On 17 February 2009, kent williams wrote:
I've seen loads of DJs play boring sets with no consideration for
their audience, using good ol vinyl and turntables. To paraphrase the
NRA, "Technology doesn't bore a crowd, DJs bore a crowd."
Exactly!
I think the important thing to remember is not process, but results.
So much of this turntables vs software talk has nothing to do with ears,
it is all eyes, to be honest.
I've often wondered about this scenario:
2 friends who love the same music attend a party together; one is sighted,
the other has 100% loss of vision in her/his eyes; after the party, both
want to
talk about the music they listened and danced to that night; while the
non-sighted
person ends up talking about the music, chances are pretty darn high the
sighted person is going to have been influenced in his talk by having seen
who used tables vs who used tables and/or software, who was the flashy DJ
vs who was low-key, perhaps also by what sex DJs were (many "listen" to a
female DJ differently for some reason), age, skin color, fashion sense
or lack
thereof, interaction with the crowd, etc, etc, etc; so many many things that
don't have any affect on the music heard. Like does Strings Of Life
played by
a woman who is 23, uses only turntables and wears baggy trousers sound
different than the same
song played on the same sound system via turntable via Traktor Scratch
by a man
of different age, clothing, etc, etc. Of course not! With the sighted
person, s/he is likely going
to talk about the music seen/heard, not simply heard whereas the non-sighted
person won't talk about the music "seen", just heard. (I'm not going to get
into that non-sighted people use their ears in a more heightened manner
because
of not having visual sight; I'm just using this drastic juxtaposition to
try to do
a proper contrast to make the point).
Personally, I don't give a darn what kind of set-up the DJs uses (ie
what my eyes see
in a DJ), I care about what my ears hear from that DJ in question. I
don't like to
watch music videos, I want to hear the darn music not see it, unless
we're talking
about a live PA, and that's a whole different story; we're talking DJs,
not live acts here.
I tell my sound design and music production students over and over again
to turn
the screen off or look away from it when listening to their work. That
visual BS
that Windows Media Player defaults to play? That's turned off in my
classes because
it affects, even if subliminally, how you're experiencing the music.
This past Sunday, a student, instead of playing his homework in an audio
player (Mac
students in this case, so whatever the Mac player is called), wanted
to play it in an audio editor to SHOW us the waveform version of his
homework
and blab on about this section vs that section, pointing to the screen
and the like;
I said "No way, we're listening to your homework, not watching it.
We want to hear you song with no visuals, not watch the waveform scrolling
by in an audio editor. If you play this music for other people in
future, they're going
to judge it with their ears; they're not going to demand to see a visual
representation of
it before judging whether they dig it or not!"
So many people don't get this aspect of music--listen to it and
appreciate it with your ears.
Students so often want to show me/the class their song and this that and
the other thing in the
waveform display of it, and I'm like "no way, we'll experience it with
our ears, thank you, not our darn eyes!!!"
I teach a sound and music class, not a visual art class!
For a long time I had 3 turntables, but due to having mortgage payments
and other bills, I'm
down to 1 Technics 1200 these days. I could use something like Traktor
Scratch or
Serato, etc, to use the turntable live in conjunction with audio files
on the computer when
doing the show, but I don't do this because my daughter is keen on
abusing my turntable at
every opportunity so it is in a place high above her hands and thus
totally not in a good place for
using to mix with. So my mixshow is done with Traktor; any vinyl I want
to play is
recorded into and saved as a WAV file on the computer; a bit
time-consuming, but after
having a dog chew on vinyl and having my daughter try to destroy records
and the tonearm, I'm willing
to do this until she (and the forthcoming son due June 13) are old
enough to allow daddy
to use his turntable in a "live" manner later in their lives; maybe some
don't know this, but
while many songs synch perfectly with software like Traktor, Serato,
Ableton et al, most still
need to be nudged and adjusted just like one would with pitch control on
a turntable.
(And there's still a human being doing the actual song choice and song
order ie programming).
Traktor, Ableton, and the others can do some tempo synching, but they
don't pick the songs! :)
Listen to my mixshow; it's full of mistakes, but I think the fact that I
play music from
the heart matters more than the occasional gallop, even while using Traktor.
I could edit out mistakes and redo shows, but the only time I have
redone a show
was one time (show M50 premiered) when I had my recording levels set way
wrong and it was all so
horribly distorted that there was no way I was going to subject anyone's
ears to it. Even in redoing it the
tracklist ended up different.
After all this rant, here is my point:
I don't think technology matters a damn bit; analog DJ vs. digital DJ? I
don't
care as long as s/he plays good music and presents it (ie audio-wise,
not visual-wise)
well.
My CDN $0.02
Andrew
np The Black Dog--Vexing EP (Soma263) out April09 and to be featured on
next mixshow
--
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