Beatmatching; a lost art?

[olafmol]

beatmatching is highly overrated, everybody with a little feeling for rhythm can learn it in a few hours.... i've seen it several times

[DvlsAdvct]

It's one thing to learn how to beatmatch two songs together. It's another to learn how to use that in a dynamic way to influence your dance floor.

But, at the same time, I don't think it is as hard as everyone makes it out to be.

[olafmol]

face it guys, DJ's are "just" the peeps playing recorded music in a certain order and a certain way to make the people dance and have fun. We can big ourselves up talking about "taking people on a journey" and "DJing being an art" but why not focus on the music and bringing joy to people on the dancefloor, and simply enjoy that pure fact?

[Monika.mhz]

Yeah, and Musicians are "just" the peeps playing pre determined note frequencies in a certain way to make the people dance and have fun. what pretentious a-holes.

[olafmol]

Yeah, and Musicians are "just" the peeps playing pre determined note frequencies in a certain way to make the people dance and have fun. what pretentious a-holes.

as both a DJ for more than 20 years, but also a (parttime) music-producer, i can assure you that creating music from scratch is something much more difficult than DJ'ing. Not to say that good DJ'ing is very easy, it also takes a certain talent to read the floor and pick the right records at the right moment. Also good producers/musicians often aren't good DJ's, and the other way around of course.

Just my 2cents of course...

[Monika.mhz]

as both a DJ for more than 20 years, but also a (parttime) music-producer, i can assure you that creating music from scratch is something much more difficult than DJ'ing. Not to say that good DJ'ing is very easy, it also takes a certain talent to read the floor and pick the right records at the right moment. Also good producers/musicians often aren't good DJ's, and the other way around of course.

Just my 2cents of course...

I was simply pointing out the flaw in your logic. DJs can create just as much as a live musician does. I dare you to call Q-bert "just a dj" sure a DJ can just play a song and fade out/in. But all of us here aim sliiightly higher.

[DvlsAdvct]

You're right, though. We are just people playing music in a specific order and fashion to keep people having fun and dancing/drinking/listening/in the room.

But are you saying that is easy? Even at the level below Q-bert (who I would not put myself in the same class as), what about the simple cd dj who shows up to a club and keeps 1000 people dancing every night? Is he not valued as highly?

[Monika.mhz]

I still don't understand when performance stopped being an art... *confused*

[Kaon]

this may be one of those chicken or the egg questions and i may be asking in the wrong place

if i am right to assume that within any given genre of dance music, all music within that genre will have a similar bpm (ill call it global bpm), then my question will make sense...


so

did beatmatching come as a result of genres with global bpms? or did genres with global bpms come out of beatmatching?

[Monika.mhz]

global bpms came out of beatmatching and genre development. Beatmatching goes all the way back to the 60s with slip-cueing and DJ Francis Grasso.