DJ ing with laptops

steevio · Post by **steevio** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 10:58 pm

::BLM:: wrote:
steevio wrote:i went to see robert hood in manchester a few months ago, and surgeon was on the bill, and i didnt realise he was using a laptop till the end, and to be honest there wasnt nothing special about it, nothing different from his old dj sets, he could have been using vinyl or a laptop and it wouldnt have made any difference, imo.
Which imo is a bad thing right? If your going to use a laptop at least use it to enhance your sets, not do something that you could of done using turntables.

SDL in the new Ableton the tracks pretty much warp themselves upon entry into the sequencer. All you have to do is move about 3 points and then your done, it doesnt take much skill.

i'm not saying its a bad thing, and i'm not saying that what he was doing might not have been skillful, but the overall effect was no different to any other surgeon set ive witnessed, and thats quite a few over the years.
surgeon sounds like surgeon.
but i must say i was dissappointed that he'd stopped playing vinyl.
i dont know why though.

Atheory · Post by **Atheory** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 11:43 pm

the topic does keep on going round in circles, but theres no real right answer.

as far as i can read on the one hand

1)if you get turntables you have to slowly buy vinyls bit by bit, and then learn to mix etc. so it takes a while to get good. you need to put in the time.

2)if you have a computer, and you get traktor/abelton etc and can rip/download loads of music, you can be mixing records 15mins after you install the program. so it kind of devalues the whole ethic of the above.

but djing has been devalued before..

in the late 80s-early90s, people thought djs were doing something that was unbelievably special. then people bought decks and realised that all you needed to do was put in a little time.

i like both tbh, dont really have a preference but there is something i love about the idea of laptop djing etc. apart from the fact that its really mobile for parties, i think its quite democratizing. Like if you dont really have money but you've got a computer, you can get access to programs and music and stuff, and have a go at djing. its not a club that is exclusive to those without financial resources. thats the really beautiful thing about it for me. you cant really put a price on music and the things that people feel about it, and if the next generation can possibly dj from a real young age, or people from areas that find it hard to get records, for financial or distribution reason, can be part of it, its definitly for the better.

Castronova · Post by **Castronova** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 11:54 pm

Atheory wrote:apart from the fact that its really mobile for parties...

When I started out DJing at my own house parties, I used to be able to take [good] requests from people and download/buy the songs on the spot using my wi-fi connection. Pretty awesome. Although bad requests always meant the internet was down.

I agree that this topic is going nowhere as of the last ten pages. Maybe we should just let it die.

jessejames · Post by **jessejames** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 12:22 am

MINIMALTECHNOHOUSE wrote:
jessejames wrote:
If you were at a club where the dj was not visible and you had the time of your life and danced the entire night and praised every track the dj played....

...then found out at the very end of the night that he was djing with a laptop...

...would your night have been a waste?
yes, definitely

If you took a poo and grunted really loud and pushed really hard and made a big splash...

...then looked in the toilet and saw a tiny turd...

...would your dump have been a waste?

steevio · Post by **steevio** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 1:06 am

Castronova wrote:

I agree that this topic is going nowhere as of the last ten pages. Maybe we should just let it die.

+1

lets just party instead.

hydrogen · Post by **hydrogen** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 6:17 am

jessejames wrote: If you took a poo and grunted really loud and pushed really hard and made a big splash...

...then looked in the toilet and saw a tiny turd...

...would your dump have been a waste?

lol. fucking amazing analogy jesse. fucking brilliant.

MINIMALTECHNOHOUSE · Post by **MINIMALTECHNOHOUSE** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 8:44 pm

i was joking! i dont really care, most djs suck no matter how they play tbh....

plastik · Post by **plastik** » Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:55 pm

anyway: don't know how much you care about this, but I'm going the other way round.

I dj with ableton now, and in the meantime will learn how to spin vinyls. I'll eventually dj with vinyls only.

the saviour of the vinyl industry, me.