Reason808
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Reason808
Participant+1
I might just spend the $50 USD and try it out next week. If so, I’ll share my experiences.
ParticipantI’m enormously frustrated with Traktor and I’m thinking of switching to Cross DJ 2.0 after Phil’s review. So I’m curious why Daryl is unhappy with Cross DJ.
Cross DJ had sync that’ll work with all my old tunes and soul tracks, plus the music library management seems A LOT better. My only concern is that Cross DJ might die out like Torq did. And only 6 cue points.
ParticipantSome tracks have tempo drift. Usually EDM songs after 2003 have a solid grid. Before that it’s hit and miss.
My guess is the the person who made the mashup didn’t edit things precisely, so there’s little shifts to the beatgrid all over the place. Maybe the remixer decided to stretch the drum loop to fit the acapella or analog music instead of vice-versa. That could create the sorts of drifts you mention. The Traktor workaround for this is to pick one passage on the music that best for mixing and align your mix to that. There’s an Ian Golden video on how to do this somewhere.
September 22, 2012 at 10:09 am in reply to: How to remember/label a song by it's sound characteristics #1012445ParticipantSomewhere on this site there was a link to DJ blog with an interesting organization system much like what you describe. This guy had made a system like this: III<iii
As I remember the brackets “” were about transitions and the upper vs. lowercase “i” vs “II” were the strengths and or intensities of the intro, break, verse, chorus, outro, etc. So it was a great way to understand the entire structure of a song at a glance, and it still worked as a searchable keyword for tagging purposes. Sorry my memory is so fuzzy on more details, maybe other posters can help on the exact source? I think our esteemed webmaster Phil may have posted it. Also, the guy who makes the Trainspotter utility has a great tagging system that organizes music on structure, and this may give you some ideas: http://www.tspotter.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/tagging-taxonomy.jpg
I agree with what Si BooGie & DigitalJunkiie said. Personally, I don’t find organizing by music by structure useful, and being specific with genres helps avoid most of the clashes you describe. The biggest mixing issue with rhythmic structure is 4-on-the-floor house with All-over-the-floor breaks, dubstep, etc. Usually mixing on the breaks, bass EQ kills, or rapid transitions takes care of the issue. Sometimes I tag songs as “sparse,” “percussive” or “fluttery” but that’s because I like the feel of the tracks like this and want to mix a set that emphasizes it.
However, I have experienced what you’re talking about. Sometimes a song has a very cluttered 32 note high-hat pattern that you don’t even notice until you mix it over one with only 8 notes. In practice, I’m not sure that I would reject a mix because of such a clash, the connection between the songs is usually stronger than hi-hat patterns. But I can see if you’re mixing exclusively minimal tech-house you might run into stuff like this frequently, so organizing your library around structure would be good.
Participantmy confusion is based around still not really understanding what ‘EDM’ is or isnt. Its just such a broad a term.
Personally, that’s what I like about the EDM term: it takes a bunch of every-shifting, yet common, genres and puts them into a category, like country, rock or classical, that’s broad yet useful. Of course people will disagree and dispute the ‘true’ meaning of these terms, and get pretentious about it, but that’s the case with any music genre.
Glad you like my other comments.
ParticipantI don’t understand where he got the idea of EDM being only based on ‘newness’.
At the risk of contradicting my earlier post, I’ll say that EDM doesn’t age very well. When I listen to a 10-15yr old classic dance track I’d forgotten about, the dated production techniques really stand out. It’s the first thing I notice, and its not pretty. So if I have this reaction as a highly sympathetic DJ, the general public is probably much harsher. I suspect that’s where the OP’s friend is coming from, although I think he’s getting carried away about newness.
I don’t have this reaction with non-EDM genres: 70s funk still feels funky, James Brown still feels soulful. The older styles and techniques sound “classic” instead of “dated.” Why? IMHO, EDM is saying, through style: “This is the future of music.” EDM constantly introduces new soundscapes to the world, often in epic fashion. As soon as the style becomes dated, the “epic and futuristic” intro really seems really small and dated in a way that other genres don’t. But that’s also why EDM is also so fresh and innovative, and keeps me excited and interested.ParticipantI’d say every EDM genre creates about 5 tracks a year that reach the pantheon of “classic” status, and about 20 others that are close. You can easily create a set of 20 “perfect” songs going back only four years, and that’s being strict with your genres and selections.
I think most new releases are pretty forgettable and disposable. Granted I’m old school, and not out in the field these days, but I bet most people still dance to music because of its inherent quality – not it’s release date.
Also, I don’t think styles change that fast, even with the internet. I’d say it takes a few months for a music style to catch on in the underground, and another 3 months as each new group of people disover it – so you’re up to a full year to get a style noticed. If its really good, it’ll take longer to fade away.
When I was DJing in situations in NYC where I thought I had an extremely fickle and trendy crowd, it was extremely rare to have somebody complain that my music was ‘old.’ Even then, it was usually a trainspotter, DJ wannabe or the odd music snob. However, I’d run into these types with equal frequency at my uncool wedding and suburban gigs. So from my experience, I don’t think club crowds are as ‘newness’ oriented as your friend thinks.
ParticipantThanks for the share and mix. To my ears, it’s similar to dubstep – but I don’t like dubstep and I really like this. You’ve given me a new area of music to investigate.
September 8, 2012 at 4:10 am in reply to: Sounds great in the club, crap after the download . . . #1011824ParticipantI came up with a geeky solution to this problem for now, maybe others will find it useful:
Any songs I’m having second thoughts about I put the keyword GiveItAChance in the comments section in iTunes
Then I made an iTunes smartlist to keep track of these tunes. I can review the smartlist every few weeks/months and decide whether to toss or keep.
ParticipantWow, really fantastic, especially for a year in! My favorite mix was the big shift around 2:40. Sweet!
ParticipantHahaha. We’ll I was talking to Phil, not the entire forum!! But it’d probably be huge fun to meet some DDJT forum friends I’ve talked to on threads in person, especially over some nice Dim Sum. Give a shout out when you’re in the Fragrant Harbor.
ParticipantEven to some of us old hands, genres are confusing. I never understood the difference between hip-hop vs. rap or Drum and Bass vs. Jungle. One DJ’s deep house could be another’s minimal tech, and so on. Some people can get very pretentious and snobby about these distinctions, but don’t let that fool or discourage you.
If that wasn’t confusing enough, people will mis-label genres constantly. I remember a very bohemian salon hairstylist call a distinctly 2-step track “house.” I surprised at the mistake, this was a person who listened to cutting edge music all day long and had a very cool clientele that was very conscious of the latest trends.
ParticipantSounds like a really good plan. I did #2 in my uni days, and it worked well for me to get into clubs. Plus you’ll get tons of opportunities to work with a real crowd.
September 7, 2012 at 4:33 am in reply to: MP3 Download Restrictions, pointless and annoying!! #1011751ParticipantI’m running into this all the time from Hong Kong and not just for MP3s.
If anybody can recommend a proxy service so another site thinks you’re coming from the US, that’d be great.ParticipantI’ll be happy to show you around if you ever make it out to Hong Kong.
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