iDJ is delighted to welcome onboard our new frontline correspondent from the DJ booth, Harold Heath. Here, he tackles the dreaded pre-recorded mix...
Of
all the many crimes and misdemeanours a DJ can commit, 'miming' to a
pre-recorded mix is the one that will send you straight to DJ hell.
DJs can be late, they can party a little too hard, they can
occasionally mis-time an air-punch, and we will still welcome them
with open arms, but to completely fake a gig is considered pretty
much unforgivable.
A
DJ is supposed to be at the helm of an event, providing the
soundtrack for hundreds of individual adventures. They're not meant
to pre-record a flawlessly mixed set that they can then mime to,
simply in order to look good. Aside from the fact that to do so is
unethical, it's
also the antithesis, the literal opposite of what a DJ is supposed to
do, making the ego of the needy dickwad on the decks the focus of the
evening when it's the crowd who should be the stars.
Playing
a pre-recorded set also leaves you no options if you've judged the
crowd wrong and your pre-mixed set has completely cleared your
dancefloor. Or worse, nearly
completely cleared your dancefloor, but leaving a lone
white girl doing
a spiritual
interpretative dance.
Technology
now exists that enables you to mix tunes without even having to learn
how to beatmatch, and you can edit, sample and loop on the fly. All
these things that used to be incredibly difficult to perform on a
pair of 1210s are now so easy that children can do them, and yet some
DJs are still afraid to actually do it live. Just how easy does it
have to be? Would you rather that we hired two DJs? One to select and
mix the music, and you to look buff, mime mixing and do
hands-in-the-air and make-some-noise stuff? Because that's
the logical conclusion of this particular trend of fakery.
So
why does it happen? The standard industry answer is that when
producers get a hit, they land some DJ gigs - but often without
really having any relevant skills apart from owning loads of
drop-crotch jogging bottoms and being able to pretend the knobs on
the mixer are too hot to touch. In the pre-digital age, a DJ in this
situation would either have to learn to mix pretty quickly or they
just wouldn't take the gigs. In 2016, a quick bit of pre-recording in
Ableton, the addition of an immaculate 50s-style grease-cut and some
sailor tattoos and you're
good to go.
But
it's not just the youngsters who are pulling this trick. I've also
heard tales of old hands, respected names who rock up with a USB
loaded up with a pre-recorded mix, and we've
all seen plenty of footage of Electronic EDM Music superstar 'DJs'
pressing play on a CDJ and then needlessly twiddling the knobs, as
though they'd created a track that needed constant EQ, volume and
tempo tweaks in order for it to be played.
The
technology has made it simple, the easy pickings of decent DJ gigs
make it hard to resist, and if you want, it does seem like you can
get away with it. But you can also probably get away with stealing
£20 out of your Nan's purse - it doesn't mean you
should do it.
As
a working DJ, you can push a monitor onto a fan and you'll be
forgiven, you can make it rain at a techno festival while dancing
camply to your own brand of minimal techno and ignoring the entire
audience, you can even post a picture on Instagram of some decks on
the beach with the hashtag #decksonthebeach or indeed
#myofficefortoday - you may do all these sins and you will be
forgiven, but the one thing you can't ever, ever
do, is fake the funk.
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