Reigniting My Passion

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I read an article online about 5 tips to help reignite your passion, and I felt that there was some very valid points in it.  The article was written by Leslie Spencer Pyle from the Entrepreneur website http://www.entrepreneur.com/homebasedbiz/homebasedbizcolumnistlesleyspencerpyle/article204336.html , which spoke about how it's normal for people to feel "burned out" and wanting a change from the norm.  This is what I'm currently going through with music, because of how I've grown so tired of the same old routine being a native of a non-musical city (Denver,CO).

One tip mentioned in the article was about becoming an industry insider, which is kind of what I am trying to become while pursuing my masters degree through Full Sail University.  There is a music conference called the Independent Music Summit coming up in Cathedral City,CA http://www.goims.org/about.html in September of this year, and I really hope I'll be able to attend it and network with the right people finally.  I've really grown tired of the fact that, there are not any conferences of this type that come to Colorado ever, and it's become a real pain to deal with at this point.

I truly realize now that a relocation move is obvious, so that I would be able to attend these kinds of events on a regular basis.  I need to be in a musical city more now than ever, and it looks like it will either be Los Angeles or Las Vegas this summer.  I'm sure there have been many people like myself who have taken the risk and moved elsewhere to pursue their dreams.  In the meantime, I am trying to network more than ever through the various social media outlets that I follow.  Reigniting my passion for music has never been more important to me, because it's truly all I know and all I want to pursue in my life.

I also realize how much of a gamble it is to leave one place and move to another, but staying in Colorado has not worked out for me with my career choice of djing professionally.  Some of my dj associates have been able to make things work here, but I feel that I've grown too big for my hometown at this point.  I found another article on the same subject through a website called Helium ( http://www.helium.com/items/2164697-reignite-your-passion-for-your-career-motivation-for-career-how-to-become-more-motivated-at-work ).

In spite of how much of a challenge it will be to stand out from my competition , there comes a time in a person's life where that risk has to be taken.  I have given too many years of my life to this artform to give in to my frustration.  At this stage of my life, I need to do whatever it will take in order for my dreams to become a reality.  All I have ever wanted to do with my life has been to entertain the world behind turntables, and I want to do it before I'm too old and worn out to even try.

Vinyl Resurrection

I read an article on a website called Digital Music News, which mentioned  about a recent upsurge in vinyl sales in 2011.  The National Association of Recording Merchandisers had a presentation in Los Angeles, CA a week ago, and discussed a 25% rise in vinyl sales for this year, which for many djs will ring sounds of joy.  I've been one of the few djs that began using digital dj software in the last 7 years, but before then I absolutely refused to use anything but vinyl.

Many people over the years had predicted that vinyl would be phased out altogether, but because of the Hip-Hop artform it never really went anywhere.  in the mid to late 1990s, I would say that it went more underground, and you had to go to specific stores to buy vinyl music.
 I'm very pleased that many djs have kept the vinyl movement alive, and that will allow people the experience to feel vinyl again instead of cds or mp3s only.

The only reason I moved from vinyl to digital programs like Serato Scratch Live, was because it allowed me access to much more music in the mp3 format than vinyl, but it also kept the vinyl feel of using records with an encoded digital signal.  I no longer had to haul 7-8 milk crates full of music everywhere I dee-jayed at, and could now spin just as much music through my laptop and turntables.  The wear and tear on my body physically is no longer an issue, and I can just worry about 2 turntables, a mixer and my laptop.

I will never abandon vinyl though, because that's the origin of the Hip-Hop DJ.  I still have vinyl that I used to haul around to my gigs, and more than likely I'll keep them for as long as they'll play.  The beauty of being a dj from the original vinyl era, is that you can really see how important it is to keep the "warm sound" of vinyl around, because mp3s will never have the "thick sound" that vinyl possesses.

Source of Reference: Digital Music News. (  May 17, 2011). Vinyl Projected to Grow More Than 25 % in 2011.  Retrived from http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/051711vinyl#CIgdcAZL2XSQItGrN9AkmA