Jam The (Rekord) Box
I don’t want this to be another of those vinyl vs digital polemics you might expect from a middle-aged man who used, once, to be relevant (an identity my 36-year-old self is doing his level best to stave off). Nor will it be an extended meditation on the virtues or otherwise of social media. Those topics have been covered ably elsewhere.
Rather, for a while now I have wanted to work through some of the considerations arising from what has amounted to my transition, over the past year or so, from record bag-lugger to USB-plugger. I say amounted to because, while the shift has been for good reasons, that doesn’t mean there was much forward planning. So rather than going into the practical motivations for it (also covered ably - and I mean it this time - elsewhere), I instead have some reflections on some of the directions it has pushed my DJing in, both good and bad.
(Trigger warning: if you are a skilled user of CDJs and/or Rekordbox you may find some of the basicness of this post - regarding my current level of aptitude with these technologies - quite appalling. I feel a bit embarrassed writing these things down but it will help me process the thoughts I’ve been having while going from gig to gig - and hopefully push me along the route to getting better.)
Algorithmic Vibrations
‘Algorithmic’ is a semi-criticism I’ve levelled at some DJs in the past, usually as a nitpick to balance out the praise I’m otherwise heaping on them. When the selection, timing and technique are all on point, go for the human behind them and call them an emotionless robot! But of course having expert technique is not inherently something to be criticised. Rather, it’s an occasional artistic effect of that technique - immaculate, machine-like, programmed - that is the source of my nitpick, and I feel it’s worth digging into where it might come from. Especially now that I have started to identify some of those same algorithmic tendencies in my own DJing.
My working theory, based on haphazard self-observation, is that this tendency comes in great part from using CDJs and Rekordbox instead of turntables and actual records. No shit, I hear you say: the machines make you sound machine-like while the tactile, accident-prone medium makes you sound tactile and accident-prone. Human. But I actually don’t think it’s that simple, as there are plenty of DJs who’ve found a way to use digital DJing without losing their humanity or their spontaneity. I think there might be something about the technology itself that, if not resisted, or even better, harnessed, can cause you to lose the joy and spontaneity of a really good set.
Here I’ll deal with two major culprits that I’ve been wrestling with this past year, playlists and cue points, though there are many other factors at work (see Endnote).
Playlists
First in the dock is the most glaringly obvious suspect: the playlist. A playlist is not just a digital record bag. It’s true that in the process of filling a record bag I’m usually putting the records in some semblance of order - though I know not all DJs do even this - but the bag does not invite me at every opportunity to fiddle with that order, switching this and that record as if imagining the moment during the night when I will mix one into the other. The record bag doesn’t look knowingly at me as I fill it up, eyebrow raised, as with every adjustment the gig ahead becomes more of a fait accompli. But the playlist does.
There’s a carelessness and openness to filling a record bag, combined with a constraint, a physical limitation, as you cram it the night before (or, in the case of G, I hope she won’t mind me mentioning, the morning of) the gig. The playlist, simultaneously and confusingly, spells both inflexible order and limitless possibility, and this is before you’ve even started scrolling through it as the previous DJ’s final tune plays out. With a bag that time would be spent flipping through records, a satisfyingly physical activity akin to reordering your hand at the start of a game of cards. Even if a CDJ offers that possibility (at 3000€ a pop, it surely must), it is just not the same. Objekt, whose Art Of DJing (linked above) is filled with wisdom, notes that despite his mastery of the Art of Playlisting, he still needs records to maintain a sense of ‘immediacy and fun’.
On the flipside, there seem to be some exciting avenues with playlists that, while not transcending the above problems, may at least compensate for them. There’s that limitless possibility for starters, and if you can mentally keep on top of a big library of music then having quick unanticipated access to a particular track - rather than wistfully picturing it on the shelf at home - must be one of the format’s big plusses. The dividing of music into ever more outlandish categories also appeals to me (remembering my friend Telma’s ‘proggy house but acid’ and other fun playlist names at her Lux gig earlier this year), while other DJs have spoken about sorting music by energy level or groove. Sure these are things we do subconsciously when sorting a record bag, but I feel like the Rekordbox and CDJ library are full of additional potential in this regard. (Many, of course, will argue that any kind of categorisation is limiting and therefore undesirable. I hear you too.)
For myself, apart from a brief burst of tagging energy earlier this year, which fizzled out very soon after it started, I’ve mostly resisted the lure of classification and advance playlisting. I make a fresh playlist for every gig and that’s that. As my digital music collection expands this is likely to become untenable, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Cue points
When I first starting noticing algorithmic tendencies in other DJs, I hypothesised that there must be some sort of CDJ/Rekordbox function that allowed you to mark where the important changes in a track take place, thus allowing you to, how you say, ‘take your cue’ from those points and thus never again have to worry about missing your moment. And I was right! Cue points, who knew? But the thing is, ever since I realised this function existed I’ve felt that it makes things a little too seductively easy.
With a record you learn about a track’s ebb and flow by listening to it and mixing it over and over, your musical brain and physical body gradually assimilating the contours of the intro, break and outro until the decision of when to mix becomes almost unconscious. (Caveat: I’m obviously talking here about music that has conventional structure and arrangement and, therefore, particular moments that make sense for mixing. If you’re Matthias Tanzmann mixing identikit tech house tunes for three hours, this is a moot point.)
But with Rekordbox you don’t need to go through that assimilatory process, you can just mark the relevant moments on the track with cue points and then, as your playing the track out for the first or second time, those punctual little squares will prompt you, infallibly, in whichever bright colour takes your fancy. I did this systematically for the first time when preparing my mix for The Lot Radio earlier this year. I had a few good reasons: I wasn’t taking records with me to the US; I was playing quite a lot of new music; and I wanted to make sure the mix was tight and fit the slot’s runtime properly. Did I achieve what I set out to? Yes. Did I feel accomplished? Sure. Was it fun? Kind of.
What I find interesting listening back to that set is that the human moments - the mix from the highly un-quantized Nitzer Ebb into Celebrate The Nun, for example - remain the most thrilling in terms of energy. Most of the transitions in the mix feel functional to me, but then that one transition feels alive. The knife-edge between a mix working or not working glints with the energy of the age-old creation/destruction dialectic, full of promise at the same time time as it is fraught with danger. But for that dialectic to work you need both sides: a damping down of the danger and destruction (via cue points or whatever other tools you use to programme what’s going to happen) naturally corresponds to a concomitant damping down of the creativity.
You could argue that for a DJ who really, really knows their records, the same is often true. There are certain records I don’t even have to think about when to mix out of, even tricky ones, because with practice it’s become almost automatic by this point. But to me, the fact that that deep knowledge has come about through attention, discovery and repetition over time - what you might call craft - rather than punctual little squares on a screen, makes a world of difference. I briefly tried telling myself that the squares I was inserting were actually just working in the same way as a needle drop, allowing me to check in on the important transitions in the track just as I usually do with a record before playing it. But in truth I haven’t been using them that way. I’ve just been relying on the visual cue as the track is playing.
Now there are clearly some avenues for using those boxes creatively, opening up new vistas in what a DJ set can consist of. Avalon Emerson is an obvious example. In her Art of DJing she describes her ‘live editing’ approach using hot cues, among many other fascinating things about playlisting etc. The one time I saw her DJ in Lux three or four years ago, it really did sound like nothing else I’d heard before. She’s using the tools to expand her options rather than funnel them down a single path, and her idea about allowing the technology to do what it’s good at, freeing you up to do what you (a human) are good at, is thought-provoking.
Getting the thrill back
Is Emerson’s or Objekt’s an approach that I feel like pursuing? Not particularly. I’m more of a this-tune-then-that-tune kind of guy. Yet it’s inspiring to see DJs using these features in such a dynamic way. Personally I reckon I can learn a lot from other DJs’ angles on these things without necessarily following down the rabbit hole. I think I can find a way of using these tools that suits my intentions, so that they help me where appropriate but without making things too easy or predictable.
I suppose not all of this will resonate with many readers/listeners. A set is a set and a transition is a transition and if it’s competent that’s often good enough. But this topic has been on my mind a lot and will continue to be, probably because I can often hear it - or its absence - when I listen to other DJs: this mysterious thing, this energy, this spontaneity…and I want to preserve it in my own work. Listening back to my set from Dimensions this year (which will hopefully be out towards the end of the year) I can hear clearly the more programmed moments, clean and seamless, and the more on-the-fly moments, edgy, (mostly) thrilling. I think I’ve lost a bit of that thrill this year and I want to get it back.
(Endnote: there are of course many other things playing into this phenomenon, which I could write about: loops and their impact on transitions; the limitations of my current home DJ setup; ripping vinyl; mixing software; the very real pressures placed on a touring DJ who’s playing multiple times every weekend and simply can’t refresh their bag or playlist every time. I’d say let me know if you want to hear about those things, but you can probably count on future newsletters labouring each of these points regardless.)