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DJs Spinning Those Hard Drives
Mipmap writes "Ben Kirkendoll leaves the records at home in favor of his iPods, Apple Computer's disk-based music player, which he simply plugs into an audio system's mixer. He's part of a small but growing number of DJs who have turned to MP3 music files for their accessibility and convenience..."
And he can't use iPods to match up beats, alter the pitch of music or spin records back and forth for a scratching effect -- all things that professional club DJs consider essential.
The performance aspect- hinted to in the quote above- is a big part of what makes club DJ's so popular. If you've never seen one at work, it can get quite physical- they literally throw those records around the platter in an attempt to generate sounds and synchronize beats. A good DJ can elicit cheers and applause from an otherwise oblivious crowd.
The DJs with the MP3 players are acting more like radio DJs- they're programming the night with a list of songs, not cutting up raw material into a performance. There's a place for both, obviously, but one will not replace the other- similar to the way theater and movies continue to coexist.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
Ok I can't see an Ipod replacing turntables, but Stanton came with a product that really rocks.(http://www.finalscratch.com/fs2/pictures.as p) It uses the turntables as an interface for for a computer to control mp3 streaming. Now that's smart. And it runs on Linux.
"It doesn't take much talent to be a DJ anymore. You just have to have a good flow of songs"
Spinning records and beatmatching isn't hard to do. I think the skill of a dj is to be able to build up a night, play good tunes that'll make people in the crowd react.
I've been a DJ at a dance/techno club for a year and a half now, and have absolutely no vinyl :-)
:-) Also, I've found that people are more often intrigued by the use of pro CD players and want to find out how they work, rather than being put off by them because they "aren't vinyl".
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While I don't use an MP3 solution directly, I use Pioneer CDJ-500's. Most of my CDs are made from well-encoded MP3's, and occasionally my own tracks.
No, you can't scratch with the old CDJ-500's, but the style of music I spin (mostly house and techno) doesn't necessitate scratching to get a good enough sound for people to have a good time and even cheer!
Club DJing is NOT all about scratching, it's about providing a great set of tunes, mixed well and mixed appropriately, that your audience that evening will enjoy... no matter what method you use to get that.
Now turntablism -- that is about scratching
Speaking of turntables and scratching, there are products out there that do a fine job of bridging the gap between traditional vinyl and the "digital DJ" world.
One is Pioneer's CDJ-1000, which allows you to scratch audio CDs with its touch sensitive jog dial. I've had the chance to play around with these, and they're awesome!! While there is obviously SOME sort of latency, it's definitely not noticeable by humans, and approaches zero
Also, Pioneer now has a professional CD player that can play MP3 CDs. I'm sure before too long they will merge the two together into a unit that will play MP3 CDs and let you scratch them intuitively like the 1000.
Perhaps the best example yet is Final Scratch. Some well-known DJs use this, including some that've used it back when it ran on BeOS. Now it runs on Linux though!
It consists of specially-encoded vinyl that you play on standard turntables, which are hooked up to a controller, which is in turn hooked up to your laptop which is presumably filled with MP3 and WAV files.
Essentially, you are able to play MP3 files WITH VINYL. I believe there is a slightly more perceptible latency than the CDJ-1000 but not so much that it's frustrating to work with.
Right now I'm happy, but if I upgrade my setup I will more than likely go with the Final Scratch solution...
ObAbstract - i've been DJing for over 10 years, headlining festivals with up to thousands of people, and been a long time fan and admirer of really good DJs. I learned on vinyl, but have been encompassing more advanced media in recent years.
;) And if you're into vinyl-based DJs can show you the different sorts of tricks that can be achieved with these mediums.
The move onto solid state media is a good, and inevitable one. The demands on a DJ are higher than ever before, and more tools are needed for the job. Some tricks *need* preparation to be performed, if for instance you want to cut out a middle chunk of a song, or want to overlay a track with a large number of samples very close together - these simply aren't possible on a traditional dual-turntable setup.
Some very big DJs have access to vinyl-pressing facilities, so can play around with tracks and then have them available to play from a 12" - but hardly anyone can afford that. So there have to be other solutions.
There will always be people arguing that one approach is better than the other, that one needs more skill than the other. This is ridiculous - both approaches can take time and skill, to become adept enough to create a good set with the tools you have. Vinyl is (for now at least) the most tactile "interface" for playing with music, though many other dj-quality units (such as CD players) compensate for their lack of interactivity with some neat tools, such as automatic BPM counters, instant dropping, better pitch or indeed fixed-pitch tempo controls, and frame by frame shifting. These already show some benefits over vinyl in some situations. Harddrive or solid-state solutions provide further benefits, such as instant accessibility, visual wave representations (it's really nice to be given an on-screen reminder that the track goes into a break in 15 seconds time), and so forth.
The real benefit is that both approaches have their strong points, as well as limitations, so people benefit from even more variation, tricks and fun stuff in their sets. The best solution would be to have all the equipment available, but this would require all the skills across the board to use properly.
If you're interested, I've been using a laptop/mp3 player live to augment DJ sets for years now. I ususally use the mp3 player for sample queuing, the laptop for processing or playing preprocessed tracks, or queueing large numbers of samples - you want to get 15 samples right in a minute, it'll be VERY tough with a regular mp3 player. And impossible on vinyl. Add these to 2 CD players (sometimes more) and sometimes a turntable, and you have what I usually use.
I have some sets available for download, that hopefully can withstand a slashdotting
There are a bunch of mirrors for the sets available here, around the US and Europe.
Fross
One reason is that a lot of music is only released on vinyl, and its really really hard to find it in mp3 form, mostly because its a bigger pain in the ass to convert from vinyl to mp3 compared to CD to mp3.
Another reason to have a DJ is that the good ones will find new tracks that are unheard of, fresh sounds. This is good for the club, because if word gets around that their resident DJ is spinning some hot UK garage or something, people will come to check it out. Not neccessarily because of trendiness, but more out of a desire to be exposed to new things. I'll admit that there's posers out there who stand around and nod their heads a bit, but really have no idea what they are listening to. Depends on the club you go to.
Vinyl sounds warmer and has more sonic range than CDs, and also its easier to beat-match on turntables than on CDs (IMO).
If you are going hear a club where the DJ is advertised as playing hits of the 70s, 80s and 90s, the DJ is basically playing to the lowest common denominator, and you really might as well stay home.
I also think that some DJs, like Donald Glaude, can be really entertaining and engage the audience, although a good majority of them end up looking like complete knobs. One of the reasons that electronic music has not acheived the mainstream success is the lack of DJ personalities. That's a good thing, if you ask me. Its time we stop idolizing and mythologizing musicians, and if the people who can't enjoy music without that are dissuaded from the genre, its no great loss.
"It's Dot Com!"
A high enough bitrate will be impossible to tell apart from an analogue source, sure. But bitrates still make things sound a lot better. The best way to prove this is to get you go to a place that sells sound systems that can handle Super Audio CDs. When I did this they played me two recordings of a guitar concert, one regular CD (44.1kHz, 16-bit), the other a SACD (~2.8MHz, 1-bit). None of the other settings were changed. The difference is startling.
So don't say that using a lossy encoding system isn't going to make a difference. It will. Maybe a small difference, but I still know that I'd rather hear warm basslines and crisp highs when I go out.
It's like images: A lossy system like Jpeg is fine while you're looking at an image on your screen or home printing, but anyone sending things to pro printers or publishers is going keep using non-lossy formats like Tiff. Why? Because it's the only way to make the finished product look the same as you made it.
It's not mysticism, just an understanding that people are really good at detecting subtle differences in quality, even if it's not at a conscious level.
Well I hate to disagree but I've actually HAD experience DJ'n both with vinyl (crappy ass gemini hand me downs admittedly) and with some tweaked mp3 & similar rigs. While 128 IS fairly acceptable for club/party/etc, you have to understand by the time it GETS to the floor it's been routed through GOD knows how many jury rigged XLR cables and half assed patch bays. Your "decent" encoded signal will pick up noise like Armani picks up cat hair and end up sounding like the south side of 64kbps. I hate to say it but from having played at a number of venues (one of which gave me the joy of actually MAKING and laying my own cables bless their souls) that unless you're dealing with a pristine route from DJ booth to said speakers, you're gonna get noise. And noise loves a low quality signal. It's like they're drinking buddies or something. As for "mixing" and similar, I think the real skill of a DJ is indeed as the article stated "reading" the crowd and playing what they want to hear. It's well and good to scratch and master mixing beats and transitions but if you're not picking the right tracks in the first place it's just a waste of skill (impressive skill that I envy and lust for the spare time to develop). . . . - end psychotic 6am rant-
Find out about my new childrens book: SS Death Camp Criminal Batallion Go To Monte Carlo For The Massacre
But I have friends that are DJs and it certainly is an art. Of the 3 guys I know, 2 can keep a party rocking, but the 3rd guy while being able to mix and such, finds a way to clear the dance floor faster than that Baby Ruth cleared the pool in Caddyshack.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
It's not DJ'ing in the strictest sense of the word, but I switched the sound system at the improv comedy club I'm a part of over from tapes and CDs to an MP3/OGG based system about a year ago to good results.
Under the tape and CD system, it took a significant amount of time to find the music selection that you needed. Even if the tapes and CDs were well-organized, it could take 20-30 seconds to find the right audio clip, where you'd need to be able to get it in 3-4 seconds to hit "the moment." Plus, especially with the tapes, you'd always have to worry if the person in front of you had rewound it to the right spot.
So I converted most of the common clips to MP3, wrote a Perl/Tk frontend running with XMMS, MySQL, and Linux to allow for quick searches, and put it into production. The results have been great - the people running the audio can get to their samples incredibly fast, and it really impresses the audience.
So a digital audio solution worked wonders for us, even though we're not the traditional "DJ".
Exactly. Even DJs that play from a CD get no respect.
Imagine if the guy actually learned to play an instrument and create new music?
Its like masturbation and sex; when you dont have to the talent for the latter, you stick with the first.
You're wrong there. A friend and I did a club-style radio show for 8 years, mixing with Denon CD Players and vinyl. We brought approximately 250 CDs every week, which at roughly 50MB/CD once converted, which comes out to 12.5GB. However, our complete collection of DJable music is much closer to 1500 CDs, which comes out to 75GB. I think it'll be a while yet before you can fit that in two off-the-shelf, unmodified ipods, much less one.
You'll also notice I've made no mention of the 18 crates of records we own which have not been ripped yet.
I'm currently experimenting with a mobile unit that includes a Fujitsu P-2110 Laptop, PCDJ, A 120GB firewire drive (for now), and a Creative Labs Extigy. Complete mobile DJ solution for under 10 pounds.
Crank up the MID? Where's this? Do that and you'll have the crowd complaining about the tinny sound.
Every time a DJ gets into my effects rack (and they have some ingenious ways of doing it despite everything I do to keep them out once my PA is tuned up) they leave the EQ looking like a smiley face, because they think it maxes the boom-chicks.
What most DJs (who aren't also sound techs) don't know is that the real kick from the bass is not at the low end, it's in the midbass. So when they have the 20Hz and 40Hz sliders at +12 it ends up sounding like the Cerwin-Vegas in a white suburban homeboy's lowered Hyundai.
The best solution to ear-ringing is a reasonably quiet chill room.
Or earplugs. I don't want to get off on a rant here, but earplugs are the best 50 cents you can ever spend. Earplugs have the advantage that they drop the overall sound (preventing the *permanent* damage you can get from just one night in front of the speaker stacks) to let you get close enough to the bass bins for a nice comfortable rib-cage massage, but they do so in a way that someone can talk to you in only a slightly louder than normal voice close to your ear and it's perfectly intelligible.
The topic is about DJ'ing with MP3's. Now, I can see arguments about the lack of scratching (still something of a problem), beatmatching (programs do exist & and are pretty damn good, IMHO), and possibly computer problems "crashing" the party, so to speak. What I can't understand is all this bullshit about lack of sound quality! This is the same bullshit all the analog-obsessed DJ's of the world started spouting when the rest of us started using CD's in our performances. Who the hell cares about the "warmth" of the sound??? I still remember when I started using MP3's to DJ and I never had comments about them. Starting with parties I did back in 1997 while I was the house DJ at the Delta Upsilon house at Carnegie Mellon, I would switch between vinyl, CD, CD-R's with converted MP3's on them, and MP3's played off my laptop. Guess what? It wasn't a bunch of old people sitting around bitching about the lack of "warmth" in the sound. It was a shitload of college kids getting piss-drunk and having fun, in part because of me. They didn't complain about the sound quality at the beginning of the parties when sober & they didn't say a word at the end when they were drunk & tone-deaf. I would mix & beatmatch with simple utilities (whose names escape me) downloaded off the net. For scratches, I would impose the turntable's sound with the mixer. The trick was finding something appropraite to scratch with a paticular song, however this made me a much stronger DJ, not the other way around. And as far as the image goes, the bitches loved coming up there and seeing a laptop running Winamp mixing in with the CD's. They thought it was the coolest shit they'd ever seen.
So, to conclude, not only does your argument (sound quality) have nothing to do with parties, but all of the other arguments against MP3 DJ'ing are either bullshit or pretty weak as well.
-Kikta
P.S. If it makes you vinyl guys feel any better, I was against automatic-HTML generation programs for a long time in favor of text editors. So I guess I can sort-of see how you feel...