ-2000NSX2 in your tech rider and the promoter said it’s no problem, still bring some alternative media source which you could quickly plug and play in case some shit happens. And yeah, shit happens!

What format DJs play

I’d like to make a serious face and say, “all DJs play WAVs only for sure” or “the majority of DJs play MP3s”, but the truth is, I don’t know. Seriously, I don’t have such data, and pointing out a random fact is not what I consider right.

I can, however, speak for myself. Personally, I prefer AIF: it has the exact same sound quality as WAV but supports extra ID3 tags and a cover artwork — which is very handy when dealing with a large media library or browsing tracks on a DJ player’s display.

I do use MP3 too, but more like an exception for bootlegs, promos and all that kind of unofficial music.

Is it worth using WAV

In short, the answer is yes. Uncompressed audio obviously better than its compressed comrades, and if you want to go deeper in tech and nerdy stuff, read articles on one of trustworthy sources like Sound On Sound magazine.

What Data Compression Does To Your Music. Sound On Sound, 2012

But I’d like to talk about something different.

You see, the audible sound quality is a very tricky thing, especially in clubs and larger venues: the sound goes through a lot of processing before reaching our ears, and it’s very easy to mess it up on every stage it passes through.

For example, if a DJ plays 192 kbps MP3s, the sound will be shitty despite the top-class PA system. Or if a DJ screw the gain control on the mixer and plays in the red zone, the sound will be shitty again despite the audio engineer’s efforts.

And it works the other way around as well. For example, if a drunk sound guy messes up the PA equalization and calibration, the sound will be shitty even with a professional DJ playing lossless formats. Or if a greedy promoter saves some money on the gear rent and puts the “100s” CDJs in the DJ booth. Or if a venue has no proofing whatsoever. And so on.

good sound at a party is the result of teamwork

The point is, making a good sound at a party is teamwork that relies on many people and things involved. Now, answering your question on whether it’s worth using WAVs, I think it’s up to a DJ whether he wants to work as a team and ensure the best sound quality. To me, the answer is obvious.