Hey dave,
Did you and Josh go get Wav's from artists? Or did you rip vinyl to the computer? Because not every one will be able to get high quality wavs in order to dj on final scratch/cd-r. And it must be harder to find Wav's of older classics, what do you do in that case?

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Originally posted by davedresden josh uses ableton, i use the cdj 1000's. while i don't nessessarily get excited about the prospects of using a laptop to dj, i must say that things like ableton are moving this artform in a new direction, something that it sorely needs in order to grow and be taken more seriously. just because josh doesn't sit there and try every cunning variation of holding down a pitch control and keeping kick drums locked into place for a long time doesn't make him less of a dj. when he spins people dance and enjoy themselves. that's what djing is about. as for the turntable, it was an awesome invention but sadly out of date, records are cumbersome, they wear out easily, are hard to store, heavy to lug through airports and simply not as versitile as the cdj-1000. i applaud the idea of being able to do more things with music in a dj booth, and eventually, i too will move over to ableton or something like it. i think in a genre of music that embraces the future as much as electronic music does, i find it ironic that many of it's biggest fans hinder its growth so much by fighting change and sticking to a format that's out of date that nobody except dj's uses. the future is great. enjoy it! - dave

Well, I've gotta explain what I was talking about now. It's pretty easy to see how automation can lead to both good and bad things. Automation can allow for innovation and creativity by removing some of the more tedious tasks in life. In the case of our dj we're talking about beatmatching, of course, and making it easier for the dj to add personal touches to his or her sets. I'm all for this. That's why I was talking about moving towards the live production type stuff. It definitely seems like djing as we know it now has progressed about as far as it can and we need to embrace new things like ableton to take everything further. Imagine sets completely personalized to suit a djs style. Imagine if every track in every dj set were completely personalized by the dj. How incredible would it be to hear something like Politics of Dancing or Involver done completely live? That is the future of djing....

Now, there's also the bad side of automation. I mean, when you have something as powerful as ableton it's not too hard to picture a dj simply automating his dj set without personalizing it. All the tracks match up (reasonably well at least... after seeing and hearing ableton live I'm kind of skeptical how well people can do it) but the set lacks style. It's a virtual McDonaldization of djing and is not the direction we should be going in. With this dj McDonaldization the dj puts no effort into the mix and his sets become incredibly lame. It's really obvious when a dj is not trying and it comes through in the quality of the set. Back at Avalon this year Josh's set felt a bit like that. The whole thing wasn't as personal as it could have been. It was danceable but nothing incredible.

I'm a big fan of CDJ's. They have great automation features but also keep a lot of the pure old school dj stuff intact. They don't allow for McDonaldization and DJ laziness and it's incredible what you can do with them with a little creativity (Zabiela!). I remember when you guys came to Arc about a year ago and were using those badboys. I loved that set. You guys were throwing down samples, loops, and accapellas; really making a super stylish personalized set. I didn't get that same feeling at Avalon though so it was kind of disappointing.

Keep innovating though! I've got a feeling you guys can do a lot with ableton....

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mmmm.. delicious...

I havnt used ableton live yet, but i know in traktor it takes days for tracks not in the "tracklisting" to load. I think that greatly lowers the creativity of the set, when only 30 or so tracks may be on the current play list. If a dj wants to find something else they have to rush through their files to find it(which can take a while).

Another thing, how do you know when a breakdown is comming other then memorization with cdj/computer programs? Because you can't tell like by looking on a vinyl.

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Time exists so everything doesn't happen at once. Space exists so everything doesn't happen to you

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Originally posted by sandstorm03 I havnt used ableton live yet, but i know in traktor it takes days for tracks not in the "tracklisting" to load. I think that greatly lowers the creativity of the set, when only 30 or so tracks may be on the current play list. If a dj wants to find something else they have to rush through their files to find it(which can take a while). Another thing, how do you know when a breakdown is comming other then memorization with cdj/computer programs? Because you can't tell like by looking on a vinyl.

Hmm, Traktor seems to work fine with Finalscratch. A friend of mine used to store tracks on a 40gb iPod and he would load them right off that thing into Finalscratch. Took him a while to initially load all the tracks but when he did it worked flawlessly and he never had to wait too long for tracks to load again. The firewire hookup to the iPod was incredibly fast and actually improved the tracking performance of the program.

Traktor/Finalscratch has great search functions. If a dj wants to find a track he's gotta just type in any portion of the artist/track name and he's got the track. The dj can also store playlists. Sometimes I wish we could do without that feature. This is what, in my opinion, led to PvD and his super stale tracklist.

You can read vinyl. That's what the little turntable light is for. You can tell exactly where the breakdown is coming if you look at those pretty little grooves. Eventually, though, you just feel it...

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mmmm.. delicious...

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Took him a while to initially load all the tracks but when he did it worked flawlessly and he never had to wait too long for tracks to load again.

thats what im talking about. If something isn't loaded the chances of it getting played are just about 0.

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Traktor/Finalscratch has great search functions. If a dj wants to find a track he's gotta just type in any portion of the artist/track name and he's got the track. The dj can also store playlists. Sometimes I wish we could do without that feature. This is what, in my opinion, led to PvD and his super stale tracklist.

when djs tour they will probably play the same majority of tracks night to night. it just isn't paul. I'd love to see sasha's tracklisting for his recent tour. I know tiesto/armin have played the same sets basically every night. There isn't anything wrong with it unless you tour with them.

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You can read vinyl. That's what the little turntable light is for. You can tell exactly where the breakdown is coming if you look at those pretty little grooves.

thats my point, i dont think you can do that with cdj's/"final scratch."

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Time exists so everything doesn't happen at once. Space exists so everything doesn't happen to you

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Originally posted by sandstorm03 thats what im talking about. If something isn't loaded the chances of it getting played are just about 0. when djs tour they will probably play the same majority of tracks night to night. it just isn't paul. I'd love to see sasha's tracklisting for his recent tour. I know tiesto/armin have played the same sets basically every night. There isn't anything wrong with it unless you tour with them. thats my point, i dont think you can do that with cdj's/"final scratch."

But who wouldn't load tracks to begin with? It's a one time process. If you're not willing to spend maybe 3 hours loading up and analyzing 1000 tracks then you shouldn't have bought the thing in the first place. Once you load the tracks you never have to wait again that's it. Analyzing the tracks also writes a stripe that descirbes the waveform. This stipe is a lot easier to read than any vinyl. You can see peaks and frequency clearly on it. The high end cdj's also analyze the track when you insert the cd. It's not as nice as the one on Finalscratch but you get just as good an idea as you do from reading vinyl..

I mentioned that PvD tracklist thing in regard to the effects of automation. This thread is not about comparing Sasha and PvD. Please keep your PvD worship to threads that are relevant to your obsession...

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mmmm.. delicious...

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When you start to criticize the times you live in, your time is over. ~Karl Lagerfeld

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Originally posted by sandstorm03 i dont think you can do that with cdj's/"final scratch."

You can do it in Traktor though =P.

And has anyone here noticed that traktor doesn't always set the BPM to the correct value? I have to manually get the BPM for every track to make sure its as close to right as possible, but it still is off a little bit. Either the auto-BM feature is retarded, or the BPM calculation is off. Anyway...

I think DJs shouldn't use these programs to mix the tracks because unless they use them to put a lot of effort into adding effects to tracks, and making th emix unique, i'm not gonna shell out my 20-40 dollars to see the DJ. I want to know that they are using their skills to make it sound good, not to let the computer do most the work, and then the DJ comes in the background. Half the time it'll look like the DJ will not be doing much anyway. I know we need to move into the future, but maybe using a new electronic version of the vinyl that would never scratch or wear down would help. It would still be used on a modified turntable, but the tracks would somehow be read electronically from the 'vinyl' instead of directly from the needle. Not sure how it could be done because i'm not an engineer, but I have ideas! =P

~Ryan

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But who wouldn't load tracks to begin with? It's a one time process.

yea thats true. But, im talking about djs probably create a playlist of 40 or so tracks that they want to play ahead of time(i think djs do that). And im prety sure that most of them will stick to thoes 40 or so tracks, just because its a hassle to go looking in you c: or searching for the tracks in traktor, in the middle of a set.

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Analyzing the tracks also writes a stripe that descirbes the waveform. You can see peaks and frequency clearly on it.

i dont think i know that. Are you just talking about the so many seconds of the track that you see when you play it? If thats the case i think thats more limiting to creativity then vinyl since you can see the whole vinyl, even though you dont see the detail of a few prior seconds.

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You can do it in Traktor though =P.

???? huh ???

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And has anyone here noticed that traktor doesn't always set the BPM to the correct value? I have to manually get the BPM for every track to make sure its as close to right as possible, but it still is off a little bit. Either the auto-BM feature is retarded, or the BPM calculation is off. Anyway...

yep the bpm on traktor is quite fucked imo, which is why i bought tables and such...

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Time exists so everything doesn't happen at once. Space exists so everything doesn't happen to you

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Originally posted by sandstorm03 i dont think i know that. Are you just talking about the so many seconds of the track that you see when you play it? If thats the case i think thats more limiting to creativity then vinyl since you can see the whole vinyl, even though you dont see the detail of a few prior seconds.

When you do an analysis of the track it builds the peaks of the entire track into a stripe. You can see this stripe under the position indicating stripe. You see the whole track as you would on vinyl and its more clearly defined.

I've always found the finalscratch bpm counter to be pretty accurate when compared with counters on mixers or cdjs. It gets the occasional breakbeat tune wrong but it's no big deal. Hell, don't even use the damn counters anyway...

i'm spending far too much time on TA at work today..

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mmmm.. delicious...

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When you do an analysis of the track it builds the peaks of the entire track into a stripe. You can see this stripe under the position indicating stripe. You see the whole track as you would on vinyl and its more clearly defined.

cool ive never seen that

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