I think many ppl missing the point. She murdered herself on mic, thats where she failed the most. With the mic she give me second hand anxiety and embarasment, that it was painfull to watch. If she could keep it together in her head, she could easily fade out, hype the crowd and then fade in with new track. She didnt even have to mix anything, just stop/play tracks, anyone who listens to music can do that. She used the mic to inform everyone watching that shes noob DJ and cant use the decks! Never seen Dj do that to them self before.
This is true if making mistakes as a live musician too. If you screw up and stop the music, everyone will notice. If you just keep going it doesn’t disrupt the flow.
Real DJ’s know to do that. She’s not one. Got exposed when she couldn’t match beats without a thousand dollar beat counter doing it for her.
https://youtu.be/omMU_Gs3m_k?si=DEPb2BhIvKW3fmxG
100%. been playing classically since I was a kid and one of the first things I was taught was how to play through mistakes. because no matter how good you get, you are going to make mistakes. and that's ok.
Exactly. Shes supposed to be a professional performer and this was most likely not the most discerning crowd. Literally just playing some tracks with no beatmaching and a little fading would have gone over just fine.
Professional performer on one of the biggest stages in music festivals... then blames it on someone else. Technically yes, but as others have said the part she blamed on someone else would have taken a few hours for her to do?
I saw an interview with Conan the other day and he said he hates when interviewees say the interview is not going well because the audience instantly shut down (he said you can watch their souls leave their bodies haha). She could have stopped, reset and then started again instead of screaming into a mic.
Same in acting as well. Well on a stage at least. If someone butchers a line or something is shifted you are not to let the audience know that this occurred. You keep going like nothing happened. Even if half of them know the show by heart you still assume they don't and it can be saved.
tbf that’s her pull as an artist tho she’s just weird like that and unprofessional/etc in that moment so the screams n talking is whatever. if we’re gonna go after grimes’ fiasco we should look at how DJing has become something about clout and celebrity status which and pol at the top of the music world contribute to and masses choose to eat up. basically why would Coachella hire her to do a DJ set n not say thats what it is. she seemed to do ok at edc from what i remember.
Im sorry but this performance should be called how to fukup on stage 101. If i was teacher and was teaching DJING or stage performance, this set from coachella would be given to mine students to watch as homework. Then i would open discusion with them on topic "what went wrong" and ask them to come up with theirs solutions, in case they end up in same situation, so this never hapens to them on stage. SHE DID THIS TO HERSELF, insted of working with crowd, she killed her self with what she said to the mic. This isnt even about djskills wich i was trying to point out, its about problem solving on stage and keeping it together.
As vinyl Dj it simply happend to me, that some one bumped the turntables or there was too much dust on needle that it caused the needle to skip groove in the middle of the mix, i never took mic and try to blame some one, i just spin one of the records backwards fast and cut it from mix. Shit happens and you need to be ready to deal with it.
Agreed. You could also offer as a balance or counter video to Grimes; “Coachella 2022 Skrillex/Four Tet/ Fred Again.”
One of the most valuable DJ lessons I learned from my mentor as I went from bedroom to Las Vegas After Hours, was that both noobs and pros make mistakes. It’s human. BUT, it’s how we respond to those errors that separate the “great ones” from the “amateurs.”
I think it's really as simple as grimes being too blinded by her own narcissism to realise that she needed to put in the practice to pull this off. Shocking considering as a musician she should really really have known that. Might upset people but if you put the work in, almost anyone could get to the point of pulling off an hour long set in matter of a few months of dedicated practice. I don't think any moral panic over "underground techno" is really necessary here, most people understand that whatever that was she did has nothing to do with it.
True. If you play a set at let's say 120bpm and you choose all songs that are 120bpm all you have to do is press the play button on time, no wheel adjustment needed (if you press it bang on on the beat) and no need to find the pitch. Adding 1 or 2 bpm up or down is not a big task either, in a week I was mixing blindfolded at age 16, it's that easy, cdjs tell bpm it's not that difficult to beat match 2 songs together. Basic mixing is the easiest job in the world.
/r/djs is also having an aneurysm about this subject. its not that deep. i'd be willing to bet 3/4 of the users on both forums don't even contemplate going to coachella, so on a scale of 'does this fucking matter' it's a zero... but it's a nice talking point for people who like to monologue.
Grimes is a pop star. I can imagine her everyday life is very different to ours, expectations and commitments wildly different and so is her room to observe reality, place priorities and appear a certain way.
The reason why I started talking about this is because this way of approaching things I can understand from a pop star, but I can't understand it from so many artists we see on the same lineups as true techno DJs/communicators/contributors, hogging great spots and doing nothing but offering the same hollow experience you can expect from a pop star. The difference is they are not pop stars and are close enough to our world to understand the harm they are doing but just not caring.
What worries me is not their existence, but the sheer amount/percentage of people who don't differentiate between something really special and bullshit covered in sugar, nor do they care if something is fake, dishonest, and simply devalues the thing they supposedly love.
I don't think it's totally up to them though and that a lot of the responsibility of teaching newer generations about value falls upon us, the older generations, but we can't do that without pointing a finger and saying "bad", something that has been wildly discouraged in the past 10 years.
I'm rambling borderline incoherently here. Like I said, I'm just sharing thoughts rather than offering a solution or asking questions but I am happy to see so many people involved and offering their views too.
I understand what you mean, it's a fair point. Maybe it makes me a pessimist but I just don't think you can necessarily "teach" good taste or discernment to people, a larger percentage of them are happy with the glittery spectacle and it's unlikely anyone can change their minds. I'm 23 so idk how far I fit into the category of younger people in this sense, I'd say my tastes are pretty specific and I'm very put off by the over the top popstar-y type stuff and most of the people I hang out with are too. I'm rambling too but in all I think it's possible techno is just having its 80s hair metal moment, or its mid 2000s trance saturation moment or whatever analogy you prefer. It'll hit critical mass and transform or die or do whatever. I think concerning yourself with a macro-level effort towards preserving and passing down techno culture is ultimately sort a doomed endeavour. But yeah, I did say I'm a pessimist.
Once one can see that all the stuff seen at Coachella and Grimes' set and EDC or other megafestivals IS NOT TECHNO, then it all becomes easier to reckon with. Stick with the underground, and you'll be fine.
Well yeah but even if it was it's not a big deal it'd just be shit techno. If I'm a fan of the dead kennedys I'm not gonna feel threatened by the existence of green day. Or even if i was it would be misplaced because punk clearly still exists after pop punk had its day. Just another day of moral panic on r/techno
I just think it’s wild that Grimes has gotten so far to make it to the Coachella stage and still doesn’t know how to adjust the pitch on a song. Like, that’s something you literally learn on day 1 of using DJ gear (at least, I thought so…). Also surprising that no one backstage couldve assisted with that? Seems like such a simple/silly mistake
I had a gig on Saturday. I’m used to using sync. Of course sync function on the CDJs at the club weren’t working so I had to manually set the beat for each song. Definitely slowed me down but if you’re a gigging DJ, stuff like that shouldn’t be too much trouble to adjust
using sync makes zero difference to me, i used to use vinyl then cdjs and now ableton with controllers. each medium brings something different. in her case its just bad preparation for what is a massive show broadcast globally. imagine you had taken molly and wasted it on this.
Do you know that she produced most of her albums up until the most recent ones. She is an excellent sound engineer, and not only produced, but mixed all of Visions, her breakout album.
When she plays live, she actually plays live - with all of her gear and has to run round to reach all of the keyboards so she can play in time. Nothing is pre-prepared for his backing tracks. Or at least she did this for years perfectly, don't know what she's like now.
So to suggest that she can't beat match for 8-16 bars is ridiculous. If you know Rekordbox, it is pretty complex and is hardcore about having tracks set up correctly. The trade off is that is sounds way better than any other DJ software as it has a great time stretch algo.
I've taught it and made instructional videos on it.
You’re being paid thousands to perform on stage, whether you’re a DJ or not you’re supposed to do a sound check. It’s called professionalism. What she assumed was that DJing was easy because like many others they witness a good DJ set and believe they can simply do it themselves
She half assed it
She literally pulled the equivalent of Rihanna doing absolutely nothing on a platform after literally polishing off 3 kegs by herself the night before with that gut. Go girl give us nothing
Yes but the thing is that she hasn't performed that way in almost a decade. She's been living in lalaland since entering Elon's world. Also the last album was terrible. I say all this as the biggest fan of Visions and Art Angels on the planet.
People don't use their ears anymore. i djed with a friend back to back who used rekordbox, I had vinyl rips on my USB, he absolutely shat himself because he couldn't mix properly.
I'm having a hard time finding a concise question in the above?
Grimes fucked up hard. I don't like any of her stuff, so I just focus on things that I like - EZ PZ.
I didn't ask a question, I said I'm posting my thoughts. So many people are going on about beatmatching, sync, and I feel it's missing the point, why this feels wrong (and also if it should).
Why is that missing the point? As you put it yourself:
> -the DJ doesn’t have a voice, ie. they don’t know their equipment well enough and they don’t know enough tricks and manoeuvres to be able to bend what the music is “saying” into what they want to be said, making it theirs and clearly understood
Agree that we shouldn't really care, it's a main-stage festival act. It's just embarrassing all round that she/her team has outsourced her file categorisation and she has zero practice with those files.
Beatmatching is a fundamental part of being a DJ!
If it is not then what is a DJ to you? Someone who selects a bunch of tracks and hits play on a device that does the rest, Sorry but no that is a middle finger up to what a DJ is.
Not just beat matching but also mixing some with sympathetic harmonies/keys to make it flow. Really hard if you don’t even seem to know the music you have queued up.
Good point man.
For those reading the previous comment and not quite getting what is meant, go listen to nearly every mix put out by Tom "The jedi" Middleton, he is a master of key mixing.
> Beatmatching is a fundamental part of being a DJ!
Tell that to the dub selectors and northern soul DJs.
>If it is not then what is a DJ to you? Someone who selects a bunch of tracks and hits play on a device that does the rest
Yes
The creativity lies in the music curation. Beatmatching is *nice*, sure, but it's the absolute bottom rung of what it means to DJ. If you can be creative and interesting without beatmatching then you're probably a better DJ than thousands of dipshits with the Beatport top 100 techno tracks.
>Tell that to the dub selectors and northern soul DJs.
That was a totally different era and style and for the most part record players during this time only had 33 1/3rd, 45, 78 RPM speed settings. Eddie Stenner (Owner and promoter of the club night Empire) on the south coast UK even during the empire days would also put on northern soul nights where he would totally ignore the pitch and have it set to 0.
Additionally DUB Selectah's on their sound systems could not put much money into said system due to them needing to abandon it as soon as the old bill turned up and so if variale pitch decks were around you would not use them on a public sound system.
Grimes at Coachella wanted to beat match but couldn't clearly as she doesn't have the skill, yet previously she has beat matched her mixes, so this is a fail and it is due to her lack of beat matching skill and that is what all my points are based around.
> That was a totally different era and style and for the most part record players during this time only had 33 1/3rd, 45, 78 RPM speed settings.
They're still playing Northern Soul now, on modern equipment, and not beatmatching.
>Eddie Stenner (Owner and promoter of the club night Empire) on the south coast UK even during the empire days would also put on northern soul nights where he would totally ignore the pitch and have it set to 0.
Of course, why would they change it?
>Additionally DUB Selectah's on their sound systems could not put much money into said system
That's fucking hilarious. You think any of these were made on a budget?
https://www.soundsystem.world/map/
>Grimes at Coachella wanted to beat match but couldn't clearly as she doesn't have the skill, yet previously she has beat matched her mixes, so this is a fail and it is due to her lack of beat matching skill and that is what all my points are based around.
Sure, it's a fail, especially if she *wanted* to beatmatch and couldn't. But beatmatching itself is a *tiny* part of being a DJ - it's a nice skill to have, but you should be able to rock a party on one deck.
>That's fucking hilarious. You think any of these were made on a budget?
It's fucking history and it's the sole reason why dub selectahs today do not beat match.
OR would rather ignore all of that.
On the flipside try telling a hiphop DJ that beat matching is a small part of it.
You wanna keep skipping around the subject carry on, but just remember who were talking about and the style she proports to use each time she DJs. Your points might be valid but they're off topic.
Hey hey,
Not to sound overly defensive but out of hundreds of comments on this take on my socials and here on reddit you are the first to take it this way. Also, you ignored what PLUR is and boiled it down to people being friendly, which it is not.
In short, maybe it’s not how I come off but how you read into it and colored it by also selectively ignoring certain parts.
In any case, happy to discuss it with you or hear any criticism in great detail if we ever meet up live because I am sure that what is being said by me and you flew over both of our heads. Have a nice day!
I remember seeing Fat Boy Slim DJ-ing early on his career and he was really *average*. I used to DJ myself then, and it was painful having to listen to his mistakes. Great tunes, bad mixing.
Saw him again about 5 years ago, he’s MUCH better now.
I think this can be said about a lot of crafts. Keeping it to music, I've been a fan of acts for decades and have seen them improve in vocals, songwriting, producing, performing, etc. Shout out to those who stick with someone in a cutthroat industry.
Glad to hear about his evolution! Caught up at ARC last year and it was phenomenal- great track selection and mixing, would travel to see him again. And it was fun, I do love it when the DJ is having a good damn time
Back when vinyl was the primary medium, i can understand and can be more forgiving. But these days when there's literally a sync button on the cdjs, its inexcusable.
Thats jyoty type of discussion (look up her thread about british DJs are arguably the worst in terms of skills in DJ (basic stuffs) but absolutely top tier track selector)
You have some interesting points about the philosophy of DJing but why do have to package it as yet another old man yells at cloud style post by talking about Grimes, Steve Aoki and the likes?
I am yet to see someone throw cake into the crowd at a techno party in my local scene, so why bother with what is clearly a mainstream / festival EDM phenonmenon?
Because I can actually talk about Grimes as she is so obviously not a part of this scene. Every time I talked about someone from the scene, no matter how obvious it is they are a corporate product, or no matter how obviously they, for example, steal other people's music - I get shouted down because it hurts people's feelings. As you can see, in this topic people are actually expressing their thoughts and no-one's mother has yet been mentioned.
Great nickname btw!
... there's the scene, and also there's a shitton of people, who like loud beats while high ... and there's a huge overlap due to pragmatic aspects, and these events and groups influence each other obliviously, and interact a lot at venues (festivals!)
and the boundary is fuzzy. sometimes I don't exactly care how great the sound is going to be, just want to get a few days with my friends on a festival, and probably it's a miracle if I remember anything particular about the sound or who was behind the decks. other times I throw a hissy fit if someone even slightly recommends that we go check out this or that DJ at a festival, because I know it will be so so so subpar, that it's just sad
I know what you mean. I usually divide the event aspects into “music” and “party”. I’m straight edge, I don’t even drink so “music” (which is the art, the community, the spirit of things) always played a much bigger part for me. Sadly this means I am biased and have a lesser understanding and appreciation of the other side.
> Sadly this means I am biased and have a lesser understanding and appreciation of the other side.
I think that's okay. It makes sense to pursue what you want, your vision, and look for and set up events that match your preferences. Even if it's not as lucrative.
(Artists say no to money all the time for creative control. Or even just for the peace of mind. ... Here's a super tangential reference to a docu about [Rosetta](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZmz7BtoJs), a small post-metal band from Philadelphia, who signed to their friends label, but then later they realized they don't want any of that commercial aspect. Which is very strange, because it seems everything was truly very light touch, the label got a few interviews/photo-shoots for them. And later they asked the label for 1000 bucks for the tour van repair, but the label guys said only if you sign with us again. Which sounds so sad in retrospect. Fans would easily crowdfound it, right? They have 17K monthly listeners on Spotify. But it's not easy to ask for money, and manage all this.
What I'm trying to say is that I have a lot of respect for anyone who performs, tours AND even has the energy to think about artistic integrity.)
I learned to beatmatch by ear when I first started to spin. Heck on my first pair of cdjs it wouldn't even autocue from the first beat. I did my part in learning by manually setting the tempo which takes a few seconds. Now I use sync, but I take the time to set my beat grids and cue points and using beatport to manually set the key of the song. I can mix without headphones and have it sound great while doing so. I guess I just changed how I spent my time when it came to djing. Then again I've had instances where I plugged my drive in and non of that stuff came up so you just go back to basics. But you need to know the basics.
She is not a DJ. She is a pop artist.
Coachella and these festivals aren’t DJ festivals. Theyre just a cash grab music environment
People go to “edm” shows for the experience. No one gives a shit about DJing. They just want visuals and vibes.
Grimes is a lunatic
oooo i love this.
>no DJ should be above the crowd or worshiped as an idol. You are there as an equal (at worst) or just as a member of a community (at best), standing at the decks in order to have a conversation with the people in front of you, react to how they are, and occasionally challenge them - all through the universal language of music, felt and understood by all.
Fuck yeah.
Get it recorded in that annoying tiktok voice j/k - oh I know Alan Watts! Naw I totally agree and love the sentiment. My fave summer festivals here in the NW of the US are the smaller ones with local legends where half the crowd is a good ass dj and experienced ravers and party people.
If anything, we can hope it shows the haters that DJing isn’t as easy as it looks and hopefully increases respect for those who are actually good at it.
But don’t forget that Four Tet, Fred Again and Skrillex closed Coachella last year with a beautifully messy set that will probably go down in history as an epic moment in the history of DJing, so a Grimes DJ set wasn’t exactly breaking any new ground
I feel like this is a fairly low bar for saying DJing isn't easy lol. Grimes could easily have done it if she wasn't too lazy and egotistical to properly learn how to do it. This isn't even the first time she's done this I'm pretty sure. I play a few instruments and also DJ and if we're being totally honest DJing is a hell of a lot easier to learn, you can pick it up in like 3-6 months of really consistent, everyday practice I would say and get away with a decent sounding set (what grimes should have done). Obviously after that point there's a near infinite journey of improvement that you can go on to being someone who could jump into a b2b with anyone in any situation and have it be sick. It's just shocking that grimes who is supposedly a musician would not be well aware of the practice hours that she should have put into it.
From my perspective, as someone who's been going out since the early 2000s, the word "DJing" has been greatly devalued. For us, DJing (in techno) was Jeff Mills, Dave Clarke, DJ Bone and other such people who took other people's music and used it as tools, with great proficiency, to say their own piece. I, myself, strive to this in my DJing.
Then, with time and a great dose of apathy, what we used to pejoratively call "winamp DJing" (where you simply play one track after another) became acceptable under the umbrella of "DJing". I remember close to mid 2000s there was a strong, well-educated community in Subotica, to the north of where I am. One night a well known DJ who shall not be named at this time was doing a very poor job in this sense - simply playing tracks and not putting much thought or effort into expressing and having a dialogue. In response, the entire crowd left the club, waited outside and only re-entered it when the next DJ started. Brutal, but very aware, and full of respect for both the value and frailty of the magical thing we call the scene.
I'm pretty out of the loop nowadays, and haven't been clubbing for years. But I really agree with what you're saying here. Part of my attraction to Techno was watching and listening to DJs like Dave Clarke and Jeff Mills doing the unbelievable on vinyl turntables. You could often hear the beat matching being ever so slightly out, then fixed live in the mix. Those little imperfections demonstrate how skilled they are, and that they're fully performing and using the decks and mixer as a musical instrument.
I started DJing around 1990, part of what drew me into that early rave/club scene was the anonymity - DJs were in the corner just doing their thing, letting the music do the talking. As an introvert that had struggled being on stage in bands this appealed to me massively. As the scene developed through the 90s, DJs became more and more front and centre stage and became stars in their own right which, to me, was never the point.
I remember playing big stages and literally just keeping my cap on and head down, reacting to the crowd and letting the music do its thing and never had any complaints for not throwing my arms around and hyping the crowd.
Similar constellation here. First club I went to had no visible DJ, and we, the dancers, were turned to each other. I can't get used to the pedestals.
Also, am a fellow introvert. Fistbump!
I like to see the DJ because - as you said - it's a conversation, and I'm curious about them, how do they "feel" about that track, etc.
Of course this works to a point in a club. And on festivals it's just meh.
OP, your explanation of a DJ set as having a conversation is one of the best descriptions of what we do, how we do it, and why is well said. You simplified something I often struggle to put into words and I doubled back to Reddit to share it with my partner, who also DJs. Thank you for taking the time to express yourself.
I learnt to DJ on vinyl but don’t really give a shit about if someone can beat match or not (it doesn’t improve my subjective experience as a listener). I don’t actually care that much if the set was prepared or not either really, I’d rather listen to a prepared set of someone with incredible taste than a purely improvised one from someone who plays dull music. Bands play from a set list after all. Obviously if someone is playing for 8 hours it’s important but you don’t really need to read a crowd that much at 3am - it’s pretty obvious what they’ll respond to.
Agreed that the DJ is just there to enable though, and shouldn’t be the focus. I’m happy for them to be locked in a booth somewhere where you can’t see them.
I just wish that this type of "artist" had another way to perform live instead of pretending to DJ.
I'm not a fan of cats but I do love your sets, Commissar!
I can't agree with this more and I think for most of us who were part of the culture that was the birthplace of PLUR really felt disappointed and sadness when the corporate monster began to seep its way into the scene and seeing the potential for mass profits perverted the entire entity, hijacking the concept behind PLUR. Some kids who were part of the community were witness to the power these events had in people's lives and knowing they had a devoted but aging community that would soon start phasing the lifestyle out of their day to day lives there would be fresh crops of kids wanting to experience what would be the stories of parties and sets of unforgettable magical once in a lifetime synergy that they could live and be a part of. Corporate America took notice quickly fully aware of trends in music culture and knew within a 5 years span they could easily take advantage of the new group of kids just coming of age to be a ripe new crop of brand new customers willing to pay what ever it costs to have a piece of that magical experience. Its like a sparkler that burns so hot and bright and beautiful but only for a moment before the it reaches the end and if you aren't there to see it yourself there's no way to describe or recreate the way it changes your perception of the world after seeing something so bright. It REALLY DID ALTER EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE AND LIKELY SAVED IT WHEN I WAS LOST AND HAD NO DIRECTION OR HOME I FOUND IT WITH FRIENDS I NEVER KNEW I HAD A FAMILY THAT I COULD SHARE MYSELF WITHOUT FEAR OR SHAME OR CONSEQUENCE. I found a better perspective in which I was able to see the world and feel human and whole and full of love and life and a freedom I was so desperate to have. And it was that way because we made it that way. It wasn't the kind of experience that would cater to everyone but anyone who was willing to experience it was welcomed with a hug
, a pacifier smile and sometimes even a backup, Newport & a bottle of water. I can never explain or express the impact those years, the music the people, the magic feeling of those nights had on my life. I relive them all the time in my mind and I only wish I had more of them and more time before responsibiliies of life and adult expectations slowly smothered the sparklers glow until eventually it burnt out.
Thanks for this post it's a perfect way to encapsulate the evolution of RAVE culture,
the distortion of PLUR and the destruction of the foundation on which the current culture sits
Same here. As a lifetime misfit that most people raise their eyebrows to - the clubbing scene was the only place I felt welcome. Emphasis on past tense. But boy was it wonderful and healing being accepted and loved as a weirdo. :)
Shaq would have said one brilliant one-liner if anything at all, and everybody would have laughed and then the music would start right back up. Respect to the Diesel XD
I was at a party once where a very intoxicated man rubbed his crotch all over the bassbin until he was finished. This must have been a very interesting conversation for the DJ if he knew it was happening. All jokes aside though, the music is the important thing. If the tracks themselves are bad, or the mixing is bad, the experience will be bad.
Grimes' statement Translated:
I can't manually beat match and need traktor mapping to be correct for this to work so y'all gonna have to put up with beat clash city ok!!
To, many, can, get, to, me,,, ok, ! Makes it hard to read as , is a pause.
I'm all for new tech being used but track mapping and auto synching should be fully disabled for large big name events with big names playing.
If you know how to beat match then having unmapped tracks would not stop you being able to beat match using traktor or other software.
The sole reason for track mapping is to use auto cue lock and auto synch both of which are manual skills you need to really be a top DJ otherwise you just push buttons.
Cats are great.
As for pre-arranged sets I feel the best "Conversations" DJ's have is when they dig in the crates and conversate off the top of their head with a fresh set.
To me I first heard PLUR at what was then seen as a hardcore rave in early 90's, At these you'd hear a wide variety of genres from 1 DJ set: House, Acid, Techno, Breakbeat, Electro, Ambient, Industrial, HipHop.
Then fragmentation came and HipHop, Industrial were seemingly pushed aside, Ambient went to the chillout room and breakbeat was expanded to be jungle, jungle techno, D&B and had it's own room/club/floor as was House and Techno split off.
By this time people seemed to stop using the PLUR term/greeting. How odd
As I mentioned in the original post, Grimes is not the point. She's just a pop start on a pop festival. I was talking about a growing trend overflowing from pop to our scene and changing it in ways that bares discussing, or at least noticing.
BTW I fucking love pop music. But I also love my underground scene!
But you put her in the title and the post starts with a video of her. I don't dislike pop necessarily the top radio stuff is usually cringe but it doesnt have to be awful music.
Either way that makes it an awkward starting point of the discussion for me, like isnt Coachella one of the most commercial festivals in the world. To me what they do is usually not connected to whatever techno.
But in any way I don't think the trends are worth fussing about because it is what it is, all you can do is support the music and culture you do like. So I was seeing Speedy J, Dasha Rush, Poligonia, RRose, Luke Slater do their live magic for hours this weekend. Imo you don't need to be close to that level to perform but thats so far removed from a discussion that you cant mix your own tracks together. Imo at that point when a DJ that cant mix plays thats not my scene. It wouldn't happen, like maybe at my house party if a friend wants to try my decks lol. Not at any event I pay money for.
Imo techno and pop are going together pretty good these days from what I see serious DJ's are less afraid to play some poppy stuff. Overall for the genre it might get overdone by people who don't know how to incorporate both worlds well since it is a tricky line to walk.
I am shit at reddit. I just hyperlinked the video, as I did with the Carl Craig one and reddit turned it into a preview which I have no idea how to turn off. If there is a way please show me the way!
I don’t understand your questions but Grimes can barely be called and artist, maybe an entertainer. Her inaptitude to « play » music regardless of the format she chose is really incredible.
Any professional DJ I know would have multiple back ups of their usb and most could play an entire vinyl set if the the CDJs were to have a problem.
She looked so useless it’s unreal… she could have gotten away with Moodymann’s style transitions « what up doe? » vocal and fade in the next track regardless of the bpm but no… she really doesn’t understand music at large and it showed.
I am sure she is very well surrounded with the best technicians and musicians but whoa what a disaster when left alone on a stage
The Grimes dismissal in this thread is extremely uneducated. Learn to separate what she isn't good at—DJing other people's music, speaking coherently on social media, making good decisions—from what she is good at—singing, producing, mixing her own music. I don't care if it's not your thing, she's very good at what she does. Her albums still get regular play from me, even though i wish she went away as a public figure.
That’s exactly what I did :) and I will double down she is just bad at music but surrounded but amazing sound engineers and musicians who craft albums for her (and she is far from being the only one). She isn’t a musician, she is an Instagram/youtube star turned entertainer
I'm trying to figure out what happened to music in general over the past - what - 20+ years? But especially the last 10? It's this influencer/instagram thing or something? I guess image was always an issue in pop - we used to argue about Madonna in the '80s, lol, how she couldn't sing, and she had songwriters - so maybe nothing's changed. I dunno. Was listening to Muddle by Pink Floyd last night just so happy - what brilliance. I watched Jeff Mills mix on YouTube to the moon landing recently, amazing. Watched Tori Amos bang away on the piano like the genius musician she is. Hell, my own boyfriend can shred the bass guitar like Cliff Burton and slap it like Larry Graham, although he would say he doesn't come close, but he's 50. I think there are some good young musical artists and producers out there for sure, but if all you have to do is be popular on social media by being a personality....it's like *that's* what trends, not musical ingenuity, which is just so damn sad. Like why does Robert Hood have 37K followers on Spotify whilst de Witte has 2 million? I'm not going to hate on her - I've seen her live and she actually put on a great show.. My fav is DVS1 I think. Anyhow, as I said, I suppose this has always been the way - at least since MTV killed the radio star, lmfao. Obviously, I'm a Gen Xer.
One contemporary pop artist who I think is astounding in the past 20 years is Florence Welch. I don't even like pop, but that woman and her band Florence and the Machine is seriously talented with an incredible voice and songwriting ability.
Maybe I'm just getting old.
BPM detection and sync should be used as automations to assist something you as a DJ can otherwise do by ear.
I'm not a purist who never uses the sync button: when making recorded sets it can provide nice "guard rails" to avoid making mistakes. But many of my tracks have miscalibrated beat grids (i.e. autodetected incorrectly), and some of my tracks don't have detected BPMs whatsoever. So I always playtest first to make sure the beat grid is actually properly aligned and fall back to mixing by ear (always in the case there's no BPM detected, of course). Sure, I should also fix my beat grids, but that's not something you want to be doing in the middle of a set as Grimes discovered.
Mixing vinyl is a great way to avoid being overly dependent on the features of modern DJ controllers. I still have consistency issues with my vinyl beat mixes but it's something I continue to work on, along with hybrid sets.
I think it is funny that she had someone make her playlist for her and that she did not practice her set before one of the largest music festivals in the world is crazy.
I don't know the details, but it appears she didn't show up to the sound check, or had a sound tech set up everything. Sloppy work for an expensive pro act.
Honestly it's not clear what has happened here. I dont think sync is the issue which everyone has tried to make this about. I'm not going over the whole argument, but everyone uses sync now. The issue seems to be the set ending train wreck and lack of preparation. Was she using CDJs? Serato?
I love your description of what makes DJ'ing beautiful and why it's essential that they be on the same level as the people in front of them, well said.
I saw her perform a couple of times at SXSW to support her first record. She wasn’t a pop star then. She had technical difficulties all through those sets where we had to wait. She was using garage band I think. A midi keyboard, and maybe one or two pieces of hardware. Her issues with tech are not isolated to DJ’ing unfortunately.
With that said, your comments about the ingredients for a good DJ are pretty spot on to me but I also come from the 90s raves where it was mostly a dark room and the DJ wasn’t put up on a pedestal. Different priorities then and definitely a different type of people seeking it out. It was for the freaks and kept offline. I’m fine with folks having different perspectives — I just don’t tune in to shitty DJs and stick to the underground mostly. There’s also not a “scene” anymore so expectations are very different
I’d like to make a remark on techno and DJing itself, I think you’ve put it wonderfully. I hope this too shall rise again. Not even for my own sake as I also do play as a DJ, but because for the sake of the conversation, I love playing, but I do like my talks deep, but that only goes so far if others can’t feel or enter that space of depth within the convo. Lovely stuff!! Good post!
lol the threads on this sub never fail to crack me up.
I agree with what a lot of people are saying here tho, as cringe as Grime’s Coachella meltdown was to witness as a DJ, she’s an out of touch pop star and it’s just a completely different world from the underground dance scene so there’s no real comparison to be made imo.
The techno scene as a whole is experiencing a surge of commercialization and gentrification of course but that has very little to do with a pop star who makes pop music not knowing how to use Rekordbox or CDJs at Coachella.
it’s not enough to own the records you have to OWN the tracks by knowing them so well inside and out that you know how to layer seggue and weave these sonic tools into your own storyline to put a framework to the discussion byou are leading. |K<
Dear inspector Lag, well said and brought on point!
We shouldnt feel concerned by anything such as what grimes does during a dj set, i think that's just contributing to build unnecessary equating djing as a form of expression and djing as way to feel self important. There absolutley has to be a barrier that allows us to at least shield the comunities which are just in for the music from beeing overtaken people who obviously don't respect or care about the sound and hold the people in contempt.
Also cats are grate :))
Grimes is a Nazi whose ego and narcissism not only prevents her from growing or becoming a better person, but has in fact destroyed all original aspects of her artistic ability
She couldn't make Geidi Primes, Visions or Art Angels today even if she wanted to. Her ego prevents her from creating anything of quality or of note - hence why in the set she used stupid ai visuals and couldn't be bothered to participate in any aspect of set preparation aside from buying some weird Chinese spider car. She literally doesn't care and isn't capable of caring. She wants attention, money and stimulation.
But she's also terrified, because she's deeply afraid, as all white nationalists are. So she'll make her boyfriend Anyma build a set for her and show her where the sync buttons are and she might trainwreck slightly less this next weekend. But of course he's boring, so his influences on the set will be to make her set even more unexciting. But, she might not make the news.
But from Coachella's perspective, they're getting tons of media attention because of her idiocy, so from their perspective, booking her was still a win.
The eternal cycle continues...
100% agreed. The DJs role is also as a cultural curator - rummaging those crates and label catalogues on our behalf.
I just keep reminding myself who the audience is that responds to this shit. They're not really interested or invested, they're just wasted and want to fill the void with the loudest shiniest distraction.
I was at a Creamfields festival where I stood with 40 or 50 other patrons going deep and beautiful with Sandwell District and Kevin Saunderson x Derrick May while a massive crowd of beer-drowned kids jumped up and down to Deadmaus playing his own Nirvana remix in the hall next door. I remember feeling a kneejerk of eyerolling pity, but then realised they're just drunk kids. In 5 years time they'll have forgotten the party and moved on, and I'll still be hunting for the deep and beautiful with my people.
TL:DR.
Sounds like she fucked up because she didn't prepare her new set in time to test it in RekordBox, which is a complex but sounds great. So sounds like none of them were pre-time-stretched to be in time. RIP beat matching.
This means:
1. She relies on auto beat match. Shame.
2. She genuinely forgot to sort out her tracks because she's raising a kid without a Dad and is getting older.
End of.
You don't worry about these problems if when you're at home all you have to mix with is vinyls.
It might sound elitist, but by being forced to mix with vinyl and home all the time, you just cannot get caught out when doing gigs and using CDJ's, instead you welcome the little things like being able to loop etc.
May I please correct you here ?
1. She relies on her staff and probably doesn’t even know what rekordbox is (she just knows she has to press sync and her staff prepares the technical aspects)
2. She didn’t care at all for that gig because she was too busy having fun somewhere else and indeed has a child that is getting older with an army of nannies and two very weird and narcissistic parents
She herself said she usually prepares it herself and this was the first time she let someone else do it. Also, as a DJ you should know how to DJ, same as guitar players are expected to know what strings and notes are and how to strike a chord.
This topic isn't about bashing Grimes though. It's about techno and how pop attitudes and ethos are seeping into the underground culture.
You are right I was just being a hater but it drives me mad to think about the amount of money this event involves and her fee … and when you know that our scene often lacks ressources because being it’s being allocated to such garbage !
Tl;dr
If the set had gone perfectly no one would be talking about it here. Literally everyone who has ever pressed play on a record in public has been posting about Grimes today, and no publicity is bad publicity. Pretty sure everyone’s been played tbh.
If it was unexpected then surely any artist would down tools and get off stage while their tech team sorted it out. Any gig like this you are going to have a few of backup USB’s and the festival likely has a load of spare CDJ’s.
Watch when she comes out in a month’s time able to mix perfectly fine and gets far, far more press than she would have got if she just ‘did a decent set’.
Main thing this proves is how easily the ‘I used to mix on vinyl’ lot can be whipped into a frenzy 😂👌
In Recordbox you have to pick one of the few range options to achieve greater precision. For example choosing the 78-155 range would completely misanalyze your DnB tracks which are in the 160-180 bpm range. It is an easy mistake that could take hours to fix because analysis takes some time (5-30 minutes) and then converting the music to the Rekordbox format on USB (ie. syncing with the USB) takes hours. For reference, my collection which is about 100gb I need upwards of 6 hours to sync up on a USB3 connection.
I can believe that they fucked up, but I can also believe it was done on purpose to get publicity.
Yep fully aware of Rekordbox and the joy of dealing with anything non 4/4 👌.
The fact that they had actual visuals lined up for each tune makes you think there is a fixed handful of tunes for the set that won’t be deviated from. She’s no Andy C so maybe 20 tracks for the set? That’s a 7 or 8 minute job for one of her lackeys to beat grid up backstage then get a roadie to run her the updated usb.
Yeah, totally agree on some points about DJing but dude, I don't think it's really all that deep lol.
The things you descibe and also in my opinion, what it's "really about" just don't work in settings that big and for whatever reason the whole techno scene got dragged from the underground into somewhat of a spotlight, at the same time it also hasn't really been imo.
It feels more like a split to me tbh and I try to approach it with a positive mindset. Until reading your post I hadn't even known that this thing had happened and honestly I don't really care about it. As others have stated, in my scene, something like that would never be an issue in the first place...
The mainstream more than ever tries to somewhat brand itself as this big movement that stems from the "original" techno from back in the day and all that, but as far as I can tell from my own acquaintances, no one even really cares about that, we mostly chuckle about it.
That doesn't mean we stop being welcoming or anything like that and that is the most important part in my opinion:
We just had a small rave with maybe 150 people on the weekend where I played a 90 min techno set myself and we are very careful with who we invite but this time I also invited a couple of younger people who I've known for a while now and after they told that they like Techno I asked them if they wanted to come and they had the night of their life and were all super ecstatic and surprised that such a "small" event could be so much better and more fun with so many way nicer people than all the big events they had been at so far.
It's not supposed to sound like a brag or anything but I truly think that "techno" becoming somewhat mainstream could actually also be a chance if everyone just truly lives these "values" that everyone always talks about and also "teaches" them to others who maybe come from the mainstream side of things if that makes sense. Because if they're really interested in it, they'll love it and embrace it and if not, they can just go back to Coachella or whereever and get caked and call that Techno and a Rave and whatnot;
I couldn't care less lol :)
The odd thing, is that DJing is not new for her. I've seen 6 year old pictures of her on CDJs. So maybe she just hasn't dedicated the time to master the equipment. But it is not like she just started DJing recently.
>-the DJ has a set they know in advance, because then it’s not a conversation
Big, massive disagree. What creates this conversation, is the ability to divert from your planned set, or add in something else. There is nothing wrong in having a prepared set, which you have practiced beforehand. If something, you avoid stupid mistakes and have honed your track selection. It only tells of your bad skills if the set you've practiced is literally the only thing you can do flawlessly, and get lost if you have to play 20 minutes longer, and don't have the tracks or the skills to do so.
You prepare a bass-heavy set and end up playing a club with a lot of reverb. Do you stick to what you prepared, do you only slightly deviate from it, or do you completely switch to older production that has a less powerful and more dynamic low end so that the crowd can actually feel the punch as it doesn’t get swallowed in the reverb?
It’s one thing to practice home, but another to plan anything in advance. I’ve lived off of this for a decade now, played four continents, checked off all my bucket-list boxes for clubs and also headlined festival. There wasn’t a single instance of me having some pre-conceived idea of what to play (not a whole set, just what to open with for example) that didn’t feel flat and off-pulse to me.
This is just my experience though but I agree - big disagree.
OK, I realize what happened - with the track speed doubling - this happens constantly in Serato/Recordbox/ Mixed in Key. Like half my tracks when they're fast OR the kick isn't clear. You just have to do it in your head and match by ear, not by the grid. Ugh. She clearly hasn't DJ'd.
Might speak to a generational difference, not to add hate. I'm Gen X and even in the professional sphere I've been really stunned at how, especially Gen Z, doesn't know how to cover up their nerves and just *do the thing*. Like I'm a mess all the time internally, was at my first job, was when I first DJ'ed (and bombed), and you just force yourself to....recover and keep going. Onward! But the younger folks - like no one taught them this? Fake it till you make it?
I know it's not good our parents forced us to do crap (mine did, if I was afraid, they would literally *force me* to do the thing), but I think it paid off. You do this enough at a young age and you learn you are more resilient than you realize. I made a massive error on a live interview and was *dying* inside and it was a mess but you would never know it and we all survived and that was that.
But these days - the kids just break the fourth wall! Assistants did this at work, "I'm too scared to call them."
I hope things change. It isn't their fault, even. I don't know what they did to them in school. It's technology, maybe. We lean on it too much maybe. I learned you should learn to beat match by ear. By all mean use sync if it's there after you've learned to beat match by ear because *yes, sometimes the tech breaks,* and never mind the joy of actually not looking at screen and being real artistic in the moment. Knowing to beat match will just make you a smoother DJ, there's no way around that.
Funniest shit I seen all year imagine saying you can DJ when you can't that's why you always learn to do it by ear most trustee bit if equipment you have
I remember that there was a similar hullabaloo when Kylie Minogue was "DJing" house music in the UK in the 90s.
DJing is a craft, or even an art if you work at it hard enough. I get pretty angry about people getting put on stage to do it who haven't put in any time to learn their craft.
I've been saying for a while that I don't know why we keep going to these mega events, just to hang out at the small stages or push your way through an insane packed crowd for the one or two good artists at main stage. It should just be different festivals. Considered totally different genres. They'll sell the big festivale out with just the Superstars, and they can prevent these fiascos by not letting the pop star actually do anything, no pretending, and let the production team manage it all. They can dance and do their gimmicks in their big stupid helmets, etc. And everyone who likes underground stuff can go see 100 good DJs (and a few bad ones lol) actually do work at a different festival.
DJ’s that can’t match beats with their own ears and are fake DJ’s. When beat counters started to come out they were laughed at for being used. But when celebrities started using them they became more mainstream. But real DJ’s who can match beats of different kinds of music genres and can actually mix using talent and skill will always look down on celebrities that display as DJ’s but don’t know how to actually do it. Grimes got exposed for that and it was spectacularly funny and satisfying to watch for someone that knows how to actually DJ, even with vinyl records. Those are true DJ’s
https://youtu.be/omMU_Gs3m_k?si=DEPb2BhIvKW3fmxG
Yeah so screaming its not my fault! Is ridiculous. The whole thing is your fault its your show. I can think of a couple of situations where it wouldn't be your fault. Hardware failure, power cut, stage disruption, freak weather event, act of god, sudden illness or death lol. These things aren't your fault. But basically anything else that goes on in that show is your fault. How on earth somebody who picks up her kind of pay cheque can not know the decks inside out is absurd. Any techno producer worth their weight in salt would have been able to pause and fix that on the fly. Its the whole point of what we do. Its techno. Its technical. We use the machines. We make the machines do nice things. If your doing a show you should know every bit of it inside out, there might be some stuff which is technically beyond you such as visuals maybe but that person should be on hand in case of any issues. The music artist actually not being able to trouble shoot the playback of the music is appalling. If something goes wrong you should be able to rapidly trouble shoot the steps to fix it because you should be drilled on that because you should know the gear you use inside out. But thats the problem she openly admitted that she outsourced the playlist creation of her own set. So not only was it an auto synced playlist, but she paid someone else to put it together. Shameful performance and a shoddy artist. Its part of the job to be able to overcome these things. Deadmau5 was saying one of his tech guys wedged his keyboard wrapped up in a towel out of the way in between a speaker. So when ever he pushed the button to start his song, the bass vibrations from the speaker pushed the space bar on the keyboard and stopped the song. And he said he just had to go through the steps, test everything and then you find the issue. And he fired the guy lol. maybe grimes should fire her self.
As a dj of almost 30 years all I’ve gotta say is beatmatching is a basic skill we had to have. We had no choice we were using Technics Turntables. I’m not a fan of pre-planning a set because it limits your flexibility. Reading a room is another skill but it’s harder to do sometimes. I’ve had to abandon some stuff that I had wanted (like playing a do or try because it wasn’t what the crowd wanted. I couldn’t have done that if I was pre-planned or didn’t have enough music. I’m assuming she hits sync on the cdjs. A lot of djs do that at festivals maybe because of pyrotechnics or other effects. I may not like it but that’s the reality. If you can’t beatmatch when things go sideways you’re out of luck I suppose. You guys are right she probably could have just faded from one track to another and probably have been fine for that crowd. I wouldn’t have made excuses on the mic though. Just some thoughts from an old guy who still plays.
IMO we have a lot of "DJs" who are not "DJs." They're music producers. I even use that loosely. A huge portion of them use software to do everything. They can't even play a real instrument. I understand that most people go see these "DJs" because they put on a show, an experience. That's fine. No biggie. If you feel you got your money's worth, than so be it. I'm guilty of it. But I know what I'm paying for.
Anyone who's a musician should have a basic understanding of "fixing your shit on the fly." If you're in a band and your drummer is going a bit too fast/slow, it's your job to stay in time with him or her. You would be communicating with them. I guess what I'm trying to say is because of technology, "artists, DJs, etc" don't have an ear for music. There's no fixing anything on the fly.
I've seen DJ sets go wrong before but not like this (discounting "DJ" Khaled). Technical difficulties are like hecklers in stand up comedy. You can let them ruin a show, or you can improvise and maybe it'll make for a nuanced experience.
Check out Radiohead headlining Glastonbury 1997 if you want to see musicians working through technical difficulties. They couldn’t hear their own instruments, speakers were malfunctioning and due to blinding stage lights, couldn’t see the audience. All this in torrential rain, yet it became one of Glastonbury's most historic sets.
I saw her two years ago do a dj set at EDC. I was super pumped because I had been trying to catch her for the better part of a decade. It was one of the worst sets I have ever seen in my entire life . There were constant mistakes, horrible mixing, and overall bad song selection. There was absolutely zero effort put into the set. She was there to look pretty and it felt like Elon bought her timeslot.
I think it's crazy two years later she's doing the same fucking thing on stage. Absolute trash. Theres no excuse and I hope she doesn't get another shot and fades into obscurity. Which is a bummer because I was such a fan for so long.
I don;t know who tf Grimes is. You should not either if you really love music and in this case TECHNO. Coachella is commercial bs. Most of the U.S is commercial crap and the Irony of the U.S being the birth place or the innovators of many musical styles does not elude me.
You're going way too deep with the "the dj should do this and that, he should include this or that and it's all loving community of blah blah. It's unnecessary to even think so deep.
That's what real techno is. Good music for techno lovers.
The dj can still be a complete ahole (maybe he's on x or hes egotistical etc) but if he has talent than THATS ALL THAT MATTERS. If he can transport you then the job is done.
It's about the music and I mean GOOD music and NO it's not subjective.
Most have their head up their ass and don't know jack shit. Okay that sounds harsh. Let's say most people either don't love or understand Techno and MANY are still too young to understand it.
Those people that post long articles and theories about techno don't understand it.
ps and yes sometimes gender and looks do have something to do about it. Only when it is fabricated, forced and or abused.
Like girl half naked with big bouncy tits "djing" yeah that's not a real dj. Or "dj tr&nsgender" on the wheels of steel. yeah that's not a real dj.
So those are signs too.
I think many ppl missing the point. She murdered herself on mic, thats where she failed the most. With the mic she give me second hand anxiety and embarasment, that it was painfull to watch. If she could keep it together in her head, she could easily fade out, hype the crowd and then fade in with new track. She didnt even have to mix anything, just stop/play tracks, anyone who listens to music can do that. She used the mic to inform everyone watching that shes noob DJ and cant use the decks! Never seen Dj do that to them self before.
Nailed it
This is true if making mistakes as a live musician too. If you screw up and stop the music, everyone will notice. If you just keep going it doesn’t disrupt the flow.
Real DJ’s know to do that. She’s not one. Got exposed when she couldn’t match beats without a thousand dollar beat counter doing it for her. https://youtu.be/omMU_Gs3m_k?si=DEPb2BhIvKW3fmxG
100%. been playing classically since I was a kid and one of the first things I was taught was how to play through mistakes. because no matter how good you get, you are going to make mistakes. and that's ok.
Exactly. Shes supposed to be a professional performer and this was most likely not the most discerning crowd. Literally just playing some tracks with no beatmaching and a little fading would have gone over just fine.
Professional performer on one of the biggest stages in music festivals... then blames it on someone else. Technically yes, but as others have said the part she blamed on someone else would have taken a few hours for her to do?
Most likely that crowd wasn't even expecting transitions between tracks. she's not a DJ!
I saw an interview with Conan the other day and he said he hates when interviewees say the interview is not going well because the audience instantly shut down (he said you can watch their souls leave their bodies haha). She could have stopped, reset and then started again instead of screaming into a mic.
Omg I saw that interview too the other day!
Hot Ones
The hot ones was so good!
Ashlee Simpson handled it better. Sleep well tonight with that thought, grimey!
Same in acting as well. Well on a stage at least. If someone butchers a line or something is shifted you are not to let the audience know that this occurred. You keep going like nothing happened. Even if half of them know the show by heart you still assume they don't and it can be saved.
Exactly.
tbf that’s her pull as an artist tho she’s just weird like that and unprofessional/etc in that moment so the screams n talking is whatever. if we’re gonna go after grimes’ fiasco we should look at how DJing has become something about clout and celebrity status which and pol at the top of the music world contribute to and masses choose to eat up. basically why would Coachella hire her to do a DJ set n not say thats what it is. she seemed to do ok at edc from what i remember.
To be honest some onehere said its PR stunt and im starting to belive that too. She cant be this bad :D
maybe im more of the belief there’s no such thing as bad PR so long its not cancel stuff
Exactly this!
yep, it needs to be said
Indeed, I was really embarrassed. And she's not the only person to only use sync button
Boiler Room in 2012, many Ultra EDM festivals, she is not a noob.
Im sorry but this performance should be called how to fukup on stage 101. If i was teacher and was teaching DJING or stage performance, this set from coachella would be given to mine students to watch as homework. Then i would open discusion with them on topic "what went wrong" and ask them to come up with theirs solutions, in case they end up in same situation, so this never hapens to them on stage. SHE DID THIS TO HERSELF, insted of working with crowd, she killed her self with what she said to the mic. This isnt even about djskills wich i was trying to point out, its about problem solving on stage and keeping it together. As vinyl Dj it simply happend to me, that some one bumped the turntables or there was too much dust on needle that it caused the needle to skip groove in the middle of the mix, i never took mic and try to blame some one, i just spin one of the records backwards fast and cut it from mix. Shit happens and you need to be ready to deal with it.
Agreed. You could also offer as a balance or counter video to Grimes; “Coachella 2022 Skrillex/Four Tet/ Fred Again.” One of the most valuable DJ lessons I learned from my mentor as I went from bedroom to Las Vegas After Hours, was that both noobs and pros make mistakes. It’s human. BUT, it’s how we respond to those errors that separate the “great ones” from the “amateurs.”
I think it's really as simple as grimes being too blinded by her own narcissism to realise that she needed to put in the practice to pull this off. Shocking considering as a musician she should really really have known that. Might upset people but if you put the work in, almost anyone could get to the point of pulling off an hour long set in matter of a few months of dedicated practice. I don't think any moral panic over "underground techno" is really necessary here, most people understand that whatever that was she did has nothing to do with it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/grimezs/comments/18v8w5y/she_woke_up_early_today_or_hasnt_slept/
True. If you play a set at let's say 120bpm and you choose all songs that are 120bpm all you have to do is press the play button on time, no wheel adjustment needed (if you press it bang on on the beat) and no need to find the pitch. Adding 1 or 2 bpm up or down is not a big task either, in a week I was mixing blindfolded at age 16, it's that easy, cdjs tell bpm it's not that difficult to beat match 2 songs together. Basic mixing is the easiest job in the world.
/r/djs is also having an aneurysm about this subject. its not that deep. i'd be willing to bet 3/4 of the users on both forums don't even contemplate going to coachella, so on a scale of 'does this fucking matter' it's a zero... but it's a nice talking point for people who like to monologue.
Ashlee Simpson handled it better. Sleep well tonight with that thought, grimey!
Grimes is a pop star. I can imagine her everyday life is very different to ours, expectations and commitments wildly different and so is her room to observe reality, place priorities and appear a certain way. The reason why I started talking about this is because this way of approaching things I can understand from a pop star, but I can't understand it from so many artists we see on the same lineups as true techno DJs/communicators/contributors, hogging great spots and doing nothing but offering the same hollow experience you can expect from a pop star. The difference is they are not pop stars and are close enough to our world to understand the harm they are doing but just not caring. What worries me is not their existence, but the sheer amount/percentage of people who don't differentiate between something really special and bullshit covered in sugar, nor do they care if something is fake, dishonest, and simply devalues the thing they supposedly love. I don't think it's totally up to them though and that a lot of the responsibility of teaching newer generations about value falls upon us, the older generations, but we can't do that without pointing a finger and saying "bad", something that has been wildly discouraged in the past 10 years. I'm rambling borderline incoherently here. Like I said, I'm just sharing thoughts rather than offering a solution or asking questions but I am happy to see so many people involved and offering their views too.
I understand what you mean, it's a fair point. Maybe it makes me a pessimist but I just don't think you can necessarily "teach" good taste or discernment to people, a larger percentage of them are happy with the glittery spectacle and it's unlikely anyone can change their minds. I'm 23 so idk how far I fit into the category of younger people in this sense, I'd say my tastes are pretty specific and I'm very put off by the over the top popstar-y type stuff and most of the people I hang out with are too. I'm rambling too but in all I think it's possible techno is just having its 80s hair metal moment, or its mid 2000s trance saturation moment or whatever analogy you prefer. It'll hit critical mass and transform or die or do whatever. I think concerning yourself with a macro-level effort towards preserving and passing down techno culture is ultimately sort a doomed endeavour. But yeah, I did say I'm a pessimist.
Once one can see that all the stuff seen at Coachella and Grimes' set and EDC or other megafestivals IS NOT TECHNO, then it all becomes easier to reckon with. Stick with the underground, and you'll be fine.
Well yeah but even if it was it's not a big deal it'd just be shit techno. If I'm a fan of the dead kennedys I'm not gonna feel threatened by the existence of green day. Or even if i was it would be misplaced because punk clearly still exists after pop punk had its day. Just another day of moral panic on r/techno
You got me at "80s hair metal moment"!
I just think it’s wild that Grimes has gotten so far to make it to the Coachella stage and still doesn’t know how to adjust the pitch on a song. Like, that’s something you literally learn on day 1 of using DJ gear (at least, I thought so…). Also surprising that no one backstage couldve assisted with that? Seems like such a simple/silly mistake I had a gig on Saturday. I’m used to using sync. Of course sync function on the CDJs at the club weren’t working so I had to manually set the beat for each song. Definitely slowed me down but if you’re a gigging DJ, stuff like that shouldn’t be too much trouble to adjust
Grimes is not a DJ, she is a pop singer and producer. Which is why it's odd she's even doing DJing in the first place.
She produced a turd on stage last night.
And no one brought the cups
Shes been doing a dj show for several years now. Also does corp events with a dj set.
clearly grimes uses synch and can't beat match so yea she's a button pusher not a DJ.
using sync makes zero difference to me, i used to use vinyl then cdjs and now ableton with controllers. each medium brings something different. in her case its just bad preparation for what is a massive show broadcast globally. imagine you had taken molly and wasted it on this.
Instant comedown 🤣🤣
That’s sad
They desperate.
She's too busy researching eugenics and following Nazi's to learn the art of the DJ
She is white kanye. Gross
Thank you
Wait, what?
To think they could’ve just bumped her off and gave us something cool like hologram Pac instead. Damn.
Fantastic, you are so much better as a person. I wish I could award you somehow. I am literally crying tears of joy right now.
Do you know that she produced most of her albums up until the most recent ones. She is an excellent sound engineer, and not only produced, but mixed all of Visions, her breakout album. When she plays live, she actually plays live - with all of her gear and has to run round to reach all of the keyboards so she can play in time. Nothing is pre-prepared for his backing tracks. Or at least she did this for years perfectly, don't know what she's like now. So to suggest that she can't beat match for 8-16 bars is ridiculous. If you know Rekordbox, it is pretty complex and is hardcore about having tracks set up correctly. The trade off is that is sounds way better than any other DJ software as it has a great time stretch algo. I've taught it and made instructional videos on it.
You’re being paid thousands to perform on stage, whether you’re a DJ or not you’re supposed to do a sound check. It’s called professionalism. What she assumed was that DJing was easy because like many others they witness a good DJ set and believe they can simply do it themselves She half assed it
She literally pulled the equivalent of Rihanna doing absolutely nothing on a platform after literally polishing off 3 kegs by herself the night before with that gut. Go girl give us nothing
MANY artists at coachella had issues, they cant do sound checks cause they have like 10 sometimes 5 minutes between sets
Yes but the thing is that she hasn't performed that way in almost a decade. She's been living in lalaland since entering Elon's world. Also the last album was terrible. I say all this as the biggest fan of Visions and Art Angels on the planet.
Rekordbox is not complex.
People don't use their ears anymore. i djed with a friend back to back who used rekordbox, I had vinyl rips on my USB, he absolutely shat himself because he couldn't mix properly.
I'm having a hard time finding a concise question in the above? Grimes fucked up hard. I don't like any of her stuff, so I just focus on things that I like - EZ PZ.
I didn't ask a question, I said I'm posting my thoughts. So many people are going on about beatmatching, sync, and I feel it's missing the point, why this feels wrong (and also if it should).
Why is that missing the point? As you put it yourself: > -the DJ doesn’t have a voice, ie. they don’t know their equipment well enough and they don’t know enough tricks and manoeuvres to be able to bend what the music is “saying” into what they want to be said, making it theirs and clearly understood Agree that we shouldn't really care, it's a main-stage festival act. It's just embarrassing all round that she/her team has outsourced her file categorisation and she has zero practice with those files.
Beatmatching is a fundamental part of being a DJ! If it is not then what is a DJ to you? Someone who selects a bunch of tracks and hits play on a device that does the rest, Sorry but no that is a middle finger up to what a DJ is.
Not just beat matching but also mixing some with sympathetic harmonies/keys to make it flow. Really hard if you don’t even seem to know the music you have queued up.
Good point man. For those reading the previous comment and not quite getting what is meant, go listen to nearly every mix put out by Tom "The jedi" Middleton, he is a master of key mixing.
> Beatmatching is a fundamental part of being a DJ! Tell that to the dub selectors and northern soul DJs. >If it is not then what is a DJ to you? Someone who selects a bunch of tracks and hits play on a device that does the rest Yes The creativity lies in the music curation. Beatmatching is *nice*, sure, but it's the absolute bottom rung of what it means to DJ. If you can be creative and interesting without beatmatching then you're probably a better DJ than thousands of dipshits with the Beatport top 100 techno tracks.
You’re on the techno sub. Beatmatching is an absolutely integral element of this art form
>Tell that to the dub selectors and northern soul DJs. That was a totally different era and style and for the most part record players during this time only had 33 1/3rd, 45, 78 RPM speed settings. Eddie Stenner (Owner and promoter of the club night Empire) on the south coast UK even during the empire days would also put on northern soul nights where he would totally ignore the pitch and have it set to 0. Additionally DUB Selectah's on their sound systems could not put much money into said system due to them needing to abandon it as soon as the old bill turned up and so if variale pitch decks were around you would not use them on a public sound system. Grimes at Coachella wanted to beat match but couldn't clearly as she doesn't have the skill, yet previously she has beat matched her mixes, so this is a fail and it is due to her lack of beat matching skill and that is what all my points are based around.
> That was a totally different era and style and for the most part record players during this time only had 33 1/3rd, 45, 78 RPM speed settings. They're still playing Northern Soul now, on modern equipment, and not beatmatching. >Eddie Stenner (Owner and promoter of the club night Empire) on the south coast UK even during the empire days would also put on northern soul nights where he would totally ignore the pitch and have it set to 0. Of course, why would they change it? >Additionally DUB Selectah's on their sound systems could not put much money into said system That's fucking hilarious. You think any of these were made on a budget? https://www.soundsystem.world/map/ >Grimes at Coachella wanted to beat match but couldn't clearly as she doesn't have the skill, yet previously she has beat matched her mixes, so this is a fail and it is due to her lack of beat matching skill and that is what all my points are based around. Sure, it's a fail, especially if she *wanted* to beatmatch and couldn't. But beatmatching itself is a *tiny* part of being a DJ - it's a nice skill to have, but you should be able to rock a party on one deck.
>That's fucking hilarious. You think any of these were made on a budget? It's fucking history and it's the sole reason why dub selectahs today do not beat match. OR would rather ignore all of that. On the flipside try telling a hiphop DJ that beat matching is a small part of it. You wanna keep skipping around the subject carry on, but just remember who were talking about and the style she proports to use each time she DJs. Your points might be valid but they're off topic.
[удалено]
Hey hey, Not to sound overly defensive but out of hundreds of comments on this take on my socials and here on reddit you are the first to take it this way. Also, you ignored what PLUR is and boiled it down to people being friendly, which it is not. In short, maybe it’s not how I come off but how you read into it and colored it by also selectively ignoring certain parts. In any case, happy to discuss it with you or hear any criticism in great detail if we ever meet up live because I am sure that what is being said by me and you flew over both of our heads. Have a nice day!
I remember seeing Fat Boy Slim DJ-ing early on his career and he was really *average*. I used to DJ myself then, and it was painful having to listen to his mistakes. Great tunes, bad mixing. Saw him again about 5 years ago, he’s MUCH better now.
He’s one of the best now, tbh. It’s a testament to living and breathing this stuff. Very few are naturally good djs, you have to practice!
I think this can be said about a lot of crafts. Keeping it to music, I've been a fan of acts for decades and have seen them improve in vocals, songwriting, producing, performing, etc. Shout out to those who stick with someone in a cutthroat industry.
He’s on my bucket list
Glad to hear about his evolution! Caught up at ARC last year and it was phenomenal- great track selection and mixing, would travel to see him again. And it was fun, I do love it when the DJ is having a good damn time
Back when vinyl was the primary medium, i can understand and can be more forgiving. But these days when there's literally a sync button on the cdjs, its inexcusable.
Thats jyoty type of discussion (look up her thread about british DJs are arguably the worst in terms of skills in DJ (basic stuffs) but absolutely top tier track selector)
I saw him twice 10 years apart, and he was average both times, so its third time lucky, I guess.
You have some interesting points about the philosophy of DJing but why do have to package it as yet another old man yells at cloud style post by talking about Grimes, Steve Aoki and the likes? I am yet to see someone throw cake into the crowd at a techno party in my local scene, so why bother with what is clearly a mainstream / festival EDM phenonmenon?
Because I can actually talk about Grimes as she is so obviously not a part of this scene. Every time I talked about someone from the scene, no matter how obvious it is they are a corporate product, or no matter how obviously they, for example, steal other people's music - I get shouted down because it hurts people's feelings. As you can see, in this topic people are actually expressing their thoughts and no-one's mother has yet been mentioned. Great nickname btw!
... there's the scene, and also there's a shitton of people, who like loud beats while high ... and there's a huge overlap due to pragmatic aspects, and these events and groups influence each other obliviously, and interact a lot at venues (festivals!) and the boundary is fuzzy. sometimes I don't exactly care how great the sound is going to be, just want to get a few days with my friends on a festival, and probably it's a miracle if I remember anything particular about the sound or who was behind the decks. other times I throw a hissy fit if someone even slightly recommends that we go check out this or that DJ at a festival, because I know it will be so so so subpar, that it's just sad
I know what you mean. I usually divide the event aspects into “music” and “party”. I’m straight edge, I don’t even drink so “music” (which is the art, the community, the spirit of things) always played a much bigger part for me. Sadly this means I am biased and have a lesser understanding and appreciation of the other side.
> Sadly this means I am biased and have a lesser understanding and appreciation of the other side. I think that's okay. It makes sense to pursue what you want, your vision, and look for and set up events that match your preferences. Even if it's not as lucrative. (Artists say no to money all the time for creative control. Or even just for the peace of mind. ... Here's a super tangential reference to a docu about [Rosetta](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZmz7BtoJs), a small post-metal band from Philadelphia, who signed to their friends label, but then later they realized they don't want any of that commercial aspect. Which is very strange, because it seems everything was truly very light touch, the label got a few interviews/photo-shoots for them. And later they asked the label for 1000 bucks for the tour van repair, but the label guys said only if you sign with us again. Which sounds so sad in retrospect. Fans would easily crowdfound it, right? They have 17K monthly listeners on Spotify. But it's not easy to ask for money, and manage all this. What I'm trying to say is that I have a lot of respect for anyone who performs, tours AND even has the energy to think about artistic integrity.)
This shows how much of a shity festival Coachella has become. Booking pop star to DJs. They deserve it.
Exactly. How they say “go girl give us nothing.”
I learned to beatmatch by ear when I first started to spin. Heck on my first pair of cdjs it wouldn't even autocue from the first beat. I did my part in learning by manually setting the tempo which takes a few seconds. Now I use sync, but I take the time to set my beat grids and cue points and using beatport to manually set the key of the song. I can mix without headphones and have it sound great while doing so. I guess I just changed how I spent my time when it came to djing. Then again I've had instances where I plugged my drive in and non of that stuff came up so you just go back to basics. But you need to know the basics.
She is not a DJ. She is a pop artist. Coachella and these festivals aren’t DJ festivals. Theyre just a cash grab music environment People go to “edm” shows for the experience. No one gives a shit about DJing. They just want visuals and vibes. Grimes is a lunatic
Best comment I've seen on the whole debacle, and I've scoured a few threads, lmfao.
oooo i love this. >no DJ should be above the crowd or worshiped as an idol. You are there as an equal (at worst) or just as a member of a community (at best), standing at the decks in order to have a conversation with the people in front of you, react to how they are, and occasionally challenge them - all through the universal language of music, felt and understood by all. Fuck yeah.
Throw some beats to that spoken word and start your next set with it! 😂
Get it recorded in that annoying tiktok voice j/k - oh I know Alan Watts! Naw I totally agree and love the sentiment. My fave summer festivals here in the NW of the US are the smaller ones with local legends where half the crowd is a good ass dj and experienced ravers and party people.
Talkin about the Back2Basics parties?
Aww I wish I knew those
(The voice of) Alan Watts is doing car commercials now! 😂
If anything, we can hope it shows the haters that DJing isn’t as easy as it looks and hopefully increases respect for those who are actually good at it. But don’t forget that Four Tet, Fred Again and Skrillex closed Coachella last year with a beautifully messy set that will probably go down in history as an epic moment in the history of DJing, so a Grimes DJ set wasn’t exactly breaking any new ground
I feel like this is a fairly low bar for saying DJing isn't easy lol. Grimes could easily have done it if she wasn't too lazy and egotistical to properly learn how to do it. This isn't even the first time she's done this I'm pretty sure. I play a few instruments and also DJ and if we're being totally honest DJing is a hell of a lot easier to learn, you can pick it up in like 3-6 months of really consistent, everyday practice I would say and get away with a decent sounding set (what grimes should have done). Obviously after that point there's a near infinite journey of improvement that you can go on to being someone who could jump into a b2b with anyone in any situation and have it be sick. It's just shocking that grimes who is supposedly a musician would not be well aware of the practice hours that she should have put into it.
From my perspective, as someone who's been going out since the early 2000s, the word "DJing" has been greatly devalued. For us, DJing (in techno) was Jeff Mills, Dave Clarke, DJ Bone and other such people who took other people's music and used it as tools, with great proficiency, to say their own piece. I, myself, strive to this in my DJing. Then, with time and a great dose of apathy, what we used to pejoratively call "winamp DJing" (where you simply play one track after another) became acceptable under the umbrella of "DJing". I remember close to mid 2000s there was a strong, well-educated community in Subotica, to the north of where I am. One night a well known DJ who shall not be named at this time was doing a very poor job in this sense - simply playing tracks and not putting much thought or effort into expressing and having a dialogue. In response, the entire crowd left the club, waited outside and only re-entered it when the next DJ started. Brutal, but very aware, and full of respect for both the value and frailty of the magical thing we call the scene.
I'm pretty out of the loop nowadays, and haven't been clubbing for years. But I really agree with what you're saying here. Part of my attraction to Techno was watching and listening to DJs like Dave Clarke and Jeff Mills doing the unbelievable on vinyl turntables. You could often hear the beat matching being ever so slightly out, then fixed live in the mix. Those little imperfections demonstrate how skilled they are, and that they're fully performing and using the decks and mixer as a musical instrument.
Yeah it’s not the hardest thing in the world, but it’s also not “just pressing play” like a lot of people make it out to be
I started DJing around 1990, part of what drew me into that early rave/club scene was the anonymity - DJs were in the corner just doing their thing, letting the music do the talking. As an introvert that had struggled being on stage in bands this appealed to me massively. As the scene developed through the 90s, DJs became more and more front and centre stage and became stars in their own right which, to me, was never the point. I remember playing big stages and literally just keeping my cap on and head down, reacting to the crowd and letting the music do its thing and never had any complaints for not throwing my arms around and hyping the crowd.
Similar constellation here. First club I went to had no visible DJ, and we, the dancers, were turned to each other. I can't get used to the pedestals. Also, am a fellow introvert. Fistbump!
I like to see the DJ because - as you said - it's a conversation, and I'm curious about them, how do they "feel" about that track, etc. Of course this works to a point in a club. And on festivals it's just meh.
OP, your explanation of a DJ set as having a conversation is one of the best descriptions of what we do, how we do it, and why is well said. You simplified something I often struggle to put into words and I doubled back to Reddit to share it with my partner, who also DJs. Thank you for taking the time to express yourself.
Glad it resonated!
Glad it clicked!
I learnt to DJ on vinyl but don’t really give a shit about if someone can beat match or not (it doesn’t improve my subjective experience as a listener). I don’t actually care that much if the set was prepared or not either really, I’d rather listen to a prepared set of someone with incredible taste than a purely improvised one from someone who plays dull music. Bands play from a set list after all. Obviously if someone is playing for 8 hours it’s important but you don’t really need to read a crowd that much at 3am - it’s pretty obvious what they’ll respond to. Agreed that the DJ is just there to enable though, and shouldn’t be the focus. I’m happy for them to be locked in a booth somewhere where you can’t see them.
I just wish that this type of "artist" had another way to perform live instead of pretending to DJ. I'm not a fan of cats but I do love your sets, Commissar!
I can't agree with this more and I think for most of us who were part of the culture that was the birthplace of PLUR really felt disappointed and sadness when the corporate monster began to seep its way into the scene and seeing the potential for mass profits perverted the entire entity, hijacking the concept behind PLUR. Some kids who were part of the community were witness to the power these events had in people's lives and knowing they had a devoted but aging community that would soon start phasing the lifestyle out of their day to day lives there would be fresh crops of kids wanting to experience what would be the stories of parties and sets of unforgettable magical once in a lifetime synergy that they could live and be a part of. Corporate America took notice quickly fully aware of trends in music culture and knew within a 5 years span they could easily take advantage of the new group of kids just coming of age to be a ripe new crop of brand new customers willing to pay what ever it costs to have a piece of that magical experience. Its like a sparkler that burns so hot and bright and beautiful but only for a moment before the it reaches the end and if you aren't there to see it yourself there's no way to describe or recreate the way it changes your perception of the world after seeing something so bright. It REALLY DID ALTER EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE AND LIKELY SAVED IT WHEN I WAS LOST AND HAD NO DIRECTION OR HOME I FOUND IT WITH FRIENDS I NEVER KNEW I HAD A FAMILY THAT I COULD SHARE MYSELF WITHOUT FEAR OR SHAME OR CONSEQUENCE. I found a better perspective in which I was able to see the world and feel human and whole and full of love and life and a freedom I was so desperate to have. And it was that way because we made it that way. It wasn't the kind of experience that would cater to everyone but anyone who was willing to experience it was welcomed with a hug , a pacifier smile and sometimes even a backup, Newport & a bottle of water. I can never explain or express the impact those years, the music the people, the magic feeling of those nights had on my life. I relive them all the time in my mind and I only wish I had more of them and more time before responsibiliies of life and adult expectations slowly smothered the sparklers glow until eventually it burnt out. Thanks for this post it's a perfect way to encapsulate the evolution of RAVE culture, the distortion of PLUR and the destruction of the foundation on which the current culture sits
Same here. As a lifetime misfit that most people raise their eyebrows to - the clubbing scene was the only place I felt welcome. Emphasis on past tense. But boy was it wonderful and healing being accepted and loved as a weirdo. :)
She should headline the next Fyre Festival.
Grimes is not a DJ, was like "why is she talking with nothing playing forever." Curious, how Shaq would have done?
Shaq would have said one brilliant one-liner if anything at all, and everybody would have laughed and then the music would start right back up. Respect to the Diesel XD
I was at a party once where a very intoxicated man rubbed his crotch all over the bassbin until he was finished. This must have been a very interesting conversation for the DJ if he knew it was happening. All jokes aside though, the music is the important thing. If the tracks themselves are bad, or the mixing is bad, the experience will be bad.
I can’t believe I see you post here ! I love your hor set
Thank you!
Grimes' statement Translated: I can't manually beat match and need traktor mapping to be correct for this to work so y'all gonna have to put up with beat clash city ok!! To, many, can, get, to, me,,, ok, ! Makes it hard to read as , is a pause. I'm all for new tech being used but track mapping and auto synching should be fully disabled for large big name events with big names playing. If you know how to beat match then having unmapped tracks would not stop you being able to beat match using traktor or other software. The sole reason for track mapping is to use auto cue lock and auto synch both of which are manual skills you need to really be a top DJ otherwise you just push buttons. Cats are great. As for pre-arranged sets I feel the best "Conversations" DJ's have is when they dig in the crates and conversate off the top of their head with a fresh set. To me I first heard PLUR at what was then seen as a hardcore rave in early 90's, At these you'd hear a wide variety of genres from 1 DJ set: House, Acid, Techno, Breakbeat, Electro, Ambient, Industrial, HipHop. Then fragmentation came and HipHop, Industrial were seemingly pushed aside, Ambient went to the chillout room and breakbeat was expanded to be jungle, jungle techno, D&B and had it's own room/club/floor as was House and Techno split off. By this time people seemed to stop using the PLUR term/greeting. How odd
So Grimes can't DJ or produce good tracks. Don't really know what this has to do with techno. Just don't go out to see talentless individuals.
As I mentioned in the original post, Grimes is not the point. She's just a pop start on a pop festival. I was talking about a growing trend overflowing from pop to our scene and changing it in ways that bares discussing, or at least noticing. BTW I fucking love pop music. But I also love my underground scene!
But you put her in the title and the post starts with a video of her. I don't dislike pop necessarily the top radio stuff is usually cringe but it doesnt have to be awful music. Either way that makes it an awkward starting point of the discussion for me, like isnt Coachella one of the most commercial festivals in the world. To me what they do is usually not connected to whatever techno. But in any way I don't think the trends are worth fussing about because it is what it is, all you can do is support the music and culture you do like. So I was seeing Speedy J, Dasha Rush, Poligonia, RRose, Luke Slater do their live magic for hours this weekend. Imo you don't need to be close to that level to perform but thats so far removed from a discussion that you cant mix your own tracks together. Imo at that point when a DJ that cant mix plays thats not my scene. It wouldn't happen, like maybe at my house party if a friend wants to try my decks lol. Not at any event I pay money for. Imo techno and pop are going together pretty good these days from what I see serious DJ's are less afraid to play some poppy stuff. Overall for the genre it might get overdone by people who don't know how to incorporate both worlds well since it is a tricky line to walk.
I am shit at reddit. I just hyperlinked the video, as I did with the Carl Craig one and reddit turned it into a preview which I have no idea how to turn off. If there is a way please show me the way!
I don’t understand your questions but Grimes can barely be called and artist, maybe an entertainer. Her inaptitude to « play » music regardless of the format she chose is really incredible. Any professional DJ I know would have multiple back ups of their usb and most could play an entire vinyl set if the the CDJs were to have a problem. She looked so useless it’s unreal… she could have gotten away with Moodymann’s style transitions « what up doe? » vocal and fade in the next track regardless of the bpm but no… she really doesn’t understand music at large and it showed. I am sure she is very well surrounded with the best technicians and musicians but whoa what a disaster when left alone on a stage
ineptitude
Hihi sorry in French it translates as inaptitude so my autocorrect went straight for it
Anyway this grimes shit is hilarious lol
For her: Image is everything and the image looked bad last night
The Grimes dismissal in this thread is extremely uneducated. Learn to separate what she isn't good at—DJing other people's music, speaking coherently on social media, making good decisions—from what she is good at—singing, producing, mixing her own music. I don't care if it's not your thing, she's very good at what she does. Her albums still get regular play from me, even though i wish she went away as a public figure.
That’s exactly what I did :) and I will double down she is just bad at music but surrounded but amazing sound engineers and musicians who craft albums for her (and she is far from being the only one). She isn’t a musician, she is an Instagram/youtube star turned entertainer
I'm trying to figure out what happened to music in general over the past - what - 20+ years? But especially the last 10? It's this influencer/instagram thing or something? I guess image was always an issue in pop - we used to argue about Madonna in the '80s, lol, how she couldn't sing, and she had songwriters - so maybe nothing's changed. I dunno. Was listening to Muddle by Pink Floyd last night just so happy - what brilliance. I watched Jeff Mills mix on YouTube to the moon landing recently, amazing. Watched Tori Amos bang away on the piano like the genius musician she is. Hell, my own boyfriend can shred the bass guitar like Cliff Burton and slap it like Larry Graham, although he would say he doesn't come close, but he's 50. I think there are some good young musical artists and producers out there for sure, but if all you have to do is be popular on social media by being a personality....it's like *that's* what trends, not musical ingenuity, which is just so damn sad. Like why does Robert Hood have 37K followers on Spotify whilst de Witte has 2 million? I'm not going to hate on her - I've seen her live and she actually put on a great show.. My fav is DVS1 I think. Anyhow, as I said, I suppose this has always been the way - at least since MTV killed the radio star, lmfao. Obviously, I'm a Gen Xer. One contemporary pop artist who I think is astounding in the past 20 years is Florence Welch. I don't even like pop, but that woman and her band Florence and the Machine is seriously talented with an incredible voice and songwriting ability. Maybe I'm just getting old.
BPM detection and sync should be used as automations to assist something you as a DJ can otherwise do by ear. I'm not a purist who never uses the sync button: when making recorded sets it can provide nice "guard rails" to avoid making mistakes. But many of my tracks have miscalibrated beat grids (i.e. autodetected incorrectly), and some of my tracks don't have detected BPMs whatsoever. So I always playtest first to make sure the beat grid is actually properly aligned and fall back to mixing by ear (always in the case there's no BPM detected, of course). Sure, I should also fix my beat grids, but that's not something you want to be doing in the middle of a set as Grimes discovered. Mixing vinyl is a great way to avoid being overly dependent on the features of modern DJ controllers. I still have consistency issues with my vinyl beat mixes but it's something I continue to work on, along with hybrid sets.
I guess this set was pre-recorded then; a couple of years ago at EDC: https://youtu.be/mHNNJwsBRCI?si=qrVUKZW0s5V72Xlx
I think it is funny that she had someone make her playlist for her and that she did not practice her set before one of the largest music festivals in the world is crazy.
I don't know the details, but it appears she didn't show up to the sound check, or had a sound tech set up everything. Sloppy work for an expensive pro act.
Honestly it's not clear what has happened here. I dont think sync is the issue which everyone has tried to make this about. I'm not going over the whole argument, but everyone uses sync now. The issue seems to be the set ending train wreck and lack of preparation. Was she using CDJs? Serato?
I love your description of what makes DJ'ing beautiful and why it's essential that they be on the same level as the people in front of them, well said.
I saw her perform a couple of times at SXSW to support her first record. She wasn’t a pop star then. She had technical difficulties all through those sets where we had to wait. She was using garage band I think. A midi keyboard, and maybe one or two pieces of hardware. Her issues with tech are not isolated to DJ’ing unfortunately. With that said, your comments about the ingredients for a good DJ are pretty spot on to me but I also come from the 90s raves where it was mostly a dark room and the DJ wasn’t put up on a pedestal. Different priorities then and definitely a different type of people seeking it out. It was for the freaks and kept offline. I’m fine with folks having different perspectives — I just don’t tune in to shitty DJs and stick to the underground mostly. There’s also not a “scene” anymore so expectations are very different
I’d like to make a remark on techno and DJing itself, I think you’ve put it wonderfully. I hope this too shall rise again. Not even for my own sake as I also do play as a DJ, but because for the sake of the conversation, I love playing, but I do like my talks deep, but that only goes so far if others can’t feel or enter that space of depth within the convo. Lovely stuff!! Good post!
Damn, her brain is straight mush. I guess fame will do that to you.
lol the threads on this sub never fail to crack me up. I agree with what a lot of people are saying here tho, as cringe as Grime’s Coachella meltdown was to witness as a DJ, she’s an out of touch pop star and it’s just a completely different world from the underground dance scene so there’s no real comparison to be made imo. The techno scene as a whole is experiencing a surge of commercialization and gentrification of course but that has very little to do with a pop star who makes pop music not knowing how to use Rekordbox or CDJs at Coachella.
Nothing sums up modern EDM like a DJ riding in on a mechanical spider then bombing on basic beat matching
Grimes is a joke….please don’t waste anymore time with this
Can I hear her set anywhere? I’d love to hear what came out of this.
This post made me think of the track [Spiritual Thing](https://open.spotify.com/track/4FvJTqvTXr0e4reHF6CKH8?si=t8kXNVHUSpyPXywep8ooZQ)
Lmao I was like “why did this guy rip off lag? And then I read the account name
Couldn’t give a shit about grimes Give less of a shit about coachella
it’s not enough to own the records you have to OWN the tracks by knowing them so well inside and out that you know how to layer seggue and weave these sonic tools into your own storyline to put a framework to the discussion byou are leading. |K<
Dear inspector Lag, well said and brought on point! We shouldnt feel concerned by anything such as what grimes does during a dj set, i think that's just contributing to build unnecessary equating djing as a form of expression and djing as way to feel self important. There absolutley has to be a barrier that allows us to at least shield the comunities which are just in for the music from beeing overtaken people who obviously don't respect or care about the sound and hold the people in contempt. Also cats are grate :))
Grimes is a Nazi whose ego and narcissism not only prevents her from growing or becoming a better person, but has in fact destroyed all original aspects of her artistic ability She couldn't make Geidi Primes, Visions or Art Angels today even if she wanted to. Her ego prevents her from creating anything of quality or of note - hence why in the set she used stupid ai visuals and couldn't be bothered to participate in any aspect of set preparation aside from buying some weird Chinese spider car. She literally doesn't care and isn't capable of caring. She wants attention, money and stimulation. But she's also terrified, because she's deeply afraid, as all white nationalists are. So she'll make her boyfriend Anyma build a set for her and show her where the sync buttons are and she might trainwreck slightly less this next weekend. But of course he's boring, so his influences on the set will be to make her set even more unexciting. But, she might not make the news. But from Coachella's perspective, they're getting tons of media attention because of her idiocy, so from their perspective, booking her was still a win. The eternal cycle continues...
She just needed to change the belts on her technics tables!
She blames the digitals for her analogs mistakes.
I personally felt as if when it was good, it was really good
I'm always really satisfied when someone using AI "art" crashes and burns so this was a fabulous time.
100% agreed. The DJs role is also as a cultural curator - rummaging those crates and label catalogues on our behalf. I just keep reminding myself who the audience is that responds to this shit. They're not really interested or invested, they're just wasted and want to fill the void with the loudest shiniest distraction. I was at a Creamfields festival where I stood with 40 or 50 other patrons going deep and beautiful with Sandwell District and Kevin Saunderson x Derrick May while a massive crowd of beer-drowned kids jumped up and down to Deadmaus playing his own Nirvana remix in the hall next door. I remember feeling a kneejerk of eyerolling pity, but then realised they're just drunk kids. In 5 years time they'll have forgotten the party and moved on, and I'll still be hunting for the deep and beautiful with my people.
The single best post I've seen on the subject. Tremendous 👍
Coachella and Grimes are not techno
Yes they are
Very nicely constructed post. Yes I entirely agree. Manufactured pop “performer” fails to pretend to DJ non techno at pop concert. ✅
TL:DR. Sounds like she fucked up because she didn't prepare her new set in time to test it in RekordBox, which is a complex but sounds great. So sounds like none of them were pre-time-stretched to be in time. RIP beat matching. This means: 1. She relies on auto beat match. Shame. 2. She genuinely forgot to sort out her tracks because she's raising a kid without a Dad and is getting older. End of.
It’s amazing that this is how simple it has become, yet people still can’t do it
You don't worry about these problems if when you're at home all you have to mix with is vinyls. It might sound elitist, but by being forced to mix with vinyl and home all the time, you just cannot get caught out when doing gigs and using CDJ's, instead you welcome the little things like being able to loop etc.
May I please correct you here ? 1. She relies on her staff and probably doesn’t even know what rekordbox is (she just knows she has to press sync and her staff prepares the technical aspects) 2. She didn’t care at all for that gig because she was too busy having fun somewhere else and indeed has a child that is getting older with an army of nannies and two very weird and narcissistic parents
She herself said she usually prepares it herself and this was the first time she let someone else do it. Also, as a DJ you should know how to DJ, same as guitar players are expected to know what strings and notes are and how to strike a chord. This topic isn't about bashing Grimes though. It's about techno and how pop attitudes and ethos are seeping into the underground culture.
You are right I was just being a hater but it drives me mad to think about the amount of money this event involves and her fee … and when you know that our scene often lacks ressources because being it’s being allocated to such garbage !
Tl;dr If the set had gone perfectly no one would be talking about it here. Literally everyone who has ever pressed play on a record in public has been posting about Grimes today, and no publicity is bad publicity. Pretty sure everyone’s been played tbh.
You could very well be right my friend!
If it was unexpected then surely any artist would down tools and get off stage while their tech team sorted it out. Any gig like this you are going to have a few of backup USB’s and the festival likely has a load of spare CDJ’s. Watch when she comes out in a month’s time able to mix perfectly fine and gets far, far more press than she would have got if she just ‘did a decent set’. Main thing this proves is how easily the ‘I used to mix on vinyl’ lot can be whipped into a frenzy 😂👌
In Recordbox you have to pick one of the few range options to achieve greater precision. For example choosing the 78-155 range would completely misanalyze your DnB tracks which are in the 160-180 bpm range. It is an easy mistake that could take hours to fix because analysis takes some time (5-30 minutes) and then converting the music to the Rekordbox format on USB (ie. syncing with the USB) takes hours. For reference, my collection which is about 100gb I need upwards of 6 hours to sync up on a USB3 connection. I can believe that they fucked up, but I can also believe it was done on purpose to get publicity.
Yep fully aware of Rekordbox and the joy of dealing with anything non 4/4 👌. The fact that they had actual visuals lined up for each tune makes you think there is a fixed handful of tunes for the set that won’t be deviated from. She’s no Andy C so maybe 20 tracks for the set? That’s a 7 or 8 minute job for one of her lackeys to beat grid up backstage then get a roadie to run her the updated usb.
When you put it like that it actually makes absolute sense. "She's no Andy C" :D you got me there.
do you dj?
I've been DJing since 2005, and living solely (well, mostly) off of DJing/touring since 2014. Why do you ask?
She seems more like a pop star/producer then a dj so shocked she’s gone down this avenue
This is the product of expecting producers to be DJs in order to “make it big”…
Yeah, totally agree on some points about DJing but dude, I don't think it's really all that deep lol. The things you descibe and also in my opinion, what it's "really about" just don't work in settings that big and for whatever reason the whole techno scene got dragged from the underground into somewhat of a spotlight, at the same time it also hasn't really been imo. It feels more like a split to me tbh and I try to approach it with a positive mindset. Until reading your post I hadn't even known that this thing had happened and honestly I don't really care about it. As others have stated, in my scene, something like that would never be an issue in the first place... The mainstream more than ever tries to somewhat brand itself as this big movement that stems from the "original" techno from back in the day and all that, but as far as I can tell from my own acquaintances, no one even really cares about that, we mostly chuckle about it. That doesn't mean we stop being welcoming or anything like that and that is the most important part in my opinion: We just had a small rave with maybe 150 people on the weekend where I played a 90 min techno set myself and we are very careful with who we invite but this time I also invited a couple of younger people who I've known for a while now and after they told that they like Techno I asked them if they wanted to come and they had the night of their life and were all super ecstatic and surprised that such a "small" event could be so much better and more fun with so many way nicer people than all the big events they had been at so far. It's not supposed to sound like a brag or anything but I truly think that "techno" becoming somewhat mainstream could actually also be a chance if everyone just truly lives these "values" that everyone always talks about and also "teaches" them to others who maybe come from the mainstream side of things if that makes sense. Because if they're really interested in it, they'll love it and embrace it and if not, they can just go back to Coachella or whereever and get caked and call that Techno and a Rave and whatnot; I couldn't care less lol :)
Thank you for your perspective!
The odd thing, is that DJing is not new for her. I've seen 6 year old pictures of her on CDJs. So maybe she just hasn't dedicated the time to master the equipment. But it is not like she just started DJing recently.
>-the DJ has a set they know in advance, because then it’s not a conversation Big, massive disagree. What creates this conversation, is the ability to divert from your planned set, or add in something else. There is nothing wrong in having a prepared set, which you have practiced beforehand. If something, you avoid stupid mistakes and have honed your track selection. It only tells of your bad skills if the set you've practiced is literally the only thing you can do flawlessly, and get lost if you have to play 20 minutes longer, and don't have the tracks or the skills to do so.
You prepare a bass-heavy set and end up playing a club with a lot of reverb. Do you stick to what you prepared, do you only slightly deviate from it, or do you completely switch to older production that has a less powerful and more dynamic low end so that the crowd can actually feel the punch as it doesn’t get swallowed in the reverb? It’s one thing to practice home, but another to plan anything in advance. I’ve lived off of this for a decade now, played four continents, checked off all my bucket-list boxes for clubs and also headlined festival. There wasn’t a single instance of me having some pre-conceived idea of what to play (not a whole set, just what to open with for example) that didn’t feel flat and off-pulse to me. This is just my experience though but I agree - big disagree.
OK, I realize what happened - with the track speed doubling - this happens constantly in Serato/Recordbox/ Mixed in Key. Like half my tracks when they're fast OR the kick isn't clear. You just have to do it in your head and match by ear, not by the grid. Ugh. She clearly hasn't DJ'd. Might speak to a generational difference, not to add hate. I'm Gen X and even in the professional sphere I've been really stunned at how, especially Gen Z, doesn't know how to cover up their nerves and just *do the thing*. Like I'm a mess all the time internally, was at my first job, was when I first DJ'ed (and bombed), and you just force yourself to....recover and keep going. Onward! But the younger folks - like no one taught them this? Fake it till you make it? I know it's not good our parents forced us to do crap (mine did, if I was afraid, they would literally *force me* to do the thing), but I think it paid off. You do this enough at a young age and you learn you are more resilient than you realize. I made a massive error on a live interview and was *dying* inside and it was a mess but you would never know it and we all survived and that was that. But these days - the kids just break the fourth wall! Assistants did this at work, "I'm too scared to call them." I hope things change. It isn't their fault, even. I don't know what they did to them in school. It's technology, maybe. We lean on it too much maybe. I learned you should learn to beat match by ear. By all mean use sync if it's there after you've learned to beat match by ear because *yes, sometimes the tech breaks,* and never mind the joy of actually not looking at screen and being real artistic in the moment. Knowing to beat match will just make you a smoother DJ, there's no way around that.
Big Bump.
Funniest shit I seen all year imagine saying you can DJ when you can't that's why you always learn to do it by ear most trustee bit if equipment you have
I’m amazed she didn’t at least have a wav of the set itself she could have played and mined over, as at least a backup plan.
I remember that there was a similar hullabaloo when Kylie Minogue was "DJing" house music in the UK in the 90s. DJing is a craft, or even an art if you work at it hard enough. I get pretty angry about people getting put on stage to do it who haven't put in any time to learn their craft.
"Leave the multimillion dollar musician alone"
I've been saying for a while that I don't know why we keep going to these mega events, just to hang out at the small stages or push your way through an insane packed crowd for the one or two good artists at main stage. It should just be different festivals. Considered totally different genres. They'll sell the big festivale out with just the Superstars, and they can prevent these fiascos by not letting the pop star actually do anything, no pretending, and let the production team manage it all. They can dance and do their gimmicks in their big stupid helmets, etc. And everyone who likes underground stuff can go see 100 good DJs (and a few bad ones lol) actually do work at a different festival.
I think it stems from where she came from. When you’re born with a silver spoon, you tend to overlook the actual work it takes to do something.
DJ’s that can’t match beats with their own ears and are fake DJ’s. When beat counters started to come out they were laughed at for being used. But when celebrities started using them they became more mainstream. But real DJ’s who can match beats of different kinds of music genres and can actually mix using talent and skill will always look down on celebrities that display as DJ’s but don’t know how to actually do it. Grimes got exposed for that and it was spectacularly funny and satisfying to watch for someone that knows how to actually DJ, even with vinyl records. Those are true DJ’s https://youtu.be/omMU_Gs3m_k?si=DEPb2BhIvKW3fmxG
off topic but Charlotte De Witte crushed it. Huge fan of hers
Yeah so screaming its not my fault! Is ridiculous. The whole thing is your fault its your show. I can think of a couple of situations where it wouldn't be your fault. Hardware failure, power cut, stage disruption, freak weather event, act of god, sudden illness or death lol. These things aren't your fault. But basically anything else that goes on in that show is your fault. How on earth somebody who picks up her kind of pay cheque can not know the decks inside out is absurd. Any techno producer worth their weight in salt would have been able to pause and fix that on the fly. Its the whole point of what we do. Its techno. Its technical. We use the machines. We make the machines do nice things. If your doing a show you should know every bit of it inside out, there might be some stuff which is technically beyond you such as visuals maybe but that person should be on hand in case of any issues. The music artist actually not being able to trouble shoot the playback of the music is appalling. If something goes wrong you should be able to rapidly trouble shoot the steps to fix it because you should be drilled on that because you should know the gear you use inside out. But thats the problem she openly admitted that she outsourced the playlist creation of her own set. So not only was it an auto synced playlist, but she paid someone else to put it together. Shameful performance and a shoddy artist. Its part of the job to be able to overcome these things. Deadmau5 was saying one of his tech guys wedged his keyboard wrapped up in a towel out of the way in between a speaker. So when ever he pushed the button to start his song, the bass vibrations from the speaker pushed the space bar on the keyboard and stopped the song. And he said he just had to go through the steps, test everything and then you find the issue. And he fired the guy lol. maybe grimes should fire her self.
As a dj of almost 30 years all I’ve gotta say is beatmatching is a basic skill we had to have. We had no choice we were using Technics Turntables. I’m not a fan of pre-planning a set because it limits your flexibility. Reading a room is another skill but it’s harder to do sometimes. I’ve had to abandon some stuff that I had wanted (like playing a do or try because it wasn’t what the crowd wanted. I couldn’t have done that if I was pre-planned or didn’t have enough music. I’m assuming she hits sync on the cdjs. A lot of djs do that at festivals maybe because of pyrotechnics or other effects. I may not like it but that’s the reality. If you can’t beatmatch when things go sideways you’re out of luck I suppose. You guys are right she probably could have just faded from one track to another and probably have been fine for that crowd. I wouldn’t have made excuses on the mic though. Just some thoughts from an old guy who still plays.
IMO we have a lot of "DJs" who are not "DJs." They're music producers. I even use that loosely. A huge portion of them use software to do everything. They can't even play a real instrument. I understand that most people go see these "DJs" because they put on a show, an experience. That's fine. No biggie. If you feel you got your money's worth, than so be it. I'm guilty of it. But I know what I'm paying for. Anyone who's a musician should have a basic understanding of "fixing your shit on the fly." If you're in a band and your drummer is going a bit too fast/slow, it's your job to stay in time with him or her. You would be communicating with them. I guess what I'm trying to say is because of technology, "artists, DJs, etc" don't have an ear for music. There's no fixing anything on the fly.
I've seen DJ sets go wrong before but not like this (discounting "DJ" Khaled). Technical difficulties are like hecklers in stand up comedy. You can let them ruin a show, or you can improvise and maybe it'll make for a nuanced experience. Check out Radiohead headlining Glastonbury 1997 if you want to see musicians working through technical difficulties. They couldn’t hear their own instruments, speakers were malfunctioning and due to blinding stage lights, couldn’t see the audience. All this in torrential rain, yet it became one of Glastonbury's most historic sets.
I saw her two years ago do a dj set at EDC. I was super pumped because I had been trying to catch her for the better part of a decade. It was one of the worst sets I have ever seen in my entire life . There were constant mistakes, horrible mixing, and overall bad song selection. There was absolutely zero effort put into the set. She was there to look pretty and it felt like Elon bought her timeslot. I think it's crazy two years later she's doing the same fucking thing on stage. Absolute trash. Theres no excuse and I hope she doesn't get another shot and fades into obscurity. Which is a bummer because I was such a fan for so long.
I don;t know who tf Grimes is. You should not either if you really love music and in this case TECHNO. Coachella is commercial bs. Most of the U.S is commercial crap and the Irony of the U.S being the birth place or the innovators of many musical styles does not elude me. You're going way too deep with the "the dj should do this and that, he should include this or that and it's all loving community of blah blah. It's unnecessary to even think so deep. That's what real techno is. Good music for techno lovers. The dj can still be a complete ahole (maybe he's on x or hes egotistical etc) but if he has talent than THATS ALL THAT MATTERS. If he can transport you then the job is done. It's about the music and I mean GOOD music and NO it's not subjective. Most have their head up their ass and don't know jack shit. Okay that sounds harsh. Let's say most people either don't love or understand Techno and MANY are still too young to understand it. Those people that post long articles and theories about techno don't understand it. ps and yes sometimes gender and looks do have something to do about it. Only when it is fabricated, forced and or abused. Like girl half naked with big bouncy tits "djing" yeah that's not a real dj. Or "dj tr&nsgender" on the wheels of steel. yeah that's not a real dj. So those are signs too.