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Tips on beatmatching for a newby? (pg. 4)
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| Mad for Brad |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mr.Mystery
tl;dr
Original point stands. |
i kinda agree that if you can't beatmatch, it is sort of like the minimum level of competence a dj should have. ya its about the crowd but come on. IF you can't beat match you have no innate music talent and you probably aren't able to read the crowd anyways. |
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| Mr.Mystery |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mad for Brad
i kinda agree that if you can't beatmatch, it is sort of like the minimum level of competence a dj should have. ya its about the crowd but come on. IF you can't beat match you have no innate music talent and you probably aren't able to read the crowd anyways. |
Yeah. It's the same thing with just about anything - gadgets and gimmicks are fine as a spice but not as the main course.
If you rely entirely on technology you might as well slap on a pre-mixed CD and go grab a beer, because at that point you're nothing more than a human jukebox. |
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| Rodri Santos |
clubs are looking for jukeboxes. One of my friends said yesterday that he will record a mix with virtual dj and send to a club owner. I said him
"But here there is no laptop, you need to know how to mix"
"No problem, i'll record a 3 hour set in mp3 and let it play while i turn some knobs, this way i earn money and have free drinks".
"It will be boring if you don't do anything"
"While i've beer nothing can be boring"
This is real believe me, i'm scared that he gets the job. |
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| brucelee6783 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Apeattack
But me, and thousands more like me, have NO problem using technology to make our lives easier. |
I wouldn't be so sure about that. From the replies I'm reading, it would seem like more people prefer manual beatmatching. |
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| n3lly |
| quote: | Originally posted by brucelee6783
I wouldn't be so sure about that. From the replies I'm reading, it would seem like more people prefer manual beatmatching. |
Give the bloke a break. Horses for courses.
We can't take the responses on this forum for a general ruling on a topic.
That's like believing all those makeup/hairstyling products that say 85% of women agree, and then it has that small line underneath it that says 85% of 33 women agree. :D
I'll tell you one thing though. I was playing out on saturday night when i arrived i hooked up my DVS system like i always do. With everything hooked up I then hit play on the left cdj, no problems there. Hit play on the right cdj.... nothing. The play button the cdj1000 wasn't working. Tried getting one of the sound guys to take a look but the place was rammed and i couldn't get anyone to help me out.
Anyway, if it wasn't for the fact that I was using my computer (traktor) the guy after me was using ableton and the bloke after him was using vinyl we'd have had a nice problem on our hands.
Of course the power on one of the power blocks went, which i didn't realise and my laptop ran out of battery mid set which was also a nice experience. I had a normal cd on hand though so it literally took 15 seconds till music was back up and playing :) |
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| brucelee6783 |
| quote: | Originally posted by n3lly
I'll tell you one thing though. I was playing out on saturday night when i arrived i hooked up my DVS system like i always do. With everything hooked up I then hit play on the left cdj, no problems there. Hit play on the right cdj.... nothing. The play button the cdj1000 wasn't working. Tried getting one of the sound guys to take a look but the place was rammed and i couldn't get anyone to help me out.
Of course the power on one of the power blocks went, which i didn't realise and my laptop ran out of battery mid set which was also a nice experience. |
:confused: I have nightmares about things like this happening. I can only imagine if this had happened mid-set when the dancefloor was packed and the track playing was the keystone track you'd been building up to all night. :nervous: |
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| Apeattack |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mr.Mystery
tl;dr
Original point stands. |
tl;dr |
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| n3lly |
| quote: | Originally posted by brucelee6783
:confused: I have nightmares about things like this happening. I can only imagine if this had happened mid-set when the dancefloor was packed and the track playing was the keystone track you'd been building up to all night. :nervous: |
It was annoying as while it wasn't a keystone track (as you put it :) ) It was a nice track that i had been looking forward to playing out.
However i have three cd's with me that have sets on them. One is more of a warm up cd, another is a bouncy tech-housey set and another is a little darker and harder.
I played the second cd which was actually perfect as the crowd were really nice and got straight back into it. I started the computer up again and slowly mixed back in the tracks i wanted to.
To be honest I was kind of happy it happened because it made me go through my 'redundancy plan' and everything worked fine so that's nice to know. |
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| Apeattack |
| quote: | Originally posted by Rodri Santos
The other day i went to a club prepared to mix in the old 1000 Mk2, unfortunately one of them was broken and was substituted by a Cdj - 100 with no bpm counter.
I'd like to see how someone who is used to use the autosync button deals without bpm counters... i'm happy that sometimes cover my bpm counters and practice without them, if not would have been a big fail. |
This situation arose because there still is a lot of very outdated equipment out there. In 5-10 years all DJ equipment will have the auto-sync feature.
In 2010, perhaps there is some benefit of being able to manually beatmatch because occasionally a situation like the one you described may come up. But in 2015 I doubt DJs will need to worry about it.
Btw, I would not have had a problem because I would have brought my Numark Omni Control + laptop. |
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| Apeattack |
| quote: | Originally posted by Rodri Santos
clubs are looking for jukeboxes. One of my friends said yesterday that he will record a mix with virtual dj and send to a club owner. I said him
"But here there is no laptop, you need to know how to mix"
"No problem, i'll record a 3 hour set in mp3 and let it play while i turn some knobs, this way i earn money and have free drinks".
"It will be boring if you don't do anything"
"While i've beer nothing can be boring"
This is real believe me, i'm scared that he gets the job. |
If the audience is happy, I don't know if it REALLY matters if a set is pre-recorded or not. I would never prerecord and pretend to mix because it still doesn't 'feel' right to me, but I am unsure if prerecording is 'wrong' if the finished product is at least as good as what a DJ could do live.
I know this sounds blasphemous to most of you, but this IS the future. All of us, manual and non-manual beatmatchers, must deal with it.
The major downside of prerecording is that a DJ cannot adjust his set if the crowd is not into the music, but I wonder how often most DJs adjust their sets significantly in practice. |
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| Apeattack |
| quote: | Originally posted by brucelee6783
I wouldn't be so sure about that. From the replies I'm reading, it would seem like more people prefer manual beatmatching. |
I'm not surprised that on a forum dedicated to DJing that many people are passionate about the need for manual beatmatching. Right now, most DJs have been DJing for years and are used to manually beatmatching because they had to. Being able to manually beatmatch used to be a valuable skill that club owners were willing to pay a lot of money for. Now that skill is worth a LOT less and will one day be worth nothing as sync'ing technology becomes better and more widespread.
My posts are regarding the near- and far-future of DJing. What I stated in the above posts is inevitable. The sooner you realize this the less frustrated you will be in the years ahead when DJs who use a lot more auto-features than I do will be willing to DJ for far less money than you think your skills are worth.
I want to stress again that I do not think manual beatmatching is silly or a waste of time. If you enjoy it, do it. At the very least the beginning DJ who practices manual beatmatching will get into the habit of listening for patterns in music and beat-counting while learning a skill that may occasionally come in handy (in the next couple years). But in the near-future I predict that most young DJs will see auto-sync'ing as normal and completely acceptable. There is a reason why a sync button was invented... there is a demand for it. |
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