So I was checking the mixes section and came across this:
Long story short, I think its an awesome routine. I was wondering though, how practical is it live? Like do many of you beat juggle/mash up this intense live? I know that unlike some of the controllerist routines Ean has done, this is at least keeps it musical in a sense that it won’t clear the dance floor due to a lack of a coherent beat to dance to, but is it sometime too much? Just asking for opinions, since I know I would love if some of the DJs in Edmonton got more creative with their mixes like this.
I think it’d be good to spice things up with, but here’s a time and a place for everything. Might be harder for your average club DJ to pull off when most people there want to dance to songs they know…but nothing a little song selection/sample change wouldn’t fix.
I’m in Edmonton too and I’ve been trying a few things similar to the vid.
Currently using two Kontrol X1’s a launchpad and a mixer. I was producing music long before I started the whole dj/controlerism thing. I generally slice things up in Ableton as well as create my own synth sounds and parts. Then throw them all into a few wavs and setup cue points similar to the DJTT Power Tools. This seems to give me the most flexibility. It beats using sample decks imho too in that I potentially have eight sample slots (hotcue points) per deck rather than four.
Doing that kind of thing is mostly just fun for the person doing it, from our perspective watching the video it looks neat, but try just listening to the audio and minimizing the window so you can’t see the video- it’s nothing special and that’s what a crowd would hear and it gives you an idea of what you are or aren’t adding to a mix.
If you have the opportunity to play a bunch of brostep live doing this is not challenging, taking any two or three or four brostep tracks and just slam the crossfader or upfaders on beat and swap the wubwubs and it sounds like this. You could do this with just about any group of songs on the beatport top 100 dubstep with similar results.
It’s fun to screw around with and if you have a crowd that is into that type of music then why not? My personal opinion though is most of the ‘controllerism’ stuff I see is fun to play with but often sounds bad, takes little skill, and people take themselves too seriously doing it.
I have a similar view to Xonetacular on this subject. I think for other DJs and stuff to watch it’s fun, but for a regular person at a club they’d rather just listen to shit they know. And as for us, other DJs love watching shit like that, it’s definitely fun to watch, but on a regular basis i’d rather just listen to the track that was made the way it was made.
For a crowd of people, after maybe one or two tracks this way I think they would get disconnected with the music and probably go sit down and drink.
yeah I also agree with Xonetacular and Coldfuzion looks cool and pretty fun to do, but regular people just wont really care. have you ever tried showing a regular person with no DJ experience a DMC performance, 90% of the time time they go “wtf is this, it just sounds weird”
I’m far from being ean golden but I’m glad you enjoyed the mix
pretty interesting discussion going on here!!
heres the way I approach the topic, for myself if i’m not doing something other than letting a track play, then I get bored and wonder why I’m djing. when i play out, almost every track i play is a live mash up, and although the majority of the audience can’t tell that I’m doing more than just letting songs play, i feel more fulfilled doing something technical, than i do when im not doing anything (if that makes sense haha ).
If your doing a controllerism routine, go nuts. If it’s a live mix that people need to dance to, go nuts to the extent that it doesn’t ruin the rhythm/energy. If you have tricks to add to a song that you feel would make the song better/more unique and personal, and it won’t hurt the energy (may even help it), go for it, but if it’s obvious that you’re doing it, a lot of times it’s not pleasant to the audience (unless you have a dj savvy audience)
See, and that’s what I found in this mix. Controllerism is cool and definitely artistic, but it’s obviously not for clubs. While this still falls in the realm of controllerism, its to a less extreme extent and, I personally think, that some of the audience could catch on if they know the songs. Remixes, if well done (I know its an arbitrary concept but in general…), are usually popular and this is pretty much a different type of live remixing on the fly with roots closer to controllerism.
Pretty much, it would be cool to see it more often live
Everyone needs to watch the mcmash clan, they are the masters of chopping up tunes. 4 decks, no syncing. Most awesome mixing I’ve ever seen. They actually do this for hours live.
If you don’t like the music you’re spinning, why are you spinning it?
I mean…mashups are a thing, and–seriously–who the hell am I to stop you from achieving your artistic vision…but that doesn’t sound like art. That sounds like you’re just bored and trying to stay entertained.
haha sorry, i guess didn’t word my post very well! i do enjoy the music that i play (or else i wouldn’t have gotten into djing in the first place ). BUT if all i’m doing is playing that music without some how adding on it, then i feel like i’m simply playing music, and not performing (edit: doing stuff like what i did in this mix makes me feel like i’m putting more into my sets and makes them more meaningful to me i guess). hopefully that clears things haha
edit: as for the mash ups thing, its not to just stay entertained, i really enjoy making them haha! mash ups are the reason i bought my first pair of decks everyone has something that they enjoy about djing, and thats mine
They are so good! And every now and again I bump into the dude in the green out in London, nice guy. They are playing in my favourite bar (maybe 50 man capacity and a really nice sounding oversized sound system) for crimbo, can’t wait
).