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..."

Comments

I hope they use some high-quality encoding

[Trepidity]

I'd hate to walk into a club with a nice sound system and hear it pumping a 128 kbps mp3 encoded with Xing.

Re:I hope they use some high-quality encoding

[ebh]

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.

Performance vs. programming

[marcsiry]

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.

final scratch

[golden spud]

I've been a DJ at a dance/techno club for a year and a half now, and have absolutely no vinyl :-)

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! :-) 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".

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...

Who doesn't have talent?

[Fex303]

"When I was younger I felt like there was a talent to it because they were spinning records backwards and forwards and really cutting it in and overlapping songs," Parrish says. "It doesn't take much talent to be a DJ anymore. You just have to have a good flow of songs."

Basically what Parrish is saying here is: I wanted to be talented DJ but I couldn't. So I decided that there's no talent to being a DJ.

What Parrish is describing (slecting a playlist) is, as mentioned in the article, something any moron can do. The only problem is the fact that this isn't DJing. Picking a playlist is only the start of what a good DJ does. The DJ then has to mix them together in a way that sounds natural and unforced, that takes more than just matching the beats up, it's also good to make sure that the sections are matched (sections being the 32 or 64 beat repetitions in music). If they really know what they are doing then they can start to think about key mixing (ie. keeping the songs you are mixing together in the same key), a difficult trick when altering the speed of the record will put into a different key.

Then there is the fact that REAL DJs can have at least two tracks going at the same time, without making it sound awful. They don't just use this to mix from one track to another. They can also use this to add an element of one track into another, without leaving the original track.

DJs can also use their mixer to make a track sound very different to what's on the vinyl. Using EQs the DJ can emphasize or reduce the Bass Midrange and Treble, effectively cutting instruments out or bringing them to the fore. Some mixers like the Pioneer DJM-600 allow the DJ to also add effects like Echo, Flange, or Reverb. It's even got a mini-sampler built in, allowing the DJ to grab a section of a track and create something new with it. Well, partially new anyhow.

In short, if you don't think there's any artistry or talent required to be a DJ, then you simply don't understand what it is that DJs can do. I haven't even begun to cover the fact that a DJ is also required to understand, respond to, and influence the vibe of an evening.

I also haven't mentioned the idiocy of using MP3s over a commercial grade sound system. Let's just say that the ear can detect lots of frequencies and lots of frequency ranges. When speakers have the ability to playback all those frequencies clearly the ear can easily hear the difference between analogue/44.1kHz/MP3.

Conclusion: this "DJ" is an idiot and I won't be going to BQE bar for the music anytime soon. (The fact that I'm on the other side of the world is worth considering too...)

Re:Why do we really need DJ's?

[stevey]

True you can do it for yourself - but half the skill of a DJ is to turn up on the night and with a finite number of albums make a playlist that the folk in the place would like.

I've done a lot of DJ'ing in the past for goth/industrial/metal/punk clubs and I've had a tricky time or two in the past when I'll turn up with 200 albums and the place will be full of punks - instantly wiping out half the tunes that I'd planned to play..

I think DJ's that most are overrated, especially people like Fatboy Slim here in the UK - but I would seriously say that it is harder than it looks. You have to keep things flowing for hours at a time, dealing with drunk people who want you to play their favourite track which either you don't have, or would totally kill the mood you've setup.

To my mind a DJ is good when you don't actually notice them...

Tools for the trade.

[Fross]

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.

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 ;) And if you're into vinyl-based DJs can show you the different sorts of tricks that can be achieved with these mediums.

There are a bunch of mirrors for the sets available here, around the US and Europe.

Fross

Re:Why do we really need DJ's?

[version5]

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.

Not important.

[Krapangor]

At the very high sound levels in clubs a human ear cannot distinguish any longer between the high frequency pitchs which would be affected be low quality encoding.
Additionally the standard audience of a club is usually exposed to high sound levels over longer periods therefore having a reduced ability of hearing these high frequencies.
BTW: This also affects the DJs, you can check this by making a spectrum analysis of the standard techno/club stuff on MTV. You'll notice extremely repetitive/monotone patterns in the high frequency bands. This is were the club saying: "I'm addicted to bass" comes from.

Not Important?

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

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-

Re:The talent?

[rblancarte]

"It doesn't take much talent to be a DJ anymore."

If he really thinks this, then he is not a true DJ. There is a huge difference between spinning and just bluring music together. I can do that, but to be able to actually keep a SOLID flow of music takes the ability to beat match and group themes etc. I am trying to learn how to do these, but it certainly is not easy.
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