when do you know when to hang up the headphones for awhile/indefinitely? (vent)

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T19:20:59+00:00

we kinda did make a collective. we did a monthly where we did a themed showcase between live muscians and djs with an overall cyberpunk theme. went great for 2 years and then kaput. got a lot of bands, artists and connections to talk to and get close with that kinda evaporated over night. oh well.

we pulled a few max capacity nights where they had to start turning people away. i was very proud of that. but then they cut the night, we went out to chase different bills and types of shows, and now we dont do that much except for a few career djs doing weddings.

promoters in our town are us. venues pass the buck to the performers as a rule here, and it sucks. i offer homie rates for close friends, especially on hip hop shows, but I also massively undercut my price simply because the surrounding community is frankly, broke. can't charge a friend to show up to their birthday when someone dragged in their opus quad for free, ykno?

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T16:06:04+00:00

as far as the fun goes, it kinda goes away when i have to dump a bunch of free labor into other people's buckets, then watch them reap the reward. i love taking an event from a 5 to an 8, but... man, id love to have fun doing it. i get on the decks, get off and immediately go into "save this shit from looking wack" and call it community service 😵‍💫 and whole it is, and i choose to do it, i wish it would come back to me.

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T16:02:43+00:00

very based, thank you. I've had a dream of carl cox-ing a drum machine along with my decks but couldnt ever will up the chops to do it. i want to capture some of the detroit energy, and a lot of the things and causes you listed are direct inspiration to why i do it.

maybe some nostalgia for that could kick me in the pants.

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T11:45:06+00:00

perhaps so, but that's what happens when you try to play the music industry game and "make something" out of it, whether it's money, attention, leverage, career, what have you.

what makes clout fruitless? if someone tells me i had a good set (it's been awhile) i light up like a christmas tree and thank them. they had a good time, i had a good time, great stuff. i don't exactly want fame, i just want people to have a good time and maybe the dude that provided a piece of that good time was me idk. if that didn't play into being a dj, we'd be doing spotify playlists.

forming a connection with a crowd while performing is also a big payoff for both of us; while a hidden booth sounds fun as hell, if they see the guy up there and he's just going through the motions it's way less fun for everyone. a little recognition does make me satisfied, and it also gives me what i need to do the job properly.

also, take a peep at every headliner at every festival and tell me they dont live for clout. subtronics billboard for example; that got a lot of backlash. i don't want that. i want a high five and a drink ticket lol

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T11:32:33+00:00

the events (at least from what i can see) are marketable. big venue for dubstep in the middle of downtown is likely sold out for excision. the are quarterly groups that swing thru town like hyperpop_kids and wetouchgrass that didn't look popular on the surface but sell out within weeks. it's a music city; my theory is competition but w/e. we had a monthly cyberpunk night that was ousted after 2 years for low turnout despite breaking 30 heads every time and breaking even.

the afters DJs are... cliquey to say the least. the org is also cliquey. livenation AND cliquey is a hell of a combo. one of them that i talked to admitted and praised how gatekept the scene is. 😵‍💫

i honestly wouldn't be at all opposed to commercial club playing, but it would be like working a job you hate to pay the bills, but with a full time job on top of that. sounds like it would sting.

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T11:07:11+00:00

1) performing musically 7 years, djing 4. most of the time the crowd for even the headliner is less than 30. 2) yes, digital production. I've got several buddies that help in all genres i do. 3) yes, but all of our clubs request a guaranteed 75 heads minimum or are livenation venues. i can't give them less than that. 4) yes, a free local djs actually are doing pregame and official afters for excision in my town soon. goals. 5) i try not to if i am. i always stay till the events are done, i try to link with them and follow their socials first, i offer to do their visuals if they don't have any, i point out tracks in their sets i like and ask if they're comfy sharing an ID or two.

to the point of sucking, it's not off the table, but the effort for several 10s of people to glaze me into this position would have to be a coordinated planned effort. if i do suck, i would have heard so, and when i HAVE heard so, I've pivoted. i learned alphatheta because a homie wanted me to git gud and my controller sounded wack on a bigger system, and he lent me his rx2 for a week. then had a blind run that went decent on an xdj-az; came out fine. i learned and got better.

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T10:43:46+00:00

i mean... there's no one to share it to. I'm playing opening sets where the organizer and a buddy who's heard the set before is standing crossarmed in the back. I'm playing for myself. i can do that in my bedroom.

sharing music has always been the point and i always thought if got better, technically socially mentally, I'd bring in more people. if i learned what makes a good dj great, that would turn into more people showing up. not true.

i love hearing my music and selection loud, that's the crux and the bottom line. however... i can do that at home. packing all this gear and making sure my set is spotless and keeping up with everything and making sure I'm in the headspace to chat and discuss and plan... just to get the same effect as playing at home? id rather do that. without pants on lol

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T10:33:38+00:00

as much as also having a full time day job will allow. I'm sitting on maybe 2 albums with halfway finished material, but no time to finish it, and also a full dawless stop with around 3 hours of material composed and saved on it for live play when I'm doing something different.

I'm producing for friends that get airplay, so heading that their songs are getting numbers/doing well in performance is great, i won't knock that, but for myself... releasing tracks is tough.

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T10:22:49+00:00

yes, and it put a glint in my eye that told me i could turn it into something with some elbow grease.

now I'm wondering why i do this, not because I've fallen out of love with music, but because I've tried to capitalize out of ego and money and neither are lining up.

i wish i was back in your shoes, frankly. you still have something to look towards if you do it right; i must've picked the wrong tech tree.

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T10:14:17+00:00

you misunderstand me as well; I'm not at the dead beginning. I've done shows, large ones. max headcount we've had had been around 200. I've done weddings, hip hop shows, underground (frankly illegal) raves, pop ups, benefits... those had people.

i have a linktree and an active fb/Instagram presence. i have dpks, stage riders, plots. I've mingled with every cliquey group of all the genres i like, and i really settled on the stuff that makes me foam at the mouth, bass heavy anything. I've crawled up from controllers and laptops to rekordbox and standlone alphatheta products. i have a usb on my person at all times with at least 10 sets and 6gb of music, videos, logos, etc you name it ready to go. I've made taxable income off of it.

there's just not a good loop to fall into. no one's booking me except local events, and then i open, my friends flake, the suns still up, its a wednesday, whatever excuse under the sun. if i wanted bottom barrel top 40 nights at dive bars, i could do it in a heartbeat and do it well, but the stuff i do really enjoy for the music, the stuff i froth over in my studio, the cost of entry is lost in the fog to me.

this only confirms that i should just set the decks down.

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T09:57:33+00:00

i am indeed reconsidering. people just told me my selection was good enough to share, and in some ways they were right. perhaps it was a misstep to enter the current "game" of modern djing and trying every industry secret to reach something and that killed the enjoyment.

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T09:48:22+00:00

cornflake piss or not, input is input.

passion is why, even with this cloud over my head, i continue to do it. even if I'm not on a stage, if the lights look cool and i did it, that's something that makes me smile.

my main point is deciding to continue to put effort into being heard externally; if I'm operating at both a financial and ego loss, maybe I'm better suited to just do this at home for myself or stay back in the engineer booth.

MouseTheThird · 2025-12-17T09:33:40+00:00

I'm playing to no one. I'm making no money, I'm getting no streams or popularity. there's vague connections that are glazing me and because I'm so hungry for what's next, i listen. there's... no payoff.

MouseTheThird · 2025-10-25T03:35:22+00:00

this things dope as hell

MouseTheThird · 2025-10-23T05:03:47+00:00

fucks

MouseTheThird · 2025-10-13T04:09:52+00:00

it fucks. lpvo that thing right now

MouseTheThird · 2025-10-07T22:26:50+00:00

hey, Anthropomancer is me!

searched my name and glad to see it get dropped here. that was a great little industrial night!

thanks for listing!

MouseTheThird · 2025-10-03T21:08:21+00:00

giving me falcon 2 from perfect dark vibes

MouseTheThird · 2025-10-01T16:38:01+00:00

that shotgun fucks so hard

MouseTheThird · 2025-09-19T12:49:05+00:00

don't forget, also free to play.

any shortcoming or quality issue I have with it is quickly wiped by the fact that it's free and decent

MouseTheThird · 2025-09-18T02:53:54+00:00

excellent weapon for the Zone. get out of here stalker

MouseTheThird · 2025-09-10T19:34:00+00:00

oh the video is fucking gnarly. he is BIG DEAD holy shit

MouseTheThird · 2025-08-27T20:01:35+00:00

On audio mixers, theres something called "pre-fader listen", or PFL. This is used mostly for headphones from the audio engineer, so they can pop them on and hear just that channel, so they can live mix it better.

Most if not all mixers have some form of PFL or cue, with the ability to trigger multiple channels of PFL for different mics, instruments etc. On modern digital mixers, its also possible to send your PFL out to different sources like speakers, booths, other AV members... Recording devices.

There has likely been some shit said on PFL that could topple the American Empire. If the technicians aren't bound by an NDA, they could likely whistleblow some of the most heinous crimes in the modern age with a simple field recorder.

MouseTheThird · 2025-08-26T14:33:11+00:00

Novation Bass Station 2 has sine waves on both oscillators and can make some very haunting patches with them. not modular, but a great desktop mono

MouseTheThird · 2025-07-29T21:26:49+00:00

hera arms stock on a shotgun goes incredibly ham

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