beatmatching is the bane of electronic dance music

Since my mum can now beatmatch 2-step tunes til the cows come home,

I wish this was true, not about your mum but you seem to presume that every dj can beat-match two-step easily. They can't.

Personally speaking, I am sick of listening to shit deejays.

People don't seem to realise that deejaying takes a hell of a lot of effort. But there's still loads of people getting gigs and looking for gigs who simply can't spin very well. Just because you own some records and possess a rudimentary knowledge of beat-matching and blending DOES NOT mean you're a good dj. If the mixing is atrocious no one's gonna get it and you're gona end up killing the tunes you love so much.

Equinox is a great dj. Great selection, great energy, passable mixing skills and very much a performer. He blew me and the rest of the room off the face of the planet last time I saw him.

So, it's not all about beat-matching, but the fact is that a lot of people do this very basic thing *SO BADLY* that it just makes it uncomfortable to listen to. That's why it's such an important topic, to this day. Not about having bang-on beat-matching each and every time, but about being a GOOD DJ (in the rounded sense of the term). If everybody in the club leaves going "yeah that dj was really good" then you've done your job, in my book. How you choose to express yourself is up to you.


Naphta: the argument about changing drug-use and the drop-off in ecstasy leading to less emphasis on robot-like beat-matching is not very accurate in my opinion. I have never taken drugs, but beat-matching has still always been an important part of it for me. Before I started deejaying or knew anything about the music, if I heard a beat go out of time on the dancefloor it would just put me off my rhythm, if it happened again and again I'd just get pissed off and go get a drink from the bar. Simple as that really, and that would be the standard reaction from any regular punter to any 'dance' night where there's a deejay playing.

No matter what your preparation preferences are, whether you like to plan everything or do it on the fly, if beats are going to go out of time constantly then people are going to lose confidence and leave. Simple as that.


Also while I'm having a long-overdue crack at this subject I want to also mention the mix cd.....if you're deejay looking to get booked, you should be making these as often as possible - NOT TO GIVE OUT, necessarily, but to listen to and study. Yes, I said it: study your mix. Learn from it, perfect it etc. If you can't make a deadly mix cd then you're not gona have a clue when you get on the decks in front of a crowd in a club.

Always be asking questions, ie. why play this tune and not that, why mix this way and not that etc. and work your own style out from there.

Not that I'm any great shakes myself but these thoughts have been bothering me BIG TIME for ages now, needed to get em off my chest. I want to see the emphasis return to great djs, rather than people getting bookings off the back of production/fame/friend of the promoter/owns a good-sized record collection and a pair of 1210s/etc.

Equinox is a great dj. Great selection, great energy, passable mixing skills and very much a performer. He blew me and the rest of the room off the face of the planet last time I saw him.

<jealous
have yet to see him play live

tis a weird speed though... youll basically have to appeal to the 138 cru - techno/dubstep/electro djs.

beatmatching is the bane of electronic dance music

should i give up then

Since my mum can now beatmatch 2-step tunes til the cows come home,

I wish this was true, not about your mum but you seem to presume that every dj can beat-match two-step easily. They can't.

I meant using Serrato. I know that getting two records to play at the same speed isn't the be all and end all of beatmatching but if anyone can get a computer to do that bit for them then it opens things up a bit and means that being able to get two records to play at the same speed for a couple of minutes no longer qualifies you for international DJ superstardom.

Equinox is fucking fantastic. I saw him a year or so ago and it was basically me, my girlfriend, two blokes and a dog in a fairly soulless ikea'd up venue and it was still amazing.

Equinox is fucking fantastic. I saw him a year or so ago and it was basically me, my girlfriend, two blokes and a dog in a fairly soulless ikea'd up venue and it was still amazing.

if everybody in the club leaves going "yeah that dj was really good" then you've done your job, in my book. how you choose to express yourself is up to you.

no argument there

naphta: the argument about changing drug-use and the drop-off in ecstasy leading to less emphasis on robot-like beat-matching is not very accurate in my opinion. i have never taken drugs, but beat-matching has still always been an important part of it for me. before i started deejaying or knew anything about the music, if i heard a beat go out of time on the dancefloor it would just put me off my rhythm, if it happened again and again i'd just get pissed off and go get a drink from the bar. simple as that really, and that would be the standard reaction from any regular punter to any 'dance' night where there's a deejay playing.

i ain't arguing for trainwrecks! :d nothing more painful to listen to for anyone who knows their music, drugs or no drugs.

my point concerning changing drug use and its effects is that the continuous-one-tempo-mix was born out of the desire to cater for a drugged-up crowd who could dance for 6, 7, 8 hours non-stop.

but many factors have changed since that time: poly-drug use (leading to a fragmentation of the communal buzz where most people in a dance were on the same drugs and thus had similar expectations), the return of traditional 'socialising' to the rave scene (when rave kicked off in dublin for example, it was a pretty non-sexual zone cos the focus was on dancing for hours, not on scoring.. alcohol was pretty absent in the beginning too)... hell even the smoking ban - all have conspired to make club nights now much more like they were in the '80s before ecstacy hit.

so: what i'm throwing out there is the question: is the traditional format of dj beat-matching tunes at the same tempo for hours as relevant to this changed situation - or is it something that continues on more because it's simply become an established habit, a recognisable format?

no matter what your preparation preferences are, whether you like to plan everything or do it on the fly, if beats are going to go out of time constantly then people are going to lose confidence and leave. simple as that.

for sure. but when rave started, the focus was very firmly on the dancefloor - that's where the real action took place, and the dj was a mere shadowy guide - there to establish an atmosphere and to keep the beats running all night. the shift to personality-djs, and the dissolution of local scenes (thanks largely to the internet - and cheap travel) have placed the focus of any event squarely on the dj (as evidenced by the way the crowd all face the dj in 99% of clubs).

with this in mind, i'm suggesting that the process whereby one guy stands on stage seamlessly maintaining a one-tempo rhythm for some hours seems to me like maybe it needs a serious overhaul at this point. hence my querying of the importance placed on maintaining that seamless beat...

i want to see the emphasis return to great djs, rather than people getting bookings off the back of production/fame/friend of the promoter/owns a good-sized record collection and a pair of 1210s/etc.

would be great indeed, but i see no likelihood of this happening until the very idea of what djing is gets massively re-configured.

o.k now i havent read the whole of this tread(too long) but i hear your points on it being limited.......the same could be said for d&b itself!

limits can often be a good thing in music

however i love to hear a good rinse out......its like a science, fusing the elements and creating something new........energy.....improvisation.

absolutely. and i ain't trying to rain on anyone's parade who's loving it! :d i've had many amazing dj experiences down through the years... i just feel that i owe it to the form to question it from time to time... and the fact that raving/clubbing is now so different from what many of us were reared on...

personally i have NEVER planned a set

i just take a bag of tunes that i like and always play on the fly.

i dont have any "mixes" ie pre planned mixes of tunes that i know sound good together.

bottom line is that if you know ur music then why do u have to pre plan sets...surely as a dj you will know what tune will sound good with another tune even if you have never mixed those records together before..YOU SHOULD KNOW


re beat matching and raves etc... bottom line is that as we get older we tend not to go to the big raves where eeveryone is pilled out of their heads and they dont actually in genral really appreciate the music for what it is...they are there for the RAVE, for the PARTY, toget FUCKED on as much mdma as they can, andtherfoire thay havent got a scooby doo if the dj is trainwrecking or not.

where as we, in general go to smaller more intimate events where the focus is actually on the music rather than the RAVE, and as alot do ot do drugs in the abundance that we used to do, we EXPECT more from the dj.
we expect for the dj to be able to beatmatch, coz surely beatmatching and making Seamless mixes is what we appreciate nowadays as we get older and more mature.

beatmatching isnt the issue here..its a dj's laziness to practice

personally, i dont mind if a dj meses a couple of mixes up if it is obvious that they are mixing on the fly...itswhen its a constant trainwreck, and or rewinds every track etc....

beatmatching is ESSENTIAL
knowledge of the tunes you are playing is ESSENTIAL
playing in the fly is ESSENTIAL

just my 2 pence worth

peas

As far as I'm concerned, an evolution of sorts needs to happen, we have all this amazing technology but we (well at least i) haven't properly tried to get to grips with it....im sure i'll start addressing that when i get more time

[Statto]

should i give up then

i learned to be a perfectionist from a bunch of perfectionists and i think that if your going to dj you need to be on your game - no questions, planned set or unplanned. as for the utility and relevance of a dj's skills as historical habit my ego is slightly offended () but after thinking about it im sure innovation may give rise to some new, unique method of crowd interaction. for the most part, the audience should always come first, but TRANSITIONS, lets just call them instead of beatmatching, are tantamount to a successful set.

but transitions, lets just call them instead of beatmatching, are tantamount to a successful set.

if by that you mean trying to create a narrative, then that's very much been my approach-of-choice when djing

again i wonder though, just how much the delivery method should adapt to changed expectations amongst the audience

yes a narrative in the overall flow of the set sense, but also in the make sure your transitions between songs are 'eloquent' lets just say. i dont think you need to do 5 minute beatmatches and xfade slams a-la bukem each and every tune, but if your djing then you should certainly strive for a clean set is what im advocating.



i think the thread title is a bit over the top lol

looks like you all found something else to complain about .
go make some dj unfriendly tracks instead of writing 5000 word symposiums about "quantized beats ruined my night" .. problem solved

beatmatching is the bane of electronic dance music

eh? ..are guitars are the bane of rock music too? boooo guitars.

i thought this thread was going to about comments like hawtin's "beatmatching will be the first skill to go" ie the skill of beatmatching is boring now (for him.. he's been doing that for 20 years) and you can get computers to do it for you (like ableton) so it frees you up to concentrate on other aspects of mixing (eqing, effects, selecting, or even.. changing tempo).

keeping a party going is a drug to djs. not many djs can slow things down without a party losing energy. its much easier to keep the party going by maintaining a tempo steady, and beatmatching is the key to that. or they can speed things up and people get even more excited.

extrapolate that increase in tempo over 10 years and kablammo d&b is 180bpm now.

Or you could accept that 90% of everything is crap anyway and just try and enjoy, encourage and contribute to the 10% thats good...

[Statto]

i thought this thread was going to about comments like hawtin's "beatmatching will be the first skill to go" ie the skill of beatmatching is boring now (for him.. he's been doing that for 20 years) and you can get computers to do it for you (like ableton) so it frees you up to concentrate on other aspects of mixing (eqing, effects, selecting, or even.. changing tempo).

it's a split topic from this thread:
http://www.subvertcentral.com/forum/view...hp?t=41546

http://www.breakbeat.co.uk/dnbtv/default...mID=100223

if you can be arsed


Best DJ ever

looks like you all found something else to complain about .
go make some dj unfriendly tracks instead of writing 5000 word symposiums about "quantized beats ruined my night" .. problem solved

easy now father, no harm done... nothing wrong with a bit of discussion and debate... those who think it's all bollix will just keep doin what they do anyway

just be creative and play everything you love.

personally i have NEVER planned a set

i just take a bag of tunes that i like and always play on the fly.

i dont have any "mixes" ie pre planned mixes of tunes that i know sound good together.

bottom line is that if you know ur music then why do u have to pre plan sets...surely as a dj you will know what tune will sound good with another tune even if you have never mixed those records together before..YOU SHOULD KNOW

Sometimes that just isnt possible. How well you know your records is unfortunately determined by y (the amount of time you have to listen to tunes/the amount you play out) divided by x (the amount of records you want to mix):



Of course, it also depends on what kind of music youre playing out, when it was made etc... its a whole other discussion really.

just be creative and play everything you love.

how romantic

personally i have NEVER planned a set

i just take a bag of tunes that i like and always play on the fly.

i dont have any "mixes" ie pre planned mixes of tunes that i know sound good together.

bottom line is that if you know ur music then why do u have to pre plan sets...surely as a dj you will know what tune will sound good with another tune even if you have never mixed those records together before..YOU SHOULD KNOW

Sometimes that just isnt possible. How well you know your records is unfortunately determined by y (the amount of time you have to listen to tunes/the amount you play out) divided by x (the amount of records you want to mix):



Of course, it also depends on what kind of music youre playing out, when it was made etc... its a whole other discussion really.

Too true.

One of the most rated DJ's in most peoples minds (Bukem) always has had planned mixes for years.

'I never plan a mix' a good DJ does not make.

If you're never recorded a mix, listened to it, and thought about improvements, and then performed that mix again (I’m talking about in the sense of two tunes) then played it out knowing it good out then you're an amateur (no offence in intended). But that’s hardly the attitude of someone who considers themselves knowledgeable in the art of DJing.

And the minute you play different tempo and style in the same set, some things just have to be planned.

You'll be hard pressed to play a set starting at 100 bpm and take it to 165/170 bpm, touching on all the tempos in between, beatmatched without the odd planned mix. I hip-hop itself is tough genre to remember where all the vocals are and tempos and not pitch up a record so high the rapper is squeaking.

Somethings just have to be planned. Just like any good 'journey', which Dj's claim to take you on.

i'm not really a fan of DJing/mixing/turntablism in general

Sometimes that just isnt possible. How well you know your records is unfortunately determined by y (the amount of time you have to listen to tunes/the amount you play out) divided by x (the amount of records you want to mix)

This is related to the reason that I tend to be wary of DJ's who mix up more than a couple of genres... people talk about trainwrecking in terms of the beat, but a lot of people 'trainwreck' the vibe by trying to mix up too many styles without knowing them well enough to make a selection that'll keep the energy flowing.