DJ

(Yes new answers are vulgar but so are all the best DJs I reckon)

There's also the issue of playing big name dance songs to make people go slightly mental, as they tend to when it's some sort of hit. I find the djs I go to see always do this as the bridge between the sort of more chilled house or breakbeat to the harder stuff. Groove Armada Superstylin or Wheres Your Head At are always used. They tend to fill the dancefloor too.

Mind you this is what I thought when I first heard "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" and the dancefloor was empty in seconds.

Also similar (I think) to what you're saying is hearing things and knowing certain friends will love it. That definitely makes songs sound better to me, also I want to like it even more because I know friend x will love it.

The thing that I find it does to me is change the way I listen to music. I have always been the type to pay attention to what is playing and who made it/what label/what city... but now I find it takes over my listening moreso. I am always paying attention to what is playing around me because I might want to hunt down a copy in the near future.

Also, I find that I now pay more attention to tempos, and try and hunt through albums as quickly as possible in order to find the best tracks. Once I have decided which tracks I like, I go through the album again and really listen to everything, and try to "learn" the record as much as possible. From there I try to catagorize it as best I can into music that I already know so that I will have another track to drop into a set. I am always trying to figure out what tracks work really well with each other.

Another thing that I find to be changing is that I view good music as a tool as much as anything. If I find a good track I am really pleased because it is another thing that I can play on the show. It is like I am hunting down music so that I can bring the best tracks from the best records to the listeners each week. I am much more agressive in my buying habits these days, I hunt stuff down a lot more now. I find myself a lot more on top of my game than I once was.

As far as loving music goes, that has not changed. I still love it, it is just that I love it in a different way. I only play the records that I think people need to hear, I never pander to the crowd. It means that my show might reach 600 people instead of 3000, but that is how it has to be. I would much rather feed 600 people good music rather than influence the mob with crap and feed my own ego.

I do a show on Saturday nights called Current in Detroit. I play nothing but Detroit Techno, Electro, and Early New Wave/Romo/Italio- Disco stuff. A lot of Derrick May, Visage, Japan, Carl Craig, Splinterfaction, Basic Channel, Delsin, Digital Soul... It would be a lot more popular if I played trance, but I would rather play the underground stuff that the people need to hear.

Dj'ing should never be about your ego, it should be about educating people about good electronic music. In a world of bad trance, and drug addled UK dance rags, people need to stand up for what this music is really about. Soul, Funk, and Elegance. I don't do it for me, I do it for Detroit because our music needs to be played in our own town.

(Absolutely no irony intended there, needless to say)

There is an educative aspect to being a radio DJ which there isn't so much to being a club DJ, certainly.

my friend DJ Krossphader on the other hand maintains that a true DJ is not afraid to clear the dancefloor by following his own muse. he does this on a regular basis.

'Dancefloor ears' as in: im listening thinking eh, diffident indie rocker, and then I'm imagining it good and loud in a club after a few beers and I'm thinking 'ace'.

Of course, there are exceptions to this... you know, those kind of listening music DJs you get, who play music you're not meant to dance to. I'd love to have a crack at that, because you can play any old shite and there are no visible signs that people hate what you're playing so you can delude yourself into thinking they are really enjoying listening to "Mr Magic (HEY YOU!)" by And The Native Hipsters.

Martyn said about his Fabric 50:

“I did the whole mix CD live just because I thought that was more honest than doing an Ableton DJ mix. It is how I would play live - not everything on the CD is perfect, but it’s not meant to be. That goes for my DJ sets and for my music as well; there’s always little bits and pieces that could have been much better or more streamlined or whatever, but that’s the beauty of music to me. I wanted it to be raw and honest.”

bigup Martyn and his consistently good work, but this "more honest", "how i would play live" bullshit... certainly not the first time i've heard these sentiments from grumpy vinyl grampas, and i'm getting sick of it.

1. no one will be listening to this release in a club with loads of drunk people.

2. he will not be playing live on people's ipods or stereos.

3. live performance is live performance. making a studio mix is making a studio mix. the 2 are DIFFERENT contexts and

4. the only "honesty" is doing the best you can in each situation, with respect to its specific freedoms and limitations.

5. i would not want to hear an album from beginning to finish in a club, and i CERTAINLY don't want to hear sloppy mixing on my headphones.

wake the fuck up people. its 2010. it was time to throw away your BORING BORING BORING vinyl purism fucking 10 years ago. you are the same as people who booed when Bob Dylan went electric, and you are the same as people who wear "drum machines have no soul" t-shirts.

where can i buy one of those tshirts?

I don't think doing a live mix without using Ableton beatmatching for you means you're not doing the best you can. I've heard his Fabric mix; it's definitely not what I would call sloppy mixing.

Jaxon: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=drum+machines+have+no+soul+t-shirt

would rather he just dj than make an ableton mix. I'm not a vinyl purist, have a fairly paultry record collection but a lot of mp3s.

myndbloom: arguable but sure, whatever. the point here is that there is nothing "dishonest" with using any tool toward any end.

if your film is about hand held with no additional soundtrack or props, and that is the best way to realize your project, great. if your film is about 250 million dollars of 3D, ALSO GREAT. as long as the method fits the purpose and the shit is good at the end of the day.

fuck all this rules and regulations nonsense.

if martyn's concept for the mix is to recreate him playing at a club then using vinyl is more honest.

whether or not that is a good concept is up for debate but that's beside the point and unrelated to whatever "point" you think you're making here.

the point here is that there is nothing "dishonest" with using any tool toward any end.

other people make mixes for purposes other than to recreate a live sound. and for their purposes, other tools, be it ableton, MPC, or tape splicing, would be appropriate.

but these kinds of people flat out state that "ableton mixes are dishonest".

and i think it's childish and silly.

and for argument's sake:

attempting to re-create a live sound in the studio is, by definition, dishonest.

the same as trying to sound like a studio mastered finished product on stage is dishonest.

"these kind of people": strawmen?

"attempting to re-create a live sound in the studio is, by definition, dishonest."

No.

how far you want to go to simulate a live experience in the studio? you going to turn down the lights, get some strobes, have recordings of crowd noises amplified around you, turn up the heat so you're sweating, fill the room with smoke?

and in all likelihood Martyn did more than 1 take for this CD.

so get the fuck outta here with this "more honest" bullshit.

any thing or action which attempts to pass itself off as something else, is by definition, dishonest.

you do know this right, Jim?

you are a moron.

wow, advanced debate techniques. i bow down to your obvious intellectual superiority.

http://www.gospeldefense.com/uploads/head-in-hands.jpg

amazing use of facepalm jpgs. your impeccable logic is next level in the dialectic tradition.

but what are you going to do next? how can anyone outdo such brilliance?

(i suggest spitting at your computer screen)

seems like you're jumping off on some wild thing based on Martyn feeling it was "more honest" for him to mix live for the fabric thing. Like, that's how he wanted to present himself in this set and that's the feeling he wanted it to have. Don't think you can extrapolate from that that he feels other people are being dishonest, can you? Seems like you accept that doing a mix live for a record is valid, so why not accept "more honest" as language describing why someone would do that.

no he stated, in a direct manner, with out beating around the bush, "clear as an un-muddied lake", that "live" mix recording is "more honest" than ableton mix recording. and since nowhere does he mention any specificity of this project in relation to the statement, one can only assume that he feels this way generally.

plus, like i said, this is by far not the first time i have heard people express similar sentiments.

I'm pretty sure Martyn uses Serato/Traktor, so I don't think this a vinyl issue.

I remembering reading a comment to the extent of "if you can't do it in a club don't do it on a disc". Which I too think is total bullshit. Personally when I make mixes I have to do about a zillion edits, and frankly, I don't care about how honest I sound, and want it to be as good and enjoyable for the listener as possible. I'm also weary of the idea of mix CD's supposed to being a certain way, they need not be perfect nor need they be not-perfect.

I'm not entirely sure by honest Martyn means simulating club experience. There's a certain 'honesty' in spontaneity, of capturing a sort of feeling of playing live that can become sterilized with abelton, which doesn't necessarily mean abelton is dishonest.

i am essentially calling into question the notion of "honesty" itself in this context, and pointing out its entirely arbitrary nature.

what is an "honest" way to record a dj mix?

i wonder if he thinks the amount of attention paid to track listing and sequence for this one 80 minutes segment, and probably doing more than one take, would be "honest".

if he wanted a truly "honest" live feel, like you say, for this project, he should have just professionally recorded one of his real live sets in a club.

"if you can't do it in a club don't do it on a disc"

i've heard that before too. on that list of dj dos and don'ts. that's what i'm talking about, the people who feel this way.

jazz music highly prizes spontaneity, perhaps more so than any other popular style. and no one has EVER said shit about Miles Davis doing multiple takes in the studio being "dishonest".

The other thing is that by virtue of having it be in a 60-80 minute timeslot, generally to be listened to from beginning to end (outside of a club, multiple times, and with much more attentive listening) already structures the experience in a very particular way that doesn't really reflect how one plays live.

I pretty much agree with you totally here, honesty is pretty well arbitrary, and of course it does not always mean 'better'.

I can respect both sides of the coin. There are the perfectionists in any genre of music who want every last second of their recording to sound immaculate & perfect. And then there are those who find beauty in the small imperfections that are bound to happen.

Hey, I like Radiohead, but I also love singers who don't fix their vocals when they reach for a note a little out of their range. There's more than one way to make or mix great music. I do think it should be pointed out that Martyn never states his method of mixing is MORE honest than Ableton mixing. Just that rawness & honesty is what he finds beautiful about music. Nothing wrong with that imo.

I did the whole mix CD live just because I thought that was more honest than doing an Ableton DJ mix

I don't think it's really a question about which way is more honest and in what sense so much as the idea that there's some sort of measure of honesty inherent to these things, which translate to value is kind of a problem.

zoom, it's one word. personally, "honest" tends to push my buttons when talking about aesthetics, because it's loaded and imprecise. but you know what? it's just one word. seems like you're really getting way too worked up over this.

honestly...

a lot rides on that one word though: an outdated and arbitrary value system, a tired and cliche view of creative work. and similar sentiments have been often expressed without the use of this word.

just using what Martyn said here as an example, because it happens to be fresh in mind.

u mad?

actually the idea of honesty is a very important one in the production of art. only the false way it is used, in this context, i have a problem with.

when I read the Martyn quote I didn't think 'oh grumpy vinyl junkie', I thought about Tobias Thomas' Smallville, one of my favourite mix cds ever, which was recorded 'live' in an empty club (Studio 672, the place where TT has his club night), to "to transfer the dramaturgy of a >>Total Confusion<<-night on to a tight mix of 70 minutes" (oh, kompakt promo blurbs, never change). It really isn't like a dj set, it's only 70 minutes and starts pretty slow&gentle and so on-- but clearly recording it 'live' was important to TT, and I've always assumed it was about maintaining a momentum. I mean, an empty club is nothing like a club with people in it, there's no kind of audience feedback, so you really wouldn't be able to capture the live feel. Instead you're capturing a kind of flow of ideas - when you're recording something in a single take you approach it very differently to recording something where you can punch in or whatever. I get that calling it "raw and honest" strikes a nerve with you, but it's a totally understandable aesthetic choice, and I think "honest" is just the first adjective he found available for it.

^^totally. also, the mix cd is a problematic format anyway, stuck between recorded album and live performance, and its artistic purpose is even more confused when actual live sets are so widely available. i wouldn't give either artists or listeners too hard a time for getting caught up in an imprecise discourse when it comes to trying to talk about what mix cds are supposed to do.

I think "honest" is just the first adjective he found available for it

...in his second language I might add