I am going back to turntables!

[TRS80]

When the DJ turned rock star, sometime in the mid to late 90s, I noticed more and more of people showing up to watch the DJ instead of dance. DJing became more of a dramatic performance than some dude hunched over crates in a dark booth. Whereas the crowd and the totality of the vent had been the main focus, the focus shifted to watching the DJ.

Going mainstream really did change the definition of the DJ, and of course many people getting into it since are attracted to that image- the dj god. Now, what shall I wear to my gig tonight, the Ed Hardy or the D&G?

[starving student]

i hear you but imho we can't dismiss the advent of the dj as a musician, when the turntable was turned into an instrument you had to pay more attention to the dj and rightfully so I think as you would any musician, the problem is that there are people out there who are not djs or musicians claiming they are djs, you can go into alot of houses and find guitars hanging on the walls as a piece of art like a painting but that doesn't mean that the owner is a guitarist. the fact that the electronic community is willing to classify everything but ourselves is a bit hypocritical, definitions are not wrong but denial is.

[Sage]

"I hear you're buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real. You want to make a Yaz record.
I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables.
I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars."

[SubFunk]

i don't miss vinyl.

[nuxnamon]

i hear you but imho we can't dismiss the advent of the dj as a musician, when the turntable was turned into an instrument you had to pay more attention to the dj and rightfully so I think as you would any musician, the problem is that there are people out there who are not djs or musicians claiming they are djs, you can go into alot of houses and find guitars hanging on the walls as a piece of art like a painting but that doesn't mean that the owner is a guitarist. the fact that the electronic community is willing to classify everything but ourselves is a bit hypocritical, definitions are not wrong but denial is.

+1000

now regarding the xmen vs ISP.. I think the fumes being generated by all your mpc's have finally taken it's toll..
but seriously.. true there are some parts of the xmen routine where it the groove is really tight, but here is the thing.. the tricks and scratches being done by the xmen are seriously not that hard... I have the original battle on VHS and I studied it (like I used to study DMC videos to learn new shit) back when it first came out and there was nothing they did skill wise that I or any of my dj friends couldn't do.. say you and I take the exact same records they had, could we duplicate the routine.. hell yeah, it wasn't hard at all...maybe we need to work on like body tricks and such, but other than that, we could duplicate it.. now if we took the same records that the ISP had, could we duplicate their set? maybe you can, but I'm not their yet..

[starving student]

you're right you're right but it's like having technically superior firepower but not knowing how to use it, look what happened to russia in afghanistan, who won that battle

[H20nly]

^ ^ I don't know about videos, but when I saw the eXecutioners live... whew... what ever they do they practice it a lot. They vibe off each other hard like trapeze artists or jugglers but they're tossing sound. I also saw them all take the same record and each play a "part" with scratched drums, scratched guitars and scratched horns to make like a high speed jazz trio or some such... I know the drums were on the record for sure, but the guitar and horns... well lets just say I think they were freaking the EQs, at the very least, to get the sounds we heard.

I don't think its so much what skillz they have but how they chain em together. Another way to say that would be how they execute them... hence the name???

So I don't doubt your ability to pull those tricks off, but I can catch football... that hardly makes me Jerry Rice.

[Rhadiem]

I'm pretty sure it's technology that gave rise to the modern dj. Old record players didn't have fine pitch control and the needles likely couldn't stand up to scratching and such. As technology improved, DJing became more than "play a song and fade into another at it's end" to what we have today.

So, to say I'm going back to "old skool", you can only go back so far before you're running into limitations that we were freed from due to technology. It's like saying I'm dumping OSX and going back to OS9.. which is substantive but really not all that "old school" at all in the grand scheme of things.

This whole conversation could be compared to a conversation painters have between themselves. "I'm the REAL artist, I use Oil and Canvas" where the other says "Get with the times, Photoshop and a drawing tablet is the way to go." They both can do cool stuff, they both can produce art, and they both like to give the other side crap for not being like them. They're both highly refined medium with strengths and weaknesses.

My personal opinion.. spinning records LOOKS cooler that guys "checking their email" on laptops, but AUDIBLY the guys with laptops could probably do just as good if not better stuff with less effort. Crates of Vinyl are tactile and it's fun to see them spin around and stuff, but this falls into what's visually interesting.. PERFORMANCE, not what's Audibly interesting.

If you're on a stage at a club, or especially if people are coming because they're coming to see you perform, by jove make it visually interesting somehow.

[sporkles]

You are not a DJ unless

you can mix records,

read grooves,

pick the next song,

fuck over other djs

be able to nod lots and wave your arms a bit.

Pose

And not actually play an instrument

Oh, damn... I'll come in again!

Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!

[littlelosthorse]

Right, getting back to the question.

I've read waaay too many posts/topics arguing about what a DJ actually is and the history of it to really care much any more.

I'm not going back to turntables.

I like the whole plastic and grooves and the feel and aesthetic qualities of turntables but digital DJing is just so much more.

I've just finished digitizing all my vinyl which means there's less to carry around and I can back it all up!

I'm not going to list all the rest of the numerous reasons why I love digital DJing over turntables but all of the "je ne sais quoi" that I miss from real vinyl and turntables can be matched by the love for endlessly tweaking all the parameters in live and playing around with midi controllers.

[SubFunk]

Right, getting back to the question.

I've read waaay too many posts/topics arguing about what a DJ actually is and the history of it to really care much any more.

I'm not going back to turntables.

I like the whole plastic and grooves and the feel and aesthetic qualities of turntables but digital DJing is just so much more.

I've just finished digitizing all my vinyl which means there's less to carry around and I can back it all up!

I'm not going to list all the rest of the numerous reasons why I love digital DJing over turntables but all of the "je ne sais quoi" that I miss from real vinyl and turntables can be matched by the love for endlessly tweaking all the parameters in live and playing around with midi controllers.

[Machinate]

on another forum i literally just coined the phrase


'DATA JOCKEY'

then go buy the t-shirt to match:
http://www.fractalspin.com/x/product.php?productid=122

Data jockey gets 2.9million hits on google...