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CDJs Vs Digital Djing
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A.Rosengren
Solid Snake
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4138
Posted : Jul 20, 2011 19:11
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Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a technical show aswell. It's just that 95% of all people on the floor are not producers/dj's and have no fucking clue what you are doing anyway. That's why I prefer someone doing it well than doing it right. Preferably both though.
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mubali
Mubali
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Posted : Jul 20, 2011 19:17
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I can understand that too, I guess I've just encountered lots of software djs that either don't have controllers or suck... sometimes both.. And I'm not saying that I don't encounter cd djs or vinyl djs that suck too, but it just seems IMHO that it's harder to be a really good cd or vinyl dj than it is to be a really good ableton dj. But in the end, everyone can have their own opinion and that's what makes us individuals. I guess I just got ticked at Will mentioning that since he's never used cd player or learned how to beatmatch without software it's irrelevant to know how.
 An Eagle may soar, but Weasels don't get sucked into jet engines. |
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A.Rosengren
Solid Snake
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4138
Posted : Jul 20, 2011 19:26
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In all honesty I did not read the entire thread, so my input was purely based on your last post and my general view upon things.
But I do agree, a dj who masters all aspects is indeed more well equppied than a dj who has no plan B.
You can be one hell of an ableton dj but that counts for nothing if you can't start your computer. I've never spent much time behind decks as I prefer pling plonging on keyboards and jerking lfo's.
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willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jul 20, 2011 19:33
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I totally agree with you on the respecting people's music and not playing too much stuff over the top unnecessarily. When I'm mixing busier psytrance I rarely add stuff because it's so intricately balanced beforehand. My mixing during this time is very minimalistic as well - I let the track tell the story. However, I love playing over the top of more minimal/less busy stuff like Zenon style progressive.
I think both of our analogies completely suck. Ableton may beatmatch for you, but you still need to learn how to operate ableton, how to warp properly, design your own custom MIDI mapping that works for you - etc - all of these things take time, and there are pitfalls along the way and errors you can make just like with anything else. It is not as simplistic as googling the answer. It still took me a year+ of learning and practice before I even asked to play out anywhere.
As for manual/automatic...well I can't drive a stick shift, so if someone asks me to I say that I can't. If someone handed me a bunch of records or a bunch of CDs and plopped me in front of some decks...I would be unable to do anything with them. I think that would be the same though if I sat a Vinyl/CDJ DJ in front of my custom Ableton setup and said have a go!
As for the warping of tracks, my method for most of the tracks I'm warping is as such (in live 8):
1) Find tempo of track with Rapid Evolution
2) Set master tempo of Ableton to that tempo
3) Find first kick drum, set it to 1.1.1
4) right click on that warp marker, use 'warp at x tempo from here'
5) go to the end of the track to see if the grey warp markers are still in time, even if they are snap one of the kicks to the grid lines to make 100% sure.
6) Zoom in on beginning/middle/end of track to verify on-timeness
7) Adjust intro/start marker to taste.
Now - there are times when something just doesn't go right.
For instance, sometimes the first kick drum has a bunch of other sounds near or on top of it, so Ableton doesn't detect its placement properly...so when you warp everything from that point onward it fucks it up. What I did in this situation is to use the second kick as the warp-from-here point. So, First kick is on 1 - the second one should be on 1.2. So you snap the second kick to 1.2, right click on the marker and warp from here at x tempo.
There are also issues with warping older tracks where the MIDI clock drifts - for instance older Goa tracks at times drift in and out. For these I use Yellow warp markers every 16-32-64 bars or whatever the track needs. Find the first kick, warp from that point, go forward 16 bars - still on time? Ok, go forward. Not on time? Add new yellow marker, warp from here - repeat.
There are also tracks that don't work in nice whole numbers all the time...for instance, I recently had a track with a 16 bar intro, a 32 bar phrase, then a breakdown that was only like, 3.3 bars long or something....so at the end of the breakdown the beat comes back at an odd time and is more difficult to mix out of. In this situation I put a yellow marker at the beginning of the breakdown, and then I put a yellow marker at the end of the breakdown and then move that end marker to a whole number instead of 3.3 or whatever. Now the breakdown is 4 bars long. Some of the sounds in the breakdown will be a little timestretched....but that usually sounds cool anyways.
I do a lot of minor adjustments of tracks that I'm playing with warp markers, I also cut out a lot of breakdowns as I find them unnecessary most of the time and I do this through follow actions or just clicking play on the waveform in real time with a 1 bar quantize.
You keep bringing up 'manually adjusting tracks' - do you mean the adjustment that you need to do to keep them in time with each other?
That's what I love so much about Ableton (well, one of the things) - you can play a track wildly out of its original tempo range and it sounds great. You can play as many tracks together as you want and they're all in time as long as you warped them properly. I routinely take 145 tracks and play them at 130-135, or take 135 tracks and speed them up to 145. You can have multiple clips playing and adjust the tempo up or down on the fly...you can route those tracks to sends with intricate dummy clip actions that generate in the moment glitches/sounds that are random but not quite....
You can pretty much do whatever you want, in whatever way you want - and unless you fucked up the warping *it never goes out of time*
I just don't see how CDJS or Vinyl are anywhere near as interesting as all of that endless potential...
It's pretty simple for me - spend a year or two learning to do something that the machine can do better than me (beatmatching), have to use physical media and worry about the CDJs/Mixer that I'm provided with...
or use ableton, have everything perfectly on time every time all the time, don't have to use CDs, don't have to worry about someones fucked up mixer, and I have all the options I could ever want in terms of adding synths/FX/extra decks in the box.
All I have to worry about is my own equipment getting wet or someone spilling beer on it...oh and all the manual beatmatch DJs sneering at me  If you want to make an apple pie from scratch...you must first invent the universe
www.soundcloud.com/tasp
www.soundcloud.com/kinematic-records |
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mubali
Mubali
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Posted : Jul 20, 2011 19:37
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Yeah.. what I wanted to know is if you're playing the track and mixing it in and it sounds a bit off, can you correct it in real-time? This is what makes cdjs or vinyl interesting.
An Eagle may soar, but Weasels don't get sucked into jet engines. |
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willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jul 20, 2011 19:49
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Well, (almost) every time I play a track its been warped beforehand and tested with another track to make sure it's warped properly so that doesn't happen.
Let me see if I have your hypothetical situation correct:
I'm playing a track. I go to mix into another track (on cue) and it doesn't sound on time. Oh shit! Better fix it!
It's either the outgoing or incoming track that is off...
I have 4 decks on my setup right now - I usually only use 2 , but I have the extra 2 for cueing for these problems should they occur.
So, I take my outgoing track and duplicate it into a cue channel, and take another track that I know is warped properly and mix them together in headphones on cue. If it works, then the outgoing track is fine and it's the incoming track that is not warped properly - if it doesn't, then the outgoing track is not warped properly. Either way, problem is identified and fixed in real time without the audience knowing.
However, this is very, very rare and I consider myself to have fucked up if I have to do this.
This is why I don't see CDJs or Vinyl as interesting enough to merit spending time with them. The stated 'interesting' part becomes extremely easy and stable so that I almost never EVER worry about beatmatching and as such apply my attention to other things that I consider vastly more important.
Again it boils down to a simple question - would you rather beat match something once properly and then never have to do it again, or every time you ever want to play it? If you want to make an apple pie from scratch...you must first invent the universe
www.soundcloud.com/tasp
www.soundcloud.com/kinematic-records |
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mubali
Mubali
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Posted : Jul 20, 2011 20:00
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ok.. but that's the issue that I have, if I'm mixing something in using cds and it's a bit off, I can slightly adjust the jog or the pitch and make it smoothly come together without having to freak out last minute... This is the flexibility that I don't get with Ableton. Also, I like the ability to come in and play a set without having to do any prep work other than burning my music or with the new cd players just hooking up a usb stick. I don't like to play music too far away from it's native tempo and if I need to go from 135-150 I can but I can creatively use other tracks that fit together better than just pitching something that might not sound all that good at such a high speed.
I feel that using ableton is all about prep work, which is ok, but in the end once you know how to beatmatch with players, you don't need to do any of that prep work anymore. You can just jump on and play. But we do both agree that you need controllers to do anything effectively. This is one of the reasons why I love my launchpad, and the launchpad+nanokontrol combo is a very effective replacement for the apc 40. It's smaller in size, less expensive, and if you know what you're doing, you can do exactly all the same stuff the apc can do, without having to use an external power supply... but I digress..
In the end, I'm a control freak and I've encountered things where if my warp is off and I'm bringing in a track, I can't just fix the track while it's playing and bump it back into place.
An Eagle may soar, but Weasels don't get sucked into jet engines. |
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mubali
Mubali
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Posted : Jul 20, 2011 20:03
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will, if you have any mixes up, I'd love to hear some of them.
An Eagle may soar, but Weasels don't get sucked into jet engines. |
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willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jul 20, 2011 20:10
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I hear that argument a lot about ableton and prep work and it's true to a point.
However - once you have your entire library warped properly...what prep work is there to be done?
I can warp an entire album in less than 10 minutes. Someone could literally hand me a bunch of new music a half an hour before a show and it would all be prepared and ready to go with no issues. However I like to know my music pretty well before I mix it, so that scenario hasn't come up yet.
Also - about the pitching it up. With the Complex timestretching algorithm you can change a tracks tempo without changing its key. I don't take 145 tracks and play them at 135 because I don't have good 135 tracks - I do it because it sounds good slower and I am not restricted by the vinyl/CDJ approach of changing the pitch when I change the tempo. I have that option with the repitch algorithm if I want though.
Not saying this to be snarky, but if you're having troubles with your warp being off you need to spend some more time warping or adjust how you warp tracks. I've never had that experience when playing out...the only time I had to warp a track in the moment was when I didn't have my entire library warped yet, I was given extra time in my set and I really wanted to play this one track that I hadn't prepped yet...and I have never had the experience of my warp being off compared to another track that I'm trying to mix in because I tested the warp on the track before trying it in my set.
It just seems like you're complaining about not being able to do something that you don't need to do if you did the original thing you were trying to do properly 
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch...you must first invent the universe
www.soundcloud.com/tasp
www.soundcloud.com/kinematic-records |
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willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jul 20, 2011 20:11
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I have a set up on my souncloud called Catharsis - though its without the live synths and FX - have to come to the shows to hear those
BTW I always enjoy your livesets 
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch...you must first invent the universe
www.soundcloud.com/tasp
www.soundcloud.com/kinematic-records |
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Basilisk
IsraTrance Full Member
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168
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2984
Posted : Jul 20, 2011 21:22
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I hear where Mubali is coming from on this one... I learned on vinyl, moved on to CDs for many years, and I know how to mix. Some DJs starting with laptops these don't even know what a trainwreck sounds like. Even more don't know how to tell when things are slightly out of phase. This is just a matter of inexperience and/or overconfidence in technology. You can't fix the problem if you don't know it exists!
On topic, I use Traktor and on-the-fly corrections are a snap; you just unlock the grid and shift forward or backward to get things in phase again. Also, anyone using Live or Traktor without a controller is totally missing the point.
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willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
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2822
Posted : Jul 20, 2011 22:28
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Yes, I think we can all agree that anyone using a laptop without a controller is not going to cut it.
Maybe I just take this a bit personally as I started with software, but it just seems like such a stereotype enhanced by selection bias.
Yes, there are people out there who don't know what out of time sounds like because all they know is Auto-sync and they have untrained ears. That doesn't mean that it's ok to make blanket statements about people using laptops being bad DJs and if only they used vinyl or CDJ then they'd be a real DJ.
It's exactly the same thing as seeing a racial stereotype and then applying that racial stereotype to all people of that race.
I may not have learned on Vinyl or CDs, but I took the time to learn my software and put in the hours of training learning how to mix and hear what's going on when I do so, complete with what happens when I do it wrong just like you would get with a traditional DJ setup - when I warp something wrong and try to mix it, train wreck! Then I have to fix it and I have tools to do so. I don't need to physically turn a wheel to hear or learn those lessons.
I respect that other people learned DJing in different ways than myself but I think that a lot of people who did learn 'traditionally' that way don't respect digital just because it's different than how they started out. It happens with every successive release of new DJ tech - when CDJs came out Vinyl people were up in arms etc.
I have a lot to learn about mixing for sure, I make mistakes often and am in no way the Chosen Mixer or anything, I may mix into a incoming track with the volume fader down or switch bass on the wrong track and various other noob things...but my stuff is never out of time - ever. That's not overconfidence in technology, it's just understanding how it works and using it properly which is an acquired skill just like how manually beatmatching is an acquired skill.
I would like to think that for every stereotypical horrible laptop DJ there are others like me putting in the time to learn it properly.
Seriously - we talk all about how it's so different from one method to the other but it's really not.
The only difference is with CDJs/Vinyl you have to manually match the tempos and with Ableton you have to know it once beforehand and tell it what tempo it is properly. With both scenarios you have to know your shit properly to play stuff on time, and each one has its own quirks. The specifics of how the track tempos are set and manipulated are slightly different but the result is exactly the same - playing two tracks together in time.
All you're doing is beatmatching, it's not like it's rocket science or anything.
It's the least artistic tool in the DJ skillset but the one that gets brought up the most in these discussions...which I find ridiculous.
I apologize in advance for another horrible analogy, but to me it's kind of like if you had a world in which every artist who was a painter had to stoop down to the ground to pick up his paints every time, and each time he mixed paints together he wouldn't be able to save the mixture but would have to recreate it every time he wanted that mix.
Then someone invents a palette/paint brush holder and you can just stand there and paint and you can save your paint mixtures, then the other painters using the other methods yell at you for cheating, and how you're not a real artist even though they're not even looking at your painting...just bitching about the tools you used to make it. If you want to make an apple pie from scratch...you must first invent the universe
www.soundcloud.com/tasp
www.soundcloud.com/kinematic-records |
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willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Jul 20, 2011 22:43
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Oh also, on topic - you can disable the grid in ableton too and slightly nudge the audio - you can also use the track delay feature for this as well for phase issues - though with proper warping I haven't had to invoke either of those methods.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch...you must first invent the universe
www.soundcloud.com/tasp
www.soundcloud.com/kinematic-records |
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mubali
Mubali
Started Topics :
71
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2219
Posted : Jul 20, 2011 23:23
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when I mention adjusting on the fly and things being off, I'm not saying this happens for me when I perform my stuff live. I do all the work to warp the track but at the most I use 2 warp markers per song. most of the time it's all good. But this is also because I spend the time writing the song to work a certain way. The vinyl vs cd argument back in the day was sound quality, which still happens if you ask your folks about it. The interesting aspect of your analogy that you made was that if you have to mix your paints everytime, it's never the same as the last time you mixed the paints. This leads to a certain uniqueness that might not be possible if you've already pre-mixed your paints or are using the same paints. Sure it would be nice to keep the paints that you used for the last masterpiece, but sometimes the joy of making a new masterpiece is by making it all over again and relishing in the differences.
But I agree that beatmatching isn't the most interesting aspect of djing... Track selection is more important for sure.
I do agree that part of my complaint is solved by doing your homework, but I like to be able to be prepared for any situation, and sometimes something slips past you. But in the end, I guess that if you actually do your homework and it sounds good, it doesn't really matter what you use. I just have an issue with people who have no idea what they're doing relying on software to do the work for them. I know that you're not one of those folks Will, but you must admit that there are many that are like that.
An Eagle may soar, but Weasels don't get sucked into jet engines. |
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willsanquil
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
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Posted : Jul 20, 2011 23:43
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Oh totally. I was at a show a couple weeks ago where the guy had a nice macbook pro and everything...but a demo version of traktor with fucked up timestretching so whenever he tried to play a track out of its original tempo it had noticeable artifacting...and he didn't notice....for an hour and a half...
Or I see people with all these MIDI controllers but are just 'mixing' stems of their tracks and not touching their controllers...
I have had the experience of saying THANK FUCK A CDJ USING DJ is coming on, now I won't have to hear crap laptop glitches for god knows how long.
Though I've also seen bad DJs who don't use laptops. I have a problem in general with bad DJs and less of a problem with what they're bad at using specifically.
+1 for everyone doing their homework and doing a good job
I think my analogy would have been better had I just kept it to the paint brush holder and left the paints out of it
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch...you must first invent the universe
www.soundcloud.com/tasp
www.soundcloud.com/kinematic-records |
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