Originally Posted by
light-o-matic
And.. no, you don't have to beatmatch by ear.. the computer can do it just as well what with gridding and stuff.
But I have to call bullshit on the people who say "If I don't learn to beatmatch it frees my time to be more creative"... etc etc....
SUUUUURRREE IT DOES.
Once in a rare while someone comes along and never learns to DJ the traditional way but instead goes all out learning to use the new stuff.. and really uses those digital capabilities to do something awesome that nobody else is doing, that's really great.
The other 95% of the time, you have people who did not work hard to learn anything, they don't have flow because they never learned that, they play a mishmash of loops and samples and tracks and whatever and it all sounds like they know what they are doing because the computer keeps it all beatmatched and phrasematched for them, yet behind the decks is a person who never learned to LISTEN to tracks or to develop a style or understand how to put tracks together to set a mood. They don't know how to DJ.
So hey, I'm not going to give anyone shit for using digital features if you have them, but just understand that all those hours the old school guys spent learning to mix by ear, that was the hours they also spent really learning how tracks go together and why they go together, learning to really HEAR what is going on with the tracks. Whereas you got to skip all those hours because you could beatmatch right away, so now it's up to you as to whether you are going to spend the time to learn those things.. or whether you are going to join the thousands of DJs who don't really know how to DJ but just how to beatmatch (because the computer does that).
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