You are right, I jumped from my feeling of Mills as having a very musical, tone and synth oriented style, and tried to describe more of a mental philosophy, at least as I see it. Mills obvious first public success and work was in the dj/radio department.
I'm glad, however, that I touched upon the vein of dj does not have to equal musician (and frankly, plenty of great musicians make horrible dj's) On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 11:54 AM, kent williams <chaircrus...@gmail.com> wrote: > Wasn't Mills DJing long before he began making records? Or am I > misunderstanding the connection you're making? > > I started making music long before I ever tried to DJ, but it was more > lack of opportunity and not having $1200 to drop on 1200s and a mixer. > Somehow picking up a synth for a couple hunderd bucks every so often > was more managable. > > People that DJ first often have an intuitive grasp of what makes a > good dance track. Whether that starts them down the path to artistic > excellence is another question. > > One does have to attain some minimal musical knowledge along the way > though. I people who have released records who are functionally > tone-deaf. I've actually 'music-doctored' a few tracks for them, > where I had to tell them how to get their chords and basslines in the > same general key, tune the vocal samples, etc. And of course, they're > way more successful than I am. And I have 2 years of college as a > music major. > > There is a big difference between DJs who start producing, and DJs who > hire ghost producers to make tracks for them because they're too busy > or coked up to learn how to do it properly themselves. That some weak > sh*t, and it's remarkably common, especially among the big room techno > and progressive DJs. > > > On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 8:58 AM, kuszyn...@gmail.com > <kuszyn...@gmail.com> wrote: >> (Here comes some flame bait) >> >> And this is why I really like Jeff Mills. Frankly, I know very few >> electronic music people who look at things as producers. They become >> producers after djing, which to me isn't musical, it's beat making. >> > -- -Mike
