I guess now that we have a more proper place to discuss this I’ll put in my real two cents (rant) on the subject and I can just ignore the threads constantly popping up in general (or link to this). I’ll be using the term “you” but this isn’t really directed at anyone reading it - the people that could benefit from this post will never see it but I’ll blow off some steam anyways.
It really is incomprehensible that so much information is readily available and people still want an easier way. To me, taking a few minutes to search for something is much easier (and typically much more effective, as you may find professional tutorials on any given topic), than asking some anonymous group and waiting days for a possible response.
I really don’t get it. At all.
Why would you come and ask someone to pick out gear for you? If you don’t know what you want (even narrowed down to a couple choices), then I’m guessing you have absolutely no plan for how you’re going to be playing. Its not just about two decks and a mixer anymore. With such a wide range of options meant to suit individual preferences, its up to you to decide what will work and what won’t with your style. It just seems natural enough for anyone to try out some demo software with a mouse and keyboard and think “hmm, it would be nice to have a knob controlling X function, and I’d like it laid out at Y location on a controller.” I wasn’t satisfied with any of the standardized MIDI controller solutions, so I took a blank slate of buttons, knobs, and faders and turned it into the a device that suited the way I wanted to play. There’s no way I could’ve arrived at that by asking someone else to tell me what I want. Narrowing down the finer points of concern in making a decision between a few contenders is understandable, but just showing up with “can i haz dj nao?” is fucking bullshit.
But the most shocking of it all is the “give me some tunes” side of it… if you don’t even have music that you like, why the fuck do you want to DJ? Never in my DJ career have I had to search for music. Ever. Any time I’m not making music, I’m listening to music. I have the luxury of being able to work while listening to music, but even before that I had no trouble with having new tracks thrown at me just from listening to radio shows, mixes, podcasts, etc from my favorite artists and jotting down any tracks that I really like. Never have I had to go out of my way for the stuff, I just enjoy listening to music so it comes naturally. On top of that, every time I open beatport it shouts out at me “Hey! You know that label that always releases tracks that you love? Well, they just released some more tracks for you to check out!” At the end of every month I have more tracks in my hold bin than I could ever possibly play and I have to go through the painful task of deciding which ones are going to get air time. Its absolutely mind boggling for you to ask, with no specifics or direction at all, a very diverse group of people what music they like instead of thinking about what you like and your sound.
And then, after finding out what these token bangers are, people proceed to go and steal the music. Really? $0.99 for a record is too much? Having a store with millions of tunes that you can access from anywhere at any time isn’t good enough? You still want to steal your tunes? And hey, might as well steal all the software while you’re at it, too, because a few hundred quid on a DAW that allows you to emulate mounds of expensive hardware is obviously far too much to ask for.
Then looking to places like youtube and one will find that the most popular tutorials are those emulating big artists… what? Is your goal as a producer really just to be a worse-sounding version of someone else? Why are you making tracks at all? No wonder the market is constantly saturated with piss-poor wannabes over and over instead of blooming with creativity.
So, that leaves us with someone that has stolen everything that they need, thus investing no money, and had all the answers spoon fed to them instead of putting in the work to really understand things, thus investing no time, and - SHOCKER - the market is flooded with half-rate weekend warrior producers and DJs that have no passion and don’t care about their work at all, but will still come here and ask how to get signed to a record label and how to land big gigs.
K, I’m done for now.
