Ableton DJs, please pack your bags and go home

[Emissary]

OK so I dont mean all obviously. But this has been bothering me most lately is the wave of the Ableton DJ who thinks once he/she has got beatmatching/warping down they are a DJ to be of the future.

Guys, beatmatching is not even half of what DJing is about...congrats if you find out how to warp a track after your 2 month learning curve. However, DJing is about your tracks selection, the order you put it in, the flow, the moods you create with it- one that makes makes musical sense...and for God's sake please do it all harmonically!

just a rant.

p.s. dont bother playing around pushing buttons and truning knobs on your controller when your not actually doing anything...alot of us do know the tracks and when you do that stuff you only make yourself look like a fool

If some guy wants to twiddle knobs and stick his fingers in his disk drive while HDJ'ing then so be it, what concern is it of yours?

[olafmol]

right...but spinning two records over and over and mixing back and forth is boring :O ...

and why is that? if the music that is played is slamming i don't think it's boring at all..why do people forget that DJ'ing is about musical-content and sequencing it in the right order? just as the original poster proclaimed.

[smutek]

If you dj remember also that every second of your gig does not have to be spent playing your midi drum over 11 tracks mixing at once with 30 different effects. Overkill can ruin a set just as quickly.

I know its ableton, but sometimes it is ok to just let a track play - the way the artist wrote it.

[leonard]

OK so I dont mean all obviously. But this has been bothering me most lately is the wave of the Ableton DJ who thinks once he/she has got beatmatching/warping down they are a DJ to be of the future.

Guys, beatmatching is not even half of what DJing is about...congrats if you find out how to warp a track after your 2 month learning curve. However, DJing is about your tracks selection, the order you put it in, the flow, the moods you create with it- one that makes makes musical sense...and for God's sake please do it all harmonically!

just a rant.

p.s. dont bother playing around pushing buttons and truning knobs on your controller when your not actually doing anything...alot of us do know the tracks and when you do that stuff you only make yourself look like a fool

I can't believe I'm reading this. As a new user to live (or potential user once I've saved enough money), this idiocy is overwhelming. Hands up here who wrote the software to do any of the things which you want to do. no-one? well then. shut the f*** up.
Really, your stupidity knocks me off my feet. Get a fucking grip man! Do your shit, and shut the fuck up!!
fuck man, you take the cake.

[quandry]

Machinedrum (geez, where did he come up with that name, and he didn't even frikkin have a machinedrum on stage!) open up for them and playing between their sets. His music was okay--blantantly trying to be Prefuse 73 on each and every cut, and he wasn't. The thing that really pissed me off was standing on the balcony looking down and seeing him totally fake like he was doing some shit on his laptop, but he wasn't touching anything--far as I can tell he just hit play once

Ok man, those where my toes! You stepped on them!

From now on the only thing that matters to me is what reaches my ears. there's no point in dissing this or that. anybody will dissapoint you. Forget about it. You'll never be shure from now on. Just listen instead ...

The music is still the answer "so keep on dancing and pracing, moving while you're grooving. At twelve midnight I'l be waiting for your you. And you now just what to do. Just keep on dancing and trancing .........."

nah, bro. As a performing musician in 5 bands, I have a vested interest in seeing what other people do live, seeing how they accomplish the sounds I'm hearing. 4 of the bands I play in are traditional (no computers), and many of the shows I see are all live bands--I can guarantee you that no one will stand for a guitar player just playing prerecorded stuff off a DAT while he fakes like he's playing with his axe not even plugged in. I "can be sure"--I know how instruments are played, I know how Live and other softwares work--I can use my eyes to see if what someone is doing with their hands corresponds to the sound. I can see when someone is not even pressing down a key, or acting like they are twisting knobs that they aren't, or which are doing nothing to the music I'm hearing. Why should I accept that electronic laptop performances should be so boring as someone just hitting play, why should I accept someone purposefully trying to trick me into thinking that they're doing something they're not--this isn't theater or acting, its "live" music people paid to "see"--if you're just going to string together other peoples tracks, do a podcast, if you are just going to play your own produced album untouched live, do a podcast and spare me the fake gestures. I personally pay to "see" shows--if I just want to hear the artists music, I can do that anywhere. It is insulting to me for a performer to just play their album unchanged using live, then fake like they are doing something that they aren't.

Live allows you to do WAY more than just string together one track at a time, my fifth band is a duo that does all-live looping using Live--absolutely no prerecorded material--songs are built from silence up making loops of live instruments with Live. People seem to really enjoy our shows, and even laypeople (non-musicans) can see and understand what is happening--i.e. the instruments that I'm playing are getting looped, then those loops are being manipulated in various ways. no trickery, no bullshit, no pre-recoded material--I'm am always doing something, usually using both hands at all times, and none of it is fake. If you create your own music and set up Live with lots of tracks and effects, and you have some controllers to give you access to lots of parameters, you can certainly keep yourself busy at all times manipulating and remixing the music live, as opposed to playing a full track and faking shit.

Ryan

[hambone1]

"Playing" a laptop is an inherently poor visual experience. All the head bobbing, punching the air, jumping up and down, and full-body-motion filter sweeps just make you look like a total clown. MIDI controllers add very little in the visual department, either, compared to lighting and video.

Take the leap into video & lighting if you're not already doing so. Even if you've never done it before, you'll find a lot of the technology and techniques very similar to Live. In fact, I do all of my video and lighting sequencing as well as audio in Live. If you can express yourself with sound, you can do it with lighting and video. It's a blast, and lets you express yourself with amazing multimedia experiences that will blow away any audio-only deejay.

[quandry]

"Playing" a laptop is an inherently poor visual experience. All the head bobbing, punching the air, jumping up and down, and full-body-motion filter sweeps just make you look like a total clown. MIDI controllers add very little in the visual department, either, compared to lighting and video.

Take the leap into video & lighting if you're not already doing so. Even if you've never done it before, you'll find a lot of the technology and techniques very similar to Live. In fact, I do all of my video and lighting sequencing in producing music in Live. If you can express yourself with sound, you can do it with lighting and video. It's a blast, and lets you express yourself with amazing multimedia experiences that will blow away any audio-only deejay.

All true, no doubt. That said, are turntables really that much more excting visually that a laptop and controllers? I do zero head bobbing, fist pumping, or expressive filter sweeping--I'm too busy just trying to live loop, mix, remix, crossfade, and effect the 12-16 tracks to bother with stage antics. In the end, I guess what I am doing is fairly boring visually, other than when I'm playing bass or other instruments. I guess as a performer and audience member, I care less about visual excitement and more about seeing a correspondence between the performers' actions and the music, and head bobs and expressive hand motions don't count. MIDI controllers like faders and knobs can be more "telling" of what hand motions are controlling what corresponding sounds than just mouse clicks, so for some of us this is the best we can do. Some of the live bands (no computers, or in the case of STS9, four of them!) that I like to see the most could be considered visually "boring" on stage (no pyrotecnics, gestures, hair rocking, etc.), but I appreciate their honesty and the fact that they are just playing their music without trying to be showmen or whatever, and they aren't faking like they're doing something they're not. That said, I definitely dig on the lights at shows, and can appreciate a really good lighting person with a nice rig--they become almost another member of the band.

Ryan

[bytheriver]

I'm a real DJ, at least i've played in front of people if thats what it takes to garner the title 'real dj'. Two other guys and me even have our own night now-a-days with a proper lisenced bar and people dancing!

Ableton DJing, or PC DJing in some form is clearly the future. The stuff you can do with it is mind blowing.

Sadly though, I cant DJ with live. It just doesn't happen for me, tracktor is a little better, but still a long way from what I can do with vinyl.

I think its my memory. I can remember 200-300 record covers (images, location in box etc), but I can only remember 50 or so MP3 names.

[Krugger]

without even bothering to comment on the main point of this (pointless) thread,

" I can remember 200-300 record covers (images, location in box etc), but I can only remember 50 or so MP3 names."

is so true!!!

i get lost with all those tunes names. my mates are good are remember who/what/remixer etc but i'm dead shite at this exercise.

show me a vinyl cover though from my collection and i'll tell you what it sounds like, where i bought it and which mix cd you can hear it from.
all that without even knowing the tune's name.

[quandry]

I'm a real DJ, at least i've played in front of people if thats what it takes to garner the title 'real dj'. Two other guys and me even have our own night now-a-days with a proper lisenced bar and people dancing!

Ableton DJing, or PC DJing in some form is clearly the future. The stuff you can do with it is mind blowing.

Sadly though, I cant DJ with live. It just doesn't happen for me, tracktor is a little better, but still a long way from what I can do with vinyl.

I think its my memory. I can remember 200-300 record covers (images, location in box etc), but I can only remember 50 or so MP3 names.

That's an interesting point...I just got one of the photo ipods, and there is definitely something nice about the visual correlation of the album cover to the artist/music. You should start a thread in the feature wishlist to be able to have small image icons next to clips in the browser--these could be album covers or anything you make--there is something about the singular visual image that is much easier to quickly identify than just using different clip colors. Maybe this is a bad idea, but I could see it being useful for those using a bunch of clips from a bunch of sources.

Ryan

[highdropod]

too many djs in the world right now... they take alot of gigs away from real musicians - which is, in essence, just screwing themselves over in the long run, much like lumber companies who chop down trees and don't replant them.

[bytheriver]

too many djs in the world right now... they take alot of gigs away from real musicians - which is, in essence, just screwing themselves over in the long run, much like lumber companies who chop down trees and don't replant them.

I'm not sure what you mean. I cant imagine a collection of 'real musicians' (whatever that may be) turning up and playing 4 hours of tech/funky house?

Enless you mean producers DJing, which a great deal do, but that would make them DJs.. and so I guess not real musicians?

[hambone1]

Here we go again....!

DJ/musician/producer/whatever... they all have their roles, some good, some bad, some talented, some leeches, some just having fun.

After all, apart from the chin-strokers, music is nothing but SHOW BUSINESS.

In my opinion, those that will excel commercially and professionally in this saturated market will be the musicians/producers who deejay not only other musicians/producers track, but their own, too. Then promote yourself and your collaborators, book and hold your own gigs with your own PA/lights/video/etc without relying on slope-headed club owners/promoters, and you're on your way under your own control with no leeches sucking you dry or telling you what you can and cannot do.

Any bedroom geek can throw together some samples, a beat repeat here, a filter sweep there, etc, but only those with the understanding of control and marketing will ever be able to make it commercially viable.

Again, my opinion only.

[Krugger]

Again, my opinion only.

and you're right

I can see the musician who's been busting his nuts for weeks, months or even years making music, trying to get gigs, trying to make a living off it and failing to do so.

That same musician walks into a club and see a guy playing other people's tunes one after the other and is seen as a God by clubbers.

Does that create frustration and hatred? You betcha!

I'm not even a musician but ...... I understand!

The thing is: Clubbers want DJs and music lovers want musicians performing Live and then there's other people who want a complete package: lights, video, sound, etc, whether as a concert or a carefully prepared gig.

It's about what the public wants! And if some guy has found a trick to convince 25,000 people (in 1 single gig) that he's the dogs nutties when it comes to a night out dancing (i.e. DJ Tiesto), then fair play to him.
I dont like his music but I cant help conclude that COMMERCIALLY he's a f*cking genius!!!

And that's just 1 example.

Kr.

[john gordon]

howerd stern fuckin rules!!!!!!bababbooeee.