How important are those dials DJ's endlessly fuck around with

FeetJerky

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Eh. Not really. Trigger a sample or effect, sweep a filter, DJs don't really do much of anything. Which is probably why Paris Hilton is successful at it.

I remember going to a "nightclub" with some friends from school about 20 years ago. They had a "special guest DJ" spinning some shitty House music and dude had THREE of those CD decks all hooked up. Asshole wasn't even mixing tracks, just playing one song after another with no actual DJing involved.

I guess one of the DJ's friends heard us joking about it while walking by because he "swaggered" up to us and just said "Y'all hatin! Y'all hatin!" before stumbling off so of course we started laughing even harder. After that we just went and got drunk in an alley.

EDIT: I should clarify, I'm talking about the modern era of EDM DJs. 90% of them are beyond useless. Hip Hop DJs, aka "turntablists" are legit as fuck. Think Grandmaster Flash, DJ Shadow, Mix Master Mike, Cut Chemist, etc. The guys that actually work their turntables like a musical instrument instead of playing back a recording while waving at the crowd.

EDIT 2:

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Ralfakick

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What about at weddings too? I just googled it and the average cost is $1700 for a DJ I guess that’s not too bad in the grand scheme of things. Let’s say’s reception is six hours that’s nearly $300 an hour plus any tip not bad if you get a couple a month

I had a friend that DJ’d at Pulsations (mentioned on The Goldbergs no less) and he would borrow some of my records and CDs he had a decent turntable setup. One time a friend DJ of his had his records and equipment stolen and we went to all the record stores on the Main Line (at the time there were three or four good ones) to help him buy cds and records.


Pulsations had the actual robot from Rocky IV


Someone I used to work with does the after party djing on the radio after the main dance party on Saturday nights at some place on one of the channels around here it’s weird hearing his name if I happen catch it coming back from somewhere.

 
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fake

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No, those knobs don’t make a notable change from the audience perspective; it’s all for show. All DJs are really doing is matching the tempo of all the songs, looping certain sections to create / release tension, and making some other tweaks. They’re also hyping up the crowd. Acting like they’re at NASA Mission Control is silly.

For weddings, you’re mostly paying for the guy to lug the sound system and set it up and lose his Saturday to your party.
 

terry.330

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Most of them aren’t even tempo matching or timing the drops, they’re just using preexisting playlists they didn’t even put together. The constant knob tweaking is just for show. Bunch of poser assclowns.

Modern “raves” are just a bunch of douchebag bros and hos there for the light show and drugs though so they don’t know or care.

It’s all about the vibes bro!

Actual DJing takes a lot of skill and years of practice.
 

NeoSneth

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At a big concert? They do almost nothing. It's all staged.
At a smaller club, quite a lot.
 

Takumaji

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Hoi, guys, not so fast here.

Sure, there's lotsa show today where digital decks enable practically anyone who cares to do some sorta mix but there's more to it than that, way more. Different tracks have different sounds/atmos, one sounds brighter, the other sounds darker, one has more bass, the other track is very bright but not so bassy, etc., so in order to shape the sound and create something new in the process, you gotta EQ quite a bit to prevent harsh cuts. Sometimes that's just what's needed, on other times you need something more smooth, for ex. if you're doing a low-bpm thing with some ambient mixed in.

You also gotta keep the volume/loudness in check. If you do varied sets with old and new music (say roughly from the 60s to now), you can't just throw in a Stax track from 1965 next to a current hip hop production (which more often than not means a victim of the loudness war) without adjusting things a bit, or a lot.

Then there's the cueing, which means setting things so that two records/tracks play in sync. This used to be one of the core elements of mixing until auto beat matching appeared, you gotta adjust things a bit here and there, depending on the track, some are very difficult to mix coz they aren't beat exact or have tempo changes so again, you gotta fiddle around quite a bit to get that down.

And then there's stagefright, tension, inner drive... yeah, well, maybe misses Hilton is missing out here a little, parts of the thing have become a bit of a farce in this day and age where ppl with their Denons and AlphaTetas and Pioneers can be multi-million-$ superstar DJs. That's okay, tho, the upper class here is one of its own that has not a lot to do with what's going on music-wise so they don't count in the grand picture.

Sometimes I wanna molotov their friggin' decks. One day I will, watch this space - - -
 

GoosehanX

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I guess one of the DJ's friends heard us joking about it while walking by because he "swaggered" up to us and just said "Y'all hatin! Y'all hatin!" before stumbling off so of course we started laughing even harder. After that we just went and got drunk in an alley.
Let's be real, y'all were totally hatin.
 

pixeljunkie

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I was gonna say, if I see Mr Oizo doing it, I know something is happening. If Paris Hilton does it....
 

StevenK

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Fun fact - everyone's favourite DJ Jimmy Saville claimed to have invented the idea of mixing records across two turntables, though it's heavily disputed
 

sirlynxalot

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Fun fact. Biggie Smalls did a concert on a hot day and the records his dj was using were warping and unplayable in the heat so Biggie put him on blast.

(But it was all a front, Biggie knew his dj couldn't help the situation and just wanted to maintain his persona and deflect any crowd animosity away from himself)
 

lithy

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Fun fact. Biggie Smalls did a concert on a hot day and the records his dj was using were warping and unplayable in the heat so Biggie put him on blast.

(But it was all a front, Biggie knew his dj couldn't help the situation and just wanted to maintain his persona and deflect any crowd animosity away from himself)

Wasn't he dead before you were born?
 

Moob Butter

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Fun fact - everyone's favourite DJ Jimmy Saville claimed to have invented the idea of mixing records across two turntables, though it's heavily disputed

He had other things to fuck about with at parties than the dials on his decks.
 

ratson

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We have a dj channel here on tv. They move their hands over the dials but don't seem to realize that the small white indicator bar on it is visible to all and doesn't move😅🤣

Edit: shitload of typos
 
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