Well here is my 2nd installment for my blog, and I haven’t done much assignment work but attempted to jot down a few ideas, as I was a bit busy mid week and weekend, however I made a few personal observations as the days progressed.
Firstly I djayed at Yates last Wed, Dj workshop on Fri evening, then Djayed Friday night again at Yates, afterwards rushed down to the Embassy nightclub at 12.30 in Bangor to see the Scratch Perverts (especially as I hired my cdjs to them). In Yates, while I was glad to be on my Denon Mc 6000 controller, my enthusiasm waned a bit when I saw that by 10.30 Yates was still quiet.
Some of the students came out but weren’t really on the floor for that long, some came in groups drank all the yager bombs and absynths you could throw at them and on to the new night club. You might think it’s the music but I must beg to differ.
They seemed to have a good time with the cheese and party. Now this supposed to be a student night, yet the only advertising done by the management was a small flier at the bar saying dj playing 80’s, 90’s 00’S. Bear in mind that this, along with the football a few weeks ago and various other promotions were on the flier/card.
Now for the life of me, why in gods name would the manager there expect good takings behind the bar? This is beyond me. Commonsense would dictate that it needs to be on a flier on it’s own and given out regularly, and not just some insignificant, little flier that you can’t even see let alone hand out to people in town. Hand out? They’re not even doing that. If it’s not promoted how the hell do they expect to make money especially as other clubs have a similar music policy on a Wed? I’m thinking of charging them to print something decent and I’ll promote it by myself. It can’t be fair to expect the dj to take care of the tunes, the atmosphere and crowd and the bar not think of advertising, especially a big chain like Yates. I’ve learnt form past experience that managers think they know what’s best for their establishment but this is never entirely true.
The other problem is that the younger crowd are so used to getting hammered with the Electro and Dance on Thursdays and Saturdays, that that’s all they want. It’s just been 3 weeks on but it needs to be addressed because no mater what I play, it won’t happen if no one knows about it. Innit?
I think I might try offering my dj services elsewhere playing what I like electro and old skool hip hop, and keep the cheese &party for the weddings and birthdays.
Rant over!
On another note, as mentioned above I went to see the scratch perverts straight after Yates.
To continue in the potential theme of my essay, the plethora of toys both old skool and new skool was awesome, close to the traditional way of djaying with new technology alongside.
The Scratch Perverts were superb to say the least and their stellar performance shows that they did their research and homework because one could not be faulted for automatically thinking the crowd was going to be treated to a night of DMC level scratching antics, which is what they are known for. I saw another side to their flexibility, skills and professionalism with the awesome DUBSTEP, DRUM N BASS show. I heard some different glitchy, dirty dubstep with filthy basslines designed to shake all the fillings out your mouth, that I hadn’t heard before which was overall was a mixture of almost breakbeat and dubstep and some tidy re-edits of some familiar tracks.
The energy levels couldn’t be any higher as they smoothly and swiftly drop mixed tune to tune, and played with their Native Instruments Traktor Kontrol X1 for beat mangling.
While one of the djs was using Technics 1200,one of which I hired out also, the other was on the cdjs, and I virtually didn’t hear one mistake from either all night.
Now both Djs worked well together, but I asked myself if the fact that one was using Traktor Scratch a DVS (Digital Virtual Scratch) with the vinyl decks, if it helped to make the performance so seamless or could he have done just the same spinning on vinyl decks, without some beat gridding,use of virtual sample decks and the control of a few cue points? Traktor is awesome but each to their own.
Being I the business for as long as they have, skills are honed and are near flawless but the question for my essay raises it head again.
Does all this innovative, available technology make it too easy for djays?
Where does the lines between originality and creativity blur? How else apart from years of practice with traditional methods of djaying could this type of performance be executed?
Forget decks. Remember the days of the 8 tracks and 16 tracks on a Reel:-)?
