Just got booked to play with DJ Logic next tuesday at an Allman Brothers after party. He’ll be playing the downstairs of a club and I’ll be playing the upstairs. Hellz yeah. This guy is a hero of mine. I’ve opened for him before, but this is a double bill. We’ll be playing at the same time. This is gonna be killer. I’m gonna bust out the old school records and teach the kids a few things about their elders. Meanwhile, Mr. Logic will be wowing folks with his funk-jammy stylings. What a party it will be!!!
This Dj stuff keeps gettin’ better. This is just a thread for me to release some of the joy I am feeling. I can’t scream out in the middle of a corporate bank for some strange reason. Anyway, if any NYC area Dopers want to check it out I’ve posted the location & time in my Live Journal. It’s gonna be a late night. Starts around 11:30 and goes till about 4-4:30.
Nah, I’ve only played with him here in New York. One of my best friends in the world is from Kansas and he has been trying to get me to go there for a while. Still haven’t made it. I have, however, made it to Vegas with him.
So you saw Project Logic, huh? Great stuff isn’t it?
I noticed you used the word “play” to describe your DJ gig. I’ve also noticed that some DJs have attained “musician” status in terms of being an attraction. Am I missing something, or is DJing playing other people’s music, with perhaps some sound effects mixed in? If so, why the elevation in status? I don’t see sufficient value added in this scenario to consider it performance. I’m not trying to say “that shit’s not music” or anything to that effect, I’m just curious…
A dj can play notes of any instrument using the proper record and a crossfader. They can be the drums, the vocals, the flute, the guitar, the tuba. . . . You name it. It takes rhythm and timing to put the right sounds at the right beat in the right measure. The spots on the record are easy to jump or skip and the delicate hand required involves much skill. Turntable sales are poised to surpass guitar sales soon, and the devices are a complex instrument limited only by creativity and practice. Hip-hop was thought of as a joke, a passing fad. It is now a billion dollar industry.
A master turntablist will have thousands of hours behind the decks. It take practice like any other instrument, and some play them well and some don’t, like any other instrument.
Thanks for the info, and not biting my head off. I was confused. I know DJ’s in the hip-hop sense ARE playing an instrument. I was thinking more of the rave-type DJs that, as far as I could tell, weren’t doing THAT kind of DJing…
I’m pretty ignorant about DJing but I did see some new gadget on CNN. Some Japanese (I think) DJ worked with a company to develop a CD player that can be manually manipulated like a turntable – scratching and all that. Have you heard of that? Do you use vinyl exculsively?
Just curious.
If you are ever in Dallas, I can probably get you a gig if you work cheap.
I use cd’s as well as vinyl, but vinyl is where its at. I have seen those devices of which you speak. They have jog dials that you turn that allow you to simulate scratching as if you were using a record.
Pretty neat stuff, but it is nothing compared to the new device they call “Final Scratch”. By hooking up a laptop and a special small device to your mixer, you can then use any old record you want on your tables as normal, but you can also use template vinyl records that the Final Scratch device recognizes. You can then map any digital sound, be it a wav or mp3 file, to the actual vinyl record. So the thousands of hours of music you have on your hard drive can be mapped to a real vinyl record and scratched just like any other records. Super cool. The best part is you can use a normal record or the template records and the computer will recognize which is which and do nothing to change the sound if you use any record but the template. Groovy.
I still get the e-mail newsletter. I’ll look for mention of you. 