What do DJs like Tiesto, Van Buuren, etc actually do on stage ?

Emp_Fab

georgenadaintl said:

I replied to it. What a DJ does is the same whether festival or club. Source: my aforementioned friends. 

Plainly it isn't.  You are talking about 'VYNIL'.  I know about people mixing vinyl on the fly, picking the tracks, beat matching etc, but this is not apparently what is going on at these huge gigs.  To define a DJ as good or bad based on the choice of media is a bit silly too.  

I get that a small club DJ has some feedback from the crowd re energy levels etc, but at these huge gigs, the DJ is pretty isolated and I can't believe they are deciding what to play there and then "depending what the mood is, who's on the dancefloor, the energy level, how crowded it is and so on." That would be like a big name band making the setlist up as they went along.  I also think that the crowd will dance to whatever the music is - that there is no feedback.  This would make choosing to select tracks and mix them live an unnecessarily risky option.  I suppose the same could be said of a band playing live vs miming, but it's virtually impossible to spot a DJ who's just pressed 'play' on a pre-mixed session and is dancing about and pressing buttons on a fairly hidden console compared to a full band pretending to play instruments and sing - so why would any big DJ take the risk of doing it live ?

Don't think I'm putting the boot into DJs - they have their place in the world, I'm just trying to establish if, at these huge gigs, they are actually doing anything up there or just 'miming'.

The other big question I have that I don't know the answer to is; do these people actually make the music they are playing ?  Are they playing stuff they've composed and recorded, or are they playing other people's tracks - and if so, who are these 'other people' and how the hell does that work re the lack of credit, and the royalties ?

Fretwired

@Emp_Fab .. the better DJs actually make their own music and play it live .. one of the top acts in the world is Booka Shade .. they release their own albums, make their own music and mashup other people's music when playing live. They use Native Instruments Tracktor and Maschine ..

guitarfishbay

They do as much as they fancy. If you have the right gear onstage you can be changing stuff up to suit the crowd/whatever.

I don't think there is any one set methodology.

mike257

I was on sound for a small club show by an American DJ/producer called Le Youth a few months back. Lovely bloke, clearly hugely passionate about music, and it transpired that he'd done his time in a signed touring band where he'd took on the musical and business responsibilites and been left with all the debt when it folded due to various flaky band members. Now he tours the world with a pair of USB drives in his bag and a set of CDJ2000 hired in at every venue for him, travelling light and living the dream! The music he plays is split about 50/50 between tracks he's produced himself and other people's stuff and the atmosphere he generated on the night was electric. Like others have said, a lot of the work is in the preparation.

mike257

ToneControl;363749" said:

I assume some DJs use Ableton, which means they can change arrangements and length of tracks constantly during a performance. To be fair, you could learn to do this in 30 minutes, so it's just adding more detail to the DJ's tools for trying to manage a dancefloor

I'd have to disagree with that really - Ableton and the like are capable of a lot of creative things, saying it's something you just learn in half an hour kind of undersells the skills and knowledge involved. I could teach someone three chords or a basic drum beat in 30 minutes too. Wouldn't make them a guitarist/drummer. Some of these guys are very musically aware and know exactly what they're doing. Not disputing that there's plenty out there soaking up the adulation for just sticking a playlist on, but they aren't all like that.

viz

As I mentioned before, the main added value of these guys is the creating of unique mixes beforehand. That's proper music-making, and isn't necessarily just adding existing samples together, there can be a lot of input from the artist. Then the live show is them performing them; some sections and effects are added on the fly, and there's lots of opportunities to tweak and manage the crowd. I think the whole thing is quite technical, skilled and artistic when done well.

chillidoggy

Emp_Fab said:

So no ideas as to what they do then ?

I reckon they get more fanny than you can shake a stick at.

Grunfeld

mike257 said:

 Some of these guys are very musically aware and know exactly what they're doing. Not disputing that there's plenty out there soaking up the adulation for just sticking a playlist on, but they aren't all like that.

For me one of the questions is, "Would it be possible as a listener/ punter to tell the difference between someone faking it (who just presses Play), and someone like your fella who has worked at it?"  (Because I totally accept that anyone who works at something will gain a level of understanding which a non-expert won't notice.)

I wonder if it would be like something only another skilled DJ would notice?  Just like any of us, as guitarists, know very quickly whether someone is playing or merely pretending to play... but I suspect that Joe Non-guitarist hasn't got a clue who's the real deal and who's just pulling shapes.

hungrymark

Emp, as others have said, the good ones will choose what they play on the night. Your point is basically 'I don't know what they do so they can't be doing anything', which is plainly nonsense. They'll cross-fade from one track to another so you can't hear the join, slow tracks down, speed them up, scratch when appropriate, cut tracks short if they're not working, jump from one to another and back if they see fit etc. They'll have a rough idea of a set list beforehand (which obviously takes prep) but will improvise the tracks depending on the nature of the crowd.

And I haven't been to a club in years.

Emp_Fab

Everyone's guessing.  I just wondered if anyone actually knew what the majority of big venue DJs, like Guetta, Van Buuren, Tiesto etc are doing when they are tweaking knobs and dancing about.  The temptation must be massive to just play a pre-mixed set and just pretend you're mixing live.  After all, the chances of getting caught are bordering on nil and the advantages are huge.

From the answers so far, nobody really knows, and nobody knows much about the ownership of the actual music being played.

Oh well !

Karlos

I'm not entirely sure anyone actually cares about this as there's usually a lot of derision of DJ's on guitar forums but Emp did ask - well here goes.

A lot of big name DJ's have been caught out in recent years either miming or playing a bunch of pre-mixed tracks. Famously Peter Hook who mimed at a gig with a CD that was freely available off a magazine. He claimed that DJing was more that just mixing but that EQing the tracks was more important and that he had been taught by famous producer Arthur Baker - of course he's correct about EQing when mixing but he's talking shit when it comes to being able to mix and just fucking miming. 

You can't just play one song after another with no EQing or changes in volume - it would sound shite, a bit like a band where everyone is playing at full volume, you can't hear one instrument over another or hear one playing melodically in the background.

You don't actually need Traktor or Maschine (or Ableton) to break tracks up and create something new from 2, 3 or 4 tunes. DJ's have been doing this since Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash took old funk tunes and just used the breakdown and repeated them from one deck to another.  DJ's like Carl Cox have been doing very inventive stuff on 3 decks for decades which with the right EQ isolation means you can have the bass line from one track playing with the vocals from another an effects on another deck thus making a new version of the original track. That's what the big DJ's should be doing - but most aren't, they are just playing their hits. That's what people pay to hear though.

A lot of DJ's use software such as Traktor to do this now as you can have more decks and more sample all synced in the software or by midi to other devices or with Ableton.

DJing at a club or a festival - same thing, you need to get the crowd dancing. Whether it's a prepared set or just winged cus your reading the crowd is personal preference but most DJ's doing BIG gigs have most of their set prepped. You don't tend to take requests at festivals but you might at a club. All depends on the kind of club.

Most people around here probably think that a DJ just plays a bunch of other peoples tunes and gets pissed and fucks off home and I have no doubt that there's no way to change that perception (for some) but there's a lot more to it than that. 
It's easy to clear a dancefloor with a tune that went down well the week before because the crowd is different from the previous week. The skill (apart from mixing) is playing the right tunes at the right time and judging a crowd - taking the time to look around and get a feel for who's actually in the club not just what you know is in the Top 40.
The big DJ's mentioned in the O.P don't have that problem - all the people at the gig came to see them. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Karlos

Grunfeld said:

I wonder if it would be like something only another skilled DJ would notice?  Just like any of us, as guitarists, know very quickly whether someone is playing or merely pretending to play... but I suspect that Joe Non-guitarist hasn't got a clue who's the real deal and who's just pulling shapes.

Trainspotting. All DJ's do it. Not just identifying tunes but criticising the DJ's technique "I'd have mixed that in earlier" , "that transition was sloppy" - a lot of DJ's are so fucking critical it's unbearable but you can spot lazy DJ's who do minimal work. That's not to say DJ's that don't do incredible mixing, I mean DJ's that don't do what they have been billed to do.

Some of the best DJ's in the world do virtually no mixing - Richard Norris is sometimes so smashed the tunes finish before he's got another on the decks but you can bet your life the next choice will be so brilliant you just don't care about the mixing.

Fretwired said:

@Emp_Fab .. the better DJs actually make their own music and play it live .. one of the top acts in the world is Booka Shade .. they release their own albums, make their own music and mashup other people's music when playing live. They use Native Instruments Tracktor and Maschine ..

This is spot on. There are some very talented people creating music that is not just 'the same old tracks night after night'. They add a certain amount of spontaneity and variation to their sets depending on how where they want to take a particular track on the night.

It's easy to sync Traktor and Maschine via midi and play tracks and add loops and samples over the top and this enables DJ's to totally change the structure of their compositions.

This is a good example of what @Fretwired is talking about. Richie Hawtin has pioneered this kind of DJing. He's using 4 decks on Traktor and Maschine to add percussion and basslines to his own tracks (and some other peoples tunes). He also has FX routed through the mixer so he's not just mixing the EQ he's totally reshaping the sounds. He is creating wholly new tracks and he never does it the same twice. Now I know some of you will find this mindnumbing (like dancing around a car alarm) but some of you old trance guys might like it..?

There are DJ's that play 7 minute trance tunes one after the other (boring for some) and there are DJ's that totally do routines that don't last that long but show loads of skill and technique... and then there's guys that do a bit of both.

Unfortunately most peoples encounters with DJ's are the ones at weddings or local clubs that just have auto-play on some crappy software and they play the same playlist week in week out. I know a few of those.

Please watch this to the 30 second mark:

Then there's guys like Jeremy Ellis who's does this. He's not a DJ but this is a crossover of performance and DJ skills taken to a different level.

TL;DR - all DJ's are talentless wankers (before someone else says it)

%-(

chillidoggy

At the end of the day, who gives a shit?

Karlos

chillidoggy said:

At the end of the day, who gives a shit?

Emp ?

viz

Emp_Fab said:

Everyone's guessing.  I just wondered if anyone actually knew what the majority of big venue DJs, like Guetta, Van Buuren, Tiesto etc are doing when they are tweaking knobs and dancing about.  The temptation must be massive to just play a pre-mixed set and just pretend you're mixing live.  After all, the chances of getting caught are bordering on nil and the advantages are huge.

From the answers so far, nobody really knows, and nobody knows much about the ownership of the actual music being played.

Oh well !

you're right, I don't know much about it - I've chatted with some of these guys about it and watched their sets so it's not scientific but it's definitely not 1 answer. I saw Giorgio Moroder the other week - he was the producer in the 80's for Blondie et al, and he mixes those songs with more modern beats and effects and bells and whistles before the gig, and from my vantage point the live performance seems play and go. Levels are controlled by the sound crew. But I've seen others controlling the music, turning up the effects, adding repeated bits for as long as they want before releasing the next section, changing the song order, pulling in songs exactly when they choose, that sort of thing. Here's one of the Moroder gigs I was at - I think all the songs were his original productions. I was backstage and you could see there was no actual changing of the music, and what the other DJs really respect him for is his productions and mixes.

Emp_Fab

Great answer @KarlosSantos - thanks.  I appreciate the effort.  So, basically, it does appear that whilst there are plenty of DJs who do produce their own music and then mix live on the night, merging it with other tracks etc, the big name DJs tend not to.  For me, that would be a logical choice, were I a DJ.  The interaction with a club crowd has to be different from a giant sea of people in the distance.

I suppose the rise of the celebrity status of DJs has something to do with the type of music.  I can't picture huge crowds dancing to a mix of top 40 tunes, or worshipping a DJ doing that.  The crowd also need a focal point, otherwise, god forbid, they'd have to interact with each other like we used to have to do.  It's a different animal altogether.

I also have to assume that DJing is a popular hobby (that may or may not turn into a profession) because it enables people to be creative (to a degree) with music, without being able to play an instrument.  It also allows people to achieve a little bit of the attention normally awarded to live bands (which seems to be extrapolated to deity status with some DJs).  You could argue that the DJ gear is an instrument, and to an extent it is - depending on how it's used.  In the Richie Hawtin and Jeremy Ellis clips KarlosSantos posted, the gear is clearly an instrument(s), but the same gear could just be used to play a one hour sample, in which case it becomes a record player.  It's an odd situation that technology has brought us to.  At one end, the DJ is nothing more than a tape deck operator and at the other, they're a musician in their own right.

It does grind my gears a bit that the people enjoying the music generally seem to have no idea who composed and played / programmed it, nor if it even has a name.  They worship at the temple of the person operating the machinery that makes it come out of the speakers though.  Someone spent a lot of time crafting that music and they remain anonymous and (presumably) poorly rewarded for their efforts, both financially and in recognition.  That seems rather sad to me.

ToneControl

mike257 said:

ToneControl;363749" said:

I assume some DJs use Ableton, which means they can change arrangements and length of tracks constantly during a performance. To be fair, you could learn to do this in 30 minutes, so it's just adding more detail to the DJ's tools for trying to manage a dancefloor

I'd have to disagree with that really - Ableton and the like are capable of a lot of creative things, saying it's something you just learn in half an hour kind of undersells the skills and knowledge involved. I could teach someone three chords or a basic drum beat in 30 minutes too. Wouldn't make them a guitarist/drummer. Some of these guys are very musically aware and know exactly what they're doing. Not disputing that there's plenty out there soaking up the adulation for just sticking a playlist on, but they aren't all like that.

my point was you can learn to play a song from a prepared Live set in half an hour, so even the more advanced tools can be played (in a basic way) on stage with little skill. Playing from a Live set is simple, IK have done iPhone apps to do this for a few years

Certainly, Ableton has a lot of depth for getting to the point of having an arranged Live set, and it would take a long time to be an expert. I doubt that many punters would be able to assess how much hand-crafting went into a Live set, or whether it was just a few basic library loops

Karlos

The reason a lot of DJ's use Ableton is for it's 'warping' function. If a track has real drummer the bmp will drift (obviously) - DJ's playing disco especially use this function to warp the track so it has a steady bpm so it's easier to mix. 

Some DJ's do this as preparation then play the warped tracks with a digital vinyl system - these tracks (or edits) are really common. 

Some DJ's use Ableton in session view are barely DJing at all. Some find this lazy as all tracks are tempo locked to the master bpm.

Ableton is a production software that has DJ functionality. It's best used as a performance software of as an accompaniment to regular DJ software.

Emp_Fab said:

It does grind my gears a bit that the people enjoying the music generally seem to have no idea who composed and played / programmed it, nor if it even has a name.  They worship at the temple of the person operating the machinery that makes it come out of the speakers though.  Someone spent a lot of time crafting that music and they remain anonymous and (presumably) poorly rewarded for their efforts, both financially and in recognition.  That seems rather sad to me.

You'd be surprised at just how much of DJ's set the crowd does know and who wrote it. There are some that are creating on-the-spot as mentioned but most play a mixture of known songs and new and exclusive tunes. Having tunes that no-one (or not many) people have is many DJ's big advantage and that's where the big guys have it good. They get sent music directly from artists or other DJ's so that they can play them first in some stupidly massive club and the get the new track instant exposure. 

You be surprised at how the DJ world (on the web and forums) can go crazy after a guy plays one track at a club on the right night. People asking for tracks I.D's after someone has posted a shitty clip on YouTube is the norm. Everyone gets bent out of shape trying to get the track and by the time it's on iTunes it's got 1000' of pre-orders.

I'm waffling again... meh I just got in from a gig and I'm not tired. 

@-)

thecolourbox

I remember seeing Faithless and Calvin Harris at a festival, And wondering pretty much the same thing as the OP. They were both brilliantly enjoyable but it did just sound like a slightly differently eq'd version of the originals. What they did do was put on a much better show than others though

Grunfeld

 And it's definitely possible to be able to play an instrument well... and still come out with the same old crap gig after gig.

How many guitar players have you seen who just regurgitate the same pentatonic and blues licks?  They might as well just have a sampler and hit "play" -- because those licks will come out time and again.... here it is in A.... oh, now it's in B....

We can all be guilty of it and it won't stop any of us collecting our wages at the end of the night.