I’ve posted another mix on the Mixes page. While the tracks used may be dusty, this mix is near and dear to me.

Why?

Because it’s the first time I ever took a mix that I had recorded live from the decks and went to town afterwards with a scalpel.

Some DJ purists will tell you it’s a sin to fudge with the results of a session on the decks. They’ll tell you to leave well enough alone and deal with the imperfections of a live mix. I bought into that for a loooong time. And then I really listened to the material that well-known, established, popular, well-selling and well-represented DJ’s were offering.

Polished. Concise. Clean. Pristine. Exciting.

Those words describe the critically acclaimed works of Richard “Humpty” Vission and DJ Dan and many others. Those words are the hallmarks of expertise, sensibility, and appeal.

I was a fool.

I originally recorded this mix straight from the decks and it clocked in at an obese and bloated 2 and a half hours. I went around the day after recording the original and handed people the first 80 raw minutes of the mix; unedited. The reception was underwhelmingly lackluster. Back to the drawing board.

After going through the process of teaching myself how to edit out portions of audio that were poorly developed, unnecessary, redundant, boring, sloppy, etc…I did what was necessary. I opened the source file up in Cool Edit, now known as Audition, and I hacked the ever-living crap out of it. It was painful at first…to lose, no, destroy parts of your baby. To hack out motionless sections of transitions that you had rehearsed for hours. To surgically remove unexciting breakdowns that went on for just a bit too long. To tidy up your mistakes. To…wait a minute. This shit sounds GOOD.

It’s clean. It’s polished, pristine, and concise. My GOD….it’s exciting!

I returned to the same people I had given the originals to. This time it was a different mix. It was a scant 63 minutes.

They loved it.

It was a breakthrough for me. It was everything I wanted my mixes to be, and not to be. Mortal sin? Hardly. I did myself a favor. I did my listeners a favor. Besides, who in the hell has 150 minutes of their life to dedicate to a musical jalopy anyway? I put the jalopy back in the garage and took the Z06 for a spin.

Listen up. Listen closely. See if you can hear what you’re missing. I can’t. And I continue to apply a little “Audition Love” to all my mixes.

To all the “purists”: Sue me.