Any vinyl-only DJs on here?

leakyboots

Just curious, everyone seems to be using laptops and CD decks these days.

I'm a complete novice just starting out and I'm going the vinyl-only route, is this ridiculous of me considering the technology available?

I've been a vinyl-head for years so I have plenty of ammo for sets already but obviously I need to get handy on the decks before looking for gigs (if that's where I want to go with it, for the moment I just want to mess around in my own house). I have over ten years of gigging experience as a musician in various bands but I thought this might be a good string to add to my bow.

Any hints or tips, dos and don'ts for me? Apologies if this has been done to death.

holystungun9

I've moved countries a few times so while I love my collection, it stays in my parents house and I haven't bought records in five years or so. I love my records but having music in my laptop is the ultimate convenience.

While I'm not doing my part, I hope others can keep buying it and keep it going.
I was in Germany this summer and at two gigs I was delighted to see the djs playing as much vinyl as CDs.

VinylJunkie

Yes, a lot of the lads here are Vinyl heads. Why? Because it makes us cooler than everyone else.

ianuss

The best piece of advice I could give is that you just need to be sure to colour co-ordinate your fixed gear bicycle with your turntables. And pastel coloured non-essential glasses are a must of course. Oh, and grow a decent fringe too.

Selik

Get Serato and have the best of all worlds, simple!

iamstop

I'm all vinyl all the time. I even named my radio show to reflect as much.

Passion of the Crates.

Here is my most recent show if you are interested:
http://www.mixcloud.com/iamstop/passion-of-the-crates-50-shades-of-bass-200912/

Vinyl > CD

dubsbhoy

Vinyl and CDS for the simple fact that some great music ain't available on vinyl

I have noticed in the past year or two a lot of people looking to buy technics and starting to buy vinyl again, i've also noticed if i leave tracks in a crate online for a few weeks they are going out of stock.

I also think that vinyl djs will have their day again somewhere in the future but at the moment live sets seem to be the craze.

My advice would be to have both formats available

Executive Steve

Would have proudly posted in this thread a month or two ago, but after nine years of playing out 100% vinyl I'm after getting a lend of a CDJ 850 just to see how comfortable I feel with it and by Christ it's a revelation.

As soon as all the venues upgrade to the new generation of USB enabled CDJ's I'm going to be increasingly playing digital music I think, the vinyl market in the music I'm interested in is increasingly shrinking to the extent that I just can't find enough new music to keep my sets as fresh as I want them to be.

As for burning CD's, CD's in general, and laptops - I'd banish them all to the ninth circle of Dante's Inferno, but being able to rock up and play unreleased music through a highly user friendly interface from a bloody keyring just seems so damn civilised.

And CUE BUTTONS!!!!!! Nobody ever told me about Cue Buttons before, mental things, the amount of time you save between a cue button and being able to select tunes with a jogwheel from folders on a USB stick is actually insane, I can be cueing up a tune and getting it beatmatched in the a third of the time I used to spend putting a record back in it's sleeve and hunting for the one white label out of a dozen in my bag that I want to play next. Amazing.

Still not ever going to abandon vinyl, and wouldn't say I'll be playing digital music out for at least another few months, but really, this feels like a giant leap forward.

Executive Steve

But yeah - fan -> record collector -> DJ, if you skip any of those steps then get to the back of the queue.

hans aus dtschl

I'm 99% vinyl.
I'll play the odd track by a friend or by myself on Serato.

The problem I have with digital is my ability to collect an insane amount of rubbish in a very short time. If the digital tracks cost as much as vinyl I'd probably be sorted haha.

leakyboots

I'm only starting out so that's why I asked, I was just curious as to what others were doing. I was wondering has vinyl gone so out of fashion that its nearly a unique selling point when approaching pubs?

I've gone - Fan -> Collector (first the records I loved myself, now, it's records I love and want to play for others in a party/gig context) -> Just bought a set of Technics with the intention of getting handy on them. Getting an analog mixer in the next month.

That said, there are tracks that I just can't get on vinyl, cracking up at times but there's plenty of music out there to dig through, you win some you lose some. Maybe down the road I'll get CDJs aswell, but for the moment I'll start from vinyl and work towards that. Been listening to some of the vinyl-only sets (Iamstop especially)some of ye on here have put up, I've a long road ahead of me!

Also... cue buttons... strikes me as 'paint-by-numbers', is it not cheating a little?

ianuss

I wouldn't be bothered with what others are doing. But in saying that, there does seem to be a good few people around Dublin who play/collect vinyl. I don't know about you having a unique selling point though, I'd doubt that a pub would be that arsed on what format you played. If anything I would have thought they'd prefer laptops or cdj's due to space.

Like Steve said, the style of music you're buying will dictate what way you dj. I started collecting vinyl about a year ago and it was because a lot of what I was in to was only available on vinyl. Plus I like the idea of collecting and it's just not the same with mp3's or burnt cd's so it just made sense.

jtsuited

if you've been a 'vinyl head for years', then just get two turntables, a mixer and you're sorted.
I love records. Love buying records, love playing records. We spend the majority of our time in front of flippin computers.

kunst nugget

jtsuited wrote: »

if you've been a 'vinyl head for years', then just get two turntables, a mixer and you're sorted.
I love records. Love buying records, love playing records. We spend the majority of our time in front of flippin computers.

My computer doesn't flip. It's dead boring like that.

milltown

Executive Steve wrote: »

And CUE BUTTONS!!!!!! Nobody ever told me about Cue Buttons before, mental things, the amount of time you save between a cue button and being able to select tunes with a jogwheel from folders on a USB stick is actually insane, I can be cueing up a tune and getting it beatmatched in the a third of the time I used to spend putting a record back in it's sleeve and hunting for the one white label out of a dozen in my bag that I want to play next. Amazing.

When you finally meet a Sync button it's going to blow your mind!

iamstop

Executive Steve wrote: »

But yeah - fan -> record collector -> DJ, if you skip any of those steps then get to the back of the queue.

I 100% agree that fan comes first. You need to love, not just like, the music before the next step but in my case I became a DJ before I was a collector. Now there is no doubt that I am all three.

Executive Steve

"It’s easy to spot a DJ who did not cut his teeth playing records, who has always had 50,000 songs on his laptop and has thus never negotiated the glorious parameters vinyl’s bulk imposes. Who has never spent hours poring through a collecti
on before a gig, figuring out how to cram six hours of music into two milk crates, mentally building set lists, reading a crowd yet unassembled. You can spot him because he sucks. His sets lack logic and flavor, conviction and shape. Remember how before we all had cellphones, we’d make plans and stick to them, and this lent a certain structure to our lives, forced us to be where we said we’d be and to know where we were going ahead of time? No? How old are you, anyway?"

tbh

jtsuited

Spot on. I still maintain that there is a very good reason the best djs tend to be record heads. Again, it's not that to be a great dj, you must use vinyl, it's that the great djs tend to use vinyl. Slight but significant difference.
It's a very interesting point about fan>collector>dj, because it does explain a lot. I think a big part of being a good dj is showing your genuine love for the music you play.
I've seen a lot of the younger digital heads just play sets where there is no true love or passion for the music, and they just go through the motions, playing anything from their bloated disposable collections focusing solely on their technical abilities and not on the art or craft of it.
It's sort of a case of vinyl ensuring (through its limitations and expense) that you pay serious attention to these aspects.

joker77

It's a different world that we live in now - so I wouldn't be too hard on the younger folk who start out, some of them would never have even seen a record player growing up!

I started collecting records at 14 or 15 (1992-ish)- then a mate suggested we get decks. Back then though - to be a DJ - that was the only option - you bought records, bought decks.

It's all good and well for anyone who was a teenager in the 70s/80s/90s thinking that we're great, but was it purely that there was no choice there? Most houses would have had a record player, we were familiar with vinyl growing up. For the younger folk - it's just not like that. They're not familiar with the format - music to them is MP3s, why would DJing be any different.

dubsbhoy

jtsuited wrote: »

It's sort of a case of vinyl ensuring (through its limitations and expense) that you pay serious attention to these aspects.

Spot on

You don't buy to many "bad" records because of exspense, space it takes up and it can taint the rest of the collection.

I've only been buying digital music since 2007 and I don't know how many times i've gone back through folders filed and deleted a heap of crap.

If i have a cart of music on juno records - it will sit there for about 2 weeks until i've gone and done my research on the tracks. if i have a cart of tracks on any of the digital sites i don't usually bother looking into the tracks and just check out.

Executive Steve

jtsuited wrote: »

focusing solely on their technical abilities

Yeah, you wouldn't catch me at that lark, would be a very short set if I had to rely on technical abilities.