DJing nowadays

[dj_donga]

The way I see it, what is the point in being a vinyl DJ if a lot of your mixes might not work, your beatmatching is often quite wonky (it is very easy to tell when a vinyl dj is only a fraction out; with autosync and all that shit you can easily put the effort in to make sure they are exactly in time) when you can get a program to do that for you .

perhaps its this need for perfection that i'm not feelin
the effort a vinyl dj has to put in to pull off back to back exciting mixes is where my pride comes from and what i find exciting when watching others
it's a flying by the seat of the pants thing
if people just wanna hear perfect mixes why dont clubs just play studio created mix cds??????
i dunno
got sucked into this thread. i usually just keep my mouth shut
it's easier than trying to explain to a wall of people with all these technological advantages behind em why i still enjoy playing 'old fashioned' vinyl
i'm out

[phrex]

meh I love vinyl.


some people don't.

[kizza2435]

As a self-confessed Traktor DJ, I'd like to throw my two pennies in..
Obviously I would prefer it if I was able to mix perfectly with vinyl. I don't think anyone could say they would rather be a master of Traktor than a master of vinyl, simply because the latter is a much, much, much harder art to learn and perfect, and hence is infinitely more rewarding. But... and here comes the problem. Learning to mix vinyl is just no longer attractive. Why bother learning to beatmatch etc. when you can just concentrate on making amazing mixes? The way I see it, what is the point in being a vinyl DJ if a lot of your mixes might not work, your beatmatching is often quite wonky (it is very easy to tell when a vinyl dj is only a fraction out; with autosync and all that shit you can easily put the effort in to make sure they are exactly in time) when you can get a program to do that for you and hence you can concentrate of the important things about djing... song selection, good mixing, using phases and playing to the crowd. Unless you are a world class vinyl DJ, the crowd are going to prefer to hear perfect beatmatching with an insane mix than dodgy beatmatching. The majority probably won't care what you were using, they're unlikely to say "his mixing wasn't great, but at least he was using vinyl". Fair play to all the vinyl djs out there though... i have immense respect for you for learning and perservering with the art, and you will forever be a better technical dj than I. But, when it comes to playing out, its not technicality that counts. And thats where I think you have to give some leeway to digital Djs.

having that mentality basically makes traktor a glorified itunes crossfader. you dont even need headphones. fuck me, you dont need ears to get a mix on...fuck that!! if you cannot beatmatch, you are not a DJ. If you dont know how to touch discs, you are not a fucking dj. Fact.

[noam]

having that mentality basically makes traktor a glorified itunes crossfader. you dont even need headphones. fuck me, you dont need ears to get a mix on...fuck that!! if you cannot beatmatch, you are not a DJ. If you dont know how to touch discs, you are not a fucking dj. Fact.

was gona make some fence-sitting statement, as it is now tho, everybody should just accept the above and move on

[Caski]

just comes down to personal preference, i reckon its a majority of the older lot that like to stay with vinyl n know wot it takes to learn to mix on vinyl as opposed to the sync button on some software...

although as a producer digital has helped get tunes played from those who cant necessarily afford to cut tunes etc...

but imo wax is THE one for me, the feel of it, the control over it all, you're earning the mix!

i just love everything about vinyl, but i like being not with the times too lol

[Alty]

(gotta get this rant out of my system and hear your opinions on this) sorry

When i started dj'ing it was just vinyl on 2 turntables and a mixer. Scratching and beatjuggling were some good times but i was also breaking my back; carrying vinyl and heavy ass equipment around, blowing tons of money on it all... eventually i noticed that generally ppl dont really give a shit as long as it sounds good and they can dance to it. (goodbye turntablism)

Now you got laptop dj's, people spinning on ipods and i pads , shits getting out of control.
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, if its not already.
I can do more mixing on a little 60 dollar piece of plastic than a nice set of tables... its kind of depressing

In all of this, the art of doing it has been largely replaced by technology...
Like a girl, its just less interesting when its too easy.

If it's depressing how easy it is now, just go back to turntables. I wayyy prefer it if I go to a club and see someone DJing on turntables, I have a lot more respect for them and it's more entertaining to look at, somtimes it's really cool seeing DJs do really cool things with turntables. It's probably the same mentality where a band could just play music off a laptop and yes it would be much easier for them, but for the crowd it would be boring and ruin the atmosphere - there is something nice about the live sound. OK, DJing isn't live music, but it is still better to watch a DJ doing something a bit more PHYSICAL and skillful than just pressing a laptop button. So yes it's easier but I think people prefer seeing a real DJ.

Well that's my 2 pence.

[NattyWallo]

I think you guys confuse two different things here.... I mix with vinyl only, but I don't use 30kilos of worthless plastic to do it, I just start my laptop, plug the Serato box in, place the 2 vinylrecords on the the tables - and play.
There is no difference mixing with Serato than from "real" vinyl, to be honest it is only better than original.

Technology has given us better tools to perform the exact same art

Now ofcourse "real" turntablizm/juggling is totally different, let's be honest you don't need to be very skilled to beatmix dubstep, it's all the same tempo... I learned DJ:ing by playing on "real" vinyls, everything from triphop, to dub, to breakbeats, to house, to broken beats. Now when I have all the tunes lined up in Serato I can skip all the stupid hassle with real vinyl (looking in crates, putting back and removing records from the sleeves, looking for the tempo etc) and concentrate on pure playing music.

This comes from an old-school vinyl dude, I never learned to beatmix with CD-J's and if Serato wasnt invented, I wouldn't DJ anymore, but IMO there is nothing romantic or more "real" searching for tunes in some dusty crate or fiddling with plastic plates or waste time looking for BPM areas (something you need to do unless every tune is the same tempo), sure it's fun to look at etc, but what comes out of the speakers is the result of your work, and that's most important.

If I could plug my brain in to my Serato box and will the mixes to sound as I want, I would do it, and it would still be as much 'art of DJing' (yes it is an artform) as playing on 2 original 1200s with only 1st edition 12"inches.

[frebentos]

looking for BPM areas (something you need to do unless every tune is the same tempo)

I don't get this.

A track is playing. You cue another and ride the pitch till it matches. I've never thought in terms of BPM's, only in terms of, "Will this go well/physically mix with this?"

Oh well, yous can say what you like, but if you are ripping your records to mp3 and playing on serato their is no way it will sound as good on a proper system...too much compression.

[Cr0fty]

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

[jolly wailer]

too many cooks in the kitchen imo

[Svetlana]

i was talking to a girl last night who i'm sure would admit barely spent anytime thinking about djing issues before
and she said 'surely if you play vinyl it acts as a filter as you're not gonna spend 6 or 7 quid on a shit tune'

I find 200 expectant paying punters to be rather a good filter against playing a shit tune no matter what i paid for it or what format i play it out on.

[frebentos]

i was talking to a girl last night who i'm sure would admit barely spent anytime thinking about djing issues before
and she said 'surely if you play vinyl it acts as a filter as you're not gonna spend 6 or 7 quid on a shit tune'

I find 200 expectant paying punters to be rather a good filter against playing a shit tune

aye IN THEIR OPINION...bloody students..

[wilf]

im sorry wilf but that is just a FAIL mentality. fairplay if u use traktor WHILE learning to beatmatch, but u should at least still be trying to one day be a real dj. it took me a year or so but IMO you need to be a real dj! if there is no one else playing dubstep out in your area and you want to get shit going immediately, then whatever, but to not even attempt to learn how DJ (ie use the pitch) then you are selling everything short.

I am not saying that it is the right mentality but I am saying it is the mentality that is held these days simply because there is no advantage to learning to mix vinyl except for personal gain. I am purely talking from a 'playing out' point of view in that i'd rather play out with traktor knowing that my beatmatching was going to be perfect and so i could concentrate on doing amazing mixes than djing with vinyl and worrying about whether i'd get my beatmatches right tonight.

having that mentality basically makes traktor a glorified itunes crossfader. you dont even need headphones. fuck me, you dont need ears to get a mix on...fuck that!! if you cannot beatmatch, you are not a DJ. If you dont know how to touch discs, you are not a fucking dj. Fact.

i don't really see how this is the case? its all about preferences. it annoys me when vinyl djs say that computer djs are not real djs. i'm doing exactly the same as you except im not having to worry about beatmatching when playing out, simply because i've taken the time to grid everything etc beforehand (which requires little effort, i know - but traktor's autogridding function is shite so its not all automatic). what i will admit to is that obviously i'd rather be as good at beatmatching on vinyl.. that is the ultimate goal. but that will takes years to learn, if at all. its fucking expensive. so why? when the direction of djing is purely computers now, vinyl djing will be a thing of the past. but thats not to say that people who have already learnt the skill are wasted... not at all. you should be treasured. but what im saying is that there is NOW now point in trying to learn it except as something on the side.
its like weaving by hand, great while it happened, excellent skill to have, well done... but when machines can do it? why not make it easier and give yourself a chance to weave something amazing instead of worrying about the weaving itself. but thats not to say i wouldnt like to know how to weave. but if i did learn it i wouldnt use it to make clothes, i use the machine. awful analogy
but ultimately, its not in the means, its in the end.

[deadly_habit]

the crowd is there to dance and have fun
they could give a fuck if you carried in 50 lbs of wax or a 5 lb laptop

[signus]

Anyone who just syncs 2 tunes digitally is waste. I play on cdjs after moving over from vinyl for numerous reasons but I still love every aspect of DJing on them, beat matching included.

Don't water down my art by letting computers do all the work please

[deadly_habit]

I'm predicting a lot of this will happen in this thread.

[MPathy]

having that mentality basically makes traktor a glorified itunes crossfader. you dont even need headphones. fuck me, you dont need ears to get a mix on...fuck that!! if you cannot beatmatch, you are not a DJ. If you dont know how to touch discs, you are not a fucking dj. Fact.

was gona make some fence-sitting statement, as it is now tho, everybody should just accept the above and move on

tbh i find it quite upsetting to watch a dj fiddling around with a laptop as oppose to using decs. Somebody mentioned using vinyl and supporting it as an older thing. I have not been mixing a year and still prefer vinyl over anything else available. The feeling you get when your vinyl have arrive in the post is up there with waking up on christmas day at the age of 10...

[signus]

im sorry wilf but that is just a FAIL mentality. fairplay if u use traktor WHILE learning to beatmatch, but u should at least still be trying to one day be a real dj. it took me a year or so but IMO you need to be a real dj! if there is no one else playing dubstep out in your area and you want to get shit going immediately, then whatever, but to not even attempt to learn how DJ (ie use the pitch) then you are selling everything short.

I am not saying that it is the right mentality but I am saying it is the mentality that is held these days simply because there is no advantage to learning to mix vinyl except for personal gain. I am purely talking from a 'playing out' point of view in that i'd rather play out with traktor knowing that my beatmatching was going to be perfect and so i could concentrate on doing amazing mixes than djing with vinyl and worrying about whether i'd get my beatmatches right tonight.

having that mentality basically makes traktor a glorified itunes crossfader. you dont even need headphones. fuck me, you dont need ears to get a mix on...fuck that!! if you cannot beatmatch, you are not a DJ. If you dont know how to touch discs, you are not a fucking dj. Fact.

i don't really see how this is the case? its all about preferences. it annoys me when vinyl djs say that computer djs are not real djs. i'm doing exactly the same as you except im not having to worry about beatmatching when playing out, simply because i've taken the time to grid everything etc beforehand (which requires little effort, i know - but traktor's autogridding function is shite so its not all automatic). what i will admit to is that obviously i'd rather be as good at beatmatching on vinyl.. that is the ultimate goal. but that will takes years to learn, if at all. its fucking expensive. so why? when the direction of djing is purely computers now, vinyl djing will be a thing of the past. but thats not to say that people who have already learnt the skill are wasted... not at all. you should be treasured. but what im saying is that there is NOW now point in trying to learn it except as something on the side.
its like weaving by hand, great while it happened, excellent skill to have, well done... but when machines can do it? why not make it easier and give yourself a chance to weave something amazing instead of worrying about the weaving itself. but thats not to say i wouldnt like to know how to weave. but if i did learn it i wouldnt use it to make clothes, i use the machine. awful analogy
but ultimately, its not in the means, its in the end.

You could still learn to beat match using Traktor, beat matching is not vinyl exclusive.

i'd rather play out with traktor knowing that my beatmatching was going to be perfect and so i could concentrate on doing amazing mixes than djing with vinyl and worrying about whether i'd get my beatmatches right tonight.

But it's not YOU doing the "amazing mixes" it's your computer. If this is the case surely you don't need to be there? Anyone given your laptop could just play a set, no talent involved I'm sorry to say. All you're actually doing is choosing a tune and maybe playing with the EQs and faders a bit, I can do all of that with an old stereo playing a mix cd.

I don't understand this new mentality of "Why beatmatch when a computer can do it?" It's simple, if your not beatmatching then you're not DJing. There is just no talent involved at all.

[Sharmaji]

ideal world: it's apples and oranges. If i'm playing a solo set live, i'll use vinyl @ serato, or even serato on CDJ's if I have to (plenty of places in emerging markets like asia simply don't HAVE decks). The wonder of vinyl is that you ONLY use your ears-- the record's black, the room's dark, there's no screen, no startpoints, etc.

The majority of what we're playing these days is 2 individual ableton setups, we match loops/clips/songs/events to each other in real time, w/o being sync'd to each other. couple that with live drumming and... really not sure where the DJ element ends and the live element begins. This is exciting to me.

non ideal world: dude stands in front of a traktor controller, no headphones, matching by sight. Every second you're looking at the screen is a second you're not controlling your hands creating music, or reading the crowd. I've seen alot of this lately, it's usually someone mixing a very soundalike set and really not that awesome.

[deadly_habit]

it comes down to a good performer not relying on their medium
a shit digital dj is gonna be just as shit on vinyl and vice versa
beatmatching isn't brain surgery either especially in this genre