10/10
Deadmau5 Calls Out Krewella for “Wireless” Mixer during UMF Set
Rock solid even huh?
If you guys look very carefully you can see exactly how many shits i give.
hah
i spy xlrs @ 2:26
I’ve watched a set they did at the beatport office a while ago and the were rocking an x1 and what seemed to be an audio 4 i could tell that at the time they were toats mixing live but it def seemed like the whole set was pre planned.
Just cause a DJ mixed flawlessly doesn’t mean it was a pre-recorded set. I know we love to hate the mainstream, but at the end of the day these guys DJ 5 or 6 days a week, they are professionals for a reason. Never mind the genre they play. And seriously, beat matching is not some divine skill. If you use Rekordbox the BPM is pretty much 100% exact every time, just match deck A BPM to deck B BPM, count to 4, press play on time and the track will only ever be out of time by fractions of a millisecond. Once you adjust for that those 2 decks will NEVER go out of time. If you use Serato you can zombie out looking at the laptop screen to see the lines of the 2 waveforms match up. If you use traktor you can hit sync. If you use cdj2000nexus you can hit sync. If it’s Ableton everything is already warped to be the same tempo. So long as you mix in key and match phrases of 16 bars you will 98% of the time be able to achieve a “perfect” mix.
Do you really think an artists management PR team would be foolish enough to let their money maker get on stage with 12 HD camera’s zoomed in on them and not bother to have equipment turned on? Do you think the festival promoters would be happy with the production crew for failing to do their job of turning the equipment on & hooking it up properly. Even in a scenario where DJ Awesome plays a pre-recorded set they will be damn sure to have all the equipment hooked up & ready to go. No one is going to get a rider for a DJ that says “just put the equipment on stage but don’t turn the power one. Not necessary for this artist”.
Nearly every image you’ve seen of equipment turned off is a trick of the camera. For starters, in daylight the screens of CDJ’s have HORRENDOUS viewing angles. Also because camera shutters only move at so many frames a second, 30fps let’s say, if you are filming a CDJ with a button that is lit up, if it’s on a 60hz circuit that means it’s turning on & off 60 times a second, and if it syncs up just right with the camera shutter, the camera is only ever going to capture the light of the button in the off state.
The backlash against an artist that without a doubt was faking it and could be proven would be HUGE. If you’re too young to remember who Milli Vanilli was then maybe do some reading. No doubt there are ways to make DJing appear “effortless”. But to say someone is able to amass millions of dollars, that record labels, festival bookers & sponsorships would invest in them for them to just stand up there and do nothing while collecting a massive paycheck is absurd. Djing is “easy”, faking it would be really hard.
But to be clear, yes there are guys who turn random knobs to make it look like they are doing something because for certain DJs the transitions last all of 2 minutes and they are just kinda awkwardly standing there with a huge crowd looking at them while a song continues to play for 5 minutes. It’s theatrics for sure. But they are still “DJing” during the actual transitions.
And as for my credentials. I work for a sound company in western Canada as main stage hand. I see all the big name DJ’s artists riders and see exactly what their technical riders call for and how to set it up. Not one artist I’ve ever worked for out of hundreds has played a pre-recorded set. There is one that a colleague of mine has, he wears a clown mask if that gives any hint. Next week I have Diplo, Eric Prydz, Dillon Francis & more, I’ll be sure to turn on all the power of the equipment or else I’d be fired.
Also because I know someone is going to say it,
“But how do they sync up the lighting & visuals & pyro technics so perfect if it’s not pre-mixed?”
Here’s your answer:
http://download.eiglive.com/TC-Supply-PRODJ-TAP-V2.pdf
The show is not “pre-mixed” but certain segments are pre-programmed. The production team is told well in advanced of the actual show that for Track “123JUMP” release confetti at the drop. At song “MakeSomeNoise” during the breakdown go to all lasers. At song “ICantHearYou[city]” use the time coded video to show the lyrics on the screen. these are multi million dollar budget production crews. The music is for the most part extremely formulatic and these guys have been doing this shit for probably over 10 years before the EDM boom began. It’s not as magical as you are lead to believe. The entire point is to make something so encapsulating, so sensory overloading, so awe inspiring, where every one of your senses are being stimulated at once in maximum amounts in perfect sync that your brain literally goes “wtf is happening, this can’t be real”
That’s show biz
Well said well put… Keep in mind people there are djs that also use the gear on stage to trigger their own visual effects… I know a few that use 2 cdjs for mixing and other 2 for controlling visuals… At least that’s what they say
Doesn’t anyone take a bunch of tunes to a gig, read the crowd a bit, and then just make it up as they go along?
Must be just me that does that then :-/
Put the mixer in mono mode and you don’t need 2 XLR-cables anymore 
Exactly ! I mean maybe I’m missing something but just going up on stage and hitting play on a 60 mins mix seems utterly pointless and boring.
a big ass paycheck doesn’t seem so boring at all 
Who cares? As long as the crowd is pleased, there’s no reason to complain. I’ve seen Hardwell pushing the Sync button twice at least during his performance in the Ziggo Dome (Netherlands) because he missed a cue point or was off-beat. No one spoke about that one, right? And it’s easy to throw up on someone while not invited to an event. Probably more jealousy than being a respectful professional DJ. I’ve seen local DJ’s playing better sets on cheapskate controllers than overpaid pro’s on high-end setups.
The power cords are plugged, the USBs are plugged and the XLR’s are plugged.
They can play like that.
If you watch Armin’s documentary, you can see how he coordinates with his video guy this stuff. Pretty neat. IIRC, they’re constantly talking back and forth since Armin just picks songs at random.
Their music actually sounds good with the mixer unplugged.
let’s not get out of hand here.
popcorn
hah