Too Much, Too Young?

franklyshocked

I've had this discussion with a few lads before but I thought I'd reprint it for the hell of it.
Back when I started DJing, CD wasn't really an option. Most CD decks were pants and those that were half way decent were massive prices so everyone started off on Vinyl decks, not always 1210's.
I've replaced many belts in my time, though that will mean nothing to most of ye. Anyhoo, that was a bit off topic.
Back in the day you didn't have the access to tracks that we do today. There really weren't as many producers and most of us could only afford to buy the minimum of tracks we were after so you chose wisely.
You really got to know your tracks. You got to know the B-sides too!

These days however, since adopting the dreaded CD, I find myself downloading literally hundreds of tracks a month and spending half the time just skipping through them to find the one or two tracks worth keeping.

So nostalgia trippers, were we better off back in the day or does todays DJ just have too much too young?

BaZmO*

I hear ya!

TBH it has it's good points and bad points.

I remember when I started out I had very limited funds for getting vinyl and as you've said I had to be very picky about what I actually bought, having said that though I still managed to buy an awful lot of cack too! Ha
But I used to miss out on buying albums quite a lot because of the cost on vinyl and buying CDs just seemed a waste, plus they weren't that much cheaper anyway.

I like a lot of Indie music but back in my clubbing days I bought very few Indie/Rock/Alternative CDs as the money just wasn't there.

Since I've switched to Digital a few years back, (I have a media centre at home so no point in buying a physical copy, i.e. CD, just to gather dust), I've been essentially able to get whatever music whenever I want. But that also has it's problems too. I've way too much music on my hard-drive (if such a thing is possible!!), well too much to listen too regularly. The only hard copy's of music I buy nowadays are 12's. But mainly for nostalgic reasons really.

One thing I do find funny nowadays is how cheap you can get older records for compared to back in the day when certain tracks were as rare as hen's teeth. You can get whatever track you want now straight away which is certainly a good thing.

joker77

Interesting topic for discussion.

It's a double edged sword really. Back when I started Djing / collecting vinyl, I spent most of my weekly wage as a teenager on it. It was a huge thing for me, many hours were spent in record shops with stacks of records, sifting through to find the ones that you were going to spend that hard earned cash on.

As you say, you got to know all your records, inside out.

But, for me anyway, there were always ones that I just couldn't get my hands on. Some I knew the names of, some I didn't. The ones I knew the names of, it would be a case of asking for it in town, and being told 'Next week bud'

So back then my head used to be wrecked a little bit not being able to get the records I wanted. That made them all the more precious for the DJs that did have them though, and the odd time I'd be lucky enough to be 1 of them - when you had a rare vinyl that none of your mates had it was pretty sweet.

These days though, it's very easy to get your hands on whatever music you want. Everything has changed. If you don't know the name of a tune now, post up a sample or describe it, and more often than not you'll find what you're looking for pretty easily. Everything about how we get our music has changed. For a DJ, instead of physically going and buying vinyl, it's just a download. For a regular music person, you don't even have to buy music any more - you can listen to it on youtube, sure there's even a desktop app now called 'Musiic' that's likely a media player for youtube.

Things change, nothing you can do about that, but for me who never had enough new music, as much as I romanticise about the days of going into town to buy records, life is a lot easier now!

franklyshocked

Great fun spending a few hours listening to the new tracks alright.
Any of ye ever had the misfortune of the new girlfriend who insists coming record shopping with you and ends up with a sour face when you spend 50 of the 60 minutes with headphones on?
Payback for her bringing me shoe shopping I suppose.
Well I married her in the end.

Zascar

Good thread... Yes I have to agree. There was a quote on here a few weeks back that I totally agree with - something along the lines of "Show me a crap DJ you can bet he has a hard drive with 1000's of mp3s"

It's so true. We are spoilt with being able to have almost any track you want in seconds - most of which can be got for free just as quick and easy as paying for it.

I was never a V inly collector - I have a small stack for nostalgia but I never toured the wax shops looking for new tracks. I was digital from the very beginning when it was crap and most DJ's turned their noses up at it. If I was going to have to pay €10 for every track things would have been very different.

Even now many of us suffer from too much music. I try to be as ruthless as possible and delete all the crap and only download what I really really want.

Still, having access to more better music - well it just pretty much rocks doesn't it.

MikeHoncho

I have way too much music. I will never listen to it all our know the tracks the way I used to. In recent months ive been trying to combat this a bit though by setting out a few rules:

1: I only buy my tracks once a month. I am constantly listening and saving tunes to my crate in beatport etc but I only actually buy once a month. I review the tracks in the crate constantly and remove ones which dont sound as good on the second or third listen.
2: I set myself a strict budget every month
3: I always pay for music I am likely to use for Djing. I find this means that it has a value to me.
4: After I download a song it is immediatly placed in a playlist according to the genre and then type of track it is. I have folders for each genre and beneath that I will have playlists for the type of track. For example my Techno folder has sub playlists like Atmospheric, Driving, Bouncy, Melodic.

I find this helps anyway. I'm sure others do similar things. I do miss flicking through my crate though looking for the perfect tune to play next. Something about seeing the sleave you could almost hear the track. Its not the same looking at writing on a screen.

Daroxtar

Sorry to be the caveman here but I'm still pretty much vinyl only. I mess around with digital but when i'm playin a gig or even just lettin rip in the bedroom i just get so much more out of playin with the records.

Completely agree with the above statement about nearly hearing the tune when you see the sleeve and also that you end up with too much sh!te on your hard drive.

I spent thousands on records and you definately get more of an attachment when they cost so much but i often arrived home and realised i'd bought a piece of muck too. Must be the headphones in the shop or something:D

franklyshocked

Daroxtar wrote: »

Sorry to be the caveman here but I'm still pretty much vinyl only. I mess around with digital but when i'm playin a gig or even just lettin rip in the bedroom i just get so much more out of playin with the records.

Completely agree with the above statement about nearly hearing the tune when you see the sleeve and also that you end up with too much sh!te on your hard drive.

I spent thousands on records and you definately get more of an attachment when they cost so much but i often arrived home and realised i'd bought a piece of muck too. Must be the headphones in the shop or something:D

I've used those headphones myself alright!

franklyshocked

Here are the new rules,

Rate all your tracks after you listen to them more than twice.
Anything less than four stars is wasting your hard drive space unless you plan to sample and remix it.

Or if you're not a fan of deleting, burn them to a DVD and you've got a couple of GIGs worth of 3 star tracks you might come back to one rainy day.

Who knows, that gabba funk asian cross-over acid Jazz track you just heard might be popular in a couple of years time.

Zascar

MikeHoncho wrote: »

4: After I download a song it is immediatly placed in a playlist according to the genre and then type of track it is. I have folders for each genre and beneath that I will have playlists for the type of track. For example my Techno folder has sub playlists like Atmospheric, Driving, Bouncy, Melodic.

MIke out of interest, any chance you could share your genre breakdown with us?

I've always wanted to get that organised but I'm just not. I have it broken down into house, electro, minimal and techno - but no further than that. I like to have my newest tracks in one directory and then disperse after that.

Yo Mamma

Good thread..

Am 100% Vinyl man myself. Have over 5000 12" in the collection, Spent years trawling through uncountable stacks of tunes all over Dublin. I have a box of what I call my 'Sympathy' Tunes, where I went into a shop and got the guys to take everything off the racks, dig out old stock and pretty much went through every tune in the shop and still found nothing I liked.... well after wasting soo much of their time I would buy a token tune...that tune being the least crap of a really crap pile LOL just so that they got a little something for their efforts....... seriously....boxex of 'Sympathy' Tunage lying around lol

Half the buzz of DJ'ing for me was the fact that you had to sniff out the good tunes and be there when the shops got their stock delivered, and get to go through white labels n such.... and when u found that GEM of a tune u could be sure that there were only a few heads that were likely to have it and play it ....in Dublin anyway... so ur set was guaranteed to sound a little more unique / intresting

Those days are gone.....

but if u listen to what the top guys are playing week in week out most of those track lists are still impossible to get (usually obscure remixes) .....even on mp3....let alone vinyl :rolleyes:

But hey on the + side the Tunes around now are spectacular !! so yes the old-school vinyl hunting days are over but its led to an explosion of talented production and labels so I guess its a fair trade off in the end.. if anything there is just soooooooo much of it around now it can tend to get a bit cheapend..... if u know what I mean.....

But then thats what makes those tunes that are a cut above the rest that bit more special in a scene where the standards have been raised so high!!

:pac:

HJ-

FLYNN-DOG

Great thread. I suppose bothe have their advantages / disadvantages. From a personal POV, I'm 22, started liking electronic music about 94/95 during the Prodigy's peak years.

I've wanted decks all my life, but as a 12 year old, my folks were hardly going to foot the bill - i asked for 1210's for Christmas when I was 14/15 - didn't get them in the end as I realised how much money it'd cost me to pay for vinyl's, not to mention a mixer aswell as the decks. (I looked at other options bar 1210's btw)

I think the problem with vinyl has a lot to do not only with the weight and the sheer annoyance of carrying around a bucketload of tunes, but also the maintenance (broken needles etc) required. Crucially though, the cost is probably the most important factor and was for me at least, the reason why I'm not a superstar dj now! I simply paid for my cdj's and that's it....no more costs!

Interesting to read how people organise their tunes. Right now, I'm in the process of arranging my tunes so they're categorised into Artist, name, label, genre, time - then I'm going to get the tracklisting laminated and highlighted according to genre - I'd be keen to know how others organise their tunes.....i mean many tunes which are both tech house won't necssarily work together....what do we do, come up with a sub-genre, sub genre?!

MikeHoncho

Zascar wrote: »

MIke out of interest, any chance you could share your genre breakdown with us?

It really only makes sense to me the way I have it broken down. This is probably gonna look wierd to everyone else. I know what I mean but everyone else might not:

Techno:
- Atmospheric
- Banging
- Big Tunes
- Bouncy
- Dark
- Driving
- Funky
- Uplifting / Melodic

I havent gotten around to doing any of my other genres yet but I have really only been buying Techno the last month or so that I have been doing this. I need to sit down and go through all my Tech House, Minimal, Electro stuff and figure out what to name them. The way I did it with Techno was literally to go through all my tracks alphabetically and think "How would I describe or place that?". If I could'nt place it in a list id already created I would come up with a new list and give it a name. I hope that makes sense.

Scubadevils

I'm actually enjoying the hunt for good electronica almost as much as I did back in the early to mid 90's. I have been through many phases in terms of the medium that I buy but these days it almost completely CD - I have yet to pay for digital downloads but did go through a psychotic Soulseek phase about two years ago and ended up with endless amount of MP3 that I could never have the time to listen to. My vinyl buying days are pretty much gone with the odd exception, I still buy some releases but have eased off a lot since about 2001.

What I love about now is the amount of music that I am tracking down that I would have never found except for the internet. It ranges from brand new releases that I order based on reviews to obscure labels from years ago that you can pick up for next to nothing now on Amazon marketplace etc. I love the hunt for labels, producers that operate under different aliases that maybe released one album on some unknown Swiss label, discovering a label you've never heard of before and then unearthing numerous other artists that equally were new to you. It really is an endless but amazing quest for good music. Most of my free time is now spent researching and listening to music, I'd almost call it an addiction now as I know I should stop spending on CD's but before I know it I'm online, added to cart and checked out - I really need to put a bit of discipline around it and set a budget per month and stick with it, this week alone 11 CD's arrived in the post from various sources! I avoid looking at my credit card bill...

I prefer having a physical release for my money and still love the artwork, sleeve notes, various types of CD cases etc. Thats a love that has been with me from as far back as I can remember. Any new CD's that I buy are first of all added to my discogs and then generally ripped to FLAC for my MP3 player.

I'd love to get back to DJing again though and when cash eventually allows I do intend to buy some CDJ's - I have amassed such a huge CD collection now and would love to get stuck into mixing them. Come back Celtic Tiger, we have formed a toxic bank to solve the nations problems...