dazeblog #7: my first time mixing vinyl for 4 hours straight
If you’ve known me, I’ve been DJing for quite some time across a variety of digital formats. Coming from making my mixes in FL Studio for virtual festivals, to learning Serato on the little baby hand-me-down DJTouch2GO2, to finally learning rekordbox & working CDJs in clubs and IRL festivals, I’ve been digitally DJing for half a decade.
What you may not have known is that I’ve been collecting records for just as long, and I recently did my first vinyl only set on 9/11/2026. It was a long time coming in my opinion, I didn’t have much immediate practice in the days that night, but I did dabble here and there at friend’s places (s/o wev & swami) and hybrid digital+analog experimentation set (s/o JRSS & Helltekk).
This set was always going to be very different though, I wouldn’t have anything to save me if I fell flat. No sync button, no BPMs pre-analyzed and read to me before I loaded the track up. Everything had to be manual, it had to have as little seams as possible and as curated as I could make it.
What motivated me to get going with doing an all vinyl set was truly when I saw Kush Jones do an all vinyl set at Elsewhere’s Chatroom. I fw Kush heavy and I thought to myself, “I’ve got a deep enough catalog, I got a (kinda) free weekend before the next Live Exhibition leg, I can do this.” So I hit up my agent Josh and told him to get Elsewhere on the phone, I’ve played there so many times it was just an easy layup.
Artist’s depiction of me and my agent Josh handling bookings
When Elsewhere got back to me with details they gave me a recommended run of show.
“Reminder that the "DJ Booth" in this space is a seated couch location- meant to compliment the mellow, lounge atmosphere of this programming:
09:00pm ~ 10:30pm mellow, opening vibes - will be a hangout for people looking to chill in chatroom or decompressing after an early show
10:30pm ~ 12:00am onwards this is when the crowd starts to trickle in for the rest of the club, feel free to bump it up a bit”
Picture of the setup from Elsewhere’s website.
Very straight forward, and easy to do. Realistically if I wanted to fill a room I wouldn’t start with the heaviest shit I got. You got to ease ppl into it, common sense I know but it never hurts to read it again.
I started picking from my library, what records do I know that ppl fw, what songs do I know are chillers, what songs are fun, what records would work best where, and what do I mentally HAVE to play.
I prepared 120+ records for the night, which lowk was my biggest detriment.
Pictured: the selection I brought to the club
Records, have weight to them. Some are thin, some are thick, and that adds up fast. I remember when I moved out my mom’s crib and moving my records was slick the most annoying because they weighed fucking bricks.
So, I take my collection to the club n I get to the door and even security’s like “damn this shit heavy as fuck” But it’s whatever, I get in. And I’m faced with the technical specs of what was expressed to me in the email. 2 Technics 1200 turntables and a fancy Euphonia mixer.
I watched many a YouTube video on how to beat match vinyl, how to use the Euphonia, the works. I’m as ready as I could be. I couldn’t get much hands-on practice as I was overseas in the weeks before this night. But I know what the fuck to do, I DJed a million times, its not even my first time touching a record, how bad could it be.
I get started and suddenly the next quantity-induced hurdle rears it’s ugly head. Choice-paralysis, caused by excess. I got so excited for the night, I brought way more than I needed. So instead of only worrying about the technicals, I’m now faced with finding the damn record before the track runs out. The mixer does not have a BPM based roll function; I can’t loop shit. When the record’s done, I have to have sumn next to it. That pair of problems led me to scramble around my collection more times than I got good blends off, I was stressed as fuck in the first hour.
Pictured: sub 5 vinyl dj trying to aura farm when he cant find the fucking record he wanted to play
Photo by @bernwillshootyou
But once I got familiar with the set up and more people came in, and I got my first gin & tonic in me, I got more n more comfortable. It was there that I remembered that, while technical skills are important, what matters more is just having good music to rinse. And I certainly had an abundance of good & recognizable music to rinse. I had classics like Snap’s “Rhythm’s a Dancer”, my roommate’s copy Daft Punk’s “Discovery”, and many Strictly Rhythm records in my early night arsenal. When I started getting into that pocket the room started filling up.
Photo by @bernwillshootyou
If you’ve listened to any of my live sets before, esp when I wasn’t the headliner and especially as I support Jane on tour, you can pick up on this method I have going. Where I start with the most recognizable before I hit the audience with where I really want to take them. That tech works no matter what you’re playing, who you’re playing to, it’s just easy. Like how parents would feed their kids their favorite foods and then ease them into eating vegetables. It’s almost the same tactic.
When I got the audience in a proper groove, I threw out some feeler tracks aiming to get the room from the 130bpm pocket up to my usual 160-180bpm range. When I played this recognizable sample-based track at 150bpm, and I saw enough ppl dancing, I knew I had them. That was when I hit my real stride, managed to get some nice blends off, and the night was in full effect.
Video from Nori, thank you to everyone that pulled up that night.
After that it was now time to just keep the momentum going. And for the rest of the night, I did; the choice-paralysis issue still presented itself, but I worked out a system around it. Records I played already go underneath the deck or the milk crate provided to me by the venue, records I want to play can stay on the couch.
Photo by @bernwillshootyou
“Of course, a new problem came to head: my lack of proper quality control. See I knew the songs on almost all the records I brought. What I didn’t assess was the quality of the actual record. We’re in the second, goin on third hour, and I’m trying to rinse my favorites. But they’re scratched, there’s dust clogging the needle, and there’s so much that I would’ve spotted had I listened to every record but it’s too late for that now. All I can do about that in the moment is just echo out and load the next tune that hopefully doesn’t sound too fucky.”
And I do that till the end of my session. And despite all the setbacks, I can say fully that it went really well. I finished the night, crowd that stuck around applauded me and I head home with my heavy fuckin records and the extra records I was gifted from Bern and Tippity.
The last thing that bit me in my ass was my hard to shake habit of redlining. Redlining on analog sounds way different (& less endearing) than digital. I knew that beforehand, but I don’t know why I still did that.
When I listened back to the recording, the late end of the session was so fucking squashed that I was like “Ok let me just salvage the best bits cause I want to put it on NTS, and I know they run a tight fuckin ship on audio fidelity”. Thankfully the best sounding portion (technically & selectively) was around the 2nd hour so I just chopped the other sides off and sent it to air. If you really want the full uncut 4hrs you’re just gonna have to email me no bullshit lmaooo.
Down below you can listen to that excerpt I mentioned and have a look at some additional photos taken by my friend Bern, @bernwillshootyou
All in all, it was really fulfilling to play a vinyl only set. I really want to do more vinyl only sets, but I definitely need to practice more. As of writing this, I took the money I made from the last US leg of the Live Exhibition tour and bought a pair of Reloop RP-7000 MK2 turntables to get going with at home.
I almost got the Technics but they are $1500 a piece. I’m not doing that to myself.
