Is technology killing our passion?
Marcus Intalex (UK drum ‘n’ bass producer) is a self-confessed grumpy old git, but he seemed to hit the nail on the head recently when he said that in years gone by we would purchase a CD, listen to it incessantly, and then save up enough money to buy a new one. Now we download more music in a week than we can listen to in a year. It’s the twenty-first century and Bangkok makes it as easy as possible to get hold of any song, movie, or television show in an instant, be it in the form of bootleg copies or downloads. There are internet cafes on every street corner, children walk around with gadgets and gizmos that baffle their parents, and life is being made very simple for all of us. But do you ever feel like somehow the fun of exploration is lacking; that we have now become so lazy that we can’t even get excited about anything? The world is at our fingertips and we don’t need to move to get it.
Where’s the passion? DJs used to spend all of their money digging in crates looking for records. They’d sell their own mothers to buy Technics 1200s (turntables) and relish the time spent at their decks. All that hard work, that innovation, that creativity, that love for something: it’s all wrapped up in a CD-rom now. You don’t even need to leave your bedroom and in a matter of minutes you can be transformed from Joe Bloggs into a DJ god.
You have to choose your camp: are you a traditionalist, who likes to see someone work for their money, or are you one of the radicals who want everything here and now and in an instant? Most clubs in Bangkok don’t even have turntables, and many of the old skool DJs from abroad, Grooverider for example, are making moves to using primarily CDs. But what about the laptop DJs? They seem to be popping up everywhere. A decently powered laptop and ‘hey presto’, you’re a DJ. The Arcadia boys (promoters of a Bangkok indie night) made a decent living out of letting iTunes run through their favorite songs once a month. Several hundred people paid 200 baht, one of boys pushed play, and four hours later they were laughing; fair play to them.
When John B was here he said something like this while watching a well known luk krueng laptop DJ: “Yeah, it’s good and it sounds alright, but what’s he really doing that you couldn’t do without a laptop? He’s not adding anything to it.”
Everything is geared towards removing the work, and you might say that this in turn removes something of the emotion from any event. Worse still, what happens when you combine videogame fanatics with the allure of “cool” that you might associate with DJing? The answer is simple: you get the WiiJs.
I wish I was making this up, but one man has spent an unearthly amount of time developing software that allows you to use Nintendo Wii remotes (wireless controllers for a videogame console) as a means of controlling a computer program that is capable of playing songs. The Wii remotes are motion sensitive and so it’s possible to manipulate elements of a computer interface by moving your hands. It’s completely pointless, but it’s making DJing accessible to even more people than it was open to before. Geeks, and not even music geeks at that, are now DJs. One WiiJ was ignorant enough to give a demonstration of scratch DJing with his Wii remotes. Kool Herc would be foaming at the mouth if he saw this.
WiiJ Timski is one of the first performers in the world to actually identify himself as a WiiJ instead of a DJ. He is Dutch and plays drum ‘n’ bass. Another WiiJ enthusiast had these words to say about the fad:
“Thank you Nintendo Wii, for bringing in the ideas. No one expects someone to take a Wiimote and make it control your roomba. They don’t expect you to play WOW with it. And they definitely don’t expect you to become a WiiJ DJ. But we do it anyways because the barrier of entry is a lot lower than it’s ever been before, and because swinging your arms around is cool in a crowd of techno music. Now, soon, I expect people to have excellent fun with it.”
I guess the way you take this depends a lot on what you believe is “cool”. All you need to become a WiiJ are a computer with Bluetooth, DJ software with keymapping, and one or more remotes from a Nintendo Wii. The demonstration given on the WiiJ website featured a mash up of four songs and it sounded bloody awful. Thankfully the WiiJ craze is yet to make it to Bangkok.
Enough of pretend DJs and back onto the music, something we can all agree to love. I’d be hypocritical if I said I didn’t download music; of course I do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel a whole lot less excited when I get a new album than before I had broadband. It’s difficult to feel passionate about music now that you can download more or less every song ever recorded quicker than the time it takes to walk to 7-Eleven. A music collection used to be something to be proud of, but it’s fast becoming a harddrive. I can’t say that I’ve rejected this move, but it saddens me a little that I can have 160 songs by Bjork without actually feeling like I’ve earned them. It devalues the process of collection, no matter how much you love the music.
It’s the same for movies: on the one hand, it’s great that the world of cinema is open to everyone, but now we can all see the same things. Nothing is rare and we can have a collection of any genre of movie, from any era, any director or actor; we can have it all just like that. We’re all watching the same movies and listening to the same music. Movies themselves have shifted from focusing on dialogue to exhibiting the latest technologies. It seems we are not even deemed attentive enough to focus on conversation.
We are no longer fans of anything in particular; we are just fans. We have so many songs now that it’s difficult to really form an opinion of them all. Technology is helping us reach areas we could never get to previously, and as such it removes the effort and therefore the excitement of achievement.
Through no fault of its own, Bangkok is a city geared towards embracing this neo-enthusiast attitude. You feel like you can be excused from getting hold of pirate music, movies, software, etc. because it’s so widespread and because the genuine alternative is so much more expensive.
Without wanting to sound too much like a grumpy old git, it seems like the way we approach everything, from accessing information to buying music, is changing and we have to move with these changes, but whether that means that the new breed of DJs will be lunatics dancing around with remote controls in their hands remains to be seen. Some things are better left alone. This is not to say that technology is bad – of course it isn’t – but the world evolves at a faster pace everyday and it’s sometimes difficult to keep up.
Techno’ tags: Technology, Downloading
March 29th, 2007 at 2:07 am
I love gadgets and I try to keep up with what’s happening in the gadget world but I can’t understand the obsession with these game machines. The only computer games (or whatever they should be called these days) I’ve played and liked are Civilisation and Counter Strike, which I’m sure are museum pieces now.
As for downloading too much music, that sounds like impulse downloading. Why not just download what you want or know you’re going to listen to? In the same way that you probably used to buy CDs.
March 29th, 2007 at 5:36 am
All this is true. I remember myself buying CDs and vynil and spending so much time listening to each one of them. The easy availability of music had change my feeling towards it. Nowadays I download more than I can listen.
I miss the time I was hitting the record stores and digging their stock.
March 29th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Downloading more music than I have time to listen to? Guilty. But I still get as excited as a little kid whenever I hear a great track. And do play it over and over and over and over and over… and over again…..
I also am an old school vinyl snob. But you know what a bitch it is to travel with lots of vinyl. Backbreaking stuff. Laptop DJing doesn’t mean you have to add anything to it that cannot be done with vinyl. Laptops are just very convenient to carry around.
If a DJ plays good music, knows how to mix in a non-disturbing way - would I care whether it’s vinyl, CD, laptop or that WiiJ thing you mentioned? No. The WiiJ remote does not make anyone a DJ. Embrace new technology and use it. The people with skills and knowledge will always be ahead of the wanna-bes.
March 30th, 2007 at 8:46 am
lost boy, you know there was more behind the arcadia nights that made they’re successful. maybe are you jealous a little bit that your party was not big success like them?
March 30th, 2007 at 9:28 am
You’ve missed my point. What I’m saying is that now anybody can do it and anybody can become successful and live with the respect that comes from “being a DJ”. Look at how much money they made and how big a following they achieved in such a short space of time. My point is about DJing and how easy it is to get into now. They’re night was, and is, extremely popular, but what’s to be jealous of?
Making parties is not my job. I’ve promoted parties with real DJs in the UK and had 700, 800 people come. Theirs is a different scene to what I’m interested in. If they could pull that off in the UK then more power to them. Bangkok is just a playground.
March 30th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
I happen to be the DJWiij guy and just have to add my 2 cents into this… (if you dont believe me email me at the email address on the website, i’ll respond back)
I agree with your thoughts on the fact that the scene is changing. It sucks, but it happens. I started out on tables and buying vinyl and digging for it at stores, and it was fun! I still have all my vinyl and gear, and I enjoyed those days. Honestly if there was a good record store around where I live I would probably be doing it today still. But the convenience of a laptop or even cds is hard to argue with. The idea of taking this vinyl out into the real world for potential damage, theft, or hassle of carrying it around is too much a pain when a laptop or cds can be replaced with proper backup.
As for having things that a laptop can do that vinyl cant, I think there are alot. I’m not going to name them all but even things like key locking are things a laptop, sure does make harmonic mixing a lot more possible.
I dont see turntables going away anytime soon, if anything people will want to bring turntables and vinyl together with laptops and cds. They are the ones that realize each “type” of djing has its own benefits.
The idea that anyone can now become a dj scares people no more than the idea anyone can buy a guitar and be a guitarist. The cream of the crop will float to the top. Technology may make joe schmo the new DJ AWESOME, but you also have to remember it also made the writer of this column go from mumbling in his room to standing on a soapbox telling the world how he feels.
March 30th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I was hoping you’d respond to this. Actually I was planning to e-mail you because I think it’s great that Nintendo have taken up your idea to make it into a game. That’s brilliant and that’s how it should be: a game.
A guitar has always been a guitar, but the equipment of the DJ has changed a lot. I got my turntables around 8 years ago. To be honest, I’ve had debates about this sort of thing with people for years. It came about firstly when CDJs started becoming more popular. If you’ve ever seen Eddie Halliwell use a CDJ then you know it can be an amazing thing, but I don’t want to pay top dollar to see someone use a BPM counter. If a DJ can use the time saved by mixing digitally to make it sound better, then that’s awesome.
I don’t have much time for laptop DJs because people seem to be using it as an easy way into something they don’t take the time to learn about.
Taking a crate of vinyl around isn’t ideal; I understand that. Those boxes are really heavy. Also, there have been turntable for years that can do keylocking (I think Stanton was the first to really push this).
I haven’t yet seen anything on your website that shows me that WiiJing is a serious form of DJing. The demo you gave was riddled was needless effects and irritating loops. If you can show me something more substantial then I would love to see it.
On a side note, products like Final Scratch and Serato are great.
Anyway, thanks for your thoughts, I’d like to hear some more.
Matt
March 30th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
“Downloading more music than I have time to listen to? Guilty. But I still get as excited as a little kid whenever I hear a great track.”
Don’t get me wrong, I still get excited, but I find my attention span for music has diminished somewhat.
March 31st, 2007 at 8:32 am
lost boy, you know there was more behind the arcadia nights that made they’re successful.
>> I’d be curious to know what.
I don’t have much time for laptop DJs because people seem to be using it as an easy way into something they don’t take the time to learn about.
>> Yet, another good example was the Chicks On Speed party last night. Like a friend told me ” she could take a shit on the turntables, people would still cheer “.
April 1st, 2007 at 10:44 am
Maybe It’s makes you more comfortable if you know that every record I play with my laptop I also have on vinyl, because i’m still a vinyl junkie like yourself, just with a passion for technology :)
You are wondering if wiijing can be a serious form of djing. Yes i can be. I did two gigs already with just one wiiremote. Without touching the laptop and only using the wiiremote as my controller. I made a little demo video which you will find interesting i guess :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slQ9KOwd6MM
April 9th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
DJing with a laptop doesn’t mean its an easy way out or you dont have to learn to do it. I learned to DJ the “old school” way on tables, and infact can still DJ using them. Once you can mix, you CAN mix… i can translate that across many platforms, vinyl, cd, laptop..hell, if you give me two tape players that i can pitch bend with i could probably mix with those too… its all in the ears, not what technology you use.
I will agree that there are people that can have no DJing experience and that can download some software and MP3’s and call themselves a DJ. But in the same regard, if that same person has some money to blow on turntables and vinyl, all the sudden they are a legit dj in your eyes?? So the difference is how much money you spend, not the actual technique or knowledge base.
I never said Wiijing will be DJing’s successor..obviously there will always be the elite hardcore vinyl junkies that are too narrow minded to broaden their horizon, or at least let others without bitching about it. You have to remember, in the end we are all just playing music…
As for seriousness of the website and wiijing itself…its a hack of a video game controller..how serious can you get? The idea of having a wireless DJ controller similar to the wiimote but made exclusively for djing is where things get serious. Give it some time to grow, its only been 2 months. More ideas, more development and time will prove the idea of wireless djing as a performance and musical technology art, in addition to the art of mixing etc.
April 19th, 2007 at 2:35 am
You’re a thoughtful fella…
April 25th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
hmm.. i thought id better join this debate as i seem to be getting a ’slagging’! i wasn’t aware i’d rattled so many cages… by the way, while were on the subject, i want to make it clear that ive never claimed to be a ‘dj’. Nor do i seek cheap fame or whatever the phrase was (contrary to popular belief). True, i used I-tunes for our first 2 parties at Jazz it, and since then, cd’s. All said and done though…I hear what your saying, Matt, so im not offended, just thought id have my say n all that! P.S. Ill be joining luke in the next few weeks to bring a few more Arcadia parties this summer, so for those of you that can abide my crude skills…see you lot in the playground! xx
April 26th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Fair play then. No harm done.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
hello guys.. i just want to say that whatever you gonna use when being the dj.. if you could play good music for the audience and they enjoy your music. that will be alright ^_^ that’s my openion!
April 26th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
p.s. i’m an IPOD girl sometimes ^_^
April 26th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
p.s.s. that SOM wasn’t me! >_