TEDxBricklane

John Dashiel Gettings (Get Low Cartel/Get Low) talks of his perspectives as a Serato user with Honey @TEDxBricklane

What’s it all about?

Here’s the chain of realness:

Vinyl > CDJs > Serato > Traktor

It all comes down to beat matching and/or levels of perceived skill.

With vinyl, you have nothing but your ears to help you beat match two tracks.

With CDs, the CDJ gives you a bpm counter on it’s display. You match the numbers together and go.

Serato shows you the bpm too, but also gives you a visual representation of the track, so you can visually see if two songs are in time.

Traktor has an auto-synch button. Just click a button and Traktor will match the tracks together automatically for you.

Vinyl users look down on CDJ users, CDJ users look down on Serato users, Serato users look down on Traktor users. (supposedly).

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Which do you like to use and why?

I’m a Serato user. I like it as a nice middle ground as it doesn’t mix for you (like Traktor), but I can access 100,000+ songs. I see Serato as a huge digital record crate. As do lots of “classic” vinyl Djs, such as DJ Marky, Scratch Perverts, Shy FX, A-Trak, Loefah, DJ AM etc who made the switch. The stigma of using Serato is now pretty much non-existant. Predominantly because YOU still have to beat-match. It cannot DJ for you.

There is still a stigma associated with Traktor due to its sync feature. Also, with Serato you still use digital vinyl on the turntables to control it. Traktor has the same thing, but a lot of Traktor DJs use unwieldily controllers (search: Traktor controller). The average Traktor user tends to suck balls at DJing too.

These digital solutions (Serato/Traktor) means the barriers to be a DJ are lower than they’ve ever been. Every man and his dog is a DJ now. So how to you differentiate yourself from the hundreds of thousands of other DJs?

Nowadays, big name DJs are increasingly seeing the time it takes to beat match is an unnecessary hinderance. Producers time stretch the tracks in their set to the same BPM (beats per minute) all the time. Shy FX has an incredible but carefully constructed set that he repeats to the letter every single time he plays out. Why? People have come to see him double drop a perfect set, not wait patiently for him to decide what the next track will be and then beatmatch it.

Huge Hip Hop Djs like Craze, Shiftee and now A-Trak who were Serato fan boys have all now quietly moved to Traktor. DJ Zinc uses Traktor purely for the synch feature!!

Because everyone is a DJ, the pressure to be SPECTACULAR is higher than ever. Who wants to waste precious time beatmatching, something MOST people on the dancefloor don’t give two shits about?

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The future of DJing? 

Two Avenues,

One avenue is that DJing will probably be live compositions with 4 decks, looping track stems, live remixes, vocal loops, effects on each part, so on and so forth. This is exactly the direction Native Instruments are going. Beat matching won’t exist anymore, the skill of a DJ won’t be how fast he can mix in the next track, it will be how imaginatively a DJ can manipulate and mash-up the music to make something new.
Lots of techno DJs are doing this.

This would be nearly impossible to do without an auto-synch feature.

On the other side, Serato is pushing the V-DJ side, predicting that DJs will be controlling a nightclubs visuals as well as its audio. Hip Hop Djs are doing this. Look at DJ Yoda for reference.

Native Instruments is killing traditional DJing, completely negating the need to actually learn a skill (how to beat match). This lowers the barriers to entry, and you end up with a lot of shitty DJs. However, long-term (20 years from now) they’re probably right on the money in terms of what DJing will be. Beat matching will be a lost art, replaced by the creativity of building songs live with loops and wacking a Daft Punk acappella over it.

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Why wouldn’t one use Serato/Traktor/CDJs?

The culture of going to a record store, the excitement of trying out a new vinyl, the smell of vinyl, the (supposed) increased sound quality, the VALUE the music has to you when each song costs £7 - I pretty much started DJing with Serato so you’re best off to ask a true vinyl DJ.

Get down to the Get Low Lock Tavern spesh this Sunday: http://www.facebook.com/events/202803616479567/?ref=ts