Hip-hop

Adapt or die, man. Technology may change how you do what you do, but the essential component of all art is the shared experience of humanity. What does it matter if the tools change?

Great example: I work for a specialty coffee roaster. Back in the day, a roastmaster would judge each batch of coffee based on when the beans cracked, how their color changed, how the smoke smelled, and so on. It was very much an inexact science since it depended on the senses of the person roasting

When computer monitoring stations got sophisticated enough to track temperature changes and gas levels and stuff like that in real time, there was a lot of hue and cry about it. People thought it took all the art out of roasting. But really, it didn’t—better tools meant better coffee. Better tools meant better art. Yeah, it’s nice and flowery to think about shit being done in the old fashion, and I respect the skills, but the evolution of an art form happens for a reason, and anyone who would hold you back or call you a sell-out out of nothing more than a fondness for the romanticized past is a fool.

I’m happy for computer programs that calculate the tempo of a song, because it means no more rhythmless DJs fuckin’ around. I’m happy for music that doesn’t depend on physical records that get scratched by needles or warped by heat. And I’m happy that artists are embracing those gifts, because they enable them to use their natural gifts to better effect. And it opens up the field to a lot of kids who otherwise might never have been able to afford all the equipment to get started, or who never thought they’d be good enough to do it.

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hey check this out, lyrics got somthing to say at last.

This Serato/Vinyl issue interests me a lot. I’m a working DJ, doing up to 5 hour sets I used to take a huge amount of records and now have switched to Serato. The thing that swung it for me was a chat I had with Roc Raida after a show we both played at (was a night I was running too www.beats.nu). The Executioners were all using Serato and maybe a very few vinyls. Roc was solely on Serato if I remember rightly. He said he just couldnt carry on ruining records and trying to get new copies, he has a heavy schedule and with scratch routines and hours of practice it isnt practial. I thought good point, and well hey if the Executioners are using it then why shouldnt a local DJ like me?

I must admit though I feel that same thing Theory, it's just not the same art when you take away that urgency of pulling up sleeves to line up your next tune, and knowing records by what they look like too.

There is an urgency with Scratch Live but its more of a nervous urgency, i.e find the record by name, squinting at a screen, test that it actually works and pray that the system doesnt crash or jutter. Admittedly I’ve had very few problems live, especially software wise but my PC has crashed and I have played corrupt MP3 ’s before, live, and it wasn’t a good feeling! Once in front of a couple hundred people is bad enough for any DJ.

Even when you get to a secure level with SSL I find that there's always this slight sense of uncertainty which can undermine my set slighty. Is the Hard Drive going to stall? am I going to accidently pull a usb cable out? And where are the good old days when you knew where you were with your equipment and music. When you looked at the record to see how long was left before it ran out. When you had to search like crazy for a copy on vinyl because otherwise you couldn't play that record in your set. People would go to see a DJ because they had records you wouldnt be able to hear anywhere else...

Crate digging, crate packing, and beat matching by ear alone are fast becoming dying skills.It feels to an older DJ that the spirit is being sucked out of the artform. But I don’t think we sold out, we have to work and if its a gig for money Serato is a good decision.

Frost has some good points. There are some good things about this new era, and with any DJ being able to get any tune and beatmatch it, it becomes more about the individual artist touch of that person. There’s also Roc Raida’s comment that you dont ruin your vinyls again and again. Its better for the environment that vinyl isnt produced so much I’m sure.

But, on the real, us DJ’s are going to miss it. Aren’t we.

It looks like vinyl is seriously dying. It’s sad. I use Scratch LIVE in order to preserve my rare records. Sorry, but I don’t want to wreck my original James Brown “super bad” record because it’ll take a long time to find it again. But I don’t mind wrecking a reprint, or a new Nas record that just came out. That new record isn’t a piece of history yet, so I can get that again.

Yet, I’m curious what the young, new DJ’s are like. Do they have any records? Do they download everything? Have they ever gone through a dusty, dirty crate?

I can’t imagine not digging in the crates. I get such a good feeling collecting records. I go on the weekend, and everytime I go I’m excited. It’s like Christmas for a little kid. You never know what you’re gonna find.

To me, that’s a part of DJing: digging in the crates, going to record shopping and talking with other collectors. That’s the social aspect. But what do the young guys do? I don’t know? Do they go out and talk, or do they blog instead?

I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard last night that Def Jam is gonna stop pressing vinyl. It was a very depressing feeling.

Times are changing. What will we do when our local record shops close? Where will we go? What will our music be like?

Think about the future—what will DJing be like in 50 years? Even in just 15 years? Imagine…no more record shops.

It’s possible. Something’s got to give. But it’s like Kool and the Gang…who’s gonna take the weight?

Hey all, I bought my seratos yesterday. I have to say its nice, but I do still buy records. I fully understand “Squirrel master” how record shops might die soon because of seratos. Me and a few other deejays at the shop when I bought my seratos were talking about how a few record shops near us closed down due to people buying seraots and even they are serato owners. But I guess we have to move on. But ofcourse I Will always buy records to get my favorite singles.