Is this progress? Or bad mixing

I agree with the use of modern tools and I have nothing against sync-buttons, key-matching, whatever. Heck, I tighten the first and last 32 beats of my old dance tracks in Ableton to give me a nice place to mix in/out of without having to keep my fingers on the jogwheel doing continuous pitch control. So yeah, prep, use tools and spend your time on other things.

I have never had an ABBA fan approach me with a CD, let alone with 200 pop in it. And not everything needs to be flawlessly mixed. I am a mic user, so I have an extra option there. What DOES happen though is that you might have to play a track you haven’t properly gridded yet (software doesn’t get it right all the time after all) or you have to transition in after another DJ. You are just gonna wait til his track finished and then start playing yours? Or do you manually beatmatch it and make a nice smooth change-over the crowd doesn’t even notice?

I have witnessed that a PC crashed (beyond repair, HD crash) in the middle of a gig. No spare laptop there. Stuff hooked up to a controller with no stand-alone capacity. All this in a relatively small venue with the controller sitting on top of a couple of CDJ-1000s. For people who have decided to follow your train of thinking, that is the end of the game. No CD’s, no knowledge of how to transition songs without tools, no knowledge of how to build a set if the tracks aren’t pre-arranged in playlists but spread over 100+ CDs.

Luckily the DJ was a friend and I jumped in to help. I tore the laptop/controller from the CDJs, while he grabbed his CD wallet from his backpack. Fired up the mixer and CDJs, slammed in a track, hit play, rammed the fader open and within a minute after breakdown we had music. Went on the mic, apologized to the crowd, expressed our hope they used the time wisely to go for a bathroom break and to get a drink.

My friend finished the night on a high note, with a happy and packed floor. He did some awesome beatmatching and manual effects on the CDJs. And got compliments from the owner for fixing stuff quickly and not letting the night go to a total waste.

I don’t see a controller/laptop DJ doing that.

It’s little effort to put a CD wallet and 2 USB sticks in your pack when you go to a gig, next to your controller and laptop. And if you know how to do it old skool, you’ll never be caught with your pants down in any situation.

To use my own analogy: I think it is stupid if a carpenter doesn’t use a nailgun to drive nails in, it’s faster, more efficient, probably more consistent results. BUT … what if his compressor or the nailgun breaks down, is he just gonna stand there and wait for someone to come fix it or bring him a new gun? No, you’d expect him to take his old trusted hammer from his toolcase and a box of nails and get busy with it. If he never learned to use a hammer, he WILL just stand there and be useless.

So, while I share your sentiments about tools being a good thing to be utilised to the max, I don’t agree with saying you don’t need basic skills like manual beatmatching.

Always up for a good discussion 😎

Greetinx,
C.

Dannyboy, post: 44925, member: 2233 wrote: Shoot if someone came up to me with 200 bucks to play some old song i’ll get on the mic, apologize in advance, and play it. Everyone should have a plan B. Mine is my phone. if something terrible like my computer dying happened I could still get by with some good software on my phone. Not ideal and cant do as much but with proper track selection will work in a pinch. Just don’t get a phone call.

Quite frankly, I dare you to do an entire gig on an iPhone! LOL.

Sure, it will tide you over for a few minutes while sorting stuff out, but as serious backup?

Granted, a loaded iPad would probably work, but the sound quality from the headphone output straight into the main PA is not gonna be all that great I think.

Greetinx,
C.

DJ Hane K, post: 44583, member: 444 wrote: Again, I ask… If all your music is on your laptop; and “the technology fails” i.e. your laptop dies; how is beatmatching by ear going to help? I mean… I’m not saying it’s not a nice skill to have, but I just think it’s rather an _unnecessary_ skill in this day and age.

Assuming you’re playing stuff from a computer, not vinyl/cds. But I guess you wouldn’t be on this particular forum if you weren’t.

it’s always good to be multi-platformed 😉 that way if your laptop/controller fails, carry an extra usb or 2, and if someone has cdjs…(where beatmatching is 90% of you’ll be doing)…BOOM. you’re set to go then you can figure out the problem that went wrong later. ie: i went to mad decent block party and one of the dj’s laptop overheated (it was 100+ outside) we had to wait 15 minutes until they brought a bag of ice to set under his laptop.

If it’s a venue gig, they WILL have other equipment there, that you could switch over to. If it’s a mobile gig, you’ll be bringing a small truckload of gear anyway, two small (the don’t need to be full blown CDJs) CD players would easily do the trick. Besides, if I only have my MC6000 in flightcase on my DJ stand, it looks sooooo empty. I charge a healthy fee for gear rental and know my customers like/expect to see some gear too, not just my iDJ Pro and two speakers :D.

And I always bring either an extra mixer or, these days, an extra controller (the iDJ Pro is ideal for that). Doing mobile gigs often means important events for people. Weddings, anniversaries, significant birtdays, etx. I can’t afford to tank those. The show truly MUST go on.

Greetinx,
C.