My take on the same tired argument

At most, a DJ should learn the basics of beat matching for two reasons.

1. It lets you know one of the basics of your art form. If you are an art student, like a painter, and you have a totally new ay of painting, you still would study the work of master painters and learn basic techniques. It just makes you better. You may never use it in a performance setting, but you will be better for it.

2. You never know what you may need to do. Sometimes equipment fails. Sometimes you really want to play a song that can not be properly beat gridded. It is like learning to drive a manual shift car. You can always buy an automatic, so why learn? Well if you need to drive your drunk buddies car or something.

Personally, I use my sync button. I promise it took more time to properly beat grid my whole collection than it did to learn to beat match. But I am glad I learned to beat match for the reasons above. Iceman, I appreciate your post because it touches on the main problem anonymous haters are just that… haters. It would be silly to change the way you do something you love because some random duder says you aren’t doing it right. If you like what you do and the people you play for are happily shaking their asses on the dance floor, you are doing it right.

I’ve said it before, but just in case anybody missed it.

It’s a skill to know and learn (if only because 95% of the current Pioneer decks out there don’t have sync and the ones that do, not quite like on software/controller combos quite frankly).

It adds a layer of self-confidence.

Once you master the art, there is no good reason to NOT use the tools at your disposal. You know you can do it manually, so don’t have to prove anybody anything. Your skills will help determine if the sync mix is going well and if not what to do to manually correct it.

If you take over from another DJ you can make a nice beatmatched transition without having to bother the other guy. And with sync working well on the majority of mixes you have more time and hands free to use on the other creative tools your setup offers. And you get to look even more at all the pretty girls in the audience making eyes at you.

If you are a carpenter, you need to learn how to bang in nails with a hammer. When you are good at that, there is no shame in using a nailgun. If the power fails, you can still pick up the hammer and continue your work manually or if you have to get into a corner the nailgun won’t fit.

Greetinx,
C.