First of all you have to decide what kind of DJ you're talking about, I
mean just because someone specializes in weddings & barmitzvas doesn't mean
that he/she's not a GOOD DJ. On one level we have to see DJing as
entertaining a crowd with music, so anyone who can play the proper music
for a given environment is a good DJ in my book. But that's not really what
we're talking about here is it...
You see, there are other types of DJs out there (most prominently for our
purposes House, Hip hop and Acid-Jazz.) For someone to be considered a good
house DJ they must be able to mix 2 records together (often for 5 minutes
at a time or more) to create a third sound. Also many house DJs mostly use
short repetitive loops to build "songs" of their own devising, this is due
to the extreme similarity of beats in House which makes it much easier for
the DJ to layer songs together.
Hip Hop mixing however usually relies on matching beats for a few bars and
then making the switch, or in some cases getting funky and switching back
and forth between two tracks to show off scratching and cutting skills.
Now as far as Acid Jazz goes, there are a lot of different opinions about
wheher it should be "beat mixed" (like house and hip hop) or "radio mixed"
where you use the ambient bits at the end of one track and the beginning of
the next to create a soft buffer in between the songs (like I suspect James
Lavelle was doing.) If you talk to DJ Chillfreez about it (like I did when
I moved back to NYC 2 years ago) he'd tell you that beat mixing is CRUCIAL
to spinning acid jazz and that without beat mixing you're not really a DJ
(BTW he does a *great* job of getting those funky AJ rythems to match up!)
Most other prominent AJ DJs would agree with Chillfreez (Jazzy Nice, Smash,
Swingsett, etc.) but let's hear from some others... Bambi, Marv, Q-Burn?
anyone else I'm forgetting
However if you talk to Mr Lavelle about it he'd probobly disagree. (some of
us, me definitely included, would say that he just CAN'T mix so he doesn't
even try to learn because he's already famous and doesn't need to learn to
mix to get high paying gigs while the rest of us are lucky to clear $40 for
a night's work.) As far as Lavelle being one of the world's BEST DJ's???
HAH! HAH HAH! WHATEVER! he's a good producer and remixer and he knows good
music but if he can't mix he's not "one of the best DJs out there" at least
not in the new testament according to Lo-Ki.
Now there's a whole separate argument about DJs who CAN beatmix but choose
not to because of artistic preference (for example DJ Spooky of NYC) but I
don't really want to get into that now because my post is too long already,
but let me say one thing... Spooky has already proved that he can beat mix,
so it's really up to him to decide whether or not he wants to. No one has
heard Mr. Lavelle beat mix successfully so I don't think he can, and I
think he should spend more time practicing and less time obsessing about
how cool he is.
>Hi you all!!
>I'd like to start a discussion about the acidjazz/tr*p-h*p/jungle/... D.J.s
> When i saw James "Mo' wax" Lavelle (who is suppossed to be one of the
>best D.J.s) i realized he didn't mix anything, he just played one track
>after another one. No technical exhibitions, no mixing masterlessons,...
>just a fine selection of tunes that take everybody to the dancefloor. The
>set contained lots of different stuff from the Beasties to Goldie through
>The Clash(?) or the Wu Tan Clan crew.
> Recently i read in a Spanish mag an interview to some Spanish D.J.s. One
>of them said (and i agree) the most important thing is not the mixing
>thing but to play the right stuff at the right time. Another d.j. replied
>that is quite easy for people, like James Lavelle, who receive lots of
>free white labels, promos,.. everyday, and he considered the mixing thing
>as a very important part of the d.j. work.
> I know there are many d.j.s in the list, so i'd like to know their
>opinion. What do you do on the turntables? Do you try to mix and to be
>creative or just to pay attention to the tunes selection?
>
> -------------------------Javi-------------------------------------------
Peace,
Lo-Ki
lo-ki@pinsky.com