Whether you’re a musician or just a music enthusiast, having a general idea of what types of technology DJ’s and performers are using during Winter Music Conference will help to round out your experience and give you some insight into where the life of your party is coming from.

Where DJ culture started – Two turntables & a mixer

Two Technics 1200's were the standard for years, with mixer of choice.

It used to be simple. Two turntables and a mixer. A DJ would put a vinyl record on a turntable, use the volume faders and EQ on the mixer, and the sound would head on out to the speakers, where the music would rock your body and blow your mind. Between tracks, DJ’s had to duck down into their record bags, flip through sleeves until they found the right EP, and then come back up for air. The DJ’s could even hold the record up in the air, teasing you, and you could recognize the track just by its album artwork …

Then came CD turntable technology

Two CD decks and a mixer

Then CD decks came along, and everything changed. Suddenly, DJ’s didn’t have to lug around 200lbs of vinyl to play a show, so they could carry around more music. And they didn’t actually have to buy vinyl anymore, at all. They could download songs and burn them onto a CD. And the music on the CD didn’t have to be on an official release. It could be a track their friend made, or a collection of samples from a movie. And, they could use the numbers on the digital display of the CD deck to cheat (just a little bit) when they were matching beats. So the skill set for DJ’s changed. It didn’t take at least five years of practice and thousands of dollars of vinyl to be an awesome DJ; instead, it took a good ear for music and a firm knowledge of equipment, and they were good to go.

Now we add computers to the mix

The basic Serato Scratch setup

Then came Serato Scratch. Now, with a specialized software/hardware combination, DJ’s could use a laptop to store music in instead of burning CD’s. Using either vinyl or CD control discs, their entire music library was with them. Add to that, now they had a computer screen in front of them showing the basic form of the song and a real-time display of when the beats hit. Creativity in track selection was becoming more and more important.

Then comes accessible, reliable production software

Ableton Live's session view, for live performances

And then came Ableton Live. With popular use of this computer software, this was when people who played electronic music for crowds switched from being ‘DJ’s’ to being ‘performers’. There was even some initial confusion among promoters how to say that performers were using Ableton vs. using CD’s or vinyl. That was when you started seeing the phrase “live PA” in tiny print next to the headliner’s name. That could also indicate that a performer was using actual hardware, but that distinction is a little fuzzy from the audience’s perspective.

With Ableton Live, artists could now produce their own music in pieces and play those pieces live, import tracks into their computers and pre-beatmap their songs so that it was impossible to make mistakes while they were mixing them, and do seamless live re-edits. Once again, the skill set for electronic music performers had changed. Now it was less about what they played, and more about what they could do with what they were playing.

Now we’re really getting crazy

Traktor Scratch Pro - just add a laptop and you're ready to go

Then came Native Instruments Traktor Scratch. With Traktor, they could do everything that they could with Serato, except now they didn’t even need a mixer, because the Traktor hardware box also functions as an audio card. That means that you can hook the outputs from the box directly to your amp and speakers. Plus, with Traktor, you could now add two additional virtual turntables, allowing you to mix off of four decks simultaneously. And now, there was a virtual mixer inside the Traktor software, essentially turning your computer into the mixer. Right around this time, companies were modeling MIDI controllers to act as turntables, mixers, and effects processors. All those extra breakout cables that come with Traktor allow you make those hook ups to your other control devices. Essentially, this all means that the audio from a show could technically be entirely contained within the computer. You could perform a whole show with a keyboard and a mouse, if you wanted, or go nuts with every processor you can plug in. As far as I know, the Traktor software was also the first DJ software to offer the “sync” button, which automatically fixes the timing of your beatmatching if it wasn’t quite on. The debate about whether using that button is cheating continues to rage on.

This piece of equipment costs more than my car did

Pioneer's new CDJ-2000

Now there are a few new types of CD turntables that accept thumb drives. So it gives the DJ the appearance of spinning CD’s, but the data itself is actually coming from hard drives (or iPods, in some cases). The new Pioneer CDJ-2000 CD decks even have a whole folder system that displays on a small screen on the player itself. I’ve heard it even makes a mean cup of coffee, and you can set it up to wake you up in the morning with a nice foot rub.

So just about everyone you see during WMC will be using some hybrid of these devices. The old-schoolers will be playing vinyl, the anti-computer DJ’s might play on CD decks, and the producers will probably be using Ableton with some combination of MIDI controllers to do live edits and effects processing. My best guess is that most of the DJ’s you see during Conference will be using Serato or Traktor Scratch with their laptops, while the live PA performers will mostly be using Ableton Live. It’s also common now for artists to work in pairs, each one controlling different parts of the performance process.

One quick early indication of what type of show artists are going to put on is whether they wear headphones during the show or not. If they do, that means they’re doing live beatmatching, or at least they are previewing what they are going to play for you next. If they don’t wear headphones, that means their beats are locked in, their material is pre-recorded, or they’re working with pre-matched material. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing, just something to be aware of.

As a member of the audience, being aware of what types of technology a DJ or performer is using can increase your appreciation of the time and type of skill sets that artists have to learn and master these days. It’s not quite so simple anymore.