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-- DJ's who whore their own productions and DJ's who don't
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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J EDIT: And concerning the actual issue, do you have to compose your own music to become a musician? Arguably if you're creating a new musical piece you're a musician. After all, music is art. Is DJ Shadow not a musician for creating a record almost entirely out of samples in Endtroducing? You can't deny that it's a piece of art. Whether or not he did it in the studio or on the decks (I suspect the former, unless the man is an octopus) it raises the question of just when does a DJ set become a piece of art when the DJ is reinterpreting the music of others to create something that is new: a new piece of art concieved and executed by them. And if the DJ has created a piece of musical art, is the DJ a musician or not?

one distinction comes about from the answer to the question: do you call the afformentioned DJ Shadow track a dj set? or do you call it a track?

another comes from the fact that dj sets are preformences, while tracks are recordings (obviously there are exceptions with both).

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J But the role of the composer and producer in electronic music has become blurred, at least semantically.

Yes, of that I agree. I was going to say more about how sometimes one person is all three, but not always. I've written about this in another thread....Britney Spears, for example, is the performer, but Max Martin is the composer and producer. But I had to run and I couldn't finish my babblespeech.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J An example would be Blondie's "Heart of Glass" which was originally quite a punky record with drums all over the place.

A better example is George Martin. Sgt. Pepper's was his idea.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Because electronic musicians write the music, put it together using synths and the sequencer and essentially "perform" it too

This is right, but also wrong. With most electronic music, there technically isn't a composer...ie: someone who actually writes and composes the music to a finished form before he heads to the studio to flesh it out. For most electronic Producers, the composing and producing part of the music happens simultaneously. Quite a deal many of them admit that they don't compose at all....they just hit the desk, lay out some keys, and noodle around with features n frequencies until something starts to sound cool, and eventually come across a unique envelope or filter that they very likely couldn't reproduce as they weren't sure how they arrived to it in the first place. In short, they make the track by trial-and-error, experimentation, and often enough, by complete accident. Air once admitted that this is how they made "Sexy Boy".

The "performer" is the DJ.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J And concerning the actual issue, do you have to compose your own music to become a musician?

I like to think so. Calling everyone who can squeak out audible noise from their desktop studios a "musician" would be like calling everything that's floating around in space a "planet", to use a highly-publicised example. Divisions must be made for categorization purposes. Why else do you think the scratch guys don't want to be called DJs anymore? .....because the very name is basically an insult now, tarnished and patronised by the trance record players. They're called turntablists now.

None of this has anything to do with whether its art or not. That's a different argument altogether.

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Originally posted by Psy-T one distinction comes about from the answer to the question: do you call the afformentioned DJ Shadow track a dj set? or do you call it a track? another comes from the fact that dj sets are preformences, while tracks are recordings (obviously there are exceptions with both).

Well Endtroducing is an album. However, it's really just a further extension of the core musical idea behind hip-hop. With today's DJing software it surely isn't impossible to make a set up live comprised out of samples.

As for the DJ being the "performer", I don't agree there at all. For a start, plenty of electronic acts perform their music live anyway. You could say a DJ is to an electronic producer what an orchestra is to a classical composer, but just as Ishkur defines a composer by a process: writing music down then going to record it I'd define a performer who actually plays an instrument or sings or otherwise recreates the track, rather than playing the studio-recorded version. Also, the performer will often appear on the record: the singer, the instrumentalists etc. A DJ who doesn't know the artist just pressing play does not constitute a true "performer" to me.

Ish: I bring the whole art thing up because you define a musician as a composer. However, many people define someone who plays an instrument a musician. Whether they're part of a band or a rent-an-instrument musician, they're still musicians. The term "musician" is not limited to one part of the musical process and I'm arguing that if a DJ is making new music on some level then they are a musician.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J As for the DJ being the "performer", I don't agree there at all. For a start, plenty of electronic acts perform their music live anyway. You could say a DJ is to an electronic producer what an orchestra is to a classical composer, but just as Ishkur defines a composer by a process: writing music down then going to record it I'd define a performer who actually plays an instrument or sings or otherwise recreates the track, rather than playing the studio-recorded version. Also, the performer will often appear on the record: the singer, the instrumentalists etc. A DJ who doesn't know the artist just pressing play does not constitute a true "performer" to me.

that's more of a semantics problem than it is a disagreement mate, i didn't mean the dj would be the performer, i said that a dj set is a performance (in comparison with a track which is a recording).

quote:

Originally posted by Psy-T that's more of a semantics problem than it is a disagreement mate, i didn't mean the dj would be the performer, i said that a dj set is a performance (in comparison with a track which is a recording).

Well I was addressing Ish there too.

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Originally posted by DjConfessions some of their shows have been literally G/D only nights

yuck...

1 or 2 of their tracks in a set i can understand. But having an entire set in that style... yuck.

Hmm...

I can think of a lot of people out there who need to read this thread. Especially people who despise the EDM scene, and people who are just getting into it.

quote:

Originally posted by DjConfessions some of their shows have been literally G/D only nights

I always thought whoring off your own stuff was a bad thing, self promotion and all that. Then again this topic came up a while back and someone said it was a good thing that some DJs were 'musical' enough to be able to produce and play their own music. Had a more 'musician' quality to it...

Playing out your label is probably in the whoring rather than musician category.

finding the rare and precious track is half of the job of the DJ.

but at the same time, i think some tracks people instantly love should be played too here and there.

but i say 30%-70% of the tracks should be unheard, from unheard producers etc.

The percentage depends on the DJ, his mood, and the crowd's mood. You neeed really a good mix of both depending on how the crowd and the Dj is feeling and also the occasion.

the reality is, for many people, a lot of tracks need to be heard a few times before they are loved.

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