Matt Challands

Every few years someone says the same thing about house. I remember it going cheesy in the 90s and again about 10 years ago.

He is just not the right DJ for them, that’s all. They want cheese and he doesn’t play it. If he was ready to bend over and play nasty commercial tunes then they’d love him and there wouldn’t be any talk of Spotify.

mr_john, post: 4998 wrote: i used to find the people complaining about EDM going mainstream crazy. I love sharing music with the world. But then the EDM scene in my town changed. It went mainstream. Gone are the PLUR days. It’s city punks, club rats, pissed off wannabe gangsters, who all go just to get drunk and mack on girls. They fight, cause problems, and ruin peoples nights. The kandy ravers and people who go for the music are fewer and farther between.
What I’m getting at, is yes it can be just music. I wish it would stay that way. But unfortunately the mainstream can’t handle it. They take the stereotype and run with it. Now every time I hear a hip-hop song with an EDM beat I die a little inside.
Trance however, seems to be safe. House is lost as far as I’m concerned. And next up is dubstep.

That is precisely why many people are gutted when their favourite genre of music goes mainstream. Not only does it start to attract awful, cheap commercial producers and fabricated bands lacking in class, talent and soul but the public who listen to it change for the worse. Not everyone agrees with that, but it’s what you and I think 🙂

Let’s not sweat it though guys. I distinctly remember 2000-2002 when the quality of music appeared to be terrible, cheap and full of artificial boy bands, karaoke covers and low quality, cheaply produced, soulless EDM. What this heinous, musically painful couple of years unexpectedly produced was a groundswell of awesome talent that had been brewing quietly away, frustrated by the current lack of quality.

At that time, future musicians and producers who were revolted and sickened by the lack of originalty had been getting high on music from 15 years before instead. The music that followed from 2003-2008 then proceeded to beat the hell out of 1999-2002.

Let’s hope the current evil autotune EDM herd of “lowest common denominator” sheep who all produce electro only because it’s meant to be the current trend will do the same, eventually disappearing to leave us with outstanding new innovative artists who come through in a year or so, or hopefully before that.

An online course will teach you as much for less money. I’ve seen some DJs schools here in France where these tutors teach fresh, impressionable youngsters who recently saw David Guetta on TV and are all excitable because they want to be him.

But they don’t teach these young guys anything about DJ intuition and reading a crowd and THIS is what separates the wheat from the chaff. Give anyone a DJ who can read the crowd but mixes badly over a DJ who can mix perfectly but can’t read a crowd.

And who are these tutors anyway? No one knows them. For all we know, they could be failed DJs who never knew how to understand people’s dancefloor reactions and would storm off when no one danced to their tunes.

DJ lessons: expensive, questionable tutors, only teaches you technical skills.

Online free/paid for learning or a DJ book: Cheaper, more effective and more worldly.

Why even use the sync button when the BPM is indicated for you?

Mixing is so easy these days, with the BPM counter visible whether you’re on CD decks or digital (not using vinyl). Even when you’re tired, you can get a decent mix together by knowing the BPM of tracks.

For all those DJs that rely on sync too much, try this:

– Set your incoming track BPM at the same speed as the current track
– Create a 2 or 4 bar loop, cueing on the kick drum beat of your choice
– Check that both of the tracks sync in your headphones! Some tracks vary in speed, sometimes digital software is slightly off. Syncing can do nothing to help you here. If you don’t agree, then try mixing Lil Louis “French Kiss”.
– If there is a slight mismatch, address it by either speeding up or slowing down your incoming track, or using the jog wheel to address the beat that is slightly off.
– Bring in that mix!

This way, you’ll eventually train your ears to at least beat match basically. You may not learn to be Elaaskins, but you’ll be better off than before.

Relying on the sync and not knowing how to correct anything in the middle of a mix is suicide. You have every chance of looking like a clown when it fails you in the middle of a prog house long transitional mix.

For those DJs who use the sync BUT know how to beat match and sync manually using jog wheels, this doesn’t apply.

But for those who need sync buttons to mix, you really need to at least master some manual beat matching.

Ampero, post: 1951 wrote: While agreeing with most that has been said, I think peer pressure and the will for acceptance factor in heavily for the prevalence of drugs in any music scene.
Of the users you’d probably find 40-60% use as a means of habit or because they really feel like that’s the only way to connect to the vibe… :/ the other percentage would be the ones doing it because they assume that it’s a part of the ‘scene’ or because the person they came with is on something.. or they do it just to look cool.

So while EDM and E (per se) may go hand-in-hand, I think it has alot less to do with the culture of things and more to do with an assumed perception of them.

You’d have to take drugs to realise why dance music and drugs (especially ecstasy) are connected. The first pill many take may be partly down to peer pressure, but after that it’s nothing to do with that anymore. After the first MDMA wave of pure pleasure when dancing to music, people don’t need peer pressure anymore or any assumed perception of them. They keep taking pills because they enjoy it and it lets them connect perfectly well and deeply with EDM.

It’s completely cultural and the dance music we know today would be either nonexistent or totally different if you took away MDMA from the equation.