The Art of DJing: Jeff Mills
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residentadvisor.net
Reading Jeff's description of the mental process not just the mechanical process... I was sad the article seemed to just touch on those areas and would love to see deeper into the artistic process. When he's imagining approaching a planet, or being in the forest, and how that translates to music for him.
What a legendary DJ. I'd love to see / hear him do a modern set mixing old school hits records like he described. And now I'm falling down a youtube hole back into the 80s:
(start around 18:00 for The Bells)
It’s really hard to do what Jeff mills is doing with turntables. Like years and years of many hours a day practice.
You can recreate it in ableton live with absolutely no practice at all and then do more stuff on top of it.
Of course ableton doesn’t tell you the right moments to mix or the right songs or the right way to filter and so on, so there is still a lot of artistry and skill, but just in terms of dexterity, it’s a lot easier.
Mixxx[0] is a good free/libre option (not necessarily for doing what Ableton does, but for DJing).
[0]: https://mixxx.org/
If you want to learn how to dj, learn to mix on turntables, cdjs, or a controller. IMO, you’re missing a lot of fun if you rely on Ableton for everything and you have less control over your mixes. You can do just as much with Serato fx as you can Ableton effects if that’s your worry.
Beat mixing is only a very small part of DJing and is not a creative part of the process. It's a technical skill - nothing more.
Telling people they must learn how to beat mix on turntables before learning Ableton is like saying someone must learn how to paint with oil paints before they're allowed to use Photoshop. What actually matters is what enables performers to create the best live performance.
One thing I will agree with you on is that I have more of an emotional connection with vinyl because I'm physically connecting with the playback media. I've never gotten the same emotional connection with CDs nor Ableton. However this is a tactile response and nothing to do with the music itself so the audience wouldn't experience that.
This. I spent years djing at clubs and opened for some of the biggest names in the world and know tons of djs and producers. Nobody talks about beatmatching except people just getting started. A lot of people learned it because it was the only way to mix records for a long time, but to me, it's an utterly pointless skill to have any more.
FWIW, it's just as easy to spend all your time looking at your turntables when you're mixing, especially when you aren't very good at beatmatching. When I was first getting started, it often took me like 2-3 minutes to get the beatmatching right, and spent almost all of that time looking at the turntables and not the crowd. Of course when I sucked at beatmatching, "the crowd" i was playing for was 5 or 10 people, half of which came with me.
What matters more than the medium is the individual who's playing from them.
I've performed a lot, both from a laptop and from vinyl (and a fair few times with both too) and anecdotally I can say using a laptop has never defined how much of a spectacle I choose to make of myself. The amount I've slept beforehand or whisky I've drank has a much bigger effect ;)
You can teach a monkey to beat match. You can't teach a monkey to be a DJ.
Why does this matter? If you want dick swinging, I'll probably beat you anyday. I'm a DMC finalist and toured with a few big rap groups and on my own for more than half of my life. All this is irrelevant. We're talking about skills vs faking the funk here.
> Beat mixing is only a very small part of DJing and is not a creative part of the process. It's a technical skill - nothing more.
It is a part of djing and it is a creative part of the process. Maybe you didn't get creative with it and that's perfectly fine. However, others have gotten creative with it(Z-trip, dj shadow, cut chemist, jrocc, mr choc, daft punk, and many more).
> Telling people they must learn how to beat mix on turntables before learning Ableton is like saying someone must learn how to paint with oil paints before they're allowed to use Photoshop. What actually matters is what enables performers to create the best live performance.
So if you're going for face value then yes, I can go up on stage with my laptop, play an mp3, dance to the music in front of thousands, and entertain people all day. This is entertainment but this isn't djing. I'm talking about raw skill. Sounds like you prefer someone to lip sync than actual sing on stage. Same thing.
> I've never gotten the same emotional connection with CDJs nor Ableton. However the audience wouldn't experience that.
They will if you're good at your craft.
>They will if you're good at your craft.
This - 100%. I can't agree more. When you feel what you're doing, the audience should feel it also. That's what keeps me doing it now after 20+ years (when I don't really have to, in order to pay the bills anymore!). It's that moment, of a connection, and the spine tingling chill/buzz you get when you pull off a great mix in the moment and the audience feel it too.
Feeling the music (rather than touching the media) is a different matter. You can emotionally connect with the music being played regardless of the playback medium.
It's relevant because it's a conversation about techno and I'm explaining I have direct insight into DJing techno.
DMC is an entirely difference scene where "turntablism" is more of a thing so I can see why you might argue the case for learning to beat mix but those arguments don't apply to techno.
> It is a part of djing and it is a creative part of the process. Maybe you didn't get creative with it and that's perfectly fine.
You cannot get creative with beat matching. The process of beat matching is literally just quantising two tracks together. Everything else beyond that is "mixing" - which is where the creative process happens. But that is not "beat matching".
The distinction I'm making is vital because you can do creative beat mixing without having to do any beat matching.
> Maybe you didn't get creative with it and that's perfectly fine.
I do and please don't make personal assumptions about me.
> So if you're going for face value then yes, I can go up on stage with my laptop, play an mp3, dance to the music in front of thousands, and entertain people all day. This is entertainment but this isn't djing. I'm talking about raw skill. Sounds like you prefer someone to lip sync than actual sing on stage. Same thing.
All DJing is just playing other peoples records. You're not up there with a guitar ffs. So it doesn't matter if it's an vinyl or an MP3 - that's just a technical detail. What actually matters is how you mix those records, not beat match them.
> They will if you're good at your craft.
You do realise you just argued that "The audience will physically touch your vinyl if you're a good DJ" - a statement which suggests you throw sharp plastic objects into the crowd. Clearly you wouldn't do this - which means you should probably go back and re-read what I'd written ;)
I started mixing and continue to do it to this day. It's important for anyone who is djing.
> You cannot get creative with beat matching. The process of beat matching is literally just quantising two tracks together. Everything else beyond that is "mixing" - which is where the creative process happens. But that is not "beat matching".
Sure, I'll give you that
> All DJing is just playing other peoples records. You're not up there with a guitar ffs. So it doesn't matter if it's an vinyl or an MP3 - that's just a technical detail. What actually matters is how you mix those records, not beat match them.
Technical detail is what this discussion is about. I never use the term "beat matching" because it's kind of been all in one for me. However, "beat matching" does matter. You're telling me that train wrecking is okay as long as it's mixed good.
> You do realise you just argued that "The audience will physically touch your vinyl if you're a good DJ" - a statement which suggests you throw sharp plastic objects into the crowd. Clearly you wouldn't do this - which means you should probably go back and re-read what I'd written ;)
I was referring to what you said:
"I've never gotten the same emotional connection with CDJs nor Ableton."
I feel like you're jabbing at me now. I wasn't trying to be disrespectful. If you want to play that game, well, we could do that all day. Not helping anyone out though.
Mixing clear is. The discussion was whether beat matching live matters. (you still need to quantise your tracks if you use Ableton but you do it before the gig rather than during it).
> Technical detail is what this discussion is about. I never use the term "beat matching" because it's kind of been all in one for me. However, "beat matching" does matter. You're telling me that train wrecking is okay as long as it's mixed good.
Nobody was arguing that train wrecking your way through each mix is a good thing. Nor was I arguing that we shouldn't discuss the technical detail.
> I was referring to what you said:(
> > "I've never gotten the same emotional connection with CDJs nor Ableton."*
Yes, but you ignored the first part where I discussed that I was talking about the tactile sensation rather than the musicality. That context is essential to the sentence you quoted.
> I feel like you're jabbing at me now. I wasn't trying to be disrespectful. If you want to play that game, well, we could do that all day. Not helping anyone out though.
Sorry if you feel that way - I assure you that wasn't my intention. However you're not really in a position to play the sympathy card given the tone of your posts leading up to this point.
This is patently false, and particularly turntablists know it. There are several ways to match beats that are hard for computers (e.g. 3 over 4), or manually swinging the beat (computers don't have the funk), particularly to match a live band or instrument.
I understand why people like Ableton, but don't pretend it's not limiting to expressivity. It's like why piano players still play chords manually instead of just triggering them -- the analog human input actually makes it sound better than worse and the human aspect is usually what the audience came for.
Every choice you make is limiting. There are things you can do with ableton you simply cannot do with turntable mixing alone.
Actually the main reason I switched to Ableton was because it was much easier to match music that isn't quantised because I started to throw in a lot of rock, metal and industrial sounds into my techno sets. What I wanted was long mixes with such tracks and while I could "drop" non-dance tracks in with vinyl, the effect wasn't as polished nor as sympathetic to the techno sound I was trying to achieve. This is in spite of me already being an accomplished multi-deck DJ who was competent with mixing different time signatures and other quirky tracks that many others might avoid.
I do still love my decks though. It's not an "either / or" for me. I'd alternate between the different formats depending on the gig and the sound I wanted to create.
> I understand why people like Ableton, but don't pretend it's not limiting to expressivity
Limiting in some ways, liberating in others. Vinyl has it's own limiting factors too. They're just different tools with different advantages and disadvantages. Saying one is better than the other is purely a subjective opinion based on the DJing style of the person arguing it.
aren't you the guy that was talking about ableton a couple parts back?
I've DJed on vinyl, CDs and Ableton. My most creative sets have come from Ableton as I've been able to mash up music from genres I simply couldn't have if I were beat mixing them on vinyl (which was actually the reason I learned Ableton in the first place). However I'm still ostensibly just playing other peoples music.
There is a lot of ego amongst some DJs where they liken themselves to musicians but it is a great deal harder to write music and perform that - live - than it is to DJ (this I know from experience as well). Which is why I objected when the OP made the comparison of himself to a band performing.
As an example I have mixed from house at 125bpm straight into drum and bass at 175, gradually adjusting the tempo during the transition with ableton live while keeping both records perfectly in sync and without pitch shifting either. You simply can't do that with turntables..
You keep sitting on HN and talking about that one time you opened for DMC and shitting on a techno DJ who does nothing like what you do, and we will keep producing creative experiences in OUR format using the same equipment you do in different ways.
This is like working on a riced-out sleeper Civic versus building a rally WRX. Yeah, we both use socket wrenches, but the cars are built entirely differently. I wouldn’t come over to your garage and lecture you about suspension travel, and you wouldn’t come to my garage to lecture me about whatever it is Civic dragsters care about (turbo pressure?). There are similarities. There are differences.
Your craft is fading into irrelevance. You shouldn’t be gatekeeping kids who click with Live just because something worked for you. Techno and turntablism are dramatically different styles. Extol the virtues of doing it your way and respect that there are others. Last time I stood behind Daft Punk while they worked (swing-a-ling), they were not working the way you think they are, by the way, so you might want to check your examples.
This might surprise you, but if people leave one of my venues feeling good and have absolutely no recollection of who I am, I still count that as a victory. I’m there for the music, not how fast I can crab walk a cross. I recognize turntablists view their self promotion differently and make the evening about them, which is why technical skill on the deck matters. I welcome trainspotters in my booth so they can see how easy it is to express themselves creatively and give their friends a good time. It’s just a way more positive vibe than... whatever it is you’re doing here.
I always thought of party promotion and djing as a single holistic art form and that the crowd was actually the creative product and not the music and the lights or anything else. At the end of the day, you're building a community and want people leaving saying they just had the best night of their life, and music is only a part of it.
Wrong.
> You keep sitting on HN and talking about that one time you opened for DMC and shitting on a techno DJ who does nothing like what you do, and we will keep producing creative experiences in OUR format using the same equipment you do in different ways.
You mad. Who said I didn't mix techno using other equipment? Because I was in DMC, I'm just a tablist now? I was in a technical discussion and you just poured a bunch of salt into this
> Your craft is fading into irrelevance. You shouldn’t be gatekeeping kids who click with Live just because something worked for you. Techno and turntablism are dramatically different styles. Extol the virtues of doing it your way and respect that there are others. Last time I stood behind Daft Punk while they worked (swing-a-ling), they were not working the way you think they are, by the way, so you might want to check your examples.
Yeah, skratching isnt as fun as it used to be which is why I've only been mixing for years now so I'll give you that one. Who was gatekeeping kids who click live? I wasn't. I was in a technical discussion about djing.
> This might surprise you, but if people leave one of my venues feeling good and have absolutely no recollection of who I am, I still count that as a victory. I’m there for the music, not how fast I can crab walk a cross. I recognize turntablists view their self promotion differently and make the evening about them, which is why technical skill on the deck matters. I welcome trainspotters in my booth so they can see how easy it is to express themselves creatively and give their friends a good time. It’s just a way more positive vibe than... whatever it is you’re doing here.
cool? How was I creating a negative vibe?
Turntablists and edm djs live in very different worlds with different audiences and different expectations.
I used to do event promotion for an extremely large weekly EDM event and turntablists (including very big names and DMC winners) just cleared the room almost every time we booked them, even if people appreciated the technical ability. The thing is that EDM audiences aren't interested in how hard the dj is working -- they just want to forget where they are and dance and not think about how the music gets made.
There are some tablist who don't mix and yeah, they're weak. Don't assume that all of them don't know how to mix though.
Lol, at 15 minutes, i'm like halfway into my second song, lol.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this conversation is a musical journey. That is a talent in itself. A surprisingly difficult on in fact - which even many top DJs don't do well. But it's a very different style of DJing to the stuff DMC turntablists would be adept at.
It's two different worlds - like comparing progressive rock to punk and saying "they're both guitar music"
There’s definitely an elitist side to the new turntable purism though and I think DJ-ing with software is much more practical and accessible for most. Although I think it makes sense to try out turntables at some point just to understand where it comes from.
When you talk about mixing in Ableton, the one thing I wonder about is the live aspect. In most DJ-software it’s super easy to set cue points and loops and do remixes on the fly. As far as I understand, with Ableton you’d have to prepare your track properly by cutting it up in ‘clips’ before-hand. Or does that become super fast with practice?
I'd actually recommend Traktor (https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/traktor/) if you want some training wheels/assistance getting all the beatmatching stuff right. It's a really great compromise between "live-ness" and all of the handy functionality you get from using software.
Some CDJs have pretty reliable/great sounding effects built in that do the job really well.
It's probably harder to get good at handling the mixer, levels and EQ as DJ software abstracts this away with auto-gain (again if you have no solid experience in sound engineering). Learning how to choose good cue points (phrasing) will again take some time if you have no idea about musical composition, but it can be simplified (usually 16-32 bars, outro -> intro, breakdown -> buildup). On top of that, add 'harmonic mixing'.
The thing is, if you don't put in the time to learn beatmatching by ear and hands, you likely won't learn how to listen attentively. Even if you auto-match the tempos based on BPM, you'll get ugly phase mismatches on the kicks and snares/claps that will sound bad and you won't even be able to notice how a small nudge could make it all gel much better.
Another tendency is to simply mix and switch tracks too fast because you have nothing else to do, the software makes it instant. The audience always takes a longer time to get into a track than you.
But in the end, I've seen no correlation between skill and event lineups.
Source: 15+ years of experience
Plus you know (and hopefully respect) where it all started / came from.
Of course, if you never learn to beatmatch by ear (and never learn to drum), you probably won't develop the skill, leading you to think the mix is right on while educated listeners are cringing.
Effects and filters only sound good if the underlying mix is great. Effects and filters are widely overused... Just like in Photoshop. Better just to start with fundamentally good art, it will need less additions.
[0]: At 130bpm, a tenth of a beat is 46ms, so if both tracks are auto-beatmatched to one-tenth of a beat precision (130.0) as is the typical accuracy claim of every major dj tool, it's still 4x less accurate than the human ear. (1000ms * 60s)/(130bpm * 10)
I never relied on the automatic beat detection. I manually adjusted the beat markers on every single track I played ahead of time. For most EDM the BPM doesn't waver at all, and most producers tend to use round numbers, so it's generally not actually that hard. The only trick is being consistent about where in the kick you mark it. I tend to use the snare/claps to calibrate, because those are generally where you can tell if there's drift. It's also easy to shift a track by a few milliseconds live if you notice that it's a bit off.
> it's still 4x less accurate than the human ear.
It's still way way more consistent than even the best analog turntables. You have to adjust constantly when mixing with technic 1200s because of drift.
Manually pre-setting tracks has to be very consistent too -- if you pick claps on one track and go for snare on another, claps might bias the upbeat and snare the downbeat and when Ableton matches the tracks the kick will sound off.
That's the problem as you identify: any two tracks may have a sound that matches best for that particular mix point, so it might need to be adjusted live.
But if you are adjusting tracks live by a few ms... It sounds like you have learned beatmatching and are using it!
To your other point: analog turntables, especially 1200s in good shape, do not drift. A proper beatmatch can and should ride the whole track. Multiple manufacturers make turntables of this quality. The error you saw was either poorly maintained equipment or an inexperienced DJ.
> A proper beatmatch can and should ride the whole track
You are simply wrong if you think two technics 1200s of the quality that are in most clubs maintain sub-11ms accuracy over the course of a 5 minute mix. They drift and wobble.
It’s really hard to do what Jeff mills is doing with turntables. Like years and years of many hours a day practice.
That said, Ableton and other digital DJing software are a perfectly good place to learn and grow, just not a substitute for putting in the hard work.
> just not a substitute for putting in the hard work
It appears that it is. Well, not really of course, the actual important part of choosing what, when and how to mix, responding to the audience and creating the atmosphere - that's something you still have to do.
Drexciya
James Stinson
Gerald Donald
DJ Stingray
Sherard Ingram
Der Zyklus
Dopplereffekt
Gedankenexperiment
Transllusion
Clarence G
The Other People Place
Underground Resistance
Robert Hood
Marcellus Pittman
Moodymann
Theo Parrish
Juan Atkins
DJ Qu
DJ Jus-Ed
Eduardo de la Calle
Terrence Dixon
Omar S
Clone Records
p.s. Thanks for keeping +8 off that list ;)
It was so big that the teeny tiny Jeff Mills couldn't really be seen behind the 8 decks he was using (I mean seriously, 8 decks.. who does that?).
That was 20 years ago this year, and other than Orbital live it is still probably one of the best electronic music nights I've ever been to. And considering I grew up in Manchester in the 1990s, I've been to a lot of Techno nights!
Anyone enjoys the list you've posted (which is very excellent by the way, we should totally be BFFs!), might also enjoy Dave Clark, the Baron of Techno and for something a little bit more on the bouncy house side there is also the giant Carl Cox.
I'm listening to Changes Of Life[1] full volume right now, I've literally got goosebumps.
The best part was when he grabbed the mike and said something to the effect of "this is my 909, I take it everywhere I go" and the crowd went crazy.
I got to hang out at the venue before and after the show through some record label connections. They put a special Funktion One sound system in just for that night (total, unnecessary overkill for the small venue). During soundcheck, I was standing alone next to Jeff in the middle of the dancefloor looking at the decor and listening. I was too scared to strike up a conversation, just didn't even know what to say.
Detroit. Memorial Day weekend.