Every morning after a gig I wake up to new messages in my email saying “Katie has tagged you in 3 photos” or “Dan has tagged you in a photo”. Those of you who use facebook know what I am talking about. For those of you that don’t, facebook is a social networking site that allows you to identify (”tag”) friends in pictures to display who is in the picture.

Usually I wake up and find myself on facebook removing some of the photo tags of me for pictures that may catch me at a bad moment. (For example, being passed out in the DJ booth) –> “remove tag”.

These pictures aren’t taken and posted up by facebook though. These pictures - sometimes funny and sometimes nice - are taken by the awesome photographers at Clubzone.com that are sent out to shoot pictures of the best nights in town.

All across North America you will find Clubzone photographers out in the clubs in different cities taking pictures of everything that goes on in a club for your viewing (and laughing) the next day.

For those of you that don’t know what Clubzone is, it is the largest Nightlife, Club and Music community in North America and it is quickly expanding in Europe, Asia and other areas of the world.

Clubzone is by far the industry leader in nightlife photos among other things such as show tickets, club listings and a kick-ass message board.

Go check out Clubzone NOW to see Club and DJing pics from around the world right now. Chances are that you are in some of them!

Lately I have had a few friends ask which headphones are best for DJing. Since Dan and I (the owners of Play It Tonight) use the same pair of headphones I figured that I would make a public recommendation.

The Pioneer HDJ1000 DJ heaphones.

I find them extremely comfortable to wear, they dampen outside noise extremely well and they have a warm crisp sound that rivals some of the most expensive home studio headphones.

Check them out and Play It Tonight!

For those DJs that are considering buying some sort of CD turntables I want to reinforce a well known fact: Pioneer CD Turntables are amazing.

This past week I showed up to a gig where there were some older “no-name-brand” in deck CD players. The expearience showed me how spoiled I have become playing in the biggest and best clubs in Vancouver, all of which have Pioneer CDJ-1000s.

Taken straight from the Pioneer website:

“The Pioneer CDJ-1000 digital deck is still taking the DJ industry by storm. With the incredible feel and performance of vinyl at their fingertips, professional DJs insist on using this world-famous unit to play out in the coolest clubs around the globe.

The CDJ-1000 MK2 will always stand out from the crowd and its world-beating features include:
Fine-tuned Jog Dial - for improved sensitivity, creativity and control
100% “Wide” Pitch Control - allows beat matching of any track and creates new sound effects
Hot Cue - new instant memory for playback of up to 3 cue points per CD
Extra Bright Display - see track info more clearly and use key features more quickly
Full Feature Digital Out - now all sound control features can be connected to a digital environment
Free Removable Multimedia Card - for storing cues, loops, wave data, etc
All this, plus existing unique features, such as Quick Scratch, Loop In/Out Adjust makes Pioneer’s CDJ-1000MK2 the world’s No.1 digital deck.”

If you are looking at making an upgrade to a professional pair of CD DJ Turntables or are looking to make the switch from vinyl to CDs, Pioneer CDJ-1000s are worth every penny that you will spend.

Now you too can make sure that every mix you make is harmonic and does not clash with the brand new Mixed In Key harmonic mixing software.

Mixed In Key has created a software that analyzes all of your MP3 catalog, will sort your catalog by key, can make recommendations about what other keys will work as well and what songs in that key will work best.

You can save the identified keys of songs into their ID3 tags on the spot and you can drag and drop your songs into Ableton Live, Traktor, Virtual DJ and most CD burning applications.

Some of the biggest DJs in the world are now using Mixed In Key. Maybe you should consider using it too?

I have heard about Kid Beyond many times before. I had no idea that he used to create his music is Ableton Live, a microphone and a foot pedal. This guy produces house, trance, drum and bass, breaks loops, melodies and percussion just by using his voice.

Check out this video that I found on youtube where Kid Beyond breaks down how he does his live performances. AMAZING!