Completely out of touch old fart irrelevant opinion - but,

The fact that Meshuggah's brand of music isn't taken seriously by society, but DJ's have been embraced with seemingly open arms is what gets me worked up on this subject. But come on guys, I understand that electronic musicians do technically write songs, but how many of them are truly "musicians?"

what in the world are you talking about ?

Meshuggah sells a ton of records and is constantly on tour playing to huge crowds .... thats seems plenty appreciated to me

and plenty of these DJs are musicians

do you know that "Skrillex" is Sonny Moore from the band From First To Last ?

.... a band who played a brand of music not all that far from Meshuggah ..... From First to Last got plenty of respect

I toured with them on Warped Tour 2006 and they played in front of about 10 to 15 thousand people a day who were absolutely crazy about them .....

it sure seemed like they were being taken seriously

and now Sonny continues to be taken seriously just in a different musical lane
 
A few years ago, I attended a huge festival here in the states called Burning Man (you may have heard of it). For those who have gone, or know of it, you're probably aware that in some respects, especially at night, parts of it can turn into a huge rave with all manner of highly regarded DJ's and electronic music and light specialists coming from all over.

Most of it was inane. There were two separate instances however, that I really enjoyed simply because it was well constructed stuff musically. And man, it wasn't just a laptop, those guys were insanely busy. Changing out records on 4 turn tables(sometimes spinning a record for what amounts to a few bars at most!), getting the right samples ready, watching the crowd to see where the anticipations and pulse was with them, massing with mixer sliders... I don't know about every case, but these guys had some serious skill with what they were doing.

That's all I have to add. One guy with a laptop does seem kind of lame, but when the whole rig is "played" like an instrument, it's kind of cool to watch and listen to.
 
Absolutely one of my more successful/better patronised threads. I'll have to get contentious & slightly closed minded more often ;)

You should start a thread about how big kits are better than small kits. I bet that one would draw some responses, too.
 
I'd much rather see a bad band than a good DJ.

Just sayin'...

Of course a good band would be better, but if I have to choose....

+1.^ This.To me,nothing can replace live ....repeat,LIVE music.I like to listen to recorded music,hell it's what I listen too most of the time.But to go to a venue,and listen to MORE,recorded music...not me.I want it live,and in my face,warts and all.The whole reason I started playing drums,is because I wanted to make music,and not to just listen other peoples.

At some point in that process,you have to physically do the work yourself,or see other musicians do it.For me it's a tactile process.So live band vs DJ.No contest.Again,I want it live and organic,and being produced on the spot.There isn't a single DJ I know,that's also a musician.

Steve B
 
There isn't a single DJ I know,that's also a musician.

You don't know me, but I fit into that category. I have a few friends who are both better DJs and better musicians on their respective instruments than me.

Also, one needs to be able to differentiate between a DJ and the producers making the music. Which is different than the "producers" on traditional record credits. Some people are both. Some people are one or the other. Most producers have at the least some kind of background on musical instruments. Many DJs I know have some kind of rhythmic instrument background, whether formal or autodidactic.

Contrary to what many people who don't understand (or dont want to understand) electronic music think, you cant just press a bunch of buttons, slap 16 bar loops of popular songs together and throw a track out there to collect Beatport purchases. At least not as a serious musical strategy. The audience is a little more savvy than you might give them credit for.

I would invite someone to listen to "Öngyilkos Vasárnap" or "Hajnal" by venetian snares and try to assert that Aaron Funk is musically deficient.

For that matter, I'd like to hear someone do the same after they listen to "In Tune and On Time" by DJ Shadow and they are told it is made almost exclusively with samples.

Both artists live performances consist of turntable rigs in various stages of analog and digital playback. I thought I even saw a laptop at the venetian snares show but i didnt care because I was so completely enthralled by what he was doing with the music he selected.
 
I really learned a lot in this thread. Acceptance mainly. It's all good. Every generation is entitled to their culture.
 
This is a fun thread with geezers and youngsters defending their respective cultures. Personally I don't give a crap. If a DJ can fill a house like that, then more power to him.
 
The quality of the picture is not that good, but the one thing that I notice is that the lighting and shadows on the DJ is different from the lighting and shadows of the crowd. I have to make the conclusion that the photo is a composite and not a representation of a live event. In other words the photo was photo-shopped. So I do not understand the references about the DJ.
 
Hate to say it America, but electronica is one genre best left to the Europeans. 'EDM' is truly appalling; the world is a better place when american kids pick up guitars.
 
Right, I'm wading into this thread.

There is nothing musically different about somebody putting together music on a laptop or a full band putting together music. It requires no less skill, no less dedication, no less time, no less effort. Bad bands sound like bad bands because they don't put the time in and have no idea what they're doing. Electronic musicians are exactly the same. A bad electronic musician hasn't put the time and effort into what they're doing. A good musician is a good musician, regardless of the tools that they use to express themselves.

I speak from the position of somebody that nowadays does more work on my laptop than I do on my drums. It takes time to learn the tools of the trade, it takes effort to put together decent works. When I do my own work, I have to write code so that my computer will do what I want it to do - nothing commercial exists to do half of it and this is true of a lot of electronic musicians. Sometimes the ideas outstretch what is available and you have to spend time learning to manipulate the machine. In my case, I write non-commercial music. It's weird and it doesn't appeal to much of an audience. Mainstream electronic musicians have the same challenges. They hear something in their head and spend hours trying to replicate that sound on their equipment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=555XMqqDYtU

If you guys have never tried to put together music on your laptop, now is the time. The tools are irrelevant, it's the music that matters and how you get there is utterly irrelevant.
 
Aha! I was wondering when my crafty flawed deliberately nipple tweaking OP would bring you out of the woodwork Duncan ;) Of course, you're completely correct, but I'll never admit to that publicly on a forum.

Crap, I just did, & in my last post too - dammit!!!

You've always struck me as an open-minded chap. The picture is an extreme example, I admit!

I can see why people don't understand what an electronic musician does. I was thinking the other day about how keyboard players have a hard time being taken seriously, partly because of the difficulty of seeing what is physically happening. The same is true of a musician with a laptop. The audience often has no idea what is happening behind the screen.

In most forms of music, you can clearly see the performer behind their instrument and see the majority of their movements. Guitarists, drummers, bass players, trombonists, violinist, contra-bassoonists have a physical presence from their movements alone. Somebody working with a laptop doesn't have that presence - neither does somebody working with a laptop, a pair of decks, a mixing desk and an effects rack. That lack of physical presence is often mistaken for 'doing nothing' when in actual fact, a good musician of any type is constantly performing.

Now, I'm not talking about the people that sell themselves as 'DJs' and push a button on an iPod. There is no musical involvement in what they're doing. That's where a lot of the confusion lies, I think (although there's an interesting aesthetic argument that I don't want to approach now). People that aren't informed with regards to electronic music confuse the guy that presses a button on their iPod with the guy that is actually working incredibly hard to manipulate sound behind a laptop - because to an audience it might appear to be the same thing.

In some cases (and I cite myself as an example here when I've performed electronic music), the majority of the work is done in the studio and brought to the performance fully-formed. I wrote a piece once that relied on a cassette player and computer programme to do all the 'performance' for me. It took me a long time to actually write the music but the performance was simply pushing a few buttons, rewinding a tape and pressing 'go'. That piece was an installation work. Other pieces have deliberately avoided 'performance' from myself as a reaction against what I saw as 'over-performance' in some electronic fields (again, I could go on but I won't). Those pieces did just involve me pressing 'play' but I had spent hours beforehand preparing the presentation and it was clear what my artistic intentions were.

So, there's a fine line sometimes.
 
...and many percussionists were put out of business when the silent films turned into talkies. Damn talkies! If the popcorn is good and not too salty, and they have that little machine that lets you put your own butter on there then I might stay and watch the movie. Or if they're showing something with Tom Hardy, I love that guy.

BS, most of those cats were union & they worked in orchestra pits at theatrical stages/houses which is where the movies were shown. "Movie theaters" didn't exist until later.
 
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People who make music with laptops actually resemble composers and arrangers more than rock stars, except classical composers could depend on virtuoso's, who could turn just about any chiken scratch, into fine music and conductors that could balance the sound and put on a show. I've done a bit myself, and it is tedious, and time consuming making samples, programming synths, mixing, singing, and it just so happens I can make real money with a laptop so I don't do it so much anymore.
 
I'd much rather see a bad band than a good DJ.

Just sayin'...

Of course a good band would be better, but if I have to choose....

Really? Not to pick on you but that seems like a very closed minded viewpoint to have.

I can't imagine how "bad" is ever better than "good".

As drummers, who play on instruments of indeterminate pitch which are considered accompaniment and not an essential part of the song structure, we should be the MOST open minded of all the instrumentalists.

C'mon there are tons of guitar players who don't consider drummers themselves to be musicians.

I bet there are people who consider what an electronic musician does to be legitimate music more than what we drummers do . If the DJ is actually writing the music, he/she is a more complete musician than a drummer. After all, we can't even copyright a drum part.

Think before you throw stones, I say.
 
A good musician is a good musician, regardless of the tools that they use to express themselves.

... nipple tweaking ...

People that aren't informed with regards to electronic music confuse the guy that presses a button on their iPod with the guy that is actually working incredibly hard to manipulate sound behind a laptop - because to an audience it might appear to be the same thing.

C'mon there are tons of guitar players who don't consider drummers themselves to be musicians.

... Think before you throw stones, I say.

These seem to be the take home statements.
 
Berliner-Philharmoniker-Herbert-von-Karajan.jpg


Come see my baton LIVE!

I mean, really, are conductors even musicians? Why not just tell the musicians to start playing and walk off?
 
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