So since the dawn of DJing in the early hiphop parties and discotheques of the 70s we’ve seen many changes and progression over the years of the craft due to advances in technology and innovations in technique by pioneers and trailblazers in the respective music scenes. The result of this evolution in technology and technique has elevated the DJ from the label of human jukebox to a position that is widely recognized as not only fundamental to many music scenes but an influential one.
Now that the DJ is required to be more involved in the musicality of programming and performing a set than ever before, not only are we seeing a rapid increase in new technology available; but the increased awareness of the craft and availabilty of the tools is forcing DJs to raise the bar and are faced with the ever-growing challenge of bringing something new to the table.
With that said one can only expect more and more technology to be available to us in the next 20 years and more techniques to be spawned out of innovative use of these new technologies. Now I can humbley assume that we as digital DJs are on the cutting edge and always on the prowl for the new; so I really want to know what you guys think the next big things will be?
What do you think will be the next “scratch”, what will be the next mash-up, what will be the next serato/traktor???
Way off the mark there buddy, DJing has been around for the last 100 years with guys playing on phonographs for people to dance to, the first two turntable set was by Jimmy Savile (of Jim 'ill fix it) in 1947, he had been putting on dance parties since the early 40’s and is still going.
I think your both right.
Jimmy Saville was the first user of twin turntables thats true but DJ culture and crucially, DJ technology grew from the 70s.
Earlier than that the DJ was just goof who played records and there were no home DJs.
UKs Radio 1 only started in 1967. So ill take the 70s as the start of DJ culture as we know it.
Also the 1210 was made in 1971 so i guess thats also when DJ technology really took off.
Anyway sod that , predictions is the thread topic.
I predict that Traktor will buy up Serato and turn it into a canoe making company.
Duerr, im gonna have to take a while to think on this one mate… Hmm.
It’s like how I sound to my niece and nephews about video games. “Back in my day, we had to blow on our games to get them to work, we had none of that nice CD format stuff”
Instead of that, it will be:
People had to use what to match up tracks?..pitch faders?..
haha alright tips, i wasn’t referring to wax cylinder rag-time box socials. those djs weren’t doing anything technical whatsoever and the dj was hardly recognized as an entertainer/performer in those days - atleast not to the extent they have been for the last 40 years. Like i said in the first post it wasn’t until the evolution of technology and technique that DJs were even recognized as anything more than a human jukebox, this happened in the 70s with the advent of disco and hiphop…
but if you’re done google wikipedia’ing old news, i’d love to here what you have to say regarding the actual thread topic
I expect to see a much greater emphasis on live remixing in DJ specific software. I also think the line between digital DJ and producer will grow ever thinner; there will be an expectation by DJs and punters to produce there own remixes/cuts of most tracks they play.
I also think there will be a ‘de-evolution’ subculture develop that will have a large following. Vinyl, mixer and headphones only.
I predict a lot more Mac vs PC, Traktor vs Serato vs whatever else is new arguments, someone (probably with the help of Bento) will recreate most of Traktor and Serato’s untilization in Ableton with M4L, Pioneer will go under because they staunchly refuse to move beyond the CDJ (long term, not any time soon), Karlos will get drunk (hey, at least something I predict has to be right), a whole generation of kids will have no concept of cue-ing, instead understanding cue-ing as hitting a button to bring you directly to where you want, and DJs will become a LOT more individual in their routines because everyone will be working completely different.
I also predict similar progress.
Faltering , stumbling steps just like now.
Its took 30 odd years and still we debate if the 1210 is still the best deck.
How long have we been waiting for USB 3.0
Serato/Ableton was the talk of the town for ages and turned out to be half what was expected.
The CDJ 2000 was not the groundbreaking machine we were expecting, rather a costly replacement for the 1000.
If ive learnt anything is that everything takes so long its hard to get any kind of view on what will transpire. I think we all crave that ‘Big Bang’ explosion of technology but its never gonna be like that.
Slow, creeping, company politics and rivalry before quick advancement.
More sucking of our money from our pockets.
More crap in my house…
I predict the bass will steadily boom…a lot of cross-genre collabs…rehash of pop cultural fads of the 90s…a short rebirth of rave with accompanying museum exhibits profiling the it’s influence in art/video…the ever present and frantic, almost obsessive pursuit of defining just what a certain sound is–until it’s ruined…utilization of robust programming language to integrate random bits and hardware (oh wait…that’s happening now yes?)…A steadily declining world economy returns scenes to more local, home-grown talents…not just steadily declining but an outright crash.
Get ready woo woo!
I agree with the post that there will be alot more options for DJ’s out there. So everyone will have a different approach and different setup… I like this idea. I think DJ Techtools will grow and eventually make some crazy ass cool controller that I will love. I think I will have a million more headaches over digital DJ’ing and finding the perfect controller because software is constantly changing. And Ean will be recognized as a pioneer in digital dj’ing (obviously)
I think the younger generation has a totally different attitude to music that will transform things. They have always had collections of thousands of tracks, collected over a very short period. They have always been able to access pretty much the entire history of dance music from their keyboard.
Mashups came about because people had these large collections and could piece together tracks that would otherwise never be seen in the same room in a Vinyl DJs world. Random shuffle led to the idea that diverse tracks could work together.
My prediction is that “the kids” will take their enormous collections of tracks, extract stems, breaks, loops, vocals and hooks and make their mixes into collages more than mixes. Initially it will be about compressing 40 hooks into 10 minutes to get “just the good bits” to feed the micro attentions of the teen audiences. The really good DJs will find out that reintroducing themes throughout a mix added a deeper element to their journey (see Coldcut), allowing artistic reinterpretation of the bassline or breakbeat in different contexts. This taken to the logical extreme will bring about mixes that are more layered, thematic and deeper journeys than simply sequencing tracks ever could.
High density Collage will turn into a new long-form of mashup mix, producing sounds and journeys that are impossible for vinyl DJs to match.
This is why I am in this game, to make this a reality…
i think you guys nailed it…
it’s definitely going to branch out in several different directions, mostly building on what we already see but taking it to a new intensity.
a) Audio Collage like what Girl Talk is doing.
b) Story/Theme centric sets like Coldcut, Mike Relm, Hexstatic etc. with heavy incorporation of visuals (video/lighting)
c) Minimalist/Purist approach (analogue, vinyl, mixer setups)
d) The lines between a Live PA set and DJ set will be further blurred by crafty use of performance software. We’ll see more cats like Muldover and Ean Golden come out of the woodwork, pushing the boundaries of controllerism in a similar way that we saw happen with turntablism in the 90s.
there really is only so many ways it can evolve before we reach the point where only minor improvements can be made to the technology and applications of it. If crafty use of turntables and records is the proverbial “inventing of the wheel” of djing, than it seems like the digital dj era is the “first motor vehicle” and we’ve yet to see the peak of this new technology - but may very well see it in our lifetimes.
I think a mixture of the user modifications working on commercial grade software will be the downfall of all the other music companies that leave their software closed off to the outside world(nearly every piece of dj software out there). The possibilities of doing what Ableton and Max are doing together is amazing and has certainly raised the bar to a new standard !
The best parts of open source and commercial software production will be mangled into a single entity which will free all musicians of many of the chains that currently hold back their creativity.
I for one am happy to partake in such a revolution
