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good thread and might I add the OP isn’t looking for the “how to’s” found on YouTube. what he asked for was mix sets.
am I right feedback?
See, you’ve already made this a potentially confrontational thread. It doesn’t have to “blow away the old school”. This is what you keep doing; trying to justify that one has to be better than the other.
They can both exist. They can both be impressive. They can both require skill. They are just different. The thread is a great idea but, Jesus, why does one method have to win with you?
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Agreed. I like the idea of this thread because we always hear about how “creative” you can be with digital DJing and I’d like to see some performances but this could open up a whole can of worms.
IMO I think the “creative” side comes out in shorter “performances” like what Ean has displayed on the blog several times. However, when you see club sets from the likes of Dubfire, Hawtin, MK et al you tend to see less “performance” and more tight uses of loops and subtle effects.
Everyones a winner!!
Why does it have to be “truly new”? When CDJ’s came out they offered nothing you couldn’t really do on a set of turntables. They just offered an alternative way of doing the same thing.
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You get a lot of those guys in here too. You get the newbie controller DJ’s saying that sync, loops etc allow them to be more creative - without ever showing how “creative” they really get.
But you also get the turntable, vinyl, freaks who talk about how sync makes people lazy and it “just isn’t proper DJing”. Its infuriating. I wish people would just accept things for what they are. Some people like to use controllers, some people dont. Instead we just end up measuring dick sizes all of the time.
Like I said i’m actually looking forward to seeing some performance videos. I’ll try to remember to link a few that I like when I get home from work. There was a guy who used to post on here but has been away for some time. He started a mix competition where 6 people chose 12 tracks (2x techno, 2 House, 2 DnB etc) and people entered a mix that used all 12 tracks. Some of the entries were mind blowing. The guy who started the thread used effects and little loops to seamlessly mix tracks that were over 100 BPM apart and off beat. No way on Earth I could get even close to replicating that with software never mind without. I’ll see if I can find it later but that was a half hour mix using Traktor not a 5 minute performance.
Incidentally there was also a guy who used to go on and on about how sync allowed him more time to be creative and he posted a mix. He got ripped to shit by another forum member (Makar1 I think) who posted a minute by minute account of all of the mistakes the guy made. He must have listed over 50 mistakes for a 30 minute mix. Brutal feedback (but most of it pretty justified).
The next post better be a performance video or i go into itchy mod finger mode 
What about these two?
this is the thread I was talking about. Unfortunately the mixes have been removed from Soundcloud. Shame because they were very good.
This guy puts up some pretty solid performances. Search his threads on here (username: iznremix). Its not my cup of tea but its tight and something that can really only be done properly with software.
Saying that I’ve seen Kissy Sell out give some great performances with 4 CDJ’s and a mixer. Check out his Pioneer DJsounds mixes.
Not a new one, but good nonetheless.
Modern Software Features - just the new “Flange”
Big differentiation needs to be made of performance vs routine, the latter I would put into same category as a scratch routine, a short demo made to showcase the DJ and his equipment skills. The former doing something that enhances the hour or so long DJ set in a club environment with real people reacting to it blind to whats happening on the stage or dj box.
One thing that stands out in my mind is the majority of effects / button mashing videos is that they are not something you could hope to enjoy if your aim is to go dancing on a night out, they are routines and get really tiring to the guy or gal on the dancefloor after 15 minutes. The tracks selected for most these routines are not ones that sound even halfway decent without layering 6 things on top.
Track selection and crowd reading is still the best way of judging a DJ’s creativity and skill IMHO now how many layers of music you can keep in time, screens you can navigate, times you can mash a button, or number of twists the HP can make in 20 seconds.
Im not saying effects or layering are redundant, when used sparingly or layered well they can a memorable hands in the air moment. Deadmau5’s Knights of Cydonia mashup was fantastic and an unexpected the first time - despite not particularly liking what he normally does most of the time, he knows what he’s doing.
The software currently has moved forward a zillion times further than the core user base knows what to do with, everyone is still in experimentation mode, and there are very few DJ’s who can tame the software to that point that actually enhances a performance beyond just choosing the best tracks and dropping them at the right time. No Different to the way as Flange was overused by every DJ when the DJM500 became widespread - and hell even thats still a problem !!
Personally I’ve taken a step back from the buttons, having used Ableton the past few years due to the sheer amount of stuff it can do, I got bored. I found that I wasn’t being as careful with the tracks I was buying, I didn’t know them inside and out as well as I should, and then there was the way I paired or mixed two tracks together which started to leave me empty - Picked up a DDJ-SR and Serato and now the concentration is more on finding the best music and working a crowd rather than trying to make mediocre stuff sound “better” for the sake of being able to do it.
Oh and just to stay OT
Personally I still think he overuses effects / samples to a certain extent, but at least he’s not completely lost in them for the entire performance.
I believe the original question was what a dj can do with digital equipment that he can’t do with analogue gear. So of course you get the routines, that’s what comes to mind first.
But going to your point (which is valid, don’t get me wrong) you can only get to the Bass Kleph’s, the Richie Hawtin’s and the Chris Liebing’s of this world. I think I know why. They understand how the structure of a track is supposed to work, they know their music theory AND they know how to read a crowd. They can create a new piece of music on the spot, which is a lot harder than it looks if you watch the Bass Kleph video posted above.
Most of us amateurs never get past reading the crowd a little and making some mediocre productions. We’re not able to fully incorporate the skills needed for these live productions. I mean, look at all the people who stepped away from their Kontrol F1’s.
But nevertheless digital gear has its place if you’d ask me. Like you’ve pointed out, it’s all about finding the right music at the right time in the end. The mixing and effects part is just an extra. Having easy access to effects and things like sync creates a more gradual learning curve. You can still go all the way and beatmatch yourself without BPM readouts and waveforms (just don’t look at your laptop), but you don’t need to do all of it at once. You can focus on the most important skills first.
This, in the end, creates a faster learning experience. The actual problem that I think oldschool people are having with new gear is that most never go beyond this initial phase. They never bother to learn to use their ears.
I’m very much a new kid on the block. I only bought my first controller about a year ago. Started with sync, quantise and all the training wheels you can imagine. Now, I’m beatmatching mostly by ear in front of live audiences on digital gear. So to all you old guys out there, it can be done. You just need to trust us a little more.
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This is so good 
Do CD sets count or is this just controller stuff?
This olderschooler was impressed with this set:
if CDs count Terrance Parker kills just like he does the 1200s