DJing nowadays

[jack_swift]

At the same time why should i bother beatmatching when i can just hit a button and focus on the mix?
I decided to sell my tables and just use a analog Mixer and midi to mix up to 4 tracks . Unless your gonna be doing scratches etc... manually cueing and beatmatching is becoming obscure,

You say why dont you jus get a computer to do the beatmatching an concentrate on the mix!!

How can you honestly enjoy that??

It is perfectly possible to do these kind of 3/4 way mixes whilst doing the beatmatching urself! Granted you have to be a fuckign badboy on the decks! An this is why djs get such a high from pullin off these mixes! People like Youngsta an EZ ive seen pull off three way mixes perfectly!

I remember about three years ago EZ did a filthyh mix of a loop of his intro number 6 into night an then added wookies scrappy into the mix out of nowhere! He was going absolutely nuts (Headnoddin i mean) behind the decks!!

do you think he would hav been enjoying himself anywhere near as much if he had jus pressed a few buttons an decided when to bring in certain bits of tunes..........................Fact is defo no!

the football equivalent is everyone being able to play football like messi but the only variable ebing how u use those skills as in who u pass to when you shoot

also would like to add it doesnt matter what u mix (vinyl, cd, vinyl or cd simulation like serato or traktor) as long as the sofware isnt doing the work for you! Otherwise your jus a technician realy not a dj

[djshiva]

seems to me like a bunch of people learned to mix on wax and are bummed out cause people with a laptop can do it easier.

such snobbery on this board, some genuine elitists on here. who gives a fuck what you're playing on??? people saying "if you ain't on wax, you ain't a DJ" i think you're missing the point... i think that people saying that in the DJ community and in your little scene you have to spin on wax to be "legit" or a "proper DJ" is silly. its like a little gang... "you gotta do what we do or you ain't in our gang".

like i say... the point is being missed. DJing isn't about turntabalism, or scratching, or juggling or whatever... that mentality only exists within a certain group of (very snobby, and fucking stupid) people and is compltely irrelevant outside of it. Your job, as a DJ, is to play tunes for listeners, and i think people forget that. From certain peoples posts in this thread it just seems like DJing is seen as some kind of circle jerking session, where if your methods dont match the standards and tastes of the "true wax DJ" then you're nothing. and its bullshit.

RESULTS > MEDIUM.

big ups to all the people who started spinning on wax cause its all that there was to spin on.

this^^

Actually, I did the complete reverse - learned to beatmatch on an early version of Traktor, started playing out with CDs and continued for a few years, but now I only ever buy vinyl.

IMHO, the most important factors are quality of musical output (mixing, track selection, flow, etc) and artist integrity. By artist integrity, I mean working your medium in such a way that you're earning the respect that you get from the crowd (and let's face it, in 2010 DJs get much more kudos than they really deserve for mixing two records together). I don't mean spending shitloads of money on vinyl, necessarily. I wish this debate would turn into "passion vs not passion", because that's really what this is about. I'm talking about giving a shit about your music, not being lazy, genuinely living for what you do, not getting the computer to do everything for you, etc. On a basic level, the medium is not important at all; it's your approach to it and what you achieve with it that counts.

So yeah, I believe that you can achieve great things with more or less any medium. However, for me, I found that both of the above levels were significantly easier to maintain when I started playing 90% vinyl. My reasons for migrating towards vinyl and sticking with it are threefold, and not really that related to the actual handling of records:

1) QUALITY CONTROL, AVOIDANCE OF MEDIOCRITY, OWNERSHIP OF A REAL OBJECT

I come from the techno and house side of things, which is even more overrun with mediocrity than the dubstep scene. In techno, 99% of the digital releases are unbearably boring, and that's 99% of an absolute SHITLOAD of releases. In order to keep up to date with everything coming out on beatport you'd need to be listening to utter tripe at least a couple of hours a day. Don't get me wrong, I love crate digging, both in the real sense and online, but 3 hours a day of the same drum loops with a different sax sample on top started making me want to burn off my own ears. Contrast this to, say, going into Hardwax and asking Shed or DJ Pete what's come out recently that they've enjoyed, and you'll find that there's just no competition. I actually enjoy buying music now. Sure, there's loads of shit coming out on vinyl too, but there's so little money to be made in dealing with wax that the quality control tends to be higher at various stages in the chain (eg labels, shops, distribution). There's still a bunch of stuff that only comes out on 12 and not digitally.

There's another side to this - if you're spending 8 euros on a record, you're gonna be keen to make sure you're not buying a load of shit. My Beatport folder is just chock full of rubbish where I listened to 10 seconds of the shitty quality sample, thought "yeah, cool, this'll fit well into a set" and clicked BUY because it was only €1.39. That, IMHO, is not a good way to collect music. I'd much rather have a smaller collection of REAL, physical objects with nice artwork etc, than a hundred gigabytes of assorted crap that I'd picked up here and there, most of which I wouldn't be able to hum the melody from if you asked me "what's this track like". I also find I know my vinyl much better than I ever knew my MP3s, partially because I have much less of it. I don't really care about having every single new release and routinely play out stuff from 2, 5, 10, 20 years ago, so for me this is much more important than being able to acquire lots of new music cheaply.


2) I (PERSONALLY) HATE PLAYING WITH A LAPTOP

I'll preface this by mentioning that I actually work as a Traktor developer, and am clearly not anti-laptop-DJ. I think the "laptop DJs look really boring" argument is bullshit, to be honest. There's absolutely no reason why you can't look as animated and engaging playing on Serato or Traktor as you can playing wax. I've seen some pretty dull vinyl DJs play and some pretty entertaining Traktor DJs play; the argument is basically moot because the whole POINT of scratch DVSs is that you don't have to look at the screen very much.

However, for me, the key difference, and the reason I hate playing out with a laptop and avoid it wherever possible, is the browsing. I HATE using a trackpad to scroll through Windows or Finder or some file browser in order to find my next track. Hate it. Live sets may be a different matter, but as a DJ I'd rather feel like a selector and a musician than a technician, and I simply don't like using computers in a club. BUT, if it works for you, great.


3) THE FACT THAT LOADS OF TRAKTOR DJs ARE REALLY SHIT

For me, I think this is the crux of the whole debate. I live in Berlin and it's CERTAINLY true here with NI having such a big market share, but I'd imagine it's the same everywhere else -- there are lots of really boring DJs playing really shitty music with Traktor (sync'ed or otherwise), and it's very easy to extrapolate as far as saying "Traktor's really boring". It's a totally bullshit argument, but I'll readily admit that vinyl does have quite a vain attraction in tending to give off the impression that you spend a lot of time, energy, money and love on your music collection and music as a whole, whereas being a laptop DJ opens up the possibility to onlookers that you might just be some bratty kid with a cracked copy of Ableton and a Rapidshare Premium account. The increasing disposability of art, culture, creativity etc has been a running theme for as long as popular culture has existed, and to me, although DVSs open many doors, I can also see that there's quite a high correlation (NOT causation!) between laptop DJs and bland selection and mixing. I definitely don't think that laptop DJs are bad DJs, but I do like how playing vinyl does (at least to a certain extent) distance you from the cheapo cracks'n'mp3s image that's very easy to acquire.


I very rarely wade into these debates but figured I'd offer my 2 cents as I don't think I've ever really written down my views on laptop DJing in full. Sorry for the essay!

TJ

Ah, finally. A well thought-out opinion. Well said.

Also, when you live a nomadic life and move around a lot, lugging thousands of vinyl records around becomes a liability. I still have my record collection, but it's in storage, and everything is now on several harddrives. This last move was MUCH less backbreaking, as are gigs. At almost 40 years old, I can't carry that shit around anymore because of chronic backpain caused by carrying that shit around.

So people can bitch all they want, and I will still rock a party and leave at the end of the night NOT feeling like I am 80 years old. LOL

[jolly wailer]

Mixing digital is good for the environment. It greatly reduces the production of polymers that will inevitably make their way into the pacific ocean.

so electric power is green now ?


and the production of computer parts doesn't pollute ?

[philly]

At the same time why should i bother beatmatching when i can just hit a button and focus on the mix?
I decided to sell my tables and just use a analog Mixer and midi to mix up to 4 tracks . Unless your gonna be doing scratches etc... manually cueing and beatmatching is becoming obscure,

You say why dont you jus get a computer to do the beatmatching an concentrate on the mix!!

How can you honestly enjoy that??

It is perfectly possible to do these kind of 3/4 way mixes whilst doing the beatmatching urself! Granted you have to be a fuckign badboy on the decks! An this is why djs get such a high from pullin off these mixes! People like Youngsta an EZ ive seen pull off three way mixes perfectly!

I remember about three years ago EZ did a filthyh mix of a loop of his intro number 6 into night an then added wookies scrappy into the mix out of nowhere! He was going absolutely nuts (Headnoddin i mean) behind the decks!!

do you think he would hav been enjoying himself anywhere near as much if he had jus pressed a few buttons an decided when to bring in certain bits of tunes..........................Fact is defo no!

the football equivalent is everyone being able to play football like messi but the only variable ebing how u use those skills as in who u pass to when you shoot

also would like to add it doesnt matter what u mix (vinyl, cd, vinyl or cd simulation like serato or traktor) as long as the sofware isnt doing the work for you! Otherwise your jus a technician realy not a dj

When you don't really know the possibilities of what you can do ,you wouldn't know how to enjoy it!
I enjoy mixing now a lot more now to be honest, i can have clips of my own personal productions in ableton synced to tracks im mixing in torq.
I have all the cues and effects mapped out while controlling the individual eq's on my mixer, nothing ever misses a beat, it allows me to get really creative.

Ive been doing nothing but DJ since i switched set ups, its fun as hell.
To each their own but I just got bored mixing on vinyl, and since my songs were beatmapped in Torq for effects when i was beatmatching manually anyways, i just didnt see the point of having the tables anymore to sync manually when i could let the program do it.
I think its fucking genius that we are even able to have a program syncing music for us so i think you might as well utilize it, a shit dj will still not be able to do good mixes even with these tools just like a retard will fail math even though he's got a calculator.

Im a real techy bastard though so Djing tracks 'digitally' is not for everyone...can be real confusing sometimes, 2 vinyl and a mixer keeps it nice and simple
Cheers to everyone thats keeping vinyl alive.

[Mr. Mittens]

I think, that just for the wheelup alone, we should stick to vinyl

unless we keep doing what we're doing bruv, someday people won't even know where that sound came from.

fair play to everyone expressing their opinion, discussion is healthy wish we could refrain from making it a personal, I'm-better-than-you type ting, but hey, this is the interwebz and dsf members are only as human as anyone else...

lot of good points all around, won't repeat them, but I would like to mention that the person who I consider to be the best DJ in my town uses turntables. Sometimes he uses serato as well. Someone earlier said something like dubstep is easy to beatmatch, it's all the same tempo. I tend to agree!

When I first started DJing, I wasn't even into EDM really, I was playing hip hop and reggae and rock and roll and blues and funk and all kinds of stuff... such a challenge to blend some of that stuff! catch yourself throwing two records together from completely different worlds, riding the pitch cause the drummers are humans, and you are supremely in the moment, making something that no one has ever heard before... when I started getting into EDM I was like "damn, this is easy! all these beats are MADE to fit together." These days I will play whole sets of just one or two genres, and all the tunes flow into each other more or less seamlessly, and I love it, but sometimes it gets boring... when I see my homie in the venue with a crate of all kinds of different shit I get so stoked, because I know he's gonna surprise me with blends that no one would even think of. And the rinses aren't always perfect! He takes chances and goes out on limbs! Sometimes the limb breaks! But it's fuckin sick cause I'm right there with him man...

anyway...

[helix]

I haven't read any of the thread, but I'm not a fan of watching somebody mix.
I'm a fan of what they play.

its nice to hear a dj go off time and within one bar correct the mistake.

Uh, no it's not. It's nice to hear a set with no errors. Fucking idiot.

[dubfama]

exclusively vinyl releasing dubstep labels get huge respect (DMZ/deep medi for example). One thing i love about vinyl releasing is the quality control involved, as well as the obvious fact you are paying for something that has had a life and is real not just a piece of data. When you play vinyl the fact that it is an analog medium it means it is given this dynamic you just cant get with digital mediums. This is most noticable on a system, of course. I'm vinyl all the way fuckin love it!! The exclusivity of it is sick as well, the whole dubplate culture is what the scene was built on shouldnt let it die. I can DJ much better using vinyl than cd, although i find mixing on traktor really easy. Two things that put me off traktor are the whole mixed in key thing sort of predicts your set for you and the fact that you can see all the tempos, the two things mean you don't have to know your tracks so well i reckon i would get into bad habits. Also it seems a bit long pluggin your box into the mixer when playing out...

[bolsty]

Now have Technics 1210's and a Technics mixer that my mate kindly donated.

donated?

Yeah man, was literally in the process of buying a Rane 57dsl for like £900 when a close mate of mine gave me his Technics mixer for £30..... i was so blown away by his kindness that i bought him a ticket for Outlook 2010 as a show of appreciation. Set em up last night so gimme a few months and i'll start harrasing peeps with some deadly mixes.

i misread it as the tech's being donated haha, still good deal though.

[NattyWallo]

the irrelevance of this discussion is equal to the amounts of quotes present. good job

[_boring]

watching (listening to) someone not beatmatch is just boring sorry, unless u are utilizing abelton loops like a madman remixing shit on the fly....

traktor or any of those programs with a midi controller is pretty wank sorry! fairplay if u cant mix and u are playing ur own tunes but.... still. bores me!.

i would rather have the mixes not be as good and watch the guy fighting for his life to stay on beat tbh

[jolly wailer]

I think its fucking genius that we are even able to have a program syncing music for us so i think you might as well utilize it, a shit dj will still not be able to do good mixes even with these tools just like a retard will fail math even though he's got a calculator.

[_boring]

there is a reason why not everyone can DJ....

[djshiva]

watching (listening to) someone not beatmatch is just boring sorry, unless u are utilizing abelton loops like a madman remixing shit on the fly....

traktor or any of those programs with a midi controller is pretty wank sorry! fairplay if u cant mix and u are playing ur own tunes but.... still. bores me!.

i would rather have the mixes not be as good and watch the guy fighting for his life to stay on beat tbh

If someone has to "fight for his life to stay on beat" then his ass should never have left his fuckin' bedroom, tbh.

Beatmatching isn't frickin' rocket science. Three months into learning how to DJ, you should pretty much have that down. The hard stuff is learning how to pick the right tunes, how to play melodies and sounds off each other, finding rhythms that complement each other instead of clashing, etc.

In other words, the REAL skill of DJing, lies in the MUSICALITY, and not the (rather easy) beatmatching. If you REALLY think beatmatching is what makes a DJ, then I would venture a guess that you yourself are a boring fucking DJ ( i mean "you" as in the general "you", before anyone gets their panties in a wad).

I would also wonder how long many of the steadfast "vinyl & beatmatching make the DJ" types in here have been DJing. I have been at it for more than 15 years, and trust that after that long, you do tend to look for ways to make it more fun and more interesting to yourself and the audience. If you are content doing the same thing at that point, then once again...you are a boring fucking DJ.

DJs are a dime a fucking dozen. Do you think your beatmatching skills make you stand out? Do something to make your DJing at least remotely interesting or suffer the fate of being a boring fucking DJ. That's the only thing I really care about, as a DJ and as a listener. HOW you do it doesn't matter as much as HOW IT SOUNDS in the end.

[_boring]

no i dont think beatmatching is special i just think not doing it is half assed

this thread is beat to death.

[misk]

dubplates smell good.

[Wabberjocky]

I think the DJ scene needs more competition, bring the battles back.

[djfoster]

still this discussion? we repeat same things every time

someone think beatmatching is redundant nowadays, I love it, every time what I'm listening with my right ear match left ear is amazing. The point IS NOT "hey its wonderful my pc can do it for me", sincerely can't understand why people have ideas like this you are assuming you'd like a dummy behind a program and its the saddest thing.

I use cdj for radio and I play with cds when I can bring my bag with me but I'll continue to spend money for acetates, yes you can say "you fucking stupid! with 300£ you can buy 50records or a ton of mp3s" and I'll answer always same thing, what I have is exclusive and concrete.

[philly]

Thanks for all the input. In the end i went through major withdrawal after a week of selling my tt500's and got a sick deal on some technics

[egoless]

[signus]

if anyone wants to arrange a vinyl vs traktor mix off then i'm deinitely game

I would fucking eat you bruv