by DJ Richardas Norvila

FIND4CLICKABLE

ZONES

MANIFESTO

DJ SET STRUCTURE

PSYCHOLOGY

INNOVATIONS

CONTENTS:

True Style DJ Practice

“Zero” Hour / Hour 1 Hour 2 / Hour 3

AttitudeCommunity FeelingDownshifting

Audio OptimizationPhase DisplacementMix Technique

Booking Info / Short Bio

v.1.1

The DJ is a city guy. He knows a lot about essential oils: he immerses in them the heart and body of a man exhausted by the capitalist mode of production at an office or a fac-tory. All week long he lives according to somebody else’s script, smiling at his boss’s camera! But at my party that will be over and done with – I play for all and everyone personally! My party is a real movie. I’ll give a girl or a boy an opportunity to feel like leading characters in a film that is being made about them and for them, They will have a chance not only to have their “fifteen minutes of fame” promised by Andy Warhol, but also to take this feeling home!

At my parties you won’t hear any of the so-called hits, which the Germans call “Ohren-würme” (ear worms). There are no infinite repeats of Internet junk (mp3). All the com-positions in my set have been tested and polished by time like bits of glass on the sea-shore. Like good wine, they have been waiting for their moment to come. To let the genie out of the bottle with gusto and at the right time – this is the DJ’s job!

My recipe: take half a pound of Soul, add a few ounces of Funk, and only after that plunge in Disco... Variety and passion... The Confusion of tongues... This is Disco!

In the early 1970s, “Disco” was the music that the DJ liked and thought of as good. This is the only music that is played at my parties. This is True Style! I often play “versions” or “another view” of well-known compositions – as the Jamaican DJs did in the ‘70s, but I have my own approach.

1.1 MANIFESTO: TRUE STYLE DJ PRACTICE

This is a very important hour, as its task is to properly prepare the guests for the next three parts. The DJ is not at the turntable yet, but the guests can hear a mix of magical music made of ‘50s and ‘60s soundtracks: easy & positive listening, cosmic jazz, the magic voices of true style singers... This mix is a tribute to the time gone by. It is back with us again... thanks to the wonderful recordings that were made then at a qualita-tively different level – both technologically and emotionally. Only positive and romantic vibes and nothing more! The music is soft, creating a very comfortable atmosphere for the guests to have a drink and talk with each other. At some point, the music changes, giving the guests an increasing feeling that some-thing is about to begin...

I start playing... The very first track produces an outburst of energy! We are dancing to the early 70’s Soul, wonderful, mysterious music which was born in America and be-came popular at parties in New England, where its energy exploded the legendary clubs The Twisted Wheel, Wigan Casino and The Torch! It is the sunniest, boldest and sweet-est music ever! One gets a feeling of complete freedom and... good-bye, fatigue! The total time of the tracks is a little more than 2 minutes, which makes the 1st hour of the party highly diverse and lets the guests properly prepare for the hypnotic Disco Beat! The 1st hour has real treats in store for the guests – unique, rarest pieces in the style of Esoteric R’n’R, Garage Beat, Mods Music, Excentric Country and Japan Exotica Ga-rage! Variety and magic, an erupting volcano of dance energy!

2.1 DJ SET STRUCTURE: “ZERO” HOUR

2.2 DJ SET STRUCTURE: HOUR 1

DELETETHIS

PICTURE

At this hour all the guests are ready to merge with the hypnotic Disco Beat – come and meet it, it is here! This music knocks at your heart subtly and unhurriedly... We begin with one hundred beats per minute or a little slower – there’s no hurry, we have a magi-cal, romantic night ahead! Only the deep, sensual Disco that we know from the parties in Paradise Garage, The Loft and Studio 54 clubs. The surprise of this hour is Under-ground Italo, positively passionate and sunny music, with its vibes beyond imagina-tion! This music feels you with warmth and works miracles! Give yourself over to its sounds and you will find yourself in the rays of the sun, feel the taste of ripe grapes and breathe the smells of a cigar factory in Cuba; every one may have their own sen-sations, though, but this is not essential! ))) This musical hour will help expand your idea of real Afro Groove, arousing secret and most tender desires.

It is after midnight. Here begins the most mysterious part of my set... Night Time Disco! At first everything is slow; the dream becomes deeper... “Bombay City... taxis don’t go there! How about something easier, guy?” This quote from the film “Nirvana” describes precisely what I do at this hour: the beats combine with your inner vibes; the bound-ary between dream and reality becomes illusory; you feel strength and see mysterious light... This is the phase of complete rest: Slow Urban Funk, True Style Vibrations! You hear Dub Step, Ragga, Reggae, Bhangara, Hip Hop, Free Style Beat, Obscure Rock and Break Core mixing with gentle and quiet compositions. Everything is as it should be a dream film! And in the end – a number of worthy Russian performers to bring you quietly back to the usual reality. And that’s all for today...

See you!

2.3 DJ SET STRUCTURE: HOUR 2

2.4 DJ SET STRUCTURE: HOUR 3

good times with you,

good times just now

and forever!

ATTITUDE

COMMUNITY FEELING

DOWNSHIFTING

PSYCHOLOGY

The content, dynamics, meaning and atmosphere of each party are determined by human communi-cation laws.

We are together, we feel good, and each of us is individual.

Alteration of music tempo, transformation of mo-notonous inner stress progression, return of men-tal condition to constructive equilibrium.

DELETETHIS

PICTURE

My DJ objective is caring and passionate management of the “collective soul” of the dancing floor. Before I begin working, I create a psychologically comfortable sensual musical atmosphere. Only after that I start my three-hour performance. Gradually the guests relax bodily and psychologically; they forget about the burdens of their daily liv-ing. I closely follow energy oscillations in all the parts of the dance floor and flexibly re-spond to minute changes.

Every time my performance induces in the guest’s soul various nuances of positive emotions, usually dormant, and I seek to reveal their original ritual nature.

The psychological peculiarity of the DJ set, in contrast to other forms of interactive art, is that it aims to give guests of the party various impressions of synthetic nature, bypass-ing the “body/soul” dualism of existence. Here strong emotions immediately find a bodi-ly expression, and music becomes more material than a car standing idle in a parking lot. The “collective soul” of the dancing floor produces a dream that develops throughout the party. When the party is over, the dream goes to sleep in the box of memory, the key to which is a stream of the magical music... Disco is with us forever!

The “Community Feeling” psychological atmosphere is always a phenomenon of “psy-chology of the masses” and, as we think, of something manipulative, terrifying and very undesirable for an individual! Of course, we see and understand this only in retrospect, for example, the horror of communism as an ideology. At the same time, it is by no means easy to put forward a programme of all-out rebellion against “corporate con-sciousness” and “Western-style renovation practices”...in Russia of course)))

3.1 PSYCHOLOGY: ATTITUDE

3.2 PSYCHOLOGY: COMMUNITY FEELING

The monotony of what is going on is one of the main

psychological causes of stress, which fact I always bear in mind when producing

playlists.

Therefore, the only way to save individuality is intelligent resistance, as well as punk at-titudes and “controlled foolishness”. We know these magic methods of reframing from history: since the time when Tom Sawyer allowed his fellows to paint the fence in ex-change for a core of an apple, nothing has changed.

My method of creating “Community Feeling” during a party is based on the thesis “We are together, we feel good, but (!) we never lose our individuality”. The point is to create a cinematographic atmosphere where each guest is the focus of the DJ’s attention. What is important to me is that each guest at my party has a feeling that I am playing personally for him and that the track he has been waiting for sounds at the right time, and then he’ll exclaim: “How did he guess? This is exactly what I wanted!” The DJ’s intuition must go into high gear. If the logic of a mix is arranged in a particular way, the public’s expectations can be controlled, and the laws of the magic ritual start working autonomously! Of course, how I achieve this is a secret, but at my party you will get evi-dence that the hardwired logic of my performance, though absolutely invisible, can do marvels!

The beauty of the party lies in its diversity! A mix of absolutely different styles – that is the essence of the Free and True Style DJ Practice. Psychologically, this is justified and even necessary, because modern living is getting faster and faster, while people are smothered with tons of audio-visual junk! Variety is becoming a necessity. Bearing this in mind, I just select quality components for my mix.

By mixing styles and varying tempos, I achieve the right level of absolutely comfortable Downshifting. The guests find themselves in a supertemporal space where the diver-sity of the situation slows down stress-inducing processes. Everything is geared to the single Groove of the party and, in fact, to relaxation – that’s what it is designed for.

3.3 PSYCHOLOGY: DOWNSHIFTING

My choice of music is an ex-cursus into the history of

dance music. Varied nuanc-es of Funk and Groove com-

bined with sudden tempo changes in the compositions

of my mix help people plunge deep into the Disco atmo-

sphere as if into a colourful fantasy film!

AUDIO OPTIMIZATION

PHASE DISPLACEMENT

MIX TECHNIQUE

INNOVATIONS

• cleaning and transformation of sound spectrum

• СD vs Vinyl – which is better?• new speakers sound like old ones• the Time Machines technique

• value of original tempo• claustrophobia and perception transformation

After completion of audio production (recording, mixing and mastering), the sound spec-trum usually contains parasitic frequency formations that interfere with comfortable per-ception of music. These are mere artefacts of the production process, which have noth-ing to do with the conveyance of emotions and feelings by the composer. In a club’s space, the presence of parasitic frequencies becomes obvious because of extremely intensive audio playback.

The sector of sound spectrum frequencies that produces a sensation of bodily and men-tal discomfort can be cleaned by specific methods. Moreover, it is also possible to en-hance the part of the sound spectrum that is responsible for comfort and high spirits. I do this work on each track that sounds in my set. My spectral remastering has no effect on actual music, but it essentially changes the perception of music by my party’s guests – they feel absolutely comfortable.

Legend has it that the sound in the famous clubs of the 1970s (The Twisted Wheel, Wigan Casino, Studio 54) was absolutely marvelous and that it is a thing of the past and can never be revived! Is it really so? Sound at that time was played through quite different speakers than today. There was a different design, different dome materials and a different principle of coil-magnet interaction. Fine phase displacements inside a track can make present-day composite speakers sound like their cardboard forerunners! It is this “old” sounding that I achieve through phase correction of the tracks in my set! Sounds become softer and much more comfortable, and at times it seems to you that the singer has come out of the speaker and is singing right by your side!

INNOVATIONS: AUDIO OPTIMIZATION

4.2 INNOVATIONS: PHASE DISPLACEMENT

This view of the sound spec-trum makes it possible to ap-proach in a different way the

long-standing question: which plays better – CD or vinyl? My answer is that the best choice is to play adequately

cleaned and optimized music, which I do at my parties.

Order and chaos in the Mix.

The most widespread track mixing technique is “beat to beat” when all tracks merge into one. It would seem that Groove is beating boldly and this can go on for ever... This technique, however, has a number of substantial shortcomings. First and foremost, one long song becomes boring after a while, and people start thinking that there will be nothing really new during the entire set. Another drawback of “beat-to-beat” mixing is a limited choice of compositions, since it depends entirely on tracks that have similar tempos. At the same time, even such tracks have to be adjusted with the pitch knob to make the mix close to the ideal. My opinion is that it is better not to touch the pitch knob at all, because this changes the formant components of music, and something impor-tant is lost. I believe that a mix should be comprised of compositions that vary in style and tem-po (and sometimes, a great deal) to achieve downshifting at emotional level, which I mentioned above. With such preconditions for total punk chaos, it would be appropriate to ask: what will a mix feed on? My answer: on fine transformation of music perception by the guests of a party!

Claustrophobia and perception transformation.

In my mix I use a method that is similar to editing in film production. The point to focus on is Transition. My technique of transition from track to track is based on spatial spe-cial effects. It allows me to accomplish a number of tasks at once – first, I have no tempo restrictions in my choice of tracks (after a 144-bpm composition I may play a 93-bpm track if it is groovy); second, the special effects I use in mixing let the guests feel free from claustrophobia which usually forms in a subtle way in enclosed club rooms. And finally, during a set the volume of music increases of its own accord, and at a certain moment there emerges a near-chaos condition which perturbs people and makes them want to skip off to another place. This fact kept in mind, the formula “uncontrolled en-ergy is nothing” can be used for the good of the guests of a party and the club itself.

4.3 INNOVATIONS: MIX TECHNIQUE

I often have to recompress tracks to recover music’s real

dynamics without which there can be no Groove! Phase

displacement of the sound spectrum magically creates a sensation of the singers and

musicians’ physical presence. The group comes out of the speakers and performs right

before us – the impossible be-comes possible!

DJ RICHARDAS NORVILA

BOOKING INFO

• Booking DJ sets• Production of original playlists

Phone: +7 (926) 526-60-11benzoishere@gmail.combenzo@inbox.ru

DJ RICHARDAS NORVILA

SHORT BIO

DJ, composer, media producer, director, PhD. (Philosophy), psychoanalyst.

Born in Lithuania in 1961. Graduated from the Psy-chology Department of Moscow State University in 1986 and in 1994 got a PhD in Philosophy.

Between 1992 and 1998 studied analytical psychol-ogy at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich. Currently lives and works in Moscow.

Participated in the European media forums Avanto, Transmediale, Donaufestival, th=ts and in the leg-endary Prototypes festival.

The author of “mediaplay”, a trend in contemporary art defined as “interactive morphing of audio, video and choreography on the basis of a common dra-matic concept obtained in field research”.

SHORT BIO

To date, five “mediaplays” have been produced in Europe and in Moscow, including Memory Traces in two parts, commissioned by the Berlin Culture Committee. The first part was put on at the Tesla-Berlin forum, while the second part was presented at the Wien Modern 2007 festival.

Has produced over forty soundtracks for stage plays and films. Major works have been published and discussed in foreign periodicals.

In 2008, produced The Stool performance based on his play, which was premiered at the NET festival.

Played DJ-sets at the closing parties of the Di-versiya, Lichnoye Delo, Territoriya and Arkhitektu-ra Dvizhenia Festivals. Compiled playlists for and played at Nokia, Honda, Land Rover and Master-Card events.

© Richardas Norvila. DJ Set Concept, texts by Richardas Norvila aka Benzo Art direction, illustrations by monstapix