I’ve been on this forum for close to five years, and have got to have written thousands pf posts over many accounts. I’ve watched it go from an intelligent and driven crowd, to a bunch of teenagers asking us to help them pick out shitty all in one controllers so they can transition between brostep tracks. What’s been key in this decline is people crying about “negativity”, whenever someone doesn’t pretend everything is perfect. Being critical of the market and the industry is incredibly important. When we just pretend everything is great, people are able to drag things downhill. When things aren’t great, they need to be pointed out so they can be improved.
Sound like you never opened controller manager?
Some people simply get monotony on CDJs you know? He is thinking controllerist who is exploiting possibility of software to improve DJ performance and define a style.
I treat you with all of my respect Stewe, but I don’t get why you take only this one sentence.
My post was really on the side of the controllers and I was just trying to criticize his views on using the controllers and software.
Thouse same easy to reach controllers and mappings that you help to create (respect) are the starting point for innovations.
The fact that some DJs abuse the abilities given to them by the software imo isn’t really a problem on this board, altrough it might be in the scene and I get your point
Was it a big deal? Sorry but that one in fact made the point to rest of your post.
The majority of forum posts are newbies seeking help; most newbies aren’t rocking CDJ2000s. Those are more commonly not brand new djs. Nothing is wrong with an all in one controller, especially for beginners. They are not skewing your culture but creating a new technologically savvy one that goes by Controllerism. They are just not the same thing. Yes the new DJs can defiantly be a-holes and entitled but that is the general young person now-a-days. As a young DJ I leaned to controllerism because as a Jazz Guitar player I wanted to use a controller as an instrument, most pro gear is overrated for what I want to do.
No no. See, this is another thing newbies need to learn. I made the same mistake until I learned how to DJ well. The problem is that it’s NOT “controllerism”, it’s controller DJing. Just like most of the time, vinyl DJs aren’t “doing turntablism”, they’re just vinyl DJing. Controllerism is it’s own separate thing, and like I’ve been saying, nobody has ever gotten success in doing it in full sets (again, i dare you to claim Ean Golden). Controllerism, like turntablism, doesn’t make sense to do for a full DJ set, unless maybe you’re headlining some massive event and everyone is there to see you do specifically that.
Problem is that all of these newbies have this image in their head of crazy performance stuff like they see in youtube videos, and they try their best to apply that to an actual DJ set, and think that’s their style and it should be respected just as much as anyone else’s. I swear every single newbie controller DJ thinks that they’re the first person to ever think “I combine performance techniques with traditional DJ set”… When in actuality they are just awkwardly spamming effects and cue points over tracks that they’re playing unmixed, between 32 beat transitions, and calling that controllerism.
I did this for the first year I DJed in my bedroom, and then i started getting gigs and learned that I was being and sounding like an idiot. Now I book battle-style controllerism performance routines, and I book hour long DJ sets where I mix and cut. They are separate things.
Absolutely controllerism isn’t about 7 minute YouTube videos, Its about being creative as an electronic musician while making yourself and a dance floor happy. There isn’t a set way to DJ, and if people can use Turntables or 16 arcade buttons to do it who gives a shit? Have respect for differences, maybe those young DJs will grow up and realize what they are doing is just hitting the siren on Virtual DJ but seriously, why would you waste your time judging them? Bad DJs wont ever get anywhere. Your on the thread for a website that sells this gear you speak of, the thread that people use to learn and grow. Get over it or leave.
Leave your negativity somewhere else, NO ONE wants it.
Im 15 years only and all I try to do is have fun and share my love of music with others. If that is through my French Horn, Guitar or S4 it makes me happy. Don’t tell people, “this is another thing newbies need to learn.” This is a forum so people can be creative and find information, its not a place for you to be didactic. I understand people can be idiotic but so what if they are happy, let them be happy. Don’t take away their safe haven for their imaginations and dreams by getting on a forum where they thrive. I hope this thread gets closed because it is discouraging to me and fellow DJTT users.
Sorry Mods, this guy just crashed my party… Its cool though, I will leave him to his ideas.
you’re doing that thing people do when they get insecure, where they try to make it seem like everyone is on their side even, though nobody has said a word… Chill out champ, my point is about gear. Kids who don’t know what they’re doing are talking as if the do, and giving each other bad advice. The community would benefit if the people who knew what they were talking about spoke more, and the people who don’t spoke less. That’s what I’m saying, you just got me off on a tangent because you’re trying to defend the WAY these new DJs are trying to spin, and called it the wrong name, as I explained.
My main point is that in large part, the newbies should listen more and talk less, because the majority of them have no idea what they’re talking about… and OTHER newbies can’t tell the difference yet, and often end up listening to their uninformed opinions.
Why does that strike you as a desirable thing? Most newbies cannot justify spending upwards of $5k on a new hobby they don’t even know they’ll like.
Additionally, I’m pretty sure there’s a thread about the DB4 which is nearly always on the front page and has over 100 pages of posts…
High-end gear, as mentioned, is expensive. Thus, controllers are going to be the starting point for the vast majority of DJs starting out nowadays. The only real issue with this is that most budget DJ controllers kind of suck to beatmatch on and thus many new DJs skip over that step (sure belt-drives are bad, but a tiny platter and a 3 inch low-resolution pitch fader isn’t a whole lot better).
I don’t think this issue you’re describing is isolated to TechTools so much as society at large. The internet, social media, consumerism… all of society has become infatuated with instant gratification (and to be clear, I’m talking from a US perspective here). Read a user manual? Forget that; I can simply type up my question and have it answered with less effort on a forum. This is why RTFM [Read The F***ing Manual] and lmgtfy [Let Me Google That For You] exist; people are lazy.
Really the only hand I think that DJTT has had in encouraging this has been to coddle the new users; there’s been a shift over the past few years from the majority of responses being more along the lines of RTFM to “well you should look that up, but let me be a nice guy and show you how.” Even I’ve been guilty of it. It makes for a more helpful and inviting community which is part of what has helped the site grow, but it does leave the incorrigibly lazy unchecked.
Aside from that, on the internet - everyone is an expert. Unfortunately, even if you screen by qualifications like, “I’ve been a sound engineer for 10 years,” you still run into the issues of stupidity, bias, or ignorance. If it bothers you, ask questions about the answers you’re given instead of accepting them at face value to make sure that you’re getting information from an actually knowledgeable source instead of just a well-spoken (or forcefully-spoken) individual.
Oh, and I’m not here to argue; that’s just my take on it.
Well since I’m green as grass and a bedroom DJ for 2 months either my voice is drowned out or I meet the criteria. Do I have CDJ’s? No only because I cant afford them but I plan on purchasing a pair in the future. Do I play vinyl? No but I have a ton of respect for anyone who has experience there.
I have a Kontrol S2 because its affordable but through out the month of December I have discovered things about mixing that I would have not imagined doing before just by mixing for fun everyday for hours on end. I can understand why a lot of people at my level think highly of themselves and proclaim there word as true for several week experience.
Maybe we are all guilty of it? Don’t we all have dreams of doing something we love and being successful at it? But yes noobs will come on and barrage the forums with questions because there to lazy to do their home work, that instead of sitting down in front of their equipment and learn from experience they want it fed to them. So they can fast track themselves to their dream.
But once a legitimate challenge comes up they either jump in and swim, or pack their stuff up and leave.
If you look at me I only go on the forums to read on peoples experiences mainly because I love to hear stories and everyone has a good story to tell. I think the only question I asked was more of a music genre based question on the forums. When it comes to the controller I learn by playing, and listening. Recently I learned that some electrohouse songs have certain parts where the key changes and in order to mix these songs I should follow my ears instead of looking at what the key is. But I still expect to learn many things even 2 years from now.
So if people are seeing a disconnect lets look at it this way. I got my S2 before the holidays. After the holidays I have noticed that the number of people asking questions about the S2 and Traktor pro 2 has sky rocketed. DJ’s have been pushed to the mainstream by media so there is plenty of people who are getting controllers because, “they want to be the next skrillex” ect. I am no victim to this either I started out mixing dubstep but I noticed that I felt restrained and there aren’t many ways to mix it.
So I moved on and found house, and I love house I never thought I would listen to more house then dubstep but to be honest I have not listened to dubstep for weeks. I find that house is so much more fun and rewarding to mix and has so many different ways to mix and make mash ups with.
I think in conclusion we all start somewhere but people come and leave. There are people who learn by themselves and dont ask many questions. And others who barrage people with questions or call them out as old, ignorant, and proclaim themselves as more intelligent.
Now ask who will be around longer. The people who waste their times arguing about hardware, music choice, ect. Or the people who dont ask many questions because instead of wasting their time arguing on forums they are in front of their decks playing, learning, and having fun?
this^
@ keeb. that is absolutely true, and a good way of looking at it. Well put.
Except the defense on newbies not beatmatching because of small jogwheels… thaaaaaat’s pretty flimsy… That’s definitely not the reason newbies skip over beatmatching.
But also, I’m not really specifically talking about the quality, I’m just talking about the kinds of gear that newbies talk about, I mean that their gear choices come from an inexperienced viewpoint and the suggest them to people as if they knew what they were talking about. For a year or so, every newbie was telling every other newbie to get a mixtrack, and it wasn’t so bad, because they were genuinely not that bad compared to what else was on the market… But now, most of us who are knowledgeable about this kind of stuff are really improving our setups, and using gear that we’ve chosen for our specific workflow. Lots are going in the direction of customizable and adaptable modular systems or more specialty controllers, building our setups to make ACTUALLY playing gigs better (easier to set up, higher build quality, more expressive etc.) Meanwhile every idiot who started playing in the last two years is there saying “you could just get an S4, they’re really solid controllers”, and the other newbies end up listening to them, and perpetuating this cycle of shitty DJing on Shitty DJ gear.
@ Gallorance
Also well put… If you’re this wise after two months, I’ve very impressed. Only thing I don’t think you’re seeing is the meta-level scene. It is really important for us to discuss gear. The way we talk about gear influences what gear is created, which gear other people buy, etc. and that really does influence the way people play. For instance, everyone circlejerking over the S2/S4: With those controllers, NI tested out an absolutely atrocious exploitative business model of intentionally locking down their equipment and giving it exclusive access to features, so they could overprice and under-engineer them to increase profits. The result is a product of incredibly low build-quality, that you cannot custom map, as a side effect of their exploitative locked-down system. But we let them get away with it by not being critical enough of it. So what happened? They continued this with the F1, and built an entire update so they could sell a new controller, and intentionally prevented these features from being available on any controller except their new one, which they were again able to overprice and under-engineer.
Had the community been outraged at the locking down of the S2/S4, and their terrible build quality-to-price ratio, NI would have had to abandon this exploitative idea and go back to serving their customers better. Now they’ve done it again with th F1, and we’ve again encouraged them, so they’ll do it again with the next controller. To a slight extent they even did it to the new Z2, and would have done it much more if it had made sense to, given the nature of the product.
It also matters in other ways. Because the S2/S4 has sold so many units because of newbies peddling them to newbies, the design of the S2/S4 is becoming more standard, and is influencing the way people spin on the meta-level. Imagine if, for instance, the midi fighter 3D were as popular as the S2/S4. That would influence the meta-scene to incorporate things like cue point juggling and trigger effects more.
Talking about these things matters.
Ive been a member here since 2009, I was a member here before I even had a laptop or any gear… My point being that I was as green as they come. 4 years This forum was full of great content, now, not so much. I use to spend hours here, now its just to flick over a few topics and get the fuck out again. For all the newbs that are a little too quick to shoot their mouth off, ill give you a little advice I have learnt. Its better to hold your tongue, exercise a little diligence, intellect and patience, in the end this will serve you much better. The place where I play took me 4 years to get a spot and it was worth the wait and the patience, waiting soaking up all that i saw and heard, I eventually got my shot because the resident dj’s saw that i had the respect and patience. Im the only Western Dj that plays there, now i get every other drunk/high western guy who has opened traktor or has a friend who has Traktor coming and telling me they are a DJ as well and can they play here… seriously??? Indonesians know better than to ask, because they have a better sense of humility and for them to ask would be embarrassing in itself… a little bit of humility goes a long way.
remember, there’s no such thing as a silly question but there are ridiculously stupid opinions… I got to this point in my life by asking a lot of silly questions, its about what you take away and knowing what you have to give back. I still dont give any input to guys asking techi questions here, why? because compared to some other guys here I know next to nothing, im 4 years in and still full of questions, some silly ones too.
Oh yes! I understand this aspect as well! Recently I have purchased a small 16 button Midi pad. I was hoping on using it to control the remix decks on Traktor but I found I could only bind 4 samples and loops! I spent $100 USD on the thing, I thought I was doing something wrong so I did some research. And turns out I found out that if I wanted to use the remix decks to the fullest extent I have to get an F1. Upset, I sent the generic Midi back for a refund and spent $150 USD more on getting the F1.
I cant believe NI would alienate there customers like that! Instead of “sure use any midi controller you’re comfortable with, we don’t care!” their all like : “Oh you want to use a part of our software? Well buy our stuff because you have no other choice!”
What kind of business is that? A business should serve its consumers not the consumers serve the business but hey at least we have alternatives right? We don’t have to buy there stuff anyway and they may change if we go somewhere else. But to them its just another way to make money so I wont waste my breathe on it.
Exactly. This kind of thing is why I am critical. The dumbasses will bitch and bitch and bitch about me being “negative”, but I’m trying my best to prevent shit like the remix deck fiasco. We need to yell and scream about how bullshit it is, we need to educate everyone about it so they can yell and scream too. That’s how you keep companies honest, and serving their customers like they should.
This is why it’s not really a “well it doesn’t affect you, so just let them do whatever they want” thing… because it affects all of us. We need to do our best to speak progressively about gear and techniques, to influence the meta-scene in to be progressive. If we just sit around circlejerking about how great NI’s is, they’re going to fuck us harder and harder, because we’re encouraging them.
Every time some newbie who doesn’t know anything about gear says that the S4 is “well-built”, or the F1 is a “great controller”, he’s negatively influencing the DJ scene in an actually tangible way.
Doing reseach before buying the original controller would have prevented you buying something that did not work.
Ok while I dislike the Idea that they do not allow generic controllers to be used with the remix decks, they have dropped the price of Traktor substantially and include it when you buy any of their controllers.
Any Successful business is NOT there to serve their customers, you are far from mistaken it is there so the owners/shareholders make money, Don’t be Naive.
I’m sure their feeling on this is that if the remix decks are truly that awesome and are a feature of Traktor Alone that people will buy the supported hardware to unleash the true potential without sacrificing supporting multiple protocols whatever way they see fit e.g. RGB/HID etc.
Serato Do the same thing y’know slot so NI’s business model is not a new thing.
So what is actually wrong with my buying a S4 and playing out with it? What am I missing by not using CDJ’s?