Last year, I DJed at a friend's party and made a couple of DJ Promos to commemorate and practice for the occassion. Both of those are available on Soundcloud, and I wrote a post about them: October 14th.

With 2 months spacing my two previous mixes apart, I figured that I would continue to make a new promo every 2 months. That fell through when I didn't have internet for 3 months and wanted to download and use some new favorites, rather than the stuff I already had downloaded. And then I got a new laptop, and had to reinstall and transfer things over to that. And I was playing Skyrim every day for 6 hours in the month of December, too.

So, I skipped December, and here we are in February :)

DyreSchlock 003 by dyreschlock

gdocs / Dyreschlock 003.mp3

1. Trentmoller - Shades of Marble (Trentmoller Remix)
2. Booka Shade - Teenage Spaceman (Sei A Bass Remix)
3. Guy Gerber - Timing (Denis Kayron Dirty Hands Remix)
4. Extrawelt - Titelheld
5. Fergie - PCP (King Unique Remix)
6. Henry Saiz & Guy J - Meridian (Original Mix)
7. Ian O'Donovan - Aurora Borealis (Henry Saiz 70's Remix)
8. Max Cooper - Heresy (Dosem Remix)
9. Spooky - Belong (Igor Cold Unofficial Remix)
10. Slacker - Hymn to Her (Lank Bootleg)

There were some clear cut songs I wanted to include in this mix. I wanted to end on Spooky - Belong, and I wanted to start with Shades of Marble (Trentmoller Remix). Almost everything in between came from experimenting with other tracks, and just seeing what worked together. Originally, I wanted to end on Orbital's new track "Never", but in its current 3 minute state, it is a difficult one to mix into.

I added Slacker - Hymn to Her at the end as a farewell to DJ Slacker, who passed away in Thailand a couple weeks ago. I wasn't super familiar with his work, but after listening to some of his tracks, I guess I knew him a little better than I thought. I remember hearing his music from sets back in the day, and occassionally at The Quest in Minneapolis. Hymn to Her is definitely my favorite and most recognizable of his, and I found a nice cut of it on Lank's Soundcloud.

My initial impressions with this mix were a little negative. It didn't feel like it had an overall message, and it was just a bunch of tracks kind of thrown together. But as I listen to the results over and over again, I think it turned out pretty well. I think all the tracks at the beginning flow pretty well, and everything leads up to Henry Saiz's monster remix of Aurora Borealis.

Give it a listen, and let me know what you think :)

My goal is to continue making these mixes every 2 months.  Whether it be tracks I hear in the next two months, or some more favorites from years past, I plan on putting something together.

For me, mixing tracks (or attempting to mix tracks) is a good way of actually feeling how the music actually works with each other, rather than just listening to a single track on its own. I'm not a DJ, nor do I really claim to be, so I don't really think about music in this way right off the bat. I might think that two songs sound good together, but in practice they might not jive at all.

When I'm mixing these tracks together, I'm not doing anything fancy. I'm really just using the cross fader, and letting the songs naturally mix together. It's a pretty basic way to do things, and I'm doing it this way because I'm not familar enough with DJ software to do otherwise. I'm really just sequencing tracks, rather than mixing them together.

But it forces me to make good decisions, and promote a natural layered flow through the mix. So far so good.