Vinyl dying (for DJ's)

skull kid

Well-known member
well it's probably more to do with watching 3 generations of detroit artists and djs who were never able to make a living out of an art form they pioneered. but i know how much the neoliberal popist set hate people with principles
 
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SecondLine

Well-known member
well it's probably more to do with the fact that 2-3 generations of detroit producers and djs were never able to make a living out of an art form they pioneered

it's easy to sit there behind your laptop on your blog w/ your cosy job at the BBC and take the neoliberal/popist stance against traditionalism but when it comes to putting food on the table and the fact that detroit pioneers are still going hungry while producers in europe who put in a fraction of the work get hyped within the space of a single 12" i dunno personally i begin to sympathize with the dude

which bit are you talking about exactly? his arguments in that vid about vinyl vs digital, or the race bit, or both?

confused by your conflation of popism, neoliberalism & opposition to traditionalism

wish I had a job at the bbc
 

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
Double vinyl with the blood of real life famous people in it.
10 pressed, $2,500 a piece



2697777d328ee6384b084ccae29ccfb9_view.jpg



:slanted:
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
you can say hes just a grumpy old man but so many modern produdcers/djs are so reasonable its boring to hear them being interviewed. theo might not be the most logical but at least hes got passion and believes in something. sometimes i think music interviews just got really boring somewhere in the 00s.

im waiting for someone to press up vinyl with real blood, sweat and tears in it. the actual fluid. if they could make it like a spirit-level thing, with all the fluids moving about when you moved the vinyl, that would be even more amazing. theres so much potential with special editions on vinyl.
 
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Esp

Well-known member
It does seem surprising how little the art of DJing seems to have moved forward given the technology, it doesnt really appear (to me) like anyone is trying. People are still getting excited by a DJ like Oneman being able to beatmatch quickly.

I havent seen a single young DJ at a club or on Boiler Room etc who turns up with some sort of MIDI controller and seems like they've spent 2 hours a day for 2+ years mastering the thing. Why isn't that happening?
 

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
It depends on what moving forward means though no? Blackdown had some stuff on ableton being the norm in the states and performance element creeping in as time taken to mix became secondary. I would always take good dj sets - on whatever tech - over any jumping around wearing a mask or whatever tbh. It's interesting how turntable use went through almost constant innovation for well over fifteen years as people competed to push the limit. Now that the limits have been removed it becomes harder and harder.

One way is more Greg Wilson style stuff with people making their own edits and all that. So easy chop up a file in ableton now there is no excuse for a set playing full tracks.

Hiphop, house and disco basics innit
 

Esp

Well-known member
It is difficult to conceive of how to move things forward without going down the creative cul de sac of more edits and effects I guess. It just seems strange to me that young DJs would want to use something like Serato that replicates a format they never used in the first place. Maybe Im just not aware of the innovation but it seems like DJing is still entrenched in a 2-decks-and-mixer-format when very few people are still using that set up. If you're using a laptop why would you then want to manually beatmatch? If you're using Ableton and mixing as if on decks that does just seem lazy and uninspired.

A way I can imagine a new form of DJing flourishing would be if there were an mp3 format which allowed DJs to isolate different individual sounds in tracks (almost like an open source multitrack). I dont know how feasible or likely it will be for something like that to happen though.
 

wise

bare BARE BONES
I always think about this when I see the NI Traktor demo vids, particularly with 2.5 coming out and the dedicated remix controllers.
I've never really heard any proper DJ playing a set like they do in the vids and to be honest i'm not sure i'd want to...
EZ's about the only person who does anything different and makes it work.

I'm quite happy to hear someone who can program a set well and mix the tunes together in interesting ways.
Most DJs don't even manage that much even.
 

wise

bare BARE BONES
I use Traktor just like I used vinyl apart from a bit of delay and what have you, sometimes the odd looping up to extend a part for a smoother mix
 

Ransbeeck

Well-known member
A way I can imagine a new form of DJing flourishing would be if there were an mp3 format which allowed DJs to isolate different individual sounds in tracks (almost like an open source multitrack). I dont know how feasible or likely it will be for something like that to happen though.

That was one of the things I thought of at a debate on 'the future of the music industry' (sigh) last week.

What if artists made their mp3s/wavs/... freely available to the normal consumer, but sold a sort of pack with individual parts of the song for dj's? Maybe not necessarily all the stems as you would get for doing a remix, but drum, vocal, synths,... Using these in Ableton, you could create that continuous flow every dj seems to dream of.
 

SecondLine

Well-known member
What if artists made their mp3s/wavs/... freely available to the normal consumer, but sold a sort of pack with individual parts of the song for dj's? Maybe not necessarily all the stems as you would get for doing a remix, but drum, vocal, synths,... Using these in Ableton, you could create that continuous flow every dj seems to dream of.

bass music blog do this with their label, props to them for trying it out, not sure how successful it's been - http://label.bassmusicblog.com/

I see the appeal, but it always bothers me, when you see someone doing a 'live' set on ableton, rebuilding their tracks from the stems. You can hear it straight away - all the different elements just kind of sit on top of each other, rather than gelling and interacting dynamically as they do when they've been precision mixed & mastered w/ just the right amount of compression etc. I'm all for people doing interesting shit but if the sound quality suffers then it's a total own goal.

Also someone above suggested a new kind of multi-stem mp3...any format which relies on being an mp3 would be bad for clubs imho, even 320s sound like arse most of the time
 

continuum

smugpolice
Is it just me or does anyone else hate the word 'stem' used in relation to music? The word sounds very twee used in this context.

I'd really like to see technology for DJs mutate so that it is possible to mix streamed music.
 

Esp

Well-known member
I see the appeal, but it always bothers me, when you see someone doing a 'live' set on ableton, rebuilding their tracks from the stems. You can hear it straight away - all the different elements just kind of sit on top of each other, rather than gelling and interacting dynamically as they do when they've been precision mixed & mastered w/ just the right amount of compression etc. I'm all for people doing interesting shit but if the sound quality suffers then it's a total own goal.

Also someone above suggested a new kind of multi-stem mp3...any format which relies on being an mp3 would be bad for clubs imho, even 320s sound like arse most of the time

I used 'mp3' as lazy shorthand for 'digital audio format' but one benefit of a 'DJ version' of tunes is that you could make WAV or better standard. The potential for horrible mutilations of otherwise great music would obviously be vast, it just seems like one fairly obvious way forward whereby DJs could bring more personality and creativity to their sets.
 

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
See again I think selection should always be paramount over any live looping stems and that. You can have everything edited, balanced and whatever before you leave the house. If you had any name at all you could probably get stems from producers handy enough but worrying about high hat patterns in the mix is taking the mind of the next tune and having the head in a laptop all night is not the way to go imo.
 

outraygeous

Well-known member
I like the idea of people releasing all different parts to their songs

The word 'stem' confused me for ages until I realised it must be to do with new music tech. Previously, everything was referred to as 'parts'
 
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