The weird thing is that I’ve seen very few sets using these “advanced maneuvers” that didn’t suck.
No offense to anyone on here…and I’ll go ahead and say that I don’t consider things like Traktor’s Sample Decks an advanced maneuver…people have been doing that with drum machines since the late 70s. People have also been using “hot cues” since the late 70s…that’s what doubles and crossfaders were originally for…people can just do it faster now.
Then again…Techno, Minimal, and House DJs have been using 3 and in some cases 4 decks for almost that long as well…so does that really count? I think not.
I mean…Drum Machines were accepted at some point despite facing heavy criticism in the beginning. They were supposed to make drummers irrelevant until people realized that they served a different function: drummers do not keep perfect time…drum machines do…and there are reasons to want each. After almost 40 years of innovation, you know how advanced we’ve gotten? The machines are a bit better at pretending to be human…if you want them to…which not many do.
The description of that video contained an interesting point that some music snobs (using that term in the most loving way possible) are starting to hate on DJs who aren’t perfect. Purpose Maker wasn’t perfect…his decks drifted all over the place. It’s still kind of incredible at what it was. But, it’s a legitimate criticism. Flaming sounds terrible and until I realized something that I had glossed over about Traktor, I was about to switch back to manual beat matching or using Ableton because there were a few tracks that I couldn’t make perfect (meaning, not flamming). I figured out what I was doing wrong…and Traktor’s cool again. Sweet.
Anyway, I really think that the best thing that could possibly happen to make auto-sync accepted throughout the world is for DJs to admit that just about everything they’re doing is possible without it…but that they use it because it’s easier. It just is. More tedious, yes…in some ways a lot more annoying. But easier in the moment.
You know what else is easier…open tunings. For those that don’t know, Open G tuning for a guitar (for example) is basically where you tune the strings away from the standard so that strumming all 6 strings open will ring out a G chord instead of the dissonant mess of EADGBE (listed low to high because that’s how I think).
And there’s only one real technique that open tunings open up: playing slide. When your pitches are dependent on a piece of metal, glass, or porcelain wrapped around one of your fingers…you lose a LOT of detail in what chord shapes you can make. If you’re not playing single-note parts, that really limits the types of melodies you can play. Open tunings fix that.
Slide players tend to play with multiple guitars in different open tunings so they can play a variety of melodies…and switch them out between songs.
Other people–like Keith Richards–use open tunings all the time despite not playing slide that much. Why? Because a lot of complicated chord shapes get replaced by baring one fret with a single finger…and the differences between major, minor, suspended, diminished, or otherwise altered chords becomes a nearly trivial process of adding a finger or two if the guitar’s in the appropriate tuning.
Soloing becomes a bit weird, but its really just memorizing different shapes on the fret board than you use in standard tuning.
In short…open tunings are just easier.
And guitarists like Keith Richards have been arguing for decades that it opened them up to playing more creative parts or whatever. But…well…it’s BS. A lot of people play Rolling Stones covers in standard tuning and just deal with having to be more precise with their fingers. It doesn’t imbue his guiar playing with more creativity; it doesn’t really open up new possibilities; in fact, it’s quite limiting because it limits you to playing basically 1 and a half octaves worth of chords instead of about 4.
He uses it because it’s easier. And he’s still very highly respected for whatever reason…probably that he’s part of a band that’s a hell of a lot of fun and has written some really good music and happened to get attached to a label with good A&R and good PR…or a few of them.
Auto Sync is just easier if your goal is rhythmic perfection. Computers are just faster at corrections. And even if you’re doing a simple 2-deck mix and even if it only takes you 5 seconds to beat-match a new song within the realm of human hearing, that’s an extra 5 seconds you could have taken to figure out where the best mix point was and what your next track should be…let alone anything more complicated. For the best…it’s nearly trivial. But it’s still there.
Is it necessary? No. Absolutely not. You show me a technique that someone used Sync for, and I’ll find a DJ who could have done it without sync…though it’ll probably be either Jazzy Jeff or Jeff Mills, and I’d bet they’d cover the lot of it.
Is sync easier? Yes. Unquestionably.
That’s why I use it.
Well…that and I can’t afford top-end CDJs, my X1s feel better to perform on than any of the budget alternatives, and I’d own a MBP and a decent audio interface anyway.
I honestly think that accepting that reasoning and stopping our hiding behind “improved creativity” or other BS is what will help it get accepted.
And I’ll be happy to be the first.
I can beat match. I’ve done gigs in front of people on vinyl…and CDJs…and DVS.
I am mostapha, and I use Traktor’s Sync function because it’s easier.