Be your own life DJDJ
[Music]
[Music]
it was a late night
in 1999 my friends and i walk up
to a nondescript building on a quiet
street in downtown boston
from the outside you can barely tell
that this was
actually one of boston’s best
underground
after hours clubs the dj that night
was danny tanaglia who is legendary
for his epic dj sets that go
as long as 13 hours
and those who are privileged enough to
be there from beginning to end
describe it as a soul expanding
experience
and that night danny took us to the
heights
of everest and down to the depths of the
marianas trench
sometimes he dialed up the tension so
much in the room and almost made you
feel
angry but then he would release all of
us
at once with a song that was so
beautifully played
that you just wanted to give everyone
around you a big hug
yes it was truly a soul expanding
experience
it was experiences like these formed in
boston where i went to school
and in new york where i grew up that
inspired me to want to become a dj
i wanted to reproduce and to share some
of these transformative moments
for me on the dance floor and now
hundreds and hundreds of events
and more than 20 years later
i can still happily say that i love
being a dj
i never did manage a 13 hour set though
my maximum was about 8.5 hours before
this happened but as many djs would say
it’s not about how long you can play but
about
how far you can take it about how far
you can take people on this musical
journey that you and the crowd
co-create together and that to me
is the art of djing to me
there was a lot of parallels that i saw
between
djing between dance music and also the
psychological concepts that i was
studying
so let me just share with you three of
them today
the first is the concept of entrainment
now most people think that a dj what we
do is just play
hit after hit pounding beats the whole
night but actually takes a little more
finesse than that
especially when you’re just starting out
now as a warm-up dj
very often you have to face an empty
dance floor
in an empty dance floor is very anxiety
inducing
what you want to do is you want to play
some hits
to kick people’s butts onto the dance
floor but you will find
that if you do that the opposite will
happen
you will drive people further away so
what should you do instead
you should feel the room take the pulse
of the room
feel where people are at emotionally and
play
music that syncs up with their mood
and make them feel safe and then
challenge them
lead them eventually onto the dance
floor how do you know if you’re doing a
good job
if you can see people nodding their
heads so
if you can get them nodding and keep
them nodding pretty soon
you can get them dancing now
this kind of synchronization was of
rhythm
and movement this is called entrainment
and entrainment happens everywhere
happens between mechanical systems and
biological systems
and it happens between people there’s
actually a concept called
conversational entrainment where
two people talking with one another will
actually match
the speed and rhythm of each other’s
speech
and even some of the body movements will
be mirrored
and this is actually essential for
creating a sense of rapport
djing is also like a conversation it’s
like a two-way conversation
the crowd dances to sync up with the
music
but the dj also plays music that syncs
up with the crowd
now dj who knows this who knows how to
entrain with a crowd
knows how to work a crowd
now the next concept is that of ebb and
flow
i don’t know if this has ever happened
to you you’re with a group of good
friends
everyone’s joking laughing having a good
time and then all of a sudden
everybody becomes quiet it’s kind of
weird right
and maybe kind of awkward but it’s also
very natural
now there are ebbs and flows in the
energy of any
crowd of people and there are ebbs and
flows in the energy
on the dance floor and the same actually
is reflected in the music
so let me show you this is the waveform
of a piece of electronic dance music and
this is zoomed out
so you can see the entire song from left
to right
you see right here with all the dark
bands the thicker the band
the more energy there is in the music
right the more stuff there’s going on in
the song but over here
it becomes light why now this part
is called a breakdown what happens
during the breakdown is that you take
out some of the most energetic aspects
of the music
such as the kick or the bass drum and
you leave just little bits
in there and then slowly you add them
back
in and by adding them back in you build
a sense of anticipation expectation
and eventually as it keeps rolling and
going and going in this crescendo
and finally during the build and then
the whole song comes back in wham all at
once
and everyone on the dance floor goes
crazy all right so this is called the
peak
now in some genres of edm production
this is also known as the rise
and the drop now this relationship is
very important
because for a piece of dance music it’s
very hard to sustain
high energy the whole way you can’t keep
adding stuff
eventually become too much overwhelming
so in order to take things up higher
you actually have to take things lower
take stuff away
take away the things that the crowd has
already gotten used to
or gotten tired of and you take them
away
so that people will appreciate them
again
that’s the concept of a breakdown and
build
now the third concept i would like to
introduce to you
is that of the motif a motif
is a small piece of music
that is a musical idea that is repeated
often
within a piece of music that becomes an
identity
of that piece of music so in classical
music
we have very famous motifs such as
everyone enjoys this motif right there
are also very famous motifs
in dance music such as
okay
marshall jefferson
underworld now in modern music motif is
also known as
riff or hook different names but they
stand for the same thing
pretty much once you hear the riff or
the hook or the motif
you will know what song you’re listening
to
so this is very important in identifying
the piece of music
now a dj who knows the value of a motif
will not waste it in the mix if it’s a
good motif that’s being
introduced and everyone will expect it
or know it
we’ll let the music actually stop
sometimes
take down the energy just so that a good
motif can come in
in its full glory these are all
techniques
that djs can use to generate the
surprise or
drama on the dance floor okay
now what i’m going to do is
i’m going to take you through a
playthrough
of a piece of dance music now this is a
song that
i produced many years ago the reason i
chose this song is because
it’s relatively simple the motif is very
clear
and you can hear exactly how it works
through all the parts of the music this
song is called
knock down and i used to play this a lot
back at a club in taipei called luxie
i hear some chuckles in the audience i
some of you may have been there all
right great times
all right so maybe you even recognize
this track
so this is knockdown and i’m going to
talk through it and tell you about how
all the pieces fit together here we go
first we have some drums and now this
first part is the intro
now in the dj friendly mix this part
usually consists of
just the most basic drums and percussion
so usually if you heard this by itself
you will find it quite boring but dj’s
needs a longer beginning for the beat
match
and here we have some guitar pores
and this is the movie and all the
personality of the track
comes from this motif right here
and here we have the introduction of the
bass which runs in parallel with the
movie
the bass line and the kick work together
to establish the groove which is the
backbone of any dance
all right so pop quiz
what is this section called
breakdown that’s right so here we only
have the motif
all of your attention is focused on this
element
but listen carefully it begins to change
and we have delays added to the mix
there’s a sense of anticipation and this
is usually when the emcee might say
something like
put your hands up all right
well why don’t we do that put your hands
up
put your hands up pretend we’re in the
club that’s right
here’s the bill wait for it
knock down
[Music]
all right now i don’t want to play the
whole song for you right i don’t want to
get you guys
really excited after all
but maybe we’ll play it at the after
party would you guys like to hear it
then
all right all right so now that i’ve
introduced these three concepts to you
how does that fit into our life
your life how does that work recently i
was counseling this
teenage girl that was bullied by her
classmates
and she was referred to me by her mother
and as you can expect with such cases
she wasn’t exactly ready to open up to
me in the beginning
so we were sitting there in the room she
was across the room from me and between
us is this huge space of silence
but instead of getting frustrated
i went into dj mode and i
thought of her as a dancer
on the edge of the dance floor of an
empty dance floor
and i felt where she was emotionally i
changed my patterns of speech and my
rhythm and my intonation
to engage with her and also to entrain
with her
and at the same time i was sending out
signals that would invite her
to join with me in this dialogue space
the dialogue space where she would feel
safe enough to share more of her story
worked and eventually were able to have
a fruitful conversation
and the next time you guys have a
conversation that
feels like you’re not really getting
through you can try this
focus on listening to the person’s
intonation
their rhythm feel their energy and
entrain with them there
match their energy level don’t just
think about what you’re going to say
and you will find that oftentimes
rapport
is built not by what you say
but by how we both say it
so in terms of ebb and flow and
breakdowns and builds
every day our energy levels are not
consistent
and so we should build our days around
the natural ebbs and flows
of our life and not in spite of it it
sounds like a very simple idea
but actually so few people actually do
that
you know we all pack out our schedules
we schedule one thing after another
after another
and it’s just go go go from the moment
we open our eyes until
we’re lying there on the bed too
exhausted to move
and yet too wired to sleep
now this can only go on for so long
so i always advise people in my own
personal coaching you
have to engineer your own breakdowns
engineer your own breakdowns so that you
can go up higher
especially before you have a peak
performance
before something important this period
of
very deliberate and intentional
quiet and reflection is very important
we need to break so that we can build
and how about motifs well i like to
think of motifs
in our life as the patterns of thought
the little things that we tell ourselves
repeatedly
over time that actually form
a core of our personality so what is
your personal motif
we all have one but we may not be aware
of it because sometimes
you repeatedly tell yourself so many
times it just becomes like background
noise
but imagine someone who wakes up every
day and tells themselves
you know i’m going to get mine or
everyone is out to get you
or win at all costs imagine how that
person would react
to other people or you know how that
person’s mental state would be
compared to someone who tells themselves
life is worth celebrating or i can be
loved
for who i am so
motifs can be reconstructed also
i often advise my clients to write down
their personal motifs
write them down so you can read them
aloud and if they’re too negative
try to change it form it in a more
constructive and positive way
and if you repeatedly tell yourself this
as an affirmation
you will find that the theme of your
life and the song of your life
starts to change his tune and indeed
life is like a song in fact
if we had the chance to zoom out
on a person’s life narrative arc
and visualize it like a wave form it
would look
very much like a piece of dance music
you know we have
our introductions early in life where
we’re just getting our footing
establishing ourselves
we have the motifs that come in our
experiences that start to form our
personality
we start to catch our groove in our 20s
and we start to experiment
maybe we enter the main productive
period of our lives
from our 20s 30s into our 40s but then
what happens with so many of us is
middle of our life
we find that we actually have to
reprioritize we need
to break down again to essentialize
and when you’re in the breakdown it’s a
little scary
because your groove is gone or you gave
up your groove
but if you listen and are patient then
you can start to hear the motif coming
back in
little by little softly at first but
then louder and louder
rising in a crescendo until eventually
if you
embrace it and know how to work with it
you will achieve
another peak in life the second wind of
your life
maybe you can even change up your tune
try something totally different
later in your life but then
as it so happens inevitably with all of
us we will all
reach the end of our life song that part
is called
the outro and at the outro
things are essential again just the
basics
because there’s no longer our song that
matters so much as the song the next
generation that is fading in
and as it plays louder and louder when
the time is right
with a simple flick of the crossfader
we are out that’s why they say god is a
dj
there’s a song called god is a dj and it
says
this is my church this is where i heal
my hurts
it’s a natural grace of watching young
life shape
it’s in minor keys solutions and
remedies
enemies becoming friends when bitterness
ends
now faithless is referring to the club
like
a church but i like to think of our
whole world
like a club we’re all members of this
club
and in this club there are billions of
dancers
each dancing their own song of life each
song unique
there’s long ones and short ones loud
ones and soft ones
there’s major keys and minor keys all of
them mixing and melding into each other
forming remixes and mashups and if we
embrace this concept
we can also become the dj of our own
lives
we can change up the rhythm dictate our
groove
we can create our own crescendos design
our own breakdowns and builds
maybe even change a key march to the
beat of a different drummer
there are elements of mystery and
spirituality here
that’s much more art than science but
this
we know for sure there’s a rhythm
in here and as long as this keeps
beating
the rhythm doesn’t end so
let the music play on and become
your own life dj thank you very much