Why As A DJ You Should Listen To/ Mix With Techno
Make or Break: Berlin: Why You HAVE to Listen To/Mix to Techno Music In Berlin And Why You Should Anywhere Else As Well My article about why techno is important and why you should learn to mix with/ listen to it
Again, not knocking you but you put it out here for everyone to read.
The article reads as if you want to educate those that don’t mix or listen to techno. But yet, you personalize the article with mostly your preferences and regarding the above quote, many Djs have a hard time mixing outro to intro let alone all the rest. Also, mixing styles are a preference and it may be boring to you but not necessarily others. And besides, most mixes on soundcloud or mix cloud are intro/outro anyway.
Again, I’m not trying to knock your hustle but if you are going to use a platform that many spend their entire lives building and money well spent, you need to be careful in how you present your material. For forums it’s ok. But on a blog post as form of education, you need to be beyond reproach and not personalize it so much and or undermine other people’s preferences by calling their’s boring.
Also I know the feeling of putting your stuff online. It’s tough and hard to take criticism. But you are doing the right thing. There isn’t any forms of education on the development of the night. There are mostly technical and gear tutorials. So keep it up.
I don’t claim to know it all. I have lived in 7 countries and lived in Miami for 10 years learning from music managers so they taught me a lot beyond the dj booth.
And if I ever come across as an ass, I apologize in advance.
But what you are doing will give others the confidence to start their own!
+1
The article is easy to read, and reasonably well written. BUT, it presents a VERY narrow view of DJing in general.
As a “for instance”, I learned to beatmix in the 1990’s spinning Top 40 in clubs using CDs (NOT CDJs…but dual deck players that were not nearly as capable as CDJs). Almost every track featured a live drummer. If you are going to set loops, you need to be able to do it with the “loop in” and “loop out” controls - no visual, no grid, and no automatic controls on the player to set an 8 beat loop with a single button press. It is trickier that is sounds at first. I think of this ability as “essential knowledge”…but it is not.
In the same way that vinyl is not the one true path to DJing, and music with a “live drummer” is not required, neither is really any genre of EDM. If the world of recording technology started with mp3’s played on laptops and midi controllers…no one would have invented vinyl as a playback medium - turntables are AWFUL as musical instruments, fragile, prone to bumps and vibrations, and so on…and yet, here we are.
DJs are becoming “artists” and “musicians” in their own right. It is not just the “actual” producers who are able to claim that…in practical terms every DJ who blends two (or more) songs together is creating a “custom mashup” on the fly (results and quality vary widely). Not every painting is “art”…but there is creativity involved in painting houses and portraits.
I think people are really misunderstanding me here. Before I came to Berlin I was an EDM Dj and I still appreciate every genre. Recently there has openly been a question of what comes next in EDM. For many DJs I have spoken with they say they want to stay creative and keep things interesting. Techno for me is a far left field from other Genres it is often a genre that breaks rules, hence it being the farthest point from what modern day DJs are doing. I am in no way saying techno is the best yada yada, but its simplicity and relative unpopularity among the masses make it a good platform for DJs to expand on. In my opinion it couldnt hurt to listen/ mix techno you do learn a lot.
I appreciate your honest criticism. I have yet to read an opinionated blog about djing so I thought Id start one. I want to target readers who are unfamiliar with djing or have only been exposed to “EDM” many of the DJs I know suffer from beatport addiction and the inability to find creativity in their sets. I am not saying EDM is bad but it has become too standardized, there are rarely new sounds coming from Producers and DJs, they are happy to play the spinning records djs all night long, all to them. But as Im sure you will agree for many this has become repetitive. With it has come the build drop scheme i was speaking about. Im trying to show people that there are other Genres and techniques to use, my reason being that people are asking the question, where to next? So I cant write a non opinionated blog because these are my beliefs, I make it clear that those are my beliefs and people may read it in any manner they wish. My goal is to expose people to what is out there.
i often get that kind of responce the the same general question as well and have learned that, when a “dj” answers with this comment, they have already lost their creativity. The answer is the same from Everyone who wants to make it in the art form they are attemtping to strive in.
Years ago i was interviewing vocalists and one guy came to the studio. he was REALLY bad and i mean REALLY REALLY bad at rapping and singing in R&B tones. So i had to ask him, why is he choosing these two platforms of music?
His repsonce was
“as it comes to being a rapper, i think the industry has seen enough of them and the world is long over due for a new rapper”
Personally i wanted to reach across the table and smack this guy in the back of the head. Only because there was no pull cord to get his brain started.
A dj saying they want to keep things creative and interesting is a standard but your question to them REALLY should have been
“What make u so different in your presentation?”
Try that one and see what responce you get. If you get something involving the words
“i know the crowd”
“I know the music inside and out”
" I been doing this all my life" which is another one i got and my reply was “just because you been doing it for 20 years doesnt mean you been doing it correctly because STILL after 20 years of (grinding or working your hustle) still no one knows you”
Probably. But, I do not think I am misunderstanding what you wrote. Perhaps you should attempt to clarify your meaning in what you have written.
I am all for a “back to the roots” kind of revival in any art form. When I wanted to really learn about EDM, I started with old school Chicago house music…and worked forward from there. The evolution and migration of dance music is far more complicated than I imagined it to be before I dove in. This infographic still blows my mind.
http://www.thomson.co.uk/blog/2011/10/how-music-travels-infographic/
I am not sure that “what comes next” is ever obvious to anyone. EDM seems to find the next “new” thing from underground clubs…and when the underground thing goes mainstream…people move on to the next underground thing. The sub-sub-sub-genre nature of modern EDM is NOT what I would have expected when I started DJing in the early 1990’s.
Said another way…do you think this statement is still “true”…???
i had to troll you guys real quick 
Techno is everything
Hahahaha I came to this thread with the sole purpose to post that Eminem quote.
I don’t think any DJ “should” listen to a specific kind of music or mix in a specific kind of way. Different DJs have different styles and mix in different ways. I definitely enjoy and appreciate techno, especially because, like you said, it breaks out of the typical formula of dance music. But that doesn’t mean other DJs need to learn to appreciate it, or “break free” from a style they enjoy mixing in.
Also, it’s entirely possible to be more creative in mainstream EDM music. It’s just that it’s not what most fans want to hear at big shows and festivals.
I think there’s lessons to be learnt from all genre’s to be honest.
The borgore video doesn’t really prove much of a point, as that’s his style of mixing and the genre he mixes lends itself to being mixed in a certain way better than mixing it like you would techno.
Lately the rule breaking is pretty hard to spot as too many people are trying to be the next Klock or Dettmann and the record bin/Beatport is flooded with nothing more than DJ tools for Berghain sets.
Yet another close minded thread. There is more to DJing and more to ‘dance’ music than techno or EDM.
Techno teaches very little. There is no need to listen to techno, certainly no more need than any other form of dance music and if you want to learn about music structure then I would suggest that techno is actually the worst genre to learn from as there is far less variation from track to track with regards to song structure.
I like a lot of techno.
It is far from being ‘left field’. It breaks no rules what-so-ever. Open format DJ’s break more rules constructing sets from various genres as long as the whole is more than just the sum of its parts. A great open format set (that really works) is far more instructive than 4 hours of techno.
The view put forward in the premise of this thread is purely a personal one.
and BLACKMETAL IST KRIEG!
Actually if you really want to break into new ways of thinking about and approaching mixes try your hand at Jungle.
I’ve never subscribed to the notion of “you need to mix different genres” to expand your horizons book of thought. I’ve never understood it either.
The name of the write up needs to be changed to “why techno is important to me”
Your post is just as close minded as you accuse the topic creator of being!
The history of techno is far too broad to sum up with a few keystrokes, and the number of styles within techno is immense. While lately it does seem like every popular record sounds a little too similar (I blame Berghain,) there’s still wonderful producers working within the style. Vince Watson, Petar Dundov, Redshape, Echospace, Deep’a & Biri, Carl Craig, Moritz von Oswald, etc.
Some of the best mix sets I have listened to the DJ flips through various subgenres of dance music and various styles, touching on old classics alongside the new tracks which are meant to keep pushing things forward. Clouds, for example, are known to drop an old techstep record in a set.
I think the worst thing to befall a DJ’s track selection is tunnel vision, but that’s my opinion.
I like techno because you can mix the bloody hell out of it! chop chop cut cut make your own break downs and it all works!
It’s also easy to mix quick and if the tracks sound good together you don’t have to worry about the mix getting busy like you do with house music.