What's Left to Do?

[GoldSeraph]

Ok we all know there are a ton of fantastic DJ's out there already, and thousands of DJ wannabe's waiting in the wings, battling it out for those local club residences. To me, it seems like the current flavor of house/trance is reaching or has already reached its peak. The guys that are on top now and have the connections are going to stay on top (ie those connected with Global Underground, Balance Promote, etc). So my question is, what is left to do with DJing as far as artistic progression?

One idea I had is the incorporation of live performance mixed in with the DJ set. No, not those lame rock-rap kind of DJ's, but rather the DJ, in addition to keeping the set going, would add his own touches to tracks with synths, samplers, etc, or perhaps even a guitar. It would be kind of a one man multi-instrumental performance. Anyone else have comments or ideas on this? I would not personally be satisfied being one of the legions of Sasha/Digweed imitators, I am trying to find a new angle which is appealing to the crowd and also challenging to myself.

[djsynrgy]

if you can rock it, rock it. My original aspirition for my DJ work was to do exactly what you said, incorporate live guitar, but since then I've settled for other things. Trying to mix records and play guitar at the same time is next to impossible.

Many DJs do sets exactly like you're describing. They just don't get hyped as much as a digweed or cox.

[chris_chrys]

I think if you bring as much to a DJing set as possible without going overboard making sure that you're expressing yourself then the possibilities are endless. Listen to DJ Shadow and see what he does with his own tracks whilst live, he Scratches then puts effects over it and also uses effects to echo songs at certain times to make it more intense - very musical - Genius. He uses effects and scratching together and it works brilliantly. If you keep evolving yourself with ideas like this then it's only a matter of time before you come up with your own ideas, it's just another evolution of ideas (to paraphrase bill hicks). There's an endless possibility to what can be done and I think it's really exciting because it will eventually lead to the shite Dj's being recognised as just that - shite, showing them for their true colours. It's all coming together and it's good. Dj's like Judge Jules, Seb fontaine and Paul Oakenfold will eventually be looked at in the same way as a disco DJ was looked at after people realised it's just a joke.
Bring on the revolution.

[bigsplendor]

The future of DJ'ing lies in groups. Like the Beat Junkies and ISP. We need more talented groups who use the turntable to create music, not just play it back. We need Dj Bands with one DJ playing drums, one playing bass, one on vocals, etc. Once people see DJ using the turntable like an instrument it will gain alot more momentum. The things one DJ can do are limited, so we need to unite and school the world.

Peace.

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Who am I to judge one's perspective? -Common