vinyl purists: you are boring. please stop.

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zhao

there are no accidents
Martyn said about his Fabric 50:

“I did the whole mix CD live just because I thought that was more honest than doing an Ableton DJ mix. It is how I would play live - not everything on the CD is perfect, but it’s not meant to be. That goes for my DJ sets and for my music as well; there’s always little bits and pieces that could have been much better or more streamlined or whatever, but that’s the beauty of music to me. I wanted it to be raw and honest.”

bigup Martyn and his consistently good work, but this "more honest", "how i would play live" bullshit... certainly not the first time i've heard these sentiments from grumpy vinyl grampas, and i'm getting sick of it.

1. no one will be listening to this release in a club with loads of drunk people.

2. he will not be playing live on people's ipods or stereos.

3. live performance is live performance. making a studio mix is making a studio mix. the 2 are DIFFERENT contexts and

4. the only "honesty" is doing the best you can in each situation, with respect to its specific freedoms and limitations.

5. i would not want to hear a studio album from beginning to finish in a club, and i CERTAINLY don't want to hear sloppy mixing on my headphones.

wake the fuck up people. its 2010. it was time to throw away your BORING BORING BORING vinyl purism fucking 10 years ago. you are the same as people who booed when Bob Dylan went electric, and you are the same as people who wear "drum machines have no soul" t-shirts.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Yeah but is that Martyn cd even an all-vinyl mix? And I bet he didn't do it first take either, the mix will have been quite thoroughly planned out in advance. I do think Martyn's doing himself down a bit there too (false modesty?), I didn't notice any sloppy mixing on it. Haven't listened on headphones admittedly.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
the point here is that there is nothing "dishonest" with using any tool toward any end.

if your film is about hand held with no additional soundtrack or props, and that is the best way to realize your project, great. if your film is about 250 million dollars of 3D, ALSO GREAT. as long as the method fits the purpose and the shit is good at the end of the day.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
for argument's sake:

attempting to simulate a live sound in the studio is, by definition, dishonest.

the same as trying to sound like a studio mastered finished product on stage is dishonest.
 

jimitheexploder

Well-known member
I guess I'm a vinyal purist...

Only because I learnt to DJ with it and I've not had the cash to upgrade my set-up to include CDJs/Serato, so I've just kept on with it.

Plus I really enjoy DJing like that as CDJs feel clunky in comparison and the more laptop based DJing doesn't realy appeal to me.

It's not dishonest to DJ any other way that vinyal at all, its just people doing their own thing. The only thing sketchy about digital DJing is the fact that more DJs are stealing music to play out. I mean how many people cut their own tracks onto vinyal to get a cheeky uperhand and slight club kudos? Some maybe... but now its gotta be a hell of a lot more and thats pretty annoying... and no doubt a diffrent discusion to what your sticking forward.

But a good set is a good set, however its made and the super slick creative putting together of not only tracks but elements of tracks has opened up DJing even more for the ones that are mucking about with all of that and when its done well its really cool to hear.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Has someone been giving you a hard time about djing with ableton Zhao? I've not noticed too much vinyl purism talk on here anyway. I pretty much agree with what you're saying but where are all these vinyl purists that are getting you so riled?
 

Papercut

cut to the bone
Zhao, i think thats a bit of a limited way to look at this.

How someone wants to get across their mixes (their art, whatever) is entirely up to them. If its important to them to have something thats a bit more rough or has a less perfect feel to it, then thats ok, it wasn't an underhand attack on those who chose to dj digitally. Its these choices that inform the overall aesthetic for me and give mixes some personality, make them about more than just putting a few tracks together.

Sometimes with vinyl djing you get into a kind of flow where everything just sticks and rolls along and it all works without even thinking about it. Your not living on a knife-edge in the same time with digital djing (imo) cause the auto sync is doing that part of the job for you, in my experience.

I don't like listening to mixes with audible time warping from ableton. It messes with the groove or something and doesn't sound good to me. I especially don't like it with non-machine based music, where its extremely corrosive to the groove in a really noticable way.
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I love vinyl but for the sake of my bank balance i think i'm gonna have to get serato this year or next year
 

jimitheexploder

Well-known member
At the moment I'm really enjoying...

Trying to get mixes really smooth thruough loads of tempos on 1210s.

Loads of people are doing it digitaly but its a real art with decks, you have to do it slower, choosing tracks that suit the tempo and fit together as you can't pitch around like a mutha'ucka as it sounds silly. Digital DJing might have even brought on shorter DJ sets as Djs could cover more ground easily compared to the olden days when you had a horse making the turn table go round...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Horse_mill_045493.jpg

But when Martyn said that stuff, I think he was just trying to get across how he likes to DJ rather than anything else.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
well he stated, in a direct manner, without beating around the bush, "clear as an un-muddied lake", that "live" mix recording is "more honest" than ableton mix recording. and since nowhere does he mention any specificity of this project in relation to the statement, nor say anything along the lines of personal preference, one can only assume that he feels this way generally.

and of course many other people seem to feel the same way: "if you can't do it in a club don't do it on a disc". remember that one?

jazz music highly prizes spontaneity, perhaps more so than any other popular style. and no one has EVER said shit about Miles Davis doing multiple takes in the studio being "dishonest".

i am essentially calling into question the notion of "honesty" itself in this context, and pointing out its entirely arbitrary nature.

if he wanted a truly "honest" live feel for this project, he should have just professionally recorded one of his real live sets in a club. no?
 

jimitheexploder

Well-known member
ey(*end yorkshire*) I get what you mean, you're just saying that snobery is annoying in this thread aint ya?

I just got the vibe that Martyn was just tryin to say he liked to DJ in a live, vinyal, cdj, serato manner rather than sequence it all for his fabric mix thats all.

Its just the way he rolls as a DJ, I mean he could have made a shit hot sequenced mix if he wanted if his album and production skills are antything to go by. But he was just saying he likes to do his mixes slightly off the cuff with live mixing and not much fooling around in whatever format he's using be it vinyal, cds or mp3s.

I dunno if he was trying to much else.
 

Papercut

cut to the bone
Oh, i get you.

Well, this being an issue with the language he used, if he said "completely honest" then he would have had to record a club live set. But he said "more honest" so that would be anything more live/rough than a clinical, video editing approach to the mix.

I don't think that anyone would accuse Miles of dishonesty for recording multiple takes, well, anyone sane. The tracks were often done on the day so you'd need to allow them a few takes to feel out the track?

But it would take a very special child to play competently in the "On the Corner" sessions, but i think i could teach a child to digtial djing in an afternoon, so its a bit different.
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
ey(*end yorkshire*) I get what you mean, you're just saying that snobery is annoying in this thread aint ya?

I just got the vibe that Martyn was just tryin to say he liked to DJ in a live, vinyal, cdj, serato manner rather than sequence it all for his fabric mix thats all.

Its just the way he rolls as a DJ, I mean he could have made a shit hot sequenced mix if he wanted if his album and production skills are antything to go by. But he was just saying he likes to do his mixes slightly off the cuff with live mixing and not much fooling around in whatever format he's using be it vinyal, cds or mp3s.

I dunno if he was trying to much else.
Yeah defo. I agree with what you're saying generally zhao, but I think singling out Martyn for abuse was maybe a little off the mark. What's dishonest for him isn't the same as what's acceptable and cool for other people to do. Why should he do an ableton mix if he doesn't want to?
 

zhao

there are no accidents
I don't think that anyone would accuse Miles of dishonesty for recording multiple takes, well, anyone sane. The tracks were often done on the day so you'd need to allow them a few takes to feel out the track?

well even the Live Evil album (notice the word "Live" in the title), is very much obviously, heavily doctored during post production. at one point the sound pans from left to right continuously for almost the length of an entire song (that crazy mofo macero... it sounds fucking wicked).

of course it's cool which ever way anyone wants to do something (with fitness to purpose in mind) -- that is precisely what i am saying. but

1. it's not cool when people think the way they choose to do it is "more honest" than other ways. and

2. if you wanna get down to the nitty gritty, the only honesty is being true to each context - which trying to simulate a live performance in the studio is certainly NOT. (how far you want to go to simulate a live experience in the studio? you going to turn down the lights, get some strobes, have recordings of crowd noises amplified around you, turn up the heat so you're sweating, fill the room with smoke???)
 

wonk_vitesse

radio eros
I don't like listening to mixes with audible time warping from ableton. It messes with the groove or something and doesn't sound good to me. I especially don't like it with non-machine based music, where its extremely corrosive to the groove in a really noticable way.

wobbly pitch shifting & time-stretching from Ableton isn't what i wanna listen to. Depends on genre obviously.
 

Papercut

cut to the bone
Zhao, i do get where coming from with this but no one actually accused anyone of being dishonest. You could read it as that, but its not necessarily what was said. Sometimes our sensitivites towards things can get in the way a little.

I haven't heard Martyn dj, i know a few of his productions (not really my thing, bit funkless/grey for me) and i don't really know much about him tbh, but i feel that his comment related more to the mix he was asked to do. Getting a Fabric is obviously a big deal to a dj and i'm sure a lot of thought goes into how they want to represent themselves and their djing because its going to be a document that a lot of people hear (probably more than any record they release) Each djs approach and decisions towards the mix (tempo, tracks, type of mixes, mood etc) add up to the personality of it. If Martyns mixing style is a bit more rough or less perfectionist than some, and he values that as part of his overall aesthetic, then it should be part of the overall mix.

Personally, if you caught me on a certain day i might call studio mixes dishonest or compare them to airbrushing a model for a magazine or whatever. Theres a pressure for a product to conform to fairly rigid parameters so the rejection of that is fairly healthy. If a woman (or man) asked not to be airbrushed in a magazine because she felt it was a "more honest" account of how she looked, it wouldn't be fair to view it as a hatchet-job on women who did get airbrushed. Its a personal decision how people represent themselves. I try not to get into laborious analogies too much, sorry if that was too clumsy.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
airbrushing models is not only clumsy but it isn't at all a good analogy for making perfect studio mixes. you might as well say any mastering process on any recording is airbrushing.
 

Alfons

Way of the future
why does it matter so much to you Zhao? I mean if you made a decision to use ableton or traktor or whatever, and you based it on your own reasons and reasoning which you find sound and good, why do you care if other people frown upon it?
 
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