Blog Archive

Fri, Mar 12 2010

DJ Technology

Exciting Times For DJ Technology

DJ technology has always been of great interest to me. From the quest to find the perfect stylus for my 1210's, to finding the ideal midi controller for Ableton Live. It's also a very controversial issue for many people. Is playing on CDJ's really "cheating"? And if so, then what does that make playing on a laptop?

We are currently in the most exciting (and therefore confusing) times for DJ technology. There have never been so many different ways to fundamentally do the same thing, play other people records. You can rock up with a bag of 90 vinyls, a wallet of CD's, your laptop, and more recently, just a USB memory stick! To confuse matters you can combine just about all of these, such as using vinyl and playing MP3's from your laptop in one set. I personally think we are at a cross roads at the moment. With so much technology available, there will only be one or at best two successors, and your guess is as good as mine to which is will be. Remember when we were all debating who would win the battle of the turntables, Vestax or Technics? Then Pioneer came along with their CDJ series and changed the game completely.

I love the debating and discussion on these issue, but I must admit to being annoyed by the casual yet confident claims that "using Ableton is cheating" and so on. I always have to ask people how this is so? Is DJ'ing a game we are playing? Or are they implying that the only art to DJ'ing is making 2 records play at the same speed? Do they consider producers who don't use hardware and midi anymore ‘cheaters' when they write tracks ‘inside the box'? These points usual quieten the critics a lot of the time. I do understand their point, it automates parts of the traditional process of DJ'ing. But it also opens the doors for new ways of manipulating the track, remixing, re-editing, all on the fly. Surely this is even more exciting for the dance floors if done correctly?

At the end of the day, this is all just food for thought. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and similarly every DJ is entitled to choose their own weapon of choice to perform their trade! For me it's an exciting time. Being a tech geek, I'm happier then a pig in Sh*t, and am more than ready to embrace the future of our art!!