The Art of Being a DJ

“When music technology takes the place of musicianship, it's time to pull the plug”

Robert Brown 

I can't imagine the feeling that my father gets when he sees his classic turntable and 70's record collection as it sits glistening in our living room hooked up to massive speakers - Led Zeppelin play on repeat. But, I feel like I'm getting closer to that unprecedented feeling of nostalgia. I mean, its nothing new - our house is an overflow of technology from 1970 to 2011 - he just doesn't have the heart to throw it out. Boxes of wires and cables take up an entire room; miles of printers; computers that you did not even know existed (We have an Osbourne 1 - the first portable computer ever built - giant floppy disks and all)


As I sat cross-legged on the floor yesterday, admiring my beautiful CDJs, I couldn't help feeling a weird sensation that my expensive babies were already outdated. I bought them last June and they have some wonderful qualities, but I feel behind. That's the thing about technology, in one day, out the next and it never ends - and you can only be so up to date for a very short period of time.


I havn't seen Dubfire, Ritchie Hawtin, or any other big name DJ flip through a crate of anything for months; no records, no Cd's, nothing- yet they are some of the godfathers of the electronic house music scene. They've done it all and now mp3's are the way to go...Or are they? A lot of people are ditching their CDj's in favour of midi controlled hardware and using pure mp3s only but I have some opinions on that.


What happened to the art of being a DJ? I remember when I fell in love with DJaying when was watching one work vinyl with his over sized hands, in full control - pure sexiness. I was in love - not with the DJ- but with the movements of Djaying. A melodic dance between man and technology where so many elements determined emotions and ambiance. Now, everywhere I look, the art has been lost to clicking buttons and endless knob turning - it looks kinda fake. #jusysaying I know that the revolution that is upon us is one that has changed what we can do as DJ's - we can produce live music now and make our sets so much more interesting than ever before. They sky is the limit with all this technology if you have good programming skills. Outside of electronic dance music, vinyl and turntablism is still massive, which I'm thankful for.


The debate that DJ's are not musicians, is gaining more momentum as technology takes over everything that we do. The argument still remains that mp3's, turntables, midi controllers and CDJ's are not instruments. On the flip side, with technology there is an argument that we are, since we can make tracks live, add in loops to our taste and pretty much do some really wild stuff that was never before imagined.


With that said - don't worry if you can't keep up with all the technology, just make sure you learn at least one and be the best at it. I always use my fellow Toronto DJ's for inspiration- they love their CDJs and they are some of the best tech house DJs in the world. And now that I think about it, my CDJ's are  pretty awesome because they actually double as midi-controlled devices when hooked up with the right software - and they offer mp3 DJaying - can't go wrong with that.


Ash