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@Vekked - A couple of questions about the DMC


Steve

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I saw you say on Facebook that you nailed your set at the DMC, but obviously it wasn't enough to make the top 3. Your attitude is definitely more true to the old school style of battling, which to me should be the only style of battling, or at least, produced routines shouldn't cross a particular line - one that I feel DJ Fly's set crossed. Clearly though, that is a matter of opinion and it isn't how many of the judges see it.

 

So, do you plan to change (compromise really) your style in order to try and score more points in future DMC battles, assuming you enter again? Do you think that, given DJ Fly's heavily produced routine, yet every single judge placing him in the top 3, that you have any chance of winning the 6 minute category if you don't do this?

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At the time, which may mean nothing as I thought Fly was really clean on the night and the video shows otherwise, Vekked definitely sounded like he'd nailed his set.

 

What I think goes against him a bit, is that his real knockout punch is his beat juggles and beat juggling doesn't seem to be getting the love it should do. His juggles were above and beyond anyone else's in the competition but they seemed to go unappreciated by most of the judges (and the large percentage of the audience who undoubtably listened to "Best Dubstep & Trap in the World Ever - Part 14" on their way home, whilst cursing the Canadian for messing up the music they were trying to dance to). I say "most" of the judges, because the look on Netik's face at the end of Vekked's "What happened to that Boy" juggle was priceless... in fact both him and Mr Viktor leapt out of there seats at that moment. Netik reflected his feelings in his voting, Viktor sort of did but still went with his home nation for the win.

 

Which is the other thing for Vekked to work on for better scores - more Canadian judges! Looking at the judges scores, there's definitely some correlation between where certain judges come from and even who they're are sitting next to and discussing what they've just seen with. I'm not saying it's the outright sham of the voting on say, Eurovision... but this year and others I've felt that it was a small factor that's always there to some degree. I'd also say that you always get a couple of judges who perhaps don't have a full understanding of what's going on in some of the most advanced sets.

 

As a veteran armchair critic, I think Vekked should stick to his guns and keep on doing what he's doing - hopefully they will appreciate what he's doing one day and even if they don't at least he can be proud of what he did.

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I saw you say on Facebook that you nailed your set at the DMC, but obviously it wasn't enough to make the top 3. Your attitude is definitely more true to the old school style of battling, which to me should be the only style of battling, or at least, produced routines shouldn't cross a particular line - one that I feel DJ Fly's set crossed. Clearly though, that is a matter of opinion and it isn't how many of the judges see it.

 

So, do you plan to change (compromise really) your style in order to try and score more points in future DMC battles, assuming you enter again? Do you think that, given DJ Fly's heavily produced routine, yet every single judge placing him in the top 3, that you have any chance of winning the 6 minute category if you don't do this?

Damn this is a good question, lol, prepare for incoming tl;dr... I've thought about a lot of different things with regards to this, and what stuff I should change, if anything.

 

I did feel that on a personal level I did my best 6 mins, but I still don't know if it was good enough to deserve top 3 or not. Although my set was the best I've put together I still see a lot of weaknesses in it. Besides maybe pure juggling technique, I don't think there is that much criteria that I was the BEST at in the battle so I wanna try to work towards out-scratching and out-juggling everyone else before I worry about changing my strategy too much. I think if I was legit the best scratcher and juggler in the battle and I still wasn't placing there might be an issue.

 

Secondly, the underlying reason that I battle is because I like the idea of battling and having it as a venue to perform, but I hate a lot of the wack MF'ers who are doing it right now. If everyone was sick and I was really happy with the level of battlers right now I probably wouldn't battle myself, I'd organize or something. I see a lot of corny/lame trends that everyone seems to be following, and I'm just trying my best to represent the other side and do things that I think make up a good routine. Hopefully this eventually starts a new trend. So on 1 hand I don't care about winning as much as just trying to show what I don't like about their sets through my set, but on the other hand I would like to win purely so people have a set to look up to that's not 1 that requires you to be a seasoned producer to make... just someone who has spent a disgusting amount of time on the turntables.

 

Also as far as judging like... I try not to take judges/results too seriously, only opinions of people I respect. There's a lot of judges who I've talked to that I just don't respect their opinion on battling/DJing, so I'm not trying to earn their respect. It'd almost be a bad thing if they liked my stuff and I thought they had a horrible opinion on battling. I find a lot of people judge battling on random criteria they pull out of their ass anyways, and I basically care about a) best scratching (overall, not just technique but composition etc too), b) best beat juggling c) tying it together with transitions and intro's and such. Some people want routines they can close their eyes and judge, so they don't care about technique, some want a routine to sound like 1 song start to finish which is basically the opposite of what I want to hear. So in short many judges are dumb, so idgaf if they like my shit.

 

The only thing I've considered "compromising" is maybe putting some thought into sound quality of some of my music or something. I heard 1 comment a few times about my set, that basically it didn't sound as "punchy" or it sounded quieter or flatter compared to other sets. This was kind of one of my fears in a way. I use WAV and FLAC of tracks as much as possible so I choose really good source material, but I think it's basically when you put a new dubstep/club track next to the music I use in my routines my stuff just doesn't sound as "big". It's annoying because there's certainly an advantage of sounding louder/bigger live. So as far as this goes, I wonder if there's something I could do about this, like getting someone to change my tracks so they sound better on a club system (if that's even possible), or if I should lean towards picking tracks that have better sonic qualities, or if I should just keep disregarding it because if I start down the path of choosing tracks based on sound quality rather than just stuff I like the best will compromise making what I feel is the best set I can put together... I guess the routine that instantly comes to mind is my Lenny Kravitz juggle from the finals. It's probs my favourite part of my routine, but I don't think it exactly bangs in the club.

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Fair play man. You're taking exactly the right approach IMO.

 

Regarding the sound quality thing, a lot of it is to do with the way music is mastered. Once the "loudness war" kicked in, a lot of music - particularly dance music, but hip-hop too - was mastered to be loud, sometimes at the expense of sound quality.

 

This is a piss-take guide I wrote on DJ Forums on how to master a dance music track so it sounds like one of Krewella's (some shitty EDM band whose music is particularly badly mastered): -

 

For this tutorial, I'm going to be using "Sweet Love" by Anita Baker.

 

Step 1 - Your song before you've mastered it to sound like one of Krewella's.

 

Once your song is complete, you might have it sounding superb, but obviously that's no good. You need it to sound LOUD. Here's a "non-LOUD" clip of Sweet Love: -

 

http://www.sigmamixes.com/misc/ab1.mp3

 

This was mastered by Bernie Grundman, a multi-award winning mastering technician who has been in the business for decades. But what does he know? Sounds like shit right? TOO FUCKING QUIET.

 

Step 2 - Compression and hard limiting.

 

The first step is to use a hard limiter. Your aim is to make the waveform fill as much of the screen as you possibly can, with squared off bits at the top and bottom. That means it's nice and LOUD. For the purposes of this tutorial, I used the hard limiter in Adobe Audition and I boosted the signal by 15 dB. Then run the compression tool and just pick random settings and hit OK.

 

Once this process is complete, you will see that your waveform is MUCH beefier than it was before. Here's a comparison, showing the original track at the top with my fully mastered LOUD version underneath: -

 

http://i.imgur.com/1mFa60e.jpg

 

The lower waveform looks just like the waveforms of your favourite EDM tracks!

 

Step 3 - Export to MP3.

 

Now you want to export your track to MP3. Don't worry about the encoder you use, but use 320 Kbps because that's CD quality and it's what all the pros use.

 

Step 4 - The end result!

 

Here's the mastered version: -

 

http://www.sigmamixes.com/misc/ab2.mp3

 

Sounds fucking awesome right? HOW LOUD IS THAT?

 

Any questions, just ask. Also, if you want me to master your track, PM me. I charge 50p per song and if you think that's expensive, just remember that you're paying for quality mastering here. I will spend a good 5 minutes mastering each song, so you're getting excellent value for money.

 

EDIT - BTW, Anita Baker could really use a touch of Auto-Tune on those vocals.

But you can make music more punchy for use in a routine by re-mastering it in a similar way, only not to such an extreme, lol.

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  • 3 years later...

Regarding the sound quality thing, a lot of it is to do with the way music is mastered. Once the "loudness war" kicked in, a lot of music - particularly dance music, but hip-hop too - was mastered to be loud, sometimes at the expense of sound quality.

 

This is a piss-take guide I wrote on DJ Forums on how to master a dance music track so it sounds like one of Krewella's (some shitty EDM band whose music is particularly badly mastered): -

 

For this tutorial, I'm going to be using "Sweet Love" by Anita Baker.

 

Step 1 - Your song before you've mastered it to sound like one of Krewella's.

 

Once your song is complete, you might have it sounding superb, but obviously that's no good. You need it to sound LOUD. Here's a "non-LOUD" clip of Sweet Love: -

 

http://www.sigmamixes.com/misc/ab1.mp3

 

This was mastered by Bernie Grundman, a multi-award winning mastering technician who has been in the business for decades. But what does he know? Sounds like shit right? TOO FUCKING QUIET.

 

Step 2 - Compression and hard limiting.

 

The first step is to use a hard limiter. Your aim is to make the waveform fill as much of the screen as you possibly can, with squared off bits at the top and bottom. That means it's nice and LOUD. For the purposes of this tutorial, I used the hard limiter in Adobe Audition and I boosted the signal by 15 dB. Then run the compression tool and just pick random settings and hit OK.

 

Once this process is complete, you will see that your waveform is MUCH beefier than it was before. Here's a comparison, showing the original track at the top with my fully mastered LOUD version underneath: -

 

 

The lower waveform looks just like the waveforms of your favourite EDM tracks!

 

Step 3 - Export to MP3.

 

Now you want to export your track to MP3. Don't worry about the encoder you use, but use 320 Kbps because that's CD quality and it's what all the pros use.

 

Step 4 - The end result!

 

Here's the mastered version: -

 

http://www.sigmamixes.com/misc/ab2.mp3

 

Sounds fucking awesome right? HOW LOUD IS THAT?

 

Any questions, just ask. Also, if you want me to master your track, PM me. I charge 50p per song and if you think that's expensive, just remember that you're paying for quality mastering here. I will spend a good 5 minutes mastering each song, so you're getting excellent value for money.

 

EDIT - BTW, Anita Baker could really use a touch of Auto-Tune on those vocals.

But you can make music more punchy for use in a routine by re-mastering it in a similar way, only not to such an extreme, lol.

 

FLOL

 

"I charge 50p per song" hahaha

 

Literally crying with laughter here.. :p

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