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''The quintessential working-man New York house DJ, Danny Tenaglia started out as the disc jockey at his local roller disco, inspired by Larry Levan’s sets at seminal house club Paradise Garage (an experience he told us about in a recent interview). Since those humble beginnings over three decades ago, he’s maintained a place at the top of the international house hierarchy as a “DJ’s DJ”, held down storied residencies at clubs like Twilo and Tunnel, remixed big names like Madonna and Michael Jackson, and released 11 mixes and albums.
At 52 he’s still going strong and touring constantly (despite claims last year that he was going to retire), with a NYE visit to Australia booked to play Lost and Found NYE at ivy in Sydney and Welcome Summer in Melbourne. We got Danny on the phone to pick his brains about what he’d learnt about DJing after more than 30 years in the business; here’s his advice for DJs just starting out.
#5 Respect your audience – and don’t be selfish
“You have to win them over first in order to get them to appreciate you, and then you can start showing your artistic expressions and experimentations. You have to remember that people are there to enjoy themselves and dance. Of course, I’m speaking about starting in the ‘70s, where if you played something and the people stopped dancing, you needed to put on something else to bring them back or you’d get fired, as simple as that. You had to make the people dance.
“But today people don’t necessarily dance, they stand and bop around back-and-forth, face the DJ, they fist-pump, they take photos. It’s a different ball game, but it still applies that you can’t completely do what you want to do and always get away with it. Like trying to drop some hip hop at a techno event; you might have 1,000 people in front of you and only four people are gonna be like, “oh, that’s cool.” I think that’s selfish, just because you’re in the mood to hear it, that’s not the place to do it. Respecting the audience and respecting yourself as an entertainer. Realising why you’re there and why they’re there.”
#4 Do your homework
“I would compare this to any other person who is studying to be anything from a pilot to a designer. The more you put in, the more you get back. You have to study, study, study, study. If an album comes out or an EP with four tracks, and one stands out the most, and you only pay attention to that one and not the other three songs on an EP, then you’re not doing your homework, because you could really be missing out. Really get to know your record collection and listen carefully without skipping through so quickly. Utilise the technology we have today to the best of your ability. A record could be 140BPM, but if you took that section five minutes in and looped it for four measures at 124BPM you could be making a whole difference, and basically giving that track a life that it never would have had, had you not messed with it.
“This is where I think I became something of a DJ with OCD: checking out the B-side and ‘what if I played it this way?’ Before the technology changed so much I was an avid record collector, finding things that might have been obscure and would only have been workable if you had two copies so you could extend that break. That worked for me. There were very few people who would do that – maybe because money was a factor, but I didn’t always have money. Sometimes I found that if I bought two obscure imports to work that middle-break it would ultimately work better for me than me buying one obvious track, in order to help me stand out and look different. Do your homework, study, use your imagination and be a leader. Be yourself.”
#3 Make your own bootleg remixes
“If you’re a young DJ aspiring to get into the league of DJs that get to travel the world and are part of an agency, the best thing to do is to approach songs and do your own versions of them and then get the attention of the label. It may even cost you money, but it’s an investment in your career, in your future. There are many people that have done this now, and it’s been that way for many years; at the end of the day, if you’re taking a record that’s fizzled out and you’re giving it a new life, I don’t see anybody not welcoming it. It might even put it on the charts again.
“You might not get the same reaction from the likes of Madonna, or Mariah Carey, or the Michael Jackson camp, they’re not gonna jump to put out a remix because you did it, but you can get attention for it. There’s so much that can be done to get attention with the technology of today. Work, work, work: you gotta work in order to climb your way up there.”
#2 Learn how to build a set and create tension
“A long set over an entire evening takes knowledge of the history of different genres of music, how to change tempos. Of course you’re gonna start off a little softer, build up the energy, get into a peak energy, and then you start bringing it down because you know you’ve got maybe an hour left. But you would need some skills with this, you would need to have a good amount of records in your collection, and then do your homework into categories and BPMs, even if you’re into using it harmonically. There’s homework to be done.
“There are a lot of DJs that do sometimes get to play long, extended sets, but you can tell when the professionalism isn’t there because the first song is a hard track, there probably isn’t even anybody in the room yet and they’re blasting it all the way up until the last song and then it’s just BOOM, cut off. There’s no story to all of this, the story is that they just want to play their favourite records without showing you that they can display an artistic journey throughout four, five, six, seven hours. When I started out, DJs basically had jobs that were 9 to 5, pm-to-am. You would go in and bring your records and set them up. At the end of the night the music stops, you close the bins, you shut the lights, you go back the next day and everything is still there.”
#1 If you’re going to DJ, do it for the thrill of playing tunes you love
“I think a lot of young kids today who are 15/16 say “mum, dad, I wanna DJ.” And then they go and buy them this $200 DJ-in-a-box gift; that’s just the DJ version of karaoke. And then they stand there, throw their hands in the air, and they’re not getting it from a musical standpoint. The high should be within the joy you get from that song that you’ve discovered and then put your thoughts and emotions into. When you play it at the right moment and the people are really feeling it, then you get the reward. But if you have this record and it has a massive build up and everybody puts their hands in the air – including you – and then it comes back down to the drums, y’know, the patterns. There’s no substance in a lot of this, there’s gimmick. If you don’t have a good enough content, then you know it’s only as good as the next person who’s not doing their homework either. The cream rises to the top.”
http://m.inthemix.com.au/features/57...years_of_DJing
At 52 he’s still going strong and touring constantly (despite claims last year that he was going to retire), with a NYE visit to Australia booked to play Lost and Found NYE at ivy in Sydney and Welcome Summer in Melbourne. We got Danny on the phone to pick his brains about what he’d learnt about DJing after more than 30 years in the business; here’s his advice for DJs just starting out.
#5 Respect your audience – and don’t be selfish
“You have to win them over first in order to get them to appreciate you, and then you can start showing your artistic expressions and experimentations. You have to remember that people are there to enjoy themselves and dance. Of course, I’m speaking about starting in the ‘70s, where if you played something and the people stopped dancing, you needed to put on something else to bring them back or you’d get fired, as simple as that. You had to make the people dance.
“But today people don’t necessarily dance, they stand and bop around back-and-forth, face the DJ, they fist-pump, they take photos. It’s a different ball game, but it still applies that you can’t completely do what you want to do and always get away with it. Like trying to drop some hip hop at a techno event; you might have 1,000 people in front of you and only four people are gonna be like, “oh, that’s cool.” I think that’s selfish, just because you’re in the mood to hear it, that’s not the place to do it. Respecting the audience and respecting yourself as an entertainer. Realising why you’re there and why they’re there.”
#4 Do your homework
“I would compare this to any other person who is studying to be anything from a pilot to a designer. The more you put in, the more you get back. You have to study, study, study, study. If an album comes out or an EP with four tracks, and one stands out the most, and you only pay attention to that one and not the other three songs on an EP, then you’re not doing your homework, because you could really be missing out. Really get to know your record collection and listen carefully without skipping through so quickly. Utilise the technology we have today to the best of your ability. A record could be 140BPM, but if you took that section five minutes in and looped it for four measures at 124BPM you could be making a whole difference, and basically giving that track a life that it never would have had, had you not messed with it.
“This is where I think I became something of a DJ with OCD: checking out the B-side and ‘what if I played it this way?’ Before the technology changed so much I was an avid record collector, finding things that might have been obscure and would only have been workable if you had two copies so you could extend that break. That worked for me. There were very few people who would do that – maybe because money was a factor, but I didn’t always have money. Sometimes I found that if I bought two obscure imports to work that middle-break it would ultimately work better for me than me buying one obvious track, in order to help me stand out and look different. Do your homework, study, use your imagination and be a leader. Be yourself.”
#3 Make your own bootleg remixes
“If you’re a young DJ aspiring to get into the league of DJs that get to travel the world and are part of an agency, the best thing to do is to approach songs and do your own versions of them and then get the attention of the label. It may even cost you money, but it’s an investment in your career, in your future. There are many people that have done this now, and it’s been that way for many years; at the end of the day, if you’re taking a record that’s fizzled out and you’re giving it a new life, I don’t see anybody not welcoming it. It might even put it on the charts again.
“You might not get the same reaction from the likes of Madonna, or Mariah Carey, or the Michael Jackson camp, they’re not gonna jump to put out a remix because you did it, but you can get attention for it. There’s so much that can be done to get attention with the technology of today. Work, work, work: you gotta work in order to climb your way up there.”
#2 Learn how to build a set and create tension
“A long set over an entire evening takes knowledge of the history of different genres of music, how to change tempos. Of course you’re gonna start off a little softer, build up the energy, get into a peak energy, and then you start bringing it down because you know you’ve got maybe an hour left. But you would need some skills with this, you would need to have a good amount of records in your collection, and then do your homework into categories and BPMs, even if you’re into using it harmonically. There’s homework to be done.
“There are a lot of DJs that do sometimes get to play long, extended sets, but you can tell when the professionalism isn’t there because the first song is a hard track, there probably isn’t even anybody in the room yet and they’re blasting it all the way up until the last song and then it’s just BOOM, cut off. There’s no story to all of this, the story is that they just want to play their favourite records without showing you that they can display an artistic journey throughout four, five, six, seven hours. When I started out, DJs basically had jobs that were 9 to 5, pm-to-am. You would go in and bring your records and set them up. At the end of the night the music stops, you close the bins, you shut the lights, you go back the next day and everything is still there.”
#1 If you’re going to DJ, do it for the thrill of playing tunes you love
“I think a lot of young kids today who are 15/16 say “mum, dad, I wanna DJ.” And then they go and buy them this $200 DJ-in-a-box gift; that’s just the DJ version of karaoke. And then they stand there, throw their hands in the air, and they’re not getting it from a musical standpoint. The high should be within the joy you get from that song that you’ve discovered and then put your thoughts and emotions into. When you play it at the right moment and the people are really feeling it, then you get the reward. But if you have this record and it has a massive build up and everybody puts their hands in the air – including you – and then it comes back down to the drums, y’know, the patterns. There’s no substance in a lot of this, there’s gimmick. If you don’t have a good enough content, then you know it’s only as good as the next person who’s not doing their homework either. The cream rises to the top.”
http://m.inthemix.com.au/features/57...years_of_DJing
by Todor Kalev | Mixcloud
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