I’ve spent way too much time worrying about the safety and security of my laptop and external hard drive at gigs.

What i’d like to see is a hardware media player that reads timecode.

Agreed, I have never yet caught the DJ bug, but this kind of thing makes me want to consider how such a thing could be used in the context of music production. Personally, I am wondering if such a turn table could be the ultimate automation improvisational tool. Maybe this is something everyone already does, but I have not been aware of this.

Blessings,
Damon

Ps.
Share a trick, to invite 10 more fresh tricks into your quiver.

Once you get to the point of investing in a certain amount of specialized controllers, laptops, etc., and the new skills to use them, how much harder is it to just perform your own tracks live?

There was something very simply an elegant about two turntables and a mixer… and they were always cheaper than music gear back in the day… but now with dirt cheap laptops, midi controllers, grooveboxes, etc., if you aren’t going to keep it old school with the vinyl, why not go 100% out and create your own tracks?

I defy anyone to watch the movie “Scratch” and then say that turntablism isn’t an art worth preserving.

Turntablism is most definitely an art worth preserving, in the same way playing jazz saxophone is an art worth preserving.

At one time though, turntables were the cheapest and easiest way for some young kid to go out and rock music… since records and turntables were the ubiquitous technology of their day. Turntablism was all about underground youth culture and enpowerment… they didn’t fetishize the turntables, they were simply the best and cheapest technology available at the time.

But nowadays, laptops and mp3s are the ubiquitous technology among youth. Turntablists are more and more like virtuoso jazz musicians, very talented and still making great sounds, but no longer relevant in that rebellious underground youth-culture sort of way.

Turntablism has become the realm of respectable adults. Q-Bert is 40 years old, and people are doing tasteful documentaries like Scratch.

The physical technique of scratching and pitching records on a turntable is an art form that has evolved over decades, and there is no digital control system that has captured people’s imagination yet in the same way.

Partly this is because vinyl jocks had no choice but to work with turntables, whereas digital DJs have a nearly infinite number of options of how to manipulate their music. There’s no universal standard that everyone is trying to expand and perfect.

For all of us old-schoolers, there’s a genuine reluctance to abandon the skills we developed over time. Plus, there is a style to mixing on a turntable that is subtly but inescapably unique, and that style has rocked many a party over the years, so there’s an institutional memory of good times. I defy anyone to watch the movie “Scratch” and then say that turntablism isn’t an art worth preserving. Better yet, show me a DJ who mixes digital tracks in a manner that’s one-eighth as entertaining as Q-bert.

Personally, I’m still waiting for a physical mixing technique that works with digital music, and takes the performing experience to a new level. Knobs, faders, and buttons are efficient and effective, but they don’t sing to me the same way that a well-executed backspin does.

interesting that.
i blame the blogs for hyping it.
except cdm ofcourse ;)

holding on to the vinyl paradigm for the newer generation of dance DJs is silly…

It’s the same problem the market has seen with timecoded vinyl: there is no standard, so company has put out their own records in hopes of “winning the market”. If there was a standard timecode format, DVS’s could focus on features and functionality instead of implementing their own DVS suite as a solution.