skmagnum said:
^^^wow, that was so damn informative! We don't do the rapping over the vox either, it sounds way too sloppy. Fortunately, we have a show DJ so we got that part covered. I will deff do the DVD thing with the graphics. what are your thoughts about giving the dj time to do his scratch thing? we give our DJ time to scratch on the turntables(nasty with it) but sometimes i feel kinda ackward during that 8 bar break that he may rock. what would you suggest? and what else would you suggest as far as including the DJ as a more active member of the set? Sorry if i got all these questions, but its true, its not talked about enough!!
I agree, I am always looking for ideas as well. Live shows make the artists...and y'all producers reading this had better become DJs. I am just now starting to DJ for some fellow artists I've made beats for along with showing up to do my features at their shows, even though I am an artist myself along with producer, engineer, etc...can't wear enough hats these days...I got me a turntable, a cd player, Deckadance, Live, and some custom Reaktor5 ensembles in my new DJ rig...Got stay in front of people no matter what, getting up and doing a feature and one song at a show that ain't mine is a thing of the past for me, if I can, I try to be the DJ so they shows also become my shows the whole time, instead of five or six minutes of it.
Anyway...
If you feel awkward, just get out of the way and off the stage and go drink some water...or, if you don't need the breather, jump into the crowd. That always gets people excited. Especially when you do a show with a rock band and they have that kind of crowd...the "all rap shows" don't tend to have much crowd surfing going on though...Anyway, be sure to give the DJ a good three to five minutes, and make sure he has a live mic...
its on him to carry his weight, you really don't need to be involved much during that part. Just say something like you gonna let the DJ do his thing for a minute and you'll be back or something like that. Since we produce most of the tracks we use, we have a lot more control than a lot of artists, so our "show mix" of a song will have the first part of the DJ set tacked on to the song that we do before his turn with some instruments taken out, that way, the music don't stop, we walk off, and the DJ has 4 bars before he crossfades into his other stuff, which also includes a way back into our next song when he's done with his thing. PLANNING AHEAD. That's key.
What we did was bounce down some acapella snippets of our tracks, and gave them to our DJ who also has some nice Numark CD players, and he scratches our vox to some custom breaks and instrumental stuff we made for him (again, no commercial instrumentals). He'll scratch and re-pitch and all that stuff and makes it hot.
The DJ can also do ad libs, can do some talking between songs so the artists don't have to say everything, and the DJ needs a sampler to trigger sound effects and stuff at the end, beginning, and between songs.
If you doing a show for over 150 people, the DJ should come out first. And you should have your main producer, if you aren't a producer yourself, craft you a killer instrumental track as an intro before the first song comes on. Our intro is sweet. We used an old ROMpler plug-in called
Morphology for some ambient pads and textures (though these sounds are everywhere these days), some hard hitting sub bass, and some tweaked out vocals of us talking using a CamelPHAT preset called VOX Skinesque and used an autopan effect...It is only about a minute long, and it crescendo's up until of first beat kicks in, and the first song we do live has a pitched down hook that starts it off and we wait until when the first verse comes on before we come out so we come out rapping. It sounds a bit creepy and mysterious and still hits at the same time...it just builds the anticipation and it works.
Same thing at the end, we have an ambient electronic type beat for an outro with more vocals using the same effects. The DJ is the last dude off stage. We just say our thanks, give one more shout out for the merch booth so people buy stuff, kick the outro on, and walk off.
1st rule of showmanship is never stay still longer than five seconds...and 2nd rule is that if you tend to close your eyes on stage, wear sunglasses no matter how dark it is in there. Never let them see you with your eyes closed.
Oh, and stack the TV's all crazy on top of each other, some sideways and what-not...usually you can find the TVs at pawn shops...we found some cheap ones at a hotel that was replacing all the rooms with newer ones...payed $10 a piece for ours. The TV's really help when at the clubs that got a crappy track lighting system (or no lighting system).
