6:28
Does the technology make you less of a DJ?
On YouTube this video is called You Are Not a Real DJ and Technology Is Killing You
What this lesson teaches
This is an opinion piece and he presents it as one, inviting disagreement at the start. It is worth engaging with properly, because the argument is better than its title and the parts of it do not all stand or fall together.
The price of capability has collapsed
He demonstrates this with his own kit rather than asserting it, and it is unarguable.
A GPS-stabilised camera drone that shoots HD, which anybody can get in the air by following the instructions - his honest answer to "is it hard to fly" is no. A handheld unit from 2008 with 120 GB of music in it, headphone and line outputs, mixing, scratching and effects: a complete DJ console in one hand, and already obsolete, because a phone does it now. A Pioneer player that will beat-match for you, hold the master tempo, loop, fire hot cues and read a USB stick.
Twenty or thirty years ago each of those represented either a lot of money or a lot of practice, usually both. That is the premise, and it is correct.
The attention argument
The middle of the video is about phones: people looking down rather than at the world, and missing what is around them.
As general cultural commentary you can take it or leave it. As a professional observation it is sharper than it looks, because reading a dancefloor is done with your eyes. A DJ watching a screen all night is not doing half the job, and the half being skipped is the one that decides whether the room stays. Whatever you think of the wider complaint, the occupational version of it is true.
The standard he wants
His proposal: you can call yourself a real DJ if you can mix two or three tracks on turntables and keep them in time, in phrase and in key, without sync, without key lock, without software doing it for you.
Taken as a test of a specific competence, that is a good test, and better than most. The machine cannot tell you whether you can hear a tempo difference; only doing it without the machine can. Anyone who has beatmatched by ear knows things about how tracks are built that a sync button will never teach them, and those things show up later in places that have nothing to do with beatmatching.
Taken as a rule about who is allowed the word, it does not hold. It would exclude people who do the job well with other tools, and - more to the point - it tests almost none of what makes a set good. Selection, order, pacing, the judgement to cut something short because the room has gone off it: none of that is on his list, and all of it matters more.
The paintbrush
His closing analogy is that painting a nice picture at school does not qualify you to paint somebody's house. Anyone can hold a brush; that does not make them a decorator.
That is a good argument, but look at what it argues for. It says there should be a standard of professional competence - which is right, and is the same point the "how long does it take" lesson makes from the other direction. It does not say the standard is a particular tool. A decorator with a spray gun is still a decorator.
So: do the thing he is asking for. Learn to hold a mix with nothing helping you, because it will make you better and because it is satisfying. Then use whatever you like.
One note on the transcript
There is a stretch near the end where the automatic transcription loses the thread over music and produces a run of words that are not what he said. It is left as it is rather than guessed at.
Contents of the video
0:00 Technology is killing you, and are you a real DJ?
Technology is killing you, and are you a real DJ? The subjects of this video. Please like and share. If you agree with me, thumbs up down there. If you disagree with me, then of course you can do a thumbs down. Right, technology is killing us. Now let's have a look at some tech. I'm going to show you this. This is the Phantom drone. This is the Mark III. It's a great drone. I don't know if you've seen these, but everyone who watches me fly this, one of their first questions is, is it difficult to fly? I could say, oh, it's terrible. You need years and years of practice. I tell them the truth. No, it's easy. You follow the instructions, you make sure you update all the software, the guidelines, etc, etc, etc. And so long as you've got everything plugged in correctly, and you follow correct protocol, you can pretty much get it up in the air and away it goes because it's GPS enabled. So even if you drop the control,
Or you turn around and look at someone, it'll just sit there. The only thing it won't do is fly in high winds or rain. But apart from that, it will do everything else and it will give you really good quality HD video footage. 1080p. This is the Phantom Advance, but there is a professional that will do 4K as well. And guess what? There's a Mark IV out now. So there you go. Technology. Isn't it amazing? This I've had recently, the Beamer effects from Chauvet DJ. We have around the, well, in the center of the head itself, we've got a red and green laser. And then around here, we've got strobe and we've got LEDs as well that you can point in any direction. And this is peanuts in price. If you had something like this 20 or 30 years ago, you would be happy to spend £1,000 because the effects are amazing. Yet technology, look what it's done. What I'm about to show you now still
2:30 Let's go now slightly to DJ more techniques, sorry techniques
Blows people's minds. Yet it's all technology. This here is the Tone and Pacemaker. It is a complete DJ console. You can mix, scratch, do effects on it. It's got 120 gigs worth of memory and you can plug headphones in it. You can also plug out to a main PA if you want to. If you had some form of wireless connection, you could walk around and you could do a set. Yet now we can do that on a mobile phone. So even though this is good technology, it's old technology. Let's go now slightly to DJ more techniques, sorry techniques. This is the Pioneer Nexus, OK? It is not the mark two. This is just the nexus and this will do everything. Practically will sink tracks just so long as you've got them through record block. It will set master tempo. You can form loops, spin back hot cues
You can put a USB and SD card in it. You could plug it into your laptop sadly it won't do the washing up for you but technology is killing us why because people are looking here and not looking around i wonder how many people have actually got run over on the road through not looking where they're going instead they're looking here how many people in fact today wherever you are tomorrow go to a pub club bar go on a bus go on a train don't use your phone and have a look and see how many people are looking at their phone and not looking at their surroundings it's a shame you're missing out on life technology is killing us killing us why is it killing us well we are more and more reliant on this small square box in front of us now this box is giving us information all the time
4:24 Are you a real dj
Yet big brother in this box is only giving us the information it wants to give us we are missing out on real information the gut feeling that wrenching fight or flight feeling that is around us this is the natural feeling we have from when we were probably in caves or jumping up and down in trees and we're losing out on that don't lose our out on that because if you continue looking at this box here you will lose what mother nature gave you think about it okay that's one part technology is killing us the next part is are you a real dj now i want you to like and share this video please because i know a lot of djs especially old school djs will agree with me 100 percent i think there should be some form of standard to say that you can only class someone
As a real dj if they can mix on a set of technics turntables or for that matter vinyl turntables they can formulate a good mix with two tracks or three tracks keep a good flow in sync in time in phrase and in key without any form of modern day technology software
Beat matching key lock or anything like that if you can do that then you can class yourself as a real dj if you rely heavily on sync or anywhere else that just means you're Wolfie OLIVIA If you trust what your hardware is, take the best in it succeed with that cost and stay trout on the outflow rather than just person eating b&g leather god damn that's probably something that legend wise but definitely not too bad think I don't mind that then i beg to differ do you beg to differ do you agree with me do you disagree with me i think there should be a standard there now i will relate to this okay at school you grab a paintbrush you paint a lovely picture does that mean to say then that when you get to the age of 24 25 you can call yourself a painter and go and paint someone's house
Maybe you can pick up the paintbrush and paint their house but you will not be as good as a professional think about it it's the same it's a similar kind of analogy anyone can pick up a paintbrush of course if you've got hands a lot of people who haven't got hands use their feet and they're bloody good at it or their mouths and they're fantastic yet just because you have a controller or you have a set of top-of-the-range pioneers does that mean that you are a real dj i beg to differ practice and enjoy thank you and by the way look at the real world it's a good place
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
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