If house is your thing, watch this DJ

**steveryan** · 02-11-2018, 11:52 PM

I'm posting this video for a couple reasons. First off, I love his stuff and I saw him play live many times back in the early 90's when I was a young DJ. I had always wondered just exactly how he and many others were handling their mixers. Well, with videos like this, we can actually see everything he's doing. If you've ever wondered if you're doing enough, this video might answer the question. I think there's a lot to be learned from watching Sneak in this live "90's vinyl" set.

He's constantly making adjustments to something. The hands are never still. He's doing all sorts of stuff to make the blending seamless, and anytime he thinks the energy might be falling off a little bit, he brings the record back up to hold it together. Sometimes he makes adjustments he doesn't like, so he just moves em back. Also, he's not just letting the songs play out. He's bringing the next track up quickly a lot of the time. Where my tendency was always to let them play at least 75% of the way through, he is not. He maintains stable energy the entire time by mixing like-to-like records with not much patience. While the elements of the songs are not identical, they're in the same family: strong bass kick with rich saturation on the mids and highs. I think that's really important to note here. He maintains the energy by selecting the right tracks. The only time he veers from this is around the 32 min mark, but the next track goes right back to it.

Also, notice that he's not Mr Technical when it comes to beat matching, which really shows that you don't have to be. You just have to keep the whole notes in tight proximity of each other and dedicate an ear to one record to track which direction it's passing. He does this a lot and adjusts the BPM back and forth as it's passing through. No need for perfection; just close attention. Hope you enjoy it as much as me.