Guest Column: Technology and Vinyl DJs

This continues a series of guest columns on how technology is reshaping hobbies and passions  – basket weaving, rugby – whatever. Very different taste in music compared to previous sax and organ columnists!

This time it is good friend and Forrester analyst Ray Wang. Very different taste in music compared to previous sax and organ columnists in this series!

"My passion for vinyl DJ'ing started when I was invited to a friend's 16th birthday.  Unlike the other parties of my time, this wasn't at a house, restaurant, or community center.  This was truly unique...Jenny's father had bought out a local Long Island, NY night club one night and pretty much decked out the venue for all of her friends.  Most of us were into the new wave/alternative scene and pretty much anything off of the WLIR/WDRE playlist,  This meant New Wave, Synthpop, Alternative or simply put anything from The CURE to New Order to Erasure To Depeche Mode to Violent Femmes.  Most of our music came from dubbed and re-dubbed cassettes or worn 45's so we were blown away with high fidelity sound coming at us from 360 degrees.  At the club, the highs were crisp, the sound hallucinogenic, and most of all you could feel the sound pressure from the bass channeled through the floor.  It was unlike any other sensual experience any of us had had (yeah, we were 16).

As we got used to our new surroundings, we found ourselves looking up at the DJ. He amazed us!  Somehow, he took his 12" vinyl records and mixed from the middle of one song into a new song.  He flawlessly matched the beats and suddenly the tunes we knew on their own came to life as they were blended into one another.  Depeche Mode's Strange Love was mixed into Erasure's Oh L'Amour and then pushed out into When In Rome's The Promise and Nitzer Ebb's Join in the Chant was sampled in as the next song was cued up. 

Never stopping once, the music kept blending for the next 4 hours.  Even now, that memory has stuck with me and was one of the key drivers for getting me into this hobby.  In fact, we formed a group in 1990 and ended up playing at night clubs and parties from Boston to DC.  Out on the West Coast, I had the pleasure of DJ'ing in SF clubs and at some great venues including San Francisco's City Hall.

Today, I've got my original 2 turntables, a wide collection of old playback equipment, mixers, and lighting technology.  I still measure my music by physical counts (e.g. 50 crates of records and over 2000 CD's), though I also have 600GB of music.  But it's precisely this shift from analog to digital that describes how my hobby has benefited from new technologies.  Let me elaborate on mixers and playback equipment.

MIXERS GO BEYOND AUDIO

If the turntables are the instruments then the mixers are the brains.  The design of the basic mixer remains the same.  Faders lower and raise the volume of each source.  A cross fader allows music from 2 sources to be blended.  Output is represented by gauges, as in the Tandy DJ Mixer you had the old VU gauges.  Today's advancements as in the Pioneer DJM-800 incorporate digital effects, video mixing capabilities, better visualization, and integration with vinyl emulation software.

PLAYBACK EQUIPMENT GOES DIGITAL

Turntables (1972 - Present). It doesn't get as analog as a turntable.  Now most of us would say a turntable is a turntable, but to the DJ, this is the key instrument behind the art.  Why? well, to effectively beat match, you needed a turntable that starts quickly, allows you to speed up or slow down the record, hold the pitch, and keep the needle from skipping.  The Technics 1200's have been the standard for 37 years, because of the engineering and technology that delivers a magnetic based direct drive which results in little mechanical wear, provides high torque for quick start, enables variable pitch control at +/- 8% which enables you to speed up or slow down a song to match beats, and delivers tone arm mods that reduces skipping.  I still have 2 of these and treasure them.

CD Mixers (1990 to Present). Mainstream adoption of CD's in the late 80's and 90's led to various experiments to build a dual playing CD mixer that wouldn't skip, lose pitch, and cost an arm and fortune.  Well, a few CD mixers had come and gone but it wasn't really till 1992 that they got a CD mixer to work that wouldn't skip, lose pitch, and cost too much.  The Denon 1000 and 2000F's finally gave DJ's the option to mix CD's.  New features allowed DJ's to create new pitch distortion effects (pitch bend) and create cue points (instant start).   The benefit: no more lugging around 6 crates of records plus the ability to bootleg music on burned cd's!

CDJ or Jog Dial CD Decks (1997 to Present). However, many DJ's including myself could never get used to not touching the records as we mixed beats. We found the CD mixer devices cold and without the artistic flair.  So, the next innovation led to a digital CD deck with a jog wheel that simulated the vinyl like control.  One deck, Pioneer's CDJ 100S  brought in this new standard.  Newer decks such as the Denon ones offer a direct drive jog wheel with simulated vinyl platters. The benefit: a realistic feel to vinyl which allow users to scratch and mix digital music.

Vinyl Emulation Software (2003 to Present). However, many old timers such as myself prefer to use those old analog turntables.  New vinyl emulation software such as Scratch Live allows DJ's to mix and scratch MP3 and other music files from their computer using both turntables and CDJ's as the analog interface.  Turntables play a vinyl "signal" record that controls a digital music file.  In vinyl emulation mode, if you pick up the needle, the music stops. The software moves the digital music file forward and back in relationship to its position on the vinyl record.  DJ's can also visualize the sound patterns via the software. The benefit: vinyl user interface for digital music

THE BOTTOM LINE

My hobby has transformed itself with the digital evolution.  Today, all you need is a laptop and a hard drive to accomplish what we dreamt of 20 years ago.  The move to digital eases the transport of music, post production tasks, and availability of content.  While physical devices such as the turntable and mixer are no longer needed, many hobbyists such as myself still find those user interfaces to be the tactile part of the experience.  Net-net, going digital allows me to pass on this craft to my kids with ease."

Comments

[Teo Hernandez]

I completely agree... music devices and music production devices have evolved almost as fast as Apple's products... hard to think you could DJ these days with a 2.99 dlls application from the Apple Store... with Deadmau5 applications you can do pretty much what you could do with a couple of sophisticated turn tables and a pricey Pioneer Mixer. Also production softwares such as Ableton Live, Apple's Logic Pro, Digidesign Pro Tools allows you to turn your computer into the most powerful music production engine. Hard to imagine that you no longer need to buy the newest mixer since these software have real scalability... If one would ever wonder that Madonna's "4 Minutes" hit would have been created with a regular set of musicians playing, that is a pure dream... all it takes is a computer and samples, put them together in one of these production softwares and there you go... you are the new Quincy Jones with one of the most creative studios... where only the imagination is your limit.

Thanks for sharing your passion... I am also very passionated about music and all you can achieve with technology in this industry.

[Brockneyc]

Quality article and some interesting points raised. I did not realise that the first pitch controlled CD player came out in 1992 - I got my first two in 1995 and hated CD's with a passion before that!

Love the picture of the Tandy mixer, this was the first one I had when learning to mix on two belt driven decks. Oh, the headphone socket didn't work when it was given to me and I learned to mix without cans until I sussed out how to solder the lead inside back on to it.....

One thing that wasn't mentioned is the consoles that can be connected to a computer to control Virtual DJ, Traktor etc. There are many of these on the market, I got a Hercules Rmx in 2008. Effectively it is like having two CD players and a mixer all built into one unit, the only difference being you do not need to put CD's in it! Google it, you will see what I mean. Used it recently in London's O2 arena and tore it up ;)

There is a bit of snobbery from a few DJ's I know, with the opinion that somebody using this kind of setup is not a 'real' DJ. My counter argument is in that case we should get two orchestras side by side and the conductor is the DJ, using his stick as a crossfader! Technology moves forward and we should embrace that.

Love your taste in music by the way! I do not know much about Violent Femmes but Erasure, The Cure and Depeche Mode were quality :)

Catch me on House FM dot Net if you want, Sunday 6-8pm UK time

[Michael Koch]

Beautiful post. Thanks for sharing this, Ray.

Vinyl addict myself, although not on the DJing side but with high end HiFi equipment. You're so right when you talk about the tactile part of turntables and vinyl. Funnily enough, my current system has only two sources: Vinyl and a network streamer.

M

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