This is just what you get when you make djs second rate.
This is another discussion but: offcourse! how long does it take to make a dj-set of 1 hour? And how long does it take to make a live set of an hour? You do the math! IMO people making the music have all the right to do (fake) live acts. Hell, especially in the goa scene more than half of the dj's are faking it too but with other people's music! Or do you consider beatmixing two overcompressed till -0.1dB tracks in 30 seconds as being creative in any way? And tweaking that little mid gain knob all the time during a 9 minute song may give the impression that they're actually changing the music for the public, but not me...
@ mk47 & colin: tnx for explanation. Since my native language is phonetic in nature sometimes I fail to recognize those "rebus" like phrases
@ bandarlog: I strongly disagree with you. Live acts and DJ should not be compared in that way at all. Assuming that we talk about good DJ and a good live act (the bad ones are not even worth taking into consideration) it's impossible to compare them in any way. Here is why I think that:
DJ does not spend time creating music as producers do, but DJ spends a LOT of time listening music. Live acts usually have little (if any) possibility to adapt. In best case they have 2 hrs of music to choose from and 1 or 1 1/2 hrs to preform. Most DJ I know travel with over 100 hrs of music in their bag. So how long does it take to listen and get to know 100 hrs of various tracks and to actually practice how to mix them and make sense of it? The way I see it that also consumes a lot of time.
Second thing is flexibility. If you look at the nature of this party thing you can clearly see that both live acts and DJ-s are hired to entertain the audience. Even thou many DJ-s and artists don't think about that in this way it is nevertheless the truth. Audience is paying them and they should entertain the audience. Without audience there would be no parties. Needless to say, DJ-s are way more adaptive since they can cover far wider spectrum of different musical ambients. They don't promote their music and if what they had in mind does not work they'll easily switch to something that works. Live acts don't have that option available.
Another thing is that audience does not care about how long did it take you to practice, listen or produce your music. They care about having fun. DJ-s are (or should be) masters of entertaining the dance floor while live acts are promoting their own music and they entertain the audience to the extent that audience likes their music. If they don't like it... live act is doomed to be boring and useless.
So if we try to compare them from the perspective of the audience than DJ-s have a much greater potential to entertain than live acts do. But I still think that such a comparison is not to be made since we're talking about different approaches to entertainment, music and audience all together.
"It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception"
Albert Einstein, speaking about his theory of relativity
This is another discussion but: offcourse! how long does it take to make a dj-set of 1 hour? And how long does it take to make a live set of an hour? You do the math! IMO people making the music have all the right to do (fake) live acts. Hell, especially in the goa scene more than half of the dj's are faking it too but with other people's music! Or do you consider beatmixing two overcompressed till -0.1dB tracks in 30 seconds as being creative in any way? And tweaking that little mid gain knob all the time during a 9 minute song may give the impression that they're actually changing the music for the public, but not me...
I agree absolutely. Artists do have the right to be on stage with their music and respected and saw as artists etc. cause of the work as you say etc.
But when it comes to "fake" live acts (I believe we agree in a way) I would say exactly BECAUSE of the reasons you name, artists do not REQUIRE to fake. I think artists have the right to stand there, let their laptop do the music. Why not? Especially compared to Djs who play music of others, why not just play own one?
The problem lies in the "lie" of most of the "live" acts.
So many artists somehow think that a "laptop play act" is not good enough and pretend as if it was live... they tweak the midband of a muted channel etc.
And this pretending makes the live act "fake"... and this pretending makes the audience not see the difference when an artist is ripping himself of to present real live play.
i personally demand from myself to play live. But I fully understand everyone who doesn't.
But if one doesn't play live he really should admit it to the audience by not pretending to be a "live" player. Out of respect for the audience and all who do play live.
Orgs could start to "declare" "press play acts" and "live acts" but that would be so complicated.. it would already be enough if artists could be fair enough to let the audience decide. By pretending artist make this impossible.. thats lame.
Most of my music for you to download at:
http://www.subconsciousmind.ch
knocz
Moderator
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40
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Posted : Sep 5, 2007 21:13
Quote:
Orgs could start to "declare" "press play acts" and "live acts" but that would be so complicated..
Isn't that called a live PA? Someone DJing their own tracks...
But I haven't seen the word live PA for about 4 years now..
I say, if people really don't play live, they should make less money. Or those that do, make more. But of course the DJ should make even less money that the fake lives.
I believe in free parties... A lot less burocracy... People play for fun and a few drinks ( and I know that doesn't put food on the table ). Whey someone can really play live then they can go professional and get money...
@ bandarlog: I strongly disagree with you. Live acts and DJ should not be compared in that way at all.
I wasn't comparing them in the first place and they are compared to live acts by the public.
Quote:
DJ does not spend time creating music as producers do, but DJ spends a LOT of time listening music.
1 hour of live set vs. 1 hour of dj'ing, again: you do the math. Becoming technically good in both can be taken into consideration if you want. (again: i'm talking mixing goa here, not turntablism)
Quote:
So how long does it take to listen and get to know 100 hrs of various tracks and to actually practice how to mix them and make sense of it? The way I see it that also consumes a lot of time.
Not as much as making 1 hour of live. I know dj's that are considered good (and they are) and still if you measure it up in time investment: not by far...
Quote:
Second thing is flexibility. If you look at the nature of this party thing you can clearly see that both live acts and DJ-s are hired to entertain the audience. Even thou many DJ-s and artists don't think about that in this way it is nevertheless the truth. Audience is paying them and they should entertain the audience. Without audience there would be no parties. Needless to say, DJ-s are way more adaptive since they can cover far wider spectrum of different musical ambients. They don't promote their music and if what they had in mind does not work they'll easily switch to something that works. Live acts don't have that option available.
Sure, never disagreed on this. DJ's are important and they should be rewarded for playing music and bringing 'ambiance' and all BUT I think it's normal that good live acts earn more than dj's. You can look at it the other way round too: A live act with a set of 1 hour: how long will it take to make a complete new set to please the crowd? A year? 2? How long will it take to make a new dj set?
Quote:
Another thing is that audience does not care about how long did it take you to practice, listen or produce your music. They care about having fun. DJ-s are (or should be) masters of entertaining the dance floor while live acts are promoting their own music and they entertain the audience to the extent that audience likes their music. If they don't like it... live act is doomed to be boring and useless.
I don't want to get in this kind of discussion much further because it would take us too far into the 'download-mp3-less pro music made'-caroussel. If artists can play their sets just x times and don't get paid enough for this (more than a dj that can play every week and still be original) than artists can't spend 100% of their time into making music because of lack of resources. And don't start with 'real artists don't need blah blah...' So yes, artists should be paid more than dj's, and they are so nothing to worry about
ps: If anyone should think I'm dissing dj's here: you misunderstood, the first post about it may have been a bit 'caricature-like' (is that a word in English?) but plz read again, I do appreciate dj's a lot but that's beside the point here.
Tomos
IsraTrance Full Member
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Posted : Sep 5, 2007 22:51
I may take a lot of flack for this but it is only my opinion so, uh.. be gentle. I think I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to playing a record.
Also, I think this opinion only applies to certain styles of Djing.. so bear with me.
Firstly, I could never look up to a DJ (just Dj that is, not a producer playing his music). I'm happy to have a DJ paid for their troubles if they pick good music, and I used to follow some dance DJs to venues because I know we had similar taste in music.
These days now beatmatching is pretty much a one button job DJs are looking at increasing their active roll in playing music by looping, cutting, adding FX and generally going to town on someone elses work using either Ableton or EFX1000's etc.
For me this is horrible. The whole point of spending 6 weeks in a studio designing a dance track is so it has a beginning, middle and end. It's my 'vision' for a song. To have some wannabe producer cut up my song into some splice-glitch fest really annoys me.
I think this is one of the reasons why minimal music (house, techno) has suddenly appeared is because long-time Djs with no musical experience want tracks they can mix together easily. You could have 4 minimal tech tracks playing at once and nobody would notice.
Anyway - I am not a DJ - I consider myself a musician first and a producer second. If people would like to hire me and hear my taste in music for an hour long set, I will not label myself as 'Live' unless I'm playing guitar or keyboards at the same time.
Bottom line - Common Djs earn very little, to make a living, you really have to be making some of the music you play, this (I think) has led to an influx of boring, but very mixable, music. I am SO not impressed with the standard Ableton live experience. Long energy-building sets have all been eclipsed by the pre-programmed epic 10-song cut-up drops and multi-song mashups. I'm pretty sure the crowd doesn't care how many things you're doing at once, as a club-goer I just want to hear well made songs mixed together.
@ tomos: no reason to fear, I think that many producers feel this way. Bad DJ is a worst nightmare for every producer that cares about how his music is presented. Indeed, many DJ-a are quite awful and they seam to care only to get as much bookings as possible. Music and earnings are completely secondary to most of them. So I agree with you all the way.
"It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception"
Albert Einstein, speaking about his theory of relativity
the daleks
The Daleks
Started Topics :
34
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Posted : Sep 6, 2007 08:02
I always kind of shirk from this dicussion, because at the moment we have kind of become a press-play live.
let me explain this though- like Subconsciousmind's story, I started out lugging my whole studio to the gig. In fact one gig in particular a few years back I used to run almost everything in Midi from a 700mhz laptop. I brought my whole setup which was a Tascam 16 channel mixer (yes, complete crap, but it was given to me), a Rack holding and Akai S-3000, and some effects units, a Korg Z-1, and my trusty Strat with a number of stompboxes and pedals. I spent about an hour hooking all of my stuff up, and with about 10 minutes to spare before my time, tested everything. first problem- a bad midi cable- jiggling it helped and I got a signal. second problem, some samples didnt load, and on my first song, I suddenly didn't have a kick. tried loading it but in a cold sweat it just wasn't working. in a moment of brinkmanship I switched from Logic to Rebirth, and mixed in another song so I could buy some time to get my sampler working right. it was going pretty well for a moment, and the crowd was digging the Rebirth song. then my computer froze and the gig was over, next live switched in, and I didnt even get a chance to touch the guitar :-(
probably anyone who makes electronic music has had an experience like this. so for me it was a lesson, 1) things don't always work like they do in the stability of a studio 2) live is live, and while you need it to sound good, you need it to be stable because if the music stops that's it... or in other words- keep it simple
so I started on a quest for stability, and at the same time started noticing what other musicians were doing and let go a little bit of my hardware-pride. 2 things i immediately noticed is that there is not always the space you would want for your setup, you have to fit it in between turntables etc, and the other that some musicians were getting a much better sound with a much smaller setup, and thus much less cables and stuff to lug to the gig (fine if you have a car...)
At first, I tried a lot of different approaches, first using a VS-1680 ala the ADAT style setup i.e. running audio tracks and mixing live, then getting a decent laptop and using Ableton and trying to remix live. This was interesting for awhile, but I eventually gave up bringing my guitar because it was just too many variables to handle why still trying to play guitar. W with Live my mixes were a little chaotic and maybe not easy to dance too (nice for glitch or noise events though). This could have been attributed to my lack of mixing skill, and use of Live at the time, since my ears and care for the audience was not as developed as now, however I still find that there is a certain level of detail that you cannont get to using Ableton i.e. its better suited to minimal styles
Recently, however, in teaming up with a partner and forming a new unit, he has insisted that the most stable way to make a good live that people can enjoy and dance to is to pre-edit and mix the set into a press play track. And in watching his live solo sets, I found this to be true. However, the tracks are separeted into stems which are them sent to a mixer where he would use a Chaos pad to cut up and apply various effects to each track individually, so it ends up being a pretty dynamic live. At first I did find this approach a little boring for me, but after a few sets found that indeed I could focus more on other things like playing an instrument, or messing with the mixer.
since the tracks are prerecorded, there was a time where I touched something in order to synchronize an action to a filter sweep, but at that same time, a part of me felt it was wrong, like indeed faking it, and I had to laugh to myself (oh no, I have done it!) that Eskimo video was pretty hilarious, btw!
bottom line is, that I don' t feel right about that, and so have looked for ways to spice things up, or route midi to live instruments to they can be tweaked, etc. Since getting a Virus that too has opened up another world of possibilities. We have a guitarist now who has been playing with us for every gig now, and I am always on the lookout for a drummer or other live musicians if they want to join.
I still would like to evolve beyond the press-play concept and be able to drop in beats/songs on the fly, and think this is possible with Sequencer software (not only Ableton), by actually stopping the track while other instruments are running/being played, and muting unmuting tracks, and maybe more so with as the software/platforms develop. Its a slow gradual process though, and working with other people one must compromise on ideas somewhat
I remember Marcus and Seb's rant about this topic though, and several other posts, and always people are so passionate about a live artist must do this, and if not, they are not live etc. but to tell you the truth, in the end its the music that counts and the people dancing too it. Of course its kind of lame to fake it, and I think people do this out of a kind of nervousness becuase in front of so many people they need to feel like they are doing something. My advice would be then to find things to do, and even better if it can be something that is dramatic. Until then I will keep poking fun at their "live" antics, as well should be
Daleks, I really enjoyed reading your text, broken cables, experimenting the hell out of tools and software... I so know what you are talking about
Quote:
On 2007-09-06 08:02, the daleks wrote:
since the tracks are prerecorded, there was a time where I touched something in order to synchronize an action to a filter sweep, but at that same time, a part of me felt it was wrong, like indeed faking it, and I had to laugh to myself (oh no, I have done it!) that Eskimo video was pretty hilarious, btw!
bottom line is, that I don' t feel right about that
I can't tell how much I appreciate this kind of honesty. I also once did as if I had something to do on my laptop during one song where I hadn't any work because I felt so useless behind the desk.. but then I felt so stupid it was even worse, just moving the mouse over the screen without any sense, just looking at a later part of the song even though there was no need for it..
I never did it since then and I wonder how one can ignore that feeling and just turn knobs etc for a whole live act.. ?? like in that video? so weird.
Since then I sometimes even leave the desk during that song go on the dancefloor and enjoy it there.. some are a bit confused by that but.. so what?.. others find it fun.
I found some nice ideas in your post. Maybe we could open a new thread and collect ideas and inspire and support each other for real live influence of the music.. I believe there was a thread.. something, but a bit too unspecific, was it?
PoM
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
162
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8087
Posted : Sep 6, 2007 15:18
for me i ll be satisifed if every time i play a track it s never the same exactly.for that a sequencer with patterns is the way to go, something a bit like a mc 303 with lot of track and working with audio and midi tracks .
the daleks
The Daleks
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Posts :
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Posted : Sep 7, 2007 07:44
thanks Subconcsiousmind
yeah, there have been several threads on the subject, which are usually a combination of rants, and ideas. it would be cool to start a focussed (i.e. minimal ranting) techinical ideas thread. Maybe if we can get permission from the admins for a sticky post like 'Mother of all Live configurations' thread, or something like that, since it is a pretty hot topic. good idea
as Tom Cosm said in his video, there are so many configurations possible, you can piece together many systems and come up with any number of combinations and styles...
and here's another one for laughs (this time a DJ)
I think he touches the EQ once or twice, but the dancing is really great- hope you guys like it Gamma Riders EP out now on iTunes and Amazon.com!
