Who uses DJ gear anyhow, and the future of E music
2002-08-06 by Neila Eliphas Spare
I gotta agree that the mass majority of products I see
pushed out that are directly marketed towards "remixers" and/or "djs" tend to be
fairly weak products. With no disrespect to DJs (I myself DJ; I'm just
more interested in the production and live instrumental performance area than
mixing), I've found that well, first of all, a lot of DJs and definately MOST
aspiring DJs I've met have a tendency to be pretty musically ingnorant.
Never mind grasping the rudementary concepts in regards to synthesis methods and
how they work (include sampling here), they don't even tend to grasp rudementary
musical theory concepts. The thing is, is that there is A VERY LARGE
group of people that all get slotted into this crowd; so how do you go
about marketing something to them? Well first off, ;don't over
complicate your products, and secondly have them work in a ever so easy way
(where actual working musical knowledge is not that of a
must). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, you just
have to keep in mind who exactly these products are being geared
towards; realize that it's geared arguably more so towards young ASPIRING
DJs and electronic producers whos working knowledge music wise is probably just
beginning and thus is rather small. Furthermore, by far, it would seem to
me that the overwhelming large bulk of people that are into "remixing" tend to
take more a phrase sampling approach, I would even extend this argument to a
large bulk of people in the Hip-Hop crowd and even a bit in the modern R&B
crowd. Sure phrase sampling is a tool, but really, taking a bunch of
phrase samples from songs that have already been made and then assembling
essientially a jig saw puzzle out of these samples doesn't take much (IMO); I
don't think you can expect serious in depth gear to be pumped out towards a
crowd of people that tend to use phrase sampling as a easy way out.
To this same end, I do think that there's a fair amount of
products out there geared more towards the serious E-musician. I also tend
to think however that this crowd doesn't tend be viewed as the DJ crowd. I
mean sure, perhaps some people in this crowd may also know how to DJ, but really
when it boils down to it what on earth do DJing and Producing/Playing electronic
music have to do with each other? In my view, the two are completely
different worlds. ; I can't say that the methodolgies behind taking a couple
records and mixing them in a interesting manner has taught me anything in
regards to say jamming with a couple of other musicians live. Can't say
that it taught me anything in regards to scales, how notes are organzied on
various instruments, scales, etc. Really, in all honesty, you'll learn
more about how to go about attacking electronic music from playing a trumpet in
your highschool band then you will from DJing. The two are completely
different worlds so why would you market anything serious towards people that
know that difference exist?
I'm already slotted on the list for getting my
"Evolver" (I doubt it will out do the 777 as my favorite mono-synth, but I
think it might come close),
The Alesis A6 really was quite a SICK synth (though there
were some OS issues), gotta admit I'm pretty wet over the "Machine Drum" (www.machinedrum.com), by far that has to
be the most damn impressive drum machine I've seen in years, and hell, even the
Command Stations are pretty darn sick in my oppinion; and pretty darn well named
they are (IMO), as really the things seemed more designed to lending themselves
to serving as a "Command Station" for a variety of gear than they are for being
self contained all in one boxes (though they're pretty interesting as "Groove
Boxes" as well). My point here is that yeah, sure there may be a lot of
weak and dare I say uninteresting gear out there, BUT, there really is a decent
amount of fairly interesting things out there as well. And though no, they
may not be things being ushered out by the big boys and Roland and such, but why
would you expect them to be? Electronic music is a niche market, so expect
the base of instruments dedicated to such to come from niche
companies. If ever a day comes back where electronic music is
penetrating the pop market world a bit more, I'm sure we'll see a whole but load
of interesting products begin to come out from the big boys dedicated to
E-musicians. Till that time, keep an eye out for the
new gear out there that is capable (it is there), and just realize that if you
hear about something dedicated to "Remixers" and "DJs" realize what that
probably really means.
Respects,
Aaron Nesby