Vinyl dying (for DJ's)

PadaEtc

Emperor Penguin
I play vinyl, just because I love buying and playing it really - don't put too much thought into it, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

Had a gig the other day where i was playing Afrobeat and Reggae mainly, so not much beat matching going on so i just danced around while the songs played (on a stage as it was after bands, but I got the engineer to take the lights low as possible) - this actually improved my set because instead of concentrating on mixing i was concentrating on how long I wanted to dance to the current song and this helped me better judge when to bring a new one.

It was by far the best set i've played out for me personally and crowd reaction - and I only beat matched about 5 songs!

Oh and I have no problem with taking my decks to a club if I can get a lift to the gig!

When it comes to being a punter I have just as much love for someone playing ace tunes not beatmatched from a variety of different genres and styles, to Dettman and Youngsta style genre purism and tight mixing (as well as anything in between) as long as it's done well!
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
"I suppose its just easier carrying a laptop around than a bag of records isn't it (though I suppose more risky in case of loss/destruction)?"
Do you reckon? I think I'd rather lose a laptop than a bag of tunes, it would certainly be easier to replace and probably cheaper as well.
Anyway, I see nothing wrong with a dj getting into his tunes to the extent that it becomes a performance as long as it feels real rather than forced.

 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
Haha no one here is actually trying to suggest DJ's shouldn't look like they are enjoying themselves when they perform are they? Sometimes this forum reaches near self-parody.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Have you ever tried carrying a big record bag? They're really really heavy"
I agree with that bit, it's just the bit about carrying a laptop being riskier that I don't subscribe to.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Haha no one here is actually trying to suggest DJ's shouldn't look like they are enjoying themselves when they perform are they? Sometimes this forum reaches near self-parody"
Probably not, I just wanted an excuse to post that crazy guy up again.
 

jackjambie

Voodoo Priest
I like this thread. You can't keep up now with just vinyl now, even if you cut dubs. Everyone else is moving at a speed set by digital distribution, and I think all of our brains are re-adjusting to that now whether we like it or not so tracks get old faster and stuff.

I prefer vinyl tbh still, but my sets were getting so fucking retro. Made the switch to CDs a few months ago, and within weeks I left the bloody CD holder on the street somewhere in Tooting when I was a bit pissed after a radio show.

I get drunk while DJing a lot and I've never even come close to doing that with my records. Maybe it's a sign (or maybe just a bit of a shitty anecdote...). Seemed quite apt though. It was all 100% replaceable (for about £40, and many hours of CD burning)...If a bag of records went I would never get some of those tracks again I reckon...old grime / ardkore and stuff.

Anyway, reckon I was one of the last people in London playing vinyl.

Do any of the dubstep guys even do it anymore? Saw a picture of N-Type where he had some no white labels on dubs from this year, but on the radio you can hear that his wheels are on CDJS. Maybe just for playing out I guess.

Can't believe how fast it all happened to be honest. 2009 as the turning point maybe? Probably earlier for label owners / major players. Did old garage DJs ever use CDJs?

They've been around for ages haven't they? People just never rated them before.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
"Anyway, reckon I was one of the last people in London playing vinyl."
Depends what kind of music. There are loads of scenes where you would get laughed at if you played cds or mp3s or even reissues.
 

jackjambie

Voodoo Priest
yea i guess so actually. i've got some mates that are into their house and techno and their nights are all still 100% vinyl - guests and all. same with the guys that run roots nights.

but dancehall - 100% digital now pretty much.

doing the dubstep / grime thing as well. does anyone on Rinse still use vinyl, for example? for up to date stuff? i don't think they do...maybe ben ufo?
 

paolo

Mechanical phantoms
I saw Ben Klock play at the weekend. He was using Serato and then he drew for a record and waved it about before sticking it on like it was some sort of big fucking deal. Got a bit of a cheer for it as well
 

benjybars

village elder.
nah chef is serato now

it's basically only Mala these days. last man standing. oh and coki actually but then he's an atrocious DJ so it doesn't really matter..
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
That Chase Is Better Than The Catch thread Leo just did works quite well in here, I think:

Interesting "Epiphanies" column in May issue of The Wire by UbuWeb/WFMU's Kenny G.

http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/6445/

Epiphanies: Kenneth Goldsmith

Since Napster launched a global filesharing frenzy, the hunt itself has become more thrilling than finding recorded treasures, argues UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith

Epiphany No 1: While I could discuss any number of musical epiphanies I’ve personally experienced over the past half a century, all of them would pale in comparison to the epiphany of seeing Napster for the first time. Although prior to Napster I had been a member of several file sharing communities, the sheer scope, variety and seeming endlessness of Napster was mind-boggling: you never knew what you were going to find and how much of it was going to be there. It was as if every record store, fleamarket and charity shop in the world had been connected by a searchable database and had flung their doors open, begging you to walk away with as much as you could carry for free. But it was even better, because the supply never exhausted; the coolest record you’ve ever dug up could now be shared with all your friends. Of course, this has been exacerbated many times over with the advent of torrents and MP3 blogs.

Epiphany No 2: One of the first things that struck me about Napster was how damn impure (read: eclectic) people’s tastes were. While browsing another user’s files, I was stunned to find John Cage MP3s alphabetically snuggled up next to, say, Mariah Carey files in the same directory. Everyone has guilty pleasures; however, never before had they been so exposed – and celebrated – so publicly. While such impure impulses have always existed in the avant garde, they’ve pretty much remained hidden. For instance, on UbuWeb we host a compilation of the ultra-modernist conductor and musicologist Nicholas Slonimsky’s early recordings of Varèse, Ives and Ruggles. But we also host a recording of Slonimsky croaking out bawdy tunes about constipated children – “Opens up the BOW-ELS” – on an out-of-tune piano. He sounds absolutely smashed. The Slonimsky recording is part of The 365 Days Project, which is a collection of crazy stuff: celebrity, children, demonstration, indigenous, Industrial, outsider, song-poem, spoken, ventriloquism, etc; snuggled in with the crazy Mormons, twangy garage bands and singing stewardesses is one of the fathers of the avant garde, Nicholas Slonimsky.

Epiphany No 3: File sharing is non-contextual. The cohesive vision of an album has been ditched in favour of the single or the playlist. Many people getting music online have no idea where something came from, nor do they care. For instance, we find that many people downloading MP3s from UbuWeb have no interest in the historical context; instead, the site is seen as a vast resource of ‘cool’ and ‘weird’ sounds to remix or throw into dance mixes. It has been reported that samples from Bruce Nauman’s mantric chant, “Get Out Of My Mind, Get Out Of This Room”, from his Raw Materials compilation on Ubu, has recently been mixed with beats and is somewhat the rage with unwitting partygoers on dancefloors in São Paulo.

Epiphany No 4: As a result, just like you, I stopped buying music. I used to be a record junkie. For years, I spent most of my free time hunting down discs in dusty corners of the world. I’ll never forget my honeymoon in Amsterdam in 1989. I had to purchase an extra suitcase so that I could bring home dozens of Dutch reissues of Stax and Atco soul LPs that were completely unavailable in New York. While I travel extensively these days, I haven’t set foot in a record store in well over a decade. Why bother, when the best record store sits on my laptop in my hotel room? A few nights ago at home, after putting the kids to bed, I was parked in front of the computer sipping bourbon. My wife asked me what I was doing. I told her I was going record shopping. As I glanced at my screen, ten ultra-rare discs I would have killed for way back when were streaming down to my living room for free.

Epiphany No 5: I don’t know about you, but I’ve lost my object fetish. But then again, I was never the type of collector who bought records for their cool covers: the music had to be great. Still, I have 10,000 vinyls gathering dust in my hallway and as many CDs in racks on my wall. I don’t use them. To me, if music can’t be shared, I’m not interested in it. However, once I digitize these objects and they enter into the file sharing ecosystem, they become alive for me again. As many dead LPs and CDs as I have, I’ve got many times that number of discs sitting on a dozen hard drives, flying up and down my network.

Epiphany No 6: It’s all about quantity. Just like you, I’m drowning in my riches. I’ve got more music on my drives than I’ll ever be able to listen to in the next ten lifetimes. As a matter of fact, records that I’ve been craving for years (such as the complete recordings of Jean Cocteau, which we just posted on Ubu) are languishing unlistened-to. I’ll never get to them either, because I’m more interested in the hunt than I am in the prey. The minute I get something, I just crave more. And so something has really changed – and I think this is the real epiphany: the ways in which culture is distributed have become profoundly more intriguing than the cultural artifact itself. What we’ve experienced is an inversion of consumption, one in which we’ve come to prefer the acts of acquisition over that which we are acquiring, the bottles over the wine.

Kenneth Goldsmith is the founder of UbuWeb.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
The relevant bit about that Wire thing up there is that it illustrates the conflict the once-record-collector-turned-downloader feels. You remember that buying vinyl felt better, more fulfilling. You remember actual moments in your life that will forever be associated with each record you have. You know they sound better over a big rig. You liked the interior of record shops and you liked the culture that surrounded it. You like seeing the records on the shelf in your house. You liked getting to know your records in and out because you only had a limited number you could mix with. You liked how DJ's sounds were defined by those limited collections. You now use Serato because you even like the feel of records.

On the other hand, mp3's are out there in massive fucking quantity, and are cheap as chips if not completely free and you don't have to leave your house. Instead of deliberating about what to spend your hard earned money on, you can have all of it. For free if you choose. It's often not fulfilling or virtuous, but it comes with immediate advantages that no one can really deny.

I feel dirty talking about it.
 
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