not wanting to start a war vinyl VS cd's, but just some of my personal
thoughts:
"CD burners allowed disc jockeys to make a
track at home, then play it on a club's CD player that
night, but D.J.'s couldn't manipulate the music as they
could with vinyl. "
personally i think CD-sets with pitch etc. are just as easy to use as
turntables......maybe it's different when you're a turntablist and/or do a
lot of scratching, but i don't need scratching, so i only need to have an
easy and fast cue option, pitch-slider and a way to pitchbend the
music....no difference here between vinyl and CD's except maybe you can cue
somewhat faster when you want to start in a break or something...
"At the same time, it is important to him that Final Scratch
works through standard turntables. "It gives me the
advantage of a physicality that not only I understand, but
the crowd understands," he said. "People understand what a
D.J. does now. It's just like how people became accustomed
to freaking out when someone did something cool with a
guitar. We don't lose that, but it opens these floodgates
to a whole new potential."
this is what i, as a vinyl DJ who turned to CD's in 1995 or something due to
money constraints, have been thinking a lot of lately....i can do a
perfectly good set using CD's, but i am thinking of switching to vinyl again
only because of this issue: the magic of vinyl for the audience....i
personally don't care about the medium, but it seems a lot of the people on
the dancefloor *need* to see a DJ spin vinyl to enjoy the music......what do
you think about this?
Olaf
----- Original Message -----
From: <mrfliz@rcn.com>
To: <acid-jazz@ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 6:38 PM
Subject: NYTimes.com Article: The D.J.'s New Mix: Digital Files and a
Turntable
> This article from NYTimes.com
> has been sent to you by mrfliz@rcn.com.
>
>
> Great article on the state of live digital mixing....
>
> kevin kiernan
> dj k-now
>
> mrfliz@rcn.com
>
>
> The D.J.'s New Mix: Digital Files and a Turntable
>
> October 25, 2001
>
> By BILL WERDE
>
>
>
>
> ON a recent Wednesday night at Centro-Fly, a trendy
> Manhattan dance club, Richie Hawtin was using two
> turntables to play the latest and best techno, a crisply
> syncopated hybrid of dark, electronic drum rhythms and
> metallic high-hat and snare effects. Like so many other
> celebrity disc jockeys on the international circuit, Mr.
> Hawtin was mixing records together to imprint his style on
> the night's music: he played two records simultaneously to
> blend the drum kick of one song with the melody of another,
> waited about 45 seconds before replacing the drum sounds
> with a new album of more pronounced bass sounds, and
> manipulated audio effects equipment to further tweak what
> clubgoers were hearing. So it went for hours, Mr. Hawtin
> adding and subtracting sounds and the crowd of about 600
> dancing and cheering when they heard a mix they liked.
>
> The scene was typical for nightclubs across the globe; the
> records Mr. Hawtin was placing on his turntable were
> anything but. Mr. Hawtin uses new technology called Final
> Scratch from N2IT Development, a Dutch company. The vinyl
> records he places on the turntables may look like normal
> albums, but they work as conduits for the 900 or so digital
> files he has stored on his laptop computer. If Mr. Hawtin
> places the stylus on the three-minute mark of the Final
> Scratch vinyl, the technology interprets that as a signal
> to play at the three-minute mark of the digital file he has
> selected.
>
> Final Scratch is not the only music or technology company
> looking to help a growing D.J. culture embrace digital
> music. A variety of software programs allow D.J.'s to use
> laptop computers to mix digital files without turntables
> and include perks like sonic filters, synthesizer emulators
> and samplers that can add well-laced loops of additional
> music or vocal snippets. Traditional audio companies are
> making equipment that allows D.J.'s to mix and edit digital
> files from compact discs. All of this gives D.J.'s new
> freedoms, both pragmatic and creative.
>
> Before the onset of home studios and CD burners, D.J.'s who
> wanted to play a new track would have to secure studio
> time, then make a dubplate, a fragile vinyl pressing that
> costs about $50 and provides 15 or 20 plays before
> deteriorating. CD burners allowed disc jockeys to make a
> track at home, then play it on a club's CD player that
> night, but D.J.'s couldn't manipulate the music as they
> could with vinyl.
>
> A breakthrough came in July with the release of the Pioneer
> CDJ-1000 Digital Vinyl Turntable. Featuring a
> touch-sensitive jog dial that can be manipulated the same
> way a D.J. does with vinyl - dragging a hand on the dial to
> slow the tempo of the CD, using a finger or two to push it
> faster, or "scratching" the CD back and forth, creating a
> myriad of potential sounds through friction - the Pioneer
> machine made believers out of many analog purists,
> including New York D.J.'s like Aaron Albano, known as Ming,
> and Freddie Sargolini, who goes by FS. Ming & FS recently
> released an album of hip-hop and techno beats called "The
> Human Condition" and have promoted it with frequent D.J.
> appearances.
>
> "You touch the plate and it reacts like you're touching
> vinyl," Mr. Albano said. "If you run your finger on the
> side of it, it slows down the platter, just like a normal
> turntable." The pair still spin mostly vinyl, but they
> experiment more than they did before.
>
> "If we make a track now, we might do three or four
> different versions," Mr. Albano said. "Maybe one will have
> more bass, maybe one will be faster, and we'll play what's
> right for the moment. If we hear a funny sample on the
> radio or television, we might grab it and use it. We don't
> have to go out and get records made. It's sped up the
> creative process immensely."
>
> Audio companies are rushing to embrace the fertile
> intersection of two exploding markets: digital music and
> D.J. culture. "Except for the engineers," said Brian
> Buonassissi, marketing manager for Pioneer's pro audio
> division, "everyone who works in marketing and product
> planning are all D.J.'s." (Mr. Buonassissi himself spins
> discs as Granmasta B in San Clemente, Calif.)
>
> Because of the Digital Vinyl Turntable's price - $1,299,
> with a street price of about $1,150 - "we expected we'd
> only sell to professionals," Mr. Buonassissi said, but the
> audience has proved to encompass "everyone from home users
> to gearheads in search of a new toy."
>
> If the gearheads are excited about the CDJ-1000, they may
> flip their propellers at the thought of Final Scratch, a
> $3,000 hardware-software package that went on sale last
> week. The software is loaded on a Sony (news/quote) Vaio
> laptop computer that is connected by a tiny processing box
> to standard turntables. (A version without the laptop will
> go on sale early next year for about $600.)
>
> Conceived at a hacker convention in Amsterdam when some
> programmers saw a D.J. run out of records after an hour or
> so, Final Scratch allows the mixing and scratching of
> virtually all formats of digital music to within a
> millisecond of precision. And as those at Centro-Fly could
> attest after hearing Mr. Hawtin's mix, it is impressive
> when put to the test of an enormous sound system.
>
> Mr. Hawtin says the best part about Final Scratch is that
> it is all contained on his laptop. "I don't travel with a
> CD burner, and if you start burning a lot of CD's, you run
> into an organizational challenge," he explained. Mr.
> Hawtin's 900 files are stored within the Final Scratch
> software, broken down by subgenres and easily
> cross-referenced by a variety of search categories.
>
> With his frequent travel, having his whole set available on
> his laptop creates time, in a matter of speaking. "In May,
> I flew to England on a Saturday," he said, "played a gig,
> flew back Sunday morning and had a gig that night in
> Detroit. I had eight hours there and back. I went through
> all my records, sorted out what I wanted to play in
> Detroit, what I wanted to play in London, picked a couple
> of tracks, re-edited them to create some special versions
> and played them that night."
>
> Mr. Hawtin is quick to praise the freedom and spontaneity
> granted by the digital realm. "This lets us evaluate what's
> happening in the world as quickly as possible now," he
> said. "I can take a snippet of some news or a popular
> record and throw it in the mix in a completely different
> way."
>
> At the same time, it is important to him that Final Scratch
> works through standard turntables. "It gives me the
> advantage of a physicality that not only I understand, but
> the crowd understands," he said. "People understand what a
> D.J. does now. It's just like how people became accustomed
> to freaking out when someone did something cool with a
> guitar. We don't lose that, but it opens these floodgates
> to a whole new potential."
>
> Some of the greatest potential revolves around much more
> mundane issues than digital revolutions may inspire. Mr.
> Hawtin carries two crates of records to his D.J. sessions,
> each holding about 100 albums. "I'll be down to one crate
> by the end of the year," Mr. Hawtin said. "The only reason
> I'm carrying as much music as I am now is that there is a
> time lag between when I get a record and when I can
> digitize it. I have plenty of room in my laptop for tracks
> I may only play once a year, but that one time I play it,
> it will make the night."
>
> Reducing the number of albums may turn out to be the
> greatest advantage of all. "Do you have any idea," Mr.
> Hawtin said with a laugh, "how much a crate of records
> weighs?"
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/25/technology/circuits/25JOCK.html?ex=1005027
925&ei=1&en=48f1914efe805a99
>
>
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