Originally posted by Beatflux
How can a DJ improve the sound of a track? I don't see how they can effectively do it.
A track on its own is just seven minutes of self-contained music. It rises, it falls, it does its own little thing in its own time-span and that's it. To create a party, you need to play multiple tracks, one after the other so a sustained mood or effect is created.Even at a Top 40 club where a DJ does no mixing and has no technical skills, he does not play tracks at random. He selects party songs that will get a good reaction, and he speeds it up and slows it down. There is a truism amongst DJs that playing one wedding disco gig of pop music will teach you more about DJing than a hundred hours spent practising alone in your bedroom. That's why, even at a Top 40 meat market where none of the crowd could spot a beatmix or care about smooth mixing, the clubs still have human DJs instead of putting on a chart compilation. Programming is essential to every good party in every nightclub, ever.
The basic principle of good DJing is playing a track at the right moment in the set and in the night to optimise its effect, relative to what's already been played, what the crowd have responded to and what will come next. It's all about context. Beatmatching, phrase-matching, harmonic mixing and the rest are the tools that elide self-contained musical moments into the larger picture that is the party.
Zyklon_Jay
i love spamming, the only reason i post this set is because it is as close to trance as i get (aka not even close) and most of it is 3 decks. It isn't perfect, but such is life when you live on the fly.
The Producers section of TA is a very frustrating place to me. It's full of people I disagree constantly with, rife with musical conservatism and lethargic posters who don't go clubbing, don't keep up with contemporary music and don't finish their work. If half these guys posted the same stuff in MD they'd be chewed up and spat out in no time.
Something to bare in mind is that some of us never or rarely post a finished work because that proportion of tracks good enough to finish end up getting signed and many a label will not want it therefore pimped about.
I know from my experience a work can be kinda lame, but come the time of actualy finishing it, that last dint of effort takes it from an ok track to a proper finished article of a different quality and vibe.
I like to bounce newish ideas in TA to see what sort of reaction they get. I hear this cry of 'just be true and make what you like' but that is only half the story for me - I don't want to put out pointless naval gazing 'art' that only me and my Mom like. Afterall we keep saying there is too much e out here, so I prefer on some works to get a sounding, as us producers tend to like the smell of our own E so it's useful to get a reality check.
For my part I'm always thinking there is much better to come and everything thus far made by me is only so so.
One theme I notice all the time cropping up is producers who have a good deal of what we might call traditional musical skill - they can play lovely melodies and so on, but I have to say nin a world stuffed full of centuries of melody and crafted musicianship I am never going to be top of the hill in that dept', and nor would I want to be as there are a million orchestra players who could do better on that front.
To be crystal clear this is not a comment to demean those more melodically inclined, but just to say I hear too much dissing of lets say beat / tech based output, when in fact all forms of output can be valid and reach out and touch people wwhether or not they contain a complex and skilful melodic component. Too often I hear people equating 'traditional' musical skill with quality.
So when we say there's too much out there, we should be mindful that one mans dreary is anothers pounding chest puncher.
I heard a chap recently with equisite melodic and playing skill, but I found myself thinking, mm you could hear this in any pub in any town, or even in a motel lounge or underground subway corridor - sure it's skilful, but it's also omnipresent and essentialy completely common place so apart from being pleasant, does not really bring anything to the party.
Raphie
Also what's wrong with making EDM for a different audience than "clubbing / party people" I wolud not underestimate the people who just like good grooves, on their ipod, on their home cinema system, in the car. also people way older than 30.
For my music i don't care if it gets played in clubs or not, i try to bring over a feeling and as long as others feel it too, i am happy. I would even say that the more serious listeners are the ones listening at home.
Richard Butler
quote:
Originally posted by Raphie
Also what's wrong with making EDM for a different audience than "clubbing / party people" I wolud not underestimate the people who just like good grooves, on their ipod, on their home cinema system, in the car. also people way older than 30.
Hey that's a very important observation. You reminded me that my Dad (in late 50's) surprised me recently when I found he had a load of dance complilations for his car.
kitphillips
Yeah and my mum listens to lady gaga. Does that mean I should produce like lady gaga?
These threads are explaining why this forum is full of derivative, soulless rubbish I'm afraid. Dance music is about dance floors - the first sign of the death of a genre is when people sit down to listen to it IMO. I think rock music died when people started sitting down to listen to the stones/beatles/Clapton. I went to a concert and that was when it died for me.
Music is there to fulfil a basic human ritual; the dancing/mating/socialising/intoxication ritual that you see in every culture since the dawn of time. If dance music falls away from its context within that ritual, it loses what makes it special and dies IMO.
A lot of you are talking about beatless, more chilled tracks, and I agree that they're a central part of dance music. But you're all missing that, even though they aren't conventional dance music fodder, they ARE still aimed at, and informed by the dancefloor. Chilled tracks like this, are perfect dancefloor material, and I play them often.
I'm out for the moment, I'm finding the whole experience of these threads depressing. I'll close by just saying that dance music may not be the best music, but the best music makes you dance, and therefore is always linked to the dancefloor.
PS
Despite my negative tone, these threads are a lot more worthwhile and informative, and even *gasp*, interesting, than most that have been on here for a while. Stimulating mature debate is always good IMO, even if it does wind up a bit depressing occasionally.
Raphie
Kit, IMHO I think your wrong, a good groove is a good groove, all good grooves did arrise in a studio, a prerequisite to be played on the dancefloor. If a song is good, people will dance to it and it will be played, even if this song reached the dancefloor via mass media. Not everything needs to be underground in order to be a good song. Maybe your just in your adolesence phase, which shows by rejecting anything mainstream by default, but that will go and perspective will change and you as well will appreciate Gaga :D
Zyklon_Jay
quote:
Originally posted by Raphie
Kit, IMHO I think your wrong, a good groove is a good groove, all good grooves did arrise in a studio, a prerequisite to be played on the dancefloor. If a song is good, people will dance to it and it will be played, even if this song reached the dancefloor via mass media. Not everything needs to be underground in order to be a good song. Maybe your just in your adolesence phase, which shows by rejecting anything mainstream by default, but that will go and perspective will change and you as well will appreciate Gaga :D
All good grooves arise in a studio? false.
A prerequisite to be played in clubs? false.
you DAW cowboys seem to forget that live music made people dance way before studio made tracks did. Live music still makes people dance, you know, the ones made by actual musicians that can play something or sing? :p
Raphie
Please don't go there, we're talking EDM here, not blues, folk or rock.
EddieZilker
quote:
Originally posted by Raphie
Kit, IMHO I think your wrong, a good groove is a good groove, all good grooves did arrise in a studio, a prerequisite to be played on the dancefloor. If a song is good, people will dance to it and it will be played, even if this song reached the dancefloor via mass media. Not everything needs to be underground in order to be a good song. Maybe your just in your adolesence phase, which shows by rejecting anything mainstream by default, but that will go and perspective will change and you as well will appreciate Gaga :D
quote:
Originally posted by Zyklon_Jay
All good grooves arise in a studio? false.
A prerequisite to be played in clubs? false.
you DAW cowboys seem to forget that live music made people dance way before studio made tracks did. Live music still makes people dance, you know, the ones made by actual musicians that can play something or sing? :p
quote:
Originally posted by Raphie
Please don't go there, we're talking EDM here, not blues, folk or rock.
I'm not picking on you two but I can see how this can degenerate into a fruitless pissing contest faster than you can say, "Ableton rules, DJ's drool."
Jay's point practically dove-tails with what Kit was saying about dance music and it's true. Aboriginal people weren't collected in a circle, hitting the play button on an Akai MPC-60, and Capoeira wasn't contrived to a DJ switching between tribal house records.
I'm sure, Raphie, you know perfectly well that dance rhythms have been around, long before people began relegating them to a 4/4 time-signature and you probably don't need to be reminded of that. Your statement, taken out of context however, could be construed to imply that dance music begins and ends, in the DAW. The fact is that such a claim, whether you meant it or not, seems to be rendered through a lens of infallibility; that would dictate, since rhythm can be established in a DAW, all material sequenced for dance has a functional groove.
It's also clear that you were pointing to the fact that mainstream music, produced in a studio, can be just as groovy as whatever underground music exists in circulation and that your point about the studio stands, pertinent to that. The history of groove still prevails, that any groove produced in the studio has its origins in cadences performed live, long before it.
Zyklon_Jay
have you ever heard of something called disco?
you said all grooves, not edm, and guess what there are live musicians that play alongside djs all of the time.
call ghosthunters bud, you've been debunked.
Raphie
Eddie, your right! ZJ, make this as wide as you want and let's go back to the tribes. ofcourse we ofspring from ancient rythms from tribal to indian percussion and whatever before that, but guess what, people currently don't make a campfire in the middle of a dancefloor, ritual slaughter a goat and share drinking blood from it's skull. while making syncopated movements, currently people dance to music that has been recorded/produced in a studio and drink GHB. period!
If you want to suddenly broaden the scope of the discussion? fine. This topic is not about winning, or owning, it's about perspective.
so yes, we had disco, we had blues before that, renesaince crap, mideval crap, for what it's worth Adam and Eve were probably hitting sticks against a tree as well..... geat real, read the OP, rethink the scope and your answers.
