Hawtin Laptop Goes Down --- No back up?

[joemanton]

He played the next day so what's the big issue?

[balakoth]

I agree with others who say he should have just had an SD card and played some tracks the regular way. Most people wouldn't notice or care. In fact I'd be more interested in seeing that as it'd be something different.

To me, this comes off as if youve never seen Richie Hawtin.

Not notice the difference? If you cant tell FOUR minimal techno tracks are being layered with maschine to make a different groove and song (so I disagree hes not making music on the fly) vs TWO techno tracks simply being mixed one from the other.. then, you. would be at the wrong show anyways.

I agree with the Kazoo sentiment. It would be the same for me, if my laptop died, Id be done. My style isnt traditional, and many wouldnt even call it DJing (more live performance I guess) but yeah... shrug...

Maybe its a bit more than people understand because all they use is CDs? I dont know. This seems pretty straight forward. Richie Hawtin and Carl Cox are theo nly people who can get me into Tech House, Minimal .. because how they layer it with 3 to 4 decks.. its no longer boring as snot.

[joemanton]

Richie Hawtin and Carl Cox are theo nly people who can get me into Tech House, Minimal .. because how they layer it with 3 to 4 decks.. its no longer boring as snot.

Ridiculous comment.

Think you'll find the majority of techno djs now do this...Chris Liebing, Beyer, Len Faki etc. It's not uncommon to layer and mash up the techno tracks.

Even Loco Dice does this. He creates his own breaks by using a delay/reverb effect via a pedal on the floor.

Richie and Carl are definitely not the only ones who do this.

[balakoth]

Hawtin hasn't been a straight up DJ for years and years. It's not the same at all.


We recently had Guy J come tour. His laptop packed it in. He had no backup laptop or hard drive (he uses Ableton).

He then attempted to mix using another DJs tunes. He ballsed it up big time and gave up after a few tunes.. Because he's a producer that plays live. Not a DJ.

Now Hawtin was once a regular DJ, he'd know how to mix. But surely you can see his point at not wanting to just get up there and play some tunes. That'd be short changing people.

+1000

[mdcdesign]

To me, this comes off as if youve never seen Richie Hawtin.

Not notice the difference? If you cant tell FOUR minimal techno tracks are being layered with maschine to make a different groove and song (so I disagree hes not making music on the fly) vs TWO techno tracks simply being mixed one from the other.. then, you. would be at the wrong show anyways.

I agree with the Kazoo sentiment. It would be the same for me, if my laptop died, Id be done. My style isnt traditional, and many wouldnt even call it DJing (more live performance I guess) but yeah... shrug...

Maybe its a bit more than people understand because all they use is CDs? I dont know. This seems pretty straight forward. Richie Hawtin and Carl Cox are theo nly people who can get me into Tech House, Minimal .. because how they layer it with 3 to 4 decks.. its no longer boring as snot.

Personally I'm not a fan of that style of music (I'm more Progressive House / Ibiza Trance), but I respect the fact he's a MIDI guy, through and through. Most MIDI users I know wouldn't use CDJs if they had the opportunity, because they're inherently limiting. At a lower level, they may find themselves forced to just suck it up and get on with it, but when you're at the level of Richie Hawtin or any other top-billing DJ, you can afford to just simply not play if you can't play the way YOU want to.

It's not worth risking him turning up, attempting to play a set on different gear, and then having people criticize his set later and potentially damage his reputation; much safer to just cancel. Not to mention I highly doubt he'd actually ENJOY playing out of his comfort zone.

A friend of mine (who's also a MIDI guy, uses a VMS4 at the moment and is getting a Novation Twitch soon) was playing a fundraiser gig last night at a local venue, and he text me about 9pm saying, "Oooooh they've got CDJ900s in here!" - the initial "oooh shinies!" comment, you know? And then throughout the night, the texts got progressively more and more frustrated and eventually angry; when I saw him for a catch-up at the end of the night, it was "I'm NEVER using 900s again".

[b1sh0p]

Some of the most memorable sets I've ever seen are when guys had equipment failure or lost their music in transport and they borrowed the promoter's wax and just killed it. I think if he would have borrowed another dj's music and explained to the crowd what happened, it would have gone off. "OMG, I saw Hawtin play an all vinyl set. It was sick!"

[JDFS]

People should see it the other way around: what if Tiësto was playing and all CDJ's failed on him? "Ooh, you can use your laptop!"?

[Xonetacular]

He uses loops mostly, one bar from one track, four from another and so on.

He does a good bit of looping but it's definitely not "mostly looping" like you are describing. You can usually hear good sections of full tracks playing out. Loops and maschine are just a little spice added on top.

People always seem to overstate just how much looping he does and he does do a good bit of A-B mixing, just watch his boiler room sets...

[Conall]

People should see it the other way around: what if Tiësto was playing and all CDJ's failed on him? "Ooh, you can use your laptop!"?

How is that the same thing?

[b1sh0p]

People should see it the other way around: what if Tiësto was playing and all CDJ's failed on him? "Ooh, you can use your laptop!"?

You're missing the point, IMO. He had the opportunity to turn it into a positive. Ultimately, the crowd doesn't really care about the medium. They're there for the music. The show must go on and you're paid to perform.