How to show energy

General Area Tips, Tricks, & Tutorials
21

It’s a sliding scale.

If I am djing with 200 tracks that I regularly DJ with, I don’t need to analyse it in engine at all.

So your argument of “listen to the track, if it doesn’t fit pick another one and mix that.” applies to vinyl. You get no help, but would you and Pete the DJ say "oh you shouldn’t mark the key or BPM on the track sleeve, you should know your music.

Why not, if it makes it easier for the DJ, then why not use what’s available?

If you think DJ’s don’t need energy, that’s a fine opinion, but

Rekordbox mytags or colour can be used for energy. Serato, similar. VDJ lots of options, including grouping and colour. Mixxx - similar.

so it’s clear other DJ’s do want that functionality.

If you don’t want to use any of the features no one if forcing you to use any of them.

For the songs I know, I don’t need the cue points, as I know where I’m going to mix in and mix out, however I’d not be telling you that you shouldn’t want or need cue points.

So do you use cue points ?

"I’ve got just shy of 7000 tracks in my digital library, countless CD compilations and about 1000 or more vinyl records, and I know the vast majority of them inside out, this is before even addressing the music I don’t own, but know.

so do you use any of the functions of Engine on those tracks?

22

[sigh] you know no-one is forcing you to post on these threads and be wrong right?

you do understand that?

You still haven’t made a point as to why there shouldn’t be the feature when it exists in other software and dj’s find it useful.

“You’re right, we are in 2024, where with a few basic searches many of the questions you’ve spammed to the site could’ve been answered, if you’d just taken the time and initiative.”

That’s the comment you’re referring to so where is the answer ? I think you’ve kind of admitted you are wrong again, as you would normally take great delight pointing to the aswer, after all it’s 2024, but where is the answer…

23

Likewise, no one is forcing you to go through the forum and dig up posts I made years ago, just to claim that I’m wrong about something. What’s your agenda here?

I haven’t “made a point” about why it shouldn’t be a feature because I’m NOT SAYING that it shouldn’t be a feature! Please pay attention.

It’s not my job to hand you the answer on a plate. The forum has a search facility. Not only that, but Reese posted a link an hour ago. Please pay attention.

24

I posted this, 8 hours later, you’ve posted rubbish.

Once again you’ve added zero to this post, so what is your agenda?

Rees posted a link after you posted, and it’s a request for the feature. Great, no-one has found a way in the mean time to do it before denon put it in “properly” that’s my agenda, there are lots of smart people on the forum (not you - doesn’t apply to you) so there is such a thing as work around that doesn’t need the feature or works whilst the feature isn’ here, so for example using the star rating, which is a great suggestion from JasonSkye.

Homeland01 points out that it can’t be recorded on the device, so wants the feature.

Prankie makes a great point that what’s high energy in a party set isn’t in a dnb set and it’s a good point to consider.

Your agenda “Seems funny to me that apparently DJs don’t bother listening to music any more. They expect the tech to tell them instead.”

Except you’ve posted that you do use the tech, so it makes you look daft trying to say you don’t or that other dj’s shouldn’t.

your second point - playground

I said nothing about the playground to you, aside from the fact that lots of people find you incredibly childish.

So what was your point ? About the earlier post, ah which you then look even dafter by saying " not me guv"

I support it…not by saying it’s tech dj’s don’t need and it belongs in the playground you don’t

Secondly, in the tidal streaming post, I actually posted that I agreed with you and you decided to nitpick, so who’s got the agenda?

25

None of that has anything to do with you claiming that the only DJs who know their music are single genre and only playing the same 150 tracks, it’s just deflecting from the fact you said it.

26

Why not use hot cue colours at the beginning of your track to distinguish whether a track has high or low energy, you can do it on the fly, there’s 8 colours to choose from, you could have red for high energy & blue for low energy & everything else in between.

Can’t see why anyone would need 8 cues for 1 track, I only 2 or 3 per track depending on length.

27

How can such a simple question about workflows result in a flamewar?

Anyway:

Well, engine doesnt really know how to handle this: if you look at the BPM ranges you can select for analysis, they stop at just the double BPM as the beginning. Traktor and some other software is able to hear the difference between 70 and 140 BPM, Engine DJ is not. Anyway, having your BPM right is a first important step.

(in that regard, Drum and bass and reggae were a bad example, because when you listen to the snare carefully, Drum and bass is always around 170 BPM as it has a snare near the 3 and the 4, and reggae should be in the lower parts of the range. There are a few other genres which do mess with the feel of BPM however. In that regard you could look at 85 and 170 BPM as more or less the same thing, as they are often interchangeable)

Second step is adding star ratings. But how good a track is, is not always equal to how much energy it has. And indeed, star ratings should be editable in device (as does the whole ID3 tag)

And finaly I make heavy use of playlists. One track can be in many playlists, be it warming-up/peaktime/bubbling-under/party/dutch/… or per genre. I also have a few “best of nillies, 10s” and so on playlists. I know a few people on this forum have their playlists just mirror a folder structure, but I feel this is limiting, as one track can only appear in one folder. You are always playing tracks in a “theme”, be it genre, era, or part of the evening, and will find the same track in another category, depending how you look at that theme.

Anyway, that combination works for me, and probably my playlists are the most important, and require the most work. You can learn a monkey to beatmatch, but curating your collection is were the pot of gold for your DJ career is….

28

Im definitely not interested in the flame war, im just sticking up for the thousands of DJs who spend their lives learning music and know thousands of tracks insdie out without any aides. Claiming its such a small subset of single genre DJs with hardly any music is living in denial, perhaps some people dont want to accept that others are far more engrossed in the craft than others.

Anyway, a good example of your comment Johan, this is around 100bpm but feels like it could be 150 easily because of the 2 step, you have to tread carefully when to play it. Its also out on 45 too :wink:

29

At all. I got a little bored reading all the comments last night… They should get a room or spit in DM.

30

1/ No one asked Pri the DJ to post here. 2/ I actually posted something to support their view and guess what…

I’ve pointed out that the forum needs a block, there are some users who help no-one one and just want to troll. Being able to block the trolls would make the forum much more pleasant.

31

Reading this thread reminded me of what happened a few years ago when a user had loudly requested (perhaps too loudly) to get the “smartlists” because they were present in competing products. Many of us had beaten him saying that they were useless, that everything can be done even without smartlists. Obviously the user was also to blame, which was that of not having asked and proposed his request politely and in a relaxed manner, but he got very angry and started insulting anyone who had ideas different from his. The story ended with that user being banned from the forum (perhaps some old forum users remember it).

Well in the following years we finally got the “smartlists”, I use them habitually and I couldn’t do without them, now I have reduced the playlists to a handful, while I use smartlists thanks to my correctly tagged tracks. To conclude I wanted to say that that user was right, unfortunately he supported his idea in the wrong way and paid the consequences, but damn… that user was right!

To get back to the topic. The lack of an “energy” tag in Engine is a fact, and it’s true. We can make up for this lack by using other tags that can be read, for example the “comment” or the “album” tag (if it is not used for its native purpose), or you can use the 5 stars of the rating, as has already been written. We have a feature request to be able to modify all the tags of the tracks directly from the console (they have already sent you the link to be able to vote for it). With it we can change the energy during the DJ set if you notice that perhaps a track has a different value than the one you have set.

I use the stars of the rating, since some time ago a user wrote (rightly) that for our use there are no bad or good songs, so using the stars of the rating to indicate the energy is a good solution.

I repeat that I agree with you that the Energy tag is missing, but the only way to get around the limit is what we have written to you.

32

Yes, delivery is everything in the world of forums. You can easily make requests without all the “ZOMFG i cant believe this useless software in 2024 cant do this vital feature that stops you from being a DJ, Denon need to hang their heads in shame” histrionics.

This specific request, in my opinion should be tied into the colour tag request, which has lots of votes.

33

Ok, lets break that down.

That’s the vinyl approach right?

no aides, learn the music, know it intimately, select from 7000 records to use your example, pick the 60 you need for a gig, and 10 incase it’s a bit more lively, and 10 in case it’s a bit more mellow.

and with no requests and no curve balls, that’s a completely valid approach.

You don’t need beatgrids, you don’t need bpm, you don’t need keys, you literally don’t need anything engine offers.

Is that a wrong way to DJ, absolutely not.

The very opposite end of that is the DJ Pro AI dj and tidal streaming, who will put in liquid dnb and let tidal and ai-dj-do it’s job.

Now my assumption is, for most of us the first option is purest, but most of us don’t want to do that, and the second option is not where we want to be.

So if option a) is 1 in the getting help from engine - no help required. and option b) is 10 engine can’t give you enough help.

I’m still not understanding why you’re so passionate about a DJ wanting to prep better by noting the feel of a record down, before they play a gig with it.

In your example above, you could easily put “this is around 100bpm but feels like it could be 150 easily because of the 2 step,”

and that’s a great comment.

For me that translates into energy and what I would play around it, all I’m asking is for somewhere to note that, that I can see whilst I’m djiing with engine, that ideally isn’t rating, as I’m already using that for tracks that I think work better for dancing than others.

Not sure why I got.

" SirReal

16h

You’re right, we are in 2024, where with a few basic searches many of the questions you’ve spammed to the site could’ve been answered, if you’d just taken the time and initiative."

From that post or why PK thought that was the right response. Aside from their usual trolling.

So going back to my point, asking for energy and the less than useful post that prompted this - what’s the issue?

34

I appreciate the time you’ve taken, having done a little playing around, I had hoped someone had a clever work around that would have worked.

I may have a try with Album, as that’s something I don’t use at all when djing and routinely blank it out to help with year matching on tunes (to avoid a song getting tagged 20 years younger when it appears on a greatest hits album)

35

Are you attributing this to me?

Not sure where you’re getting that from

"So we all know that a track can be 75 bpm and have huge energy such as a drum and bass track.

Likewise, you can have a reggae track that is laid back and shows 150 bpm.

Ignoring the “know your music comments” because we are in 2024 and not using small amounts of Vinyl any more and most of us have more music than we can remember all tracks from, most other DJ software has grouping, energy, etc so a track can be grouped like that.

Aside from adding it to title/artist which I really don’t want to do.

How does engine help us as DJ’s see the energy of a track. ?"

If you look at later responses, they are responses to trolls, which are unfortunately present on every forum.

or saying thank you for their suggestion.

Feel free to point out an exception to that.

36

Im addressing this nonsense, not the request, you made a nonsensical comment about DJs who know their music, its from a place of extreme ignorance. The rest of your words are largely waffle.

Why do you keep talking about Vinyl DJs? most of us here have been using digital music for decades, and have large libraries.

37

Ah that’s great now I know where you’re coming from.

You think that sort of response is useful and helpful and are defending it, whilst taking objection to me asking the question.

I thought you were better than that, apparently not, please continue to support toxic trolls like that and I’m sure the forums will be a better place for you…

38

Again, im supporting nobody, why are you struggling to understand this, its your comment about bedroom DJs with small libraries im addressing, not anything anyone else has said, stop deflecting.

39

No it doesn’t. It just needs people to act like adults!

I condemn the cancel culture, but if you want there’s a mute button…

That wasn’t because of good ideas. Harassment was his MO.

40

Because your argument is exactly the same as Vinyl djs make.

It’s literally the same argument you’re making as I see Vinyl DJs making about every other tool available.

Energy field is a useful tool.

yes you make the point that you don’t need it if you know your music.

If you play 1 genre and 100 records that is easy to do.

Are you disagreeing that 1 genre and 100 records is easy to know all your music?

No, you’re taking it personally and saying, ah I have more than one 1 genre and more than 100 records and I know them, so therefore everyone else should do that.

At that point, you’re doing the Vinyl DJ argument, you don’t need the tool, no-one else should

If I gave you a corporate gig, can you dj it?

You get 1 day before hand, 10 records in polish, 10 in slovakian, 10 in turkish and they’d like you to mix them in.

For me, that’s a real world case and having a quick listen, putting my energy rating on it, so when it comes to the day I can best mix them in, sound like a valid response.

I’m sorry that use case upsets you.