Curious how you handle elitist vinyl djs.
I've never really had any issue with vinyl djs acting all high & mighty around me while I am throwing down a set. Only recently have I encountered this. Granted he was drunk out of his mind, but he is somebody I consider a friend, so therefore it holds a little more weight than it would otherwise.
To give a bit of background, I use NI Traktor. Instead of controlling it with a typical interface I see people using that also use a laptop, I use an Akai MPD24 controller. There's a few reasons for this....
1. The mpd24 was a steal at $160.
2. I'm not bound to the rules of conventional interfaces. I can program it anyway I please. Nor am I bound by using some program the interface came with that might be obsolete over the course of a few years.
3. I've yet to find an interface that allows me to control all 4 decks in Traktor. It was easier to just buy a midi knob box and set it up however I want. It has 6 faders, 8 knobs, and 16 pads that have 4 banks. Basically means i can assign 64 diff functions to the 16 pads
I use the 16 pads for bank A to control the decks main functions to get things in sync and creating loop points. Bank B is all fx and is wicked fun. I can't imagine anybody having the type of flexibility I have with fx using any of the standard digital dj control interfaces I have seen so far. Not knocking them of course. Just explaining why I prefer using this instead.
Whenever I bring it into a place, people assume I am doing live pa. Last time I played at a party, a buddy of mine who spins came up and started shoulder surfing me. Once he saw that I didn't need to spend all my time keeping a few tracks in sync, he went on the same long winded diatribe he heard when he played some party in MA and brought cd decks. Granted he was hammered out of his mind, and probably went on longer than he meant to. Still kinda irked me to see somebody act all high and mighty when the only concept they understood was that I didn't have to spend much time at all getting shit in sync.
My point is, if anybody is THAT obsessed over the "purity" of someone's method of expression, they should focus on producing their own shit. Don't get me wrong. There is a HUGE satisfaction in getting two pieces of vinyl in sync with eachother. I don't think any digital means can replicate that feeling as it stands now. I find it even more satisfying however, to layer my own beats and basslines over tracks I know and love. Being able to create something and drop it onto a crowd without having to get it pressed to vinyl, not digging thru a record crate in a dark room, having thousands of songs on a tiny hard drive instead of lugging a crate of wax, being able to get music faster than ordering records online (assuming the track is even on wax). The list goes on. I'll drop a track I love the night I grab it online while the same 12" is still on it's way to somebody else in a plane flying over the friggin Atlantic.
The analogy I gave this guy for giving me a hard time is this: What if the guy who produced a track that was part of his set came up to him after and said HE should get credit for the entire set on the basis of the fact that the dj didn't know how to produce music? Yes, that argument would be bullshit and pointless, but so is his, and for the exact same reason.
There's also much to be said for the evolution of technology. I have enough at my fingertips now to completely nail people with a nauseating wall of sound if I chose to do so. I'll still hold back and play a track out if everybody is feeling it. Knowing when to hold back is just as crucial as knowing when to push forward. If somebody turned the knob to 11 with 4 decks for an hour, your intrigue would turn into fatigue real fast. Doesn't matter if you're spinning vinyl or mixing digitally, instinct and taste prevail over everything.
I'll admit. I have had a couple tracks synced up in Traktor, realized my daughter shit her diaper, changed it and went back to the same tracks still locked in. Do I feel guilty? Maybe the next party I spin at, i'll head off to a corner to read the newspaper while some rinsed Justice track keeps looping the same 4 bars until everybody on the dancefloor goes into a coma.
So what experience do you have with guys like this? How do you handle it? Did you get into a fistfight outside the club? haha. Let's hear it!
