Up in Here! Up in Here!

Megan reintroduced me to Up in Here by DMX on this gig. What a great song! Her and I played OUR sets to start this party off. Something I've slowly been discovering lately is that by playing music I want to hear is attractive and will bring people to me. So that's what we did. We traded on and off while the other ate and dug deep into our crates for those classic gems and groovin' tracks that we've always wanted to bust out. Once we got some grub in our bellies, we each grabbed a deck and went to town. Megan was playing some classic cuts that I had long since forgotten about, but are back in my barrel thanks to her! We were playing to a diverse crowd and kept mixing it up all night. One of my losses for the night is that I wasn't thinking about the video at all. We did an integrated experience and one change I made this time around was to put the video mixer, Tim Musho, right next to me. However, I was intentional about incorporating video this time around and kept forgetting what songs we had on DVD. A solution I came up with was cataloging what we have on video and color coding my collection so I know as I'm looking through my books what we can put up on the screens. The party was fantastic! This was one of my best gigs this season and I think it's because I keep learning from my gigs and incorporating those learns in future gigs. I keep pushing the limits on what I think is possible. Next step? Empowering others to step up and pass on what I know to up and coming dj's, as well as learning photo and video to develop other skills while taking on more producing roles, too! Look out world! The professor is about unleash a new formula for parties...

--Jonathan Hood, the professor