We have a late edition of Fan Fridays — Dj Chris Cham mixing and party rocking @ the Standard.  He’s sporting our Paired Down Tee shirt right from our apparel collection.  He’s provided a playlist from his live mix.  Feel free to send us pictures and your playlist as well!

Tracklist:
David Guetta feat Snoop Dogg, Lil Jon and Fatman Scoop – Wet (DJ Beatmaster Summerbomb)
Ian Carey feat Snoop Dogg & Bobby Anthony – Last Night (R3hab Remix)
Laidback Luke & Steve Aoki feat Lil Jon vs Rednex – Cotton Eye Turbulence (Dada Life Mash)
Sidney Samson vs Tara McDonald – Dynamite (Nicky Romero Remix)
Chuckie & Klosman feat Promiseland vs Greg&Roog – Twisted Mutfakta (Dani Veiga in the Air Mashup)
Tiesto – Maximal Crazy (Original Mix)
Missy Elliot – Get ur Freak On (Alvaro & Punish Moombahton Bootleg)
Dillon Francis & Dave Nada – Brazzer’s Theme (Munchi’s Fuck remix)
Chuckie & Groovematic – Move it 2 the Drum (Groovematic Moombahton Edit)
Rednek – Game Over (Calvertron Remix)
3LAU – Dubsex (Skrillex & Nero feat. Britney vs Daft Punk vs Posner vs Amanda)
Kelly Rowland w/Lil Wayne – Motivation (Diplo Remix)
Chris Brown – Look at Me Now feat Lil Wayne & Busta Rymes w/ Look at me now (Gusto remix)
Chelley – Took the Night (Alvaro Remix)
Alexandra Stan – Mr. Saxobeat (Jay Amato Elektro Mix 2011)
Jay-Z ft. Pharrell – Give It to Me (Kid Kaio Remix)
Afrojack – Polkadots 2010 (Oliver Twizt Remix)
Afrojack – Vancouver (Original Mix)
Hyper Crush – Fingers Up
Chuckie & Gregor Salto – What Happens in Vegas (Club Mix)
Duck Sauce vs Darth and Vader – Charlie Sheen (Mike Teez Dirty Remix)
Ellie Goulding – Lights (HLM Remix)
Marco V – Unprepared (Marcel Woods Remix)
Daft Punk – One More Technologic (Alex Todd Bootleg)
Tiesto – Slumber (Original)
Fedde le Grand vs Daft Punk – Metrum Rock (Chris Cham’s Robotic Mash)
Congorock – Babylon (Dub Mix)
Flash Vegas vs LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem Mush Mush
Lil Jon & Diplo VS Jump Smokers – Fuck the Club up
DiBella – The Cinema of Valentina (Alesso, Dune, Benny Benassi , Journey, Lady Gaga)

http://soundcloud.com/rockdicasbah/chris-cham-live-the-standard

Cinema Skrillex Edition

Time for us to get into dubstep clothing? Several fans have asked about dubstep influenced designs for our shirts so maybe we’ll take it back to the lab and look into it.

Ableton is one of my favorite new software products. This is a intro edition for the newbie producer that will get him/her off to a quick start for making and producing music. It will take about a good year to start producing to really learn, master and start producing good decent music before you can upgrade to the full professional version. I’ve played with this edition and it’s more than enough to satisfy a beginner producer’s appetite.

Ahh, the laptop stand. For someone who has no idea what a DJ Laptop stand is, it looks like a silly, illogical piece of metal that holds up a laptop. For performing DJ’s, this amazing piece of construction make it 1000x easier to DJ while watching the crowd and operating the equipment. The DJ stand, unless he/she already has one, is a must have for any DJ looking to get good at the craft.

Novation came out with these “dicers” several years ago and act as midi controllers that fit onto any DJ setup and compatible with any DJ software. These dicers make a great addition to a DJ’s repertoire when it comes to mixing and mashing up music quickly and elegantly on the dance floor. I really like how the dicers fit into the setup comfortably without having to go above and beyond to access it

You’re wondering, what is a banana stand doing in a dj gift list??  This is one of my favorites — a banana stand used as a headphone stand! It’s amazing, take a look at the reviews and see the great ratings that everybody gives it. It goes to show creative uses for normal everyday products, even a banana holder can find value in a DJ’s gear box.

No DJ, and I make a very important point here, NO DJ can ever have enough usb sticks. I have about 10 and I either have given them to people to borrow (never to be seen again) or have filled all of them with a load of music ready to be played at an event. I can’t imagine any DJ traveling without a USB stick or external USB drive. I’ve specifically chosen the 64 GB usb stick because its got tons of space and DJ’s will always tell you they never have enough space. I bought a 1TB (that’s 1,000 GB, or 1,000,000 MB) and it’s almost full!! Ridiculous! Get your DJ at 64 GB usb stick and they’ll be very thankful.

Don’t tell anybody but I bought a bunch of these speakers because after I heard them once, I was just amazed at how loud they actually were. My first impressions, before hearing them were biased because I’ve never heard a good set of mini speakers that don’t sound like you’re playing them from a cell phone. If you’ve ever shared music from your cell phone by playing it really loud, that is NOT how this sounds. It really sounds like a good set of speakers played at a lower volume. Obviously due to the size of the speaker, they cannot be played for more than a crowd of like 5-6 without being drowned out in conversation but for a DJ who doesn’t want to listen to music through the headphones, this is the PERFECT addition to tech savvy DJ. There are also other alternatives to other mini speakers

You knew we wouldn’t finish this list without listing our own collection of great gifts for less than $100. In fact, we offer a great option for a gift that is meaningful, affordable and unique. Take a look at our dj apparel collection and if you get more than 1, you get free shipping. I’ll get off my soap box now, go do your shopping!

Make sure to make your recommendations below.

DJ Khaled

Not a new name to our most popular dj’s list, DJ Khaled continues to gain popularity due to his collaborations with heavy hitter mainstream artists such as Dr. Dre and Fat Joe .  It’s also no coincidence that he always collaborates with the newest most popular hip hop artists and recently did performed at the BET music awards earlier this year.  He continues to top the search engine charts on Google with his mix tape releases and big name collaborations.

DJ Mehdi

Unfortunately for DJ Medhi, his rise to popularity on the google search engines is a result of his tragic death.  He was most known for being a DJ and producer in France and collaborated with electro artists such as Daft Punk and Chromeo.  His death came tragically after his room collapsed in his Paris home.

DJ Earworm

As mentioned in our last popular DJ’s post, his ranking on google is no surprise as his exposure and popularity is a result of his famous “United States of Pop” which encompasses rich and intricate mashups of mainstream top 40 music throughout the year.  He continues to release his mashups and his next one is slated to be released December of 2011.

DJ AM

In spite of his tragic death in August of 2009, DJ AM continues to rank high amongst the searches on Google due to his high celebrity status associates and mainstream popular mashups and mixes.   Many up and coming club DJ’s continue to follow in suite of his style mixing and mashing genres from 80′s and 90′s into current mainstream pop.

DJ Shadow

 DJ Shadow, aka Josh Davis primarily serves an underground entourage with a overzealous following for his unique and eclectic music.  His musical repoirtoire consists of a variety of different genres ranging from electronic, hip hop and turntablism.  His work is featured in the popular DJ Hero  and has collaborated with numerous of artists and recently released “The Less You Know The Better” on September 22 and plans to kick off a tour in his home town of  San Francisco on October 21st, 2011.

DJ Lil Debbie

DJ Lil Debbie is part of the Kreayshawn entourage (Kreayshawn recently signed a 1 million dollar deal with Sony) so her popularity helped the rise of DJ Lil Debbie, better known has Kreayshawn’s sister in her group White Girl Mob.  To be honest, there’s not much to say about DJ Lil Debbie as her popularity is high due to the rising popularity of White Girl Mob.  Let’s see where DJ Lil Debbie appears in next months edition of most popular DJ’s.

DJ Pauly D

 DJ Pauly D is nationally known due to his role on MTV’s popular reality Jersey Shore.  He’s been able to cash in his popularity on MTV by scoring big gigs around the world and score a residency at the Palms Casino in Sin City Las Vegas.  Despite the negative notoriety he is associated with, he recently participated in the 9/11 Tribute Movement.   His work has slowly progressed from DJing into production and studio work and has come out with several house songs featuring himself.

We’re finally releasing our candence tee, but guess what? We have it in Long Sleeve as well. It’s just in time for the winter as it slowly creeps in on us. It’s our first long sleeve offering and it’s quality matches that of our short sleeve tees. Check out the new tee now!

Hailing from Brooklyn, NY, DJ Esquire has proven to be a fierce competitor in the DJ battle scene and a highly respected figure in the turntablist community over the past 17 years.  From live stage performances to radio shows, various club/lounge residencies and countless DJ competition victories, Esquire has dazzled music enthusiasts across the USA, Canada and Europe.  In 2008, Esquire first met the good people from Dbmlabs and picked up a limited DMC 2008 USA Finals tee that he proudly sports to this very day.  You can catch DJ Esquire in action on his weekly radio show, “The Crossover”, every Wednesdays night on Beatminerz Radio ( www.dabeatminerz.com ) and teaching aspiring DJs at Scratch DJ Academy in NYC.  I actually had a chance to watch his performance back in 2008 and he’s continuing to develop his turntablism skills and what better way to develop them than to teach them!  If you’re into turntablism, scratching and hip hop, he’s definitely someone to get in touch with.  Check out some of his work below:

Website: www.djesquirenyc.com

Music:  http://www.mixcloud.com/DJESQUIRENYC

Are you interested in being on Dbmlabs Fan Fridays?  Contact us and we’ll give you information on what you need to do.

1.  Organizing Music by Beats Per Minute

I’ve seen this as a method for organizing music, especially as a beginner DJ.  Back when records and vinyl were still popular among the DJ masses, crates would be organized my BPM, which made sense since transitioning between songs would be much easier and simpler.  Organizing music by crates was the way to go.  In the digital age, most DJ software will analyze your music for you so when you bring it up (serato,traktor, ableton, etc) you really don’t need to go hunting for the BPM.  For a beginner DJ, this may be the preferred method just because you can concentrate less on whether the song will mix and more on WHAT you will mix.  Imagine as a beginner DJ, you are worried about whether or not the two songs will mix.  With the BPM organization method, you know it will mix.  Now, whether the tonal quality of the two songs will match is a different story.  We all know that a train wreck in mixing is much easier to notice than two songs rhythm and tone don’t match.  So organizing by Beats Per Minute will prevent this from happening.

2.  Organizing Music by Genre

After djing for 10 or so years, I realized that many DJ’s organize their music by genres, especially if you play for an eclectic, mainstrea,, hollywood club crowd.  For example, most party rockers who play in large mainstream club music atmospheres will absolutely need to have a wide variety of music at their disposal.  You’ll have people asking for house, dance, hip hop, alternative, 80′s, 90′s, etc.  This is when organizing by genre makes sense.  If you are strictly and trance, dance, or house DJ, this method doesn’t really make sense for performing because everything is in the same genre.  We won’t go into the sub-genres because that’s a whole other argument we can get into.

3.  Organizing music by Dates and Years

Personally, after several years of mixing and remixing, I started organizing my music by dates and year.  Here’s why.  Trends in music begin to change and evolve.  By organizing by years, I will know what I can use that’s more up to date.  For example, when playing live, I like to mix a variety of folders with different years depending on the crowd.  If it’s an older crowd, I know that they love to reminisce and nostalgia kicks it when that 80′s or 90′s song comes ripping into the mix.   Also, I began to get more specific with the dates, for example, months, like 2011 August.  I know my music collection well enough that I know what songs are in there and usually I will include mostly hits and semi-hits in those folders.  I’ll take the crowd through the several years and trust me, people love a DJ who can play more than just the new hits, but also hits that bring back memories.  A DJ is supposed to take you through a journey, it’s an experience.  You HAVE to play for the crowd if you’re performing.  Organizing music by dates is a great way to bring out that nostalgia to the crowd in a methodical and organized way.

4.  Organizing music by a Combination of the Previous

Although the previous 3 methods of organizing music are very logical, this last way is very particular to performing.  If you’re just organizing music, you obviously won’t use this method.  I sort of lied in my number 3 when I said I organize my music by year.  I actually do a combination of both music and genre.  However, it’s a little more complicated than that.  For big hits and anthems, I organize them by genre so that I can access them quickly, especially if I start forgetting about them after a while.  I think after you’ve used your music collection for a while, you’ll know which songs are anthem bombs and big hits that will always get a reaction from the crowd.  The important thing is that you don’t continually drop the anthems or else you might be crowd burnout.  I overheard a DJ complain to the promoter (who was headlining) that the opener DJ was just dropping all the bombs and left nothing for the headliner.   Interesting right?

Summary

So to summarize, I know you will hate this, but it’s really personal preference.  Personally, my suggestion is to organize your music as if you were djing with a handful of records.  I used to dj with 3 crates, that’s what your mindset should be like.  Have your songs organized in something like the “latest hits” and then have some of them organized by either genre or dates, or by both!  Basically it comes down to the fact that the more you DJ and perform, the easier it will be for you to access your music.  It’s ok, experiment because there really is no right way of organizing it.  No matter what people say, there’s no right way and you need to find a way that works for you.  I’m just providing the options you have and some ideas of how people organize their music.

If you have pictures of your collection, would love to see it!  Send it to us at www.dbmlabs.com/contact.php and we’ll add it to this post!