EDITOR’S LETTER AUGUST 2013

SYNC MY ASS.

This month’s Editor’s letter is all about DJs, the ones that are supposed to make people dance, entertain the crowd with their skills by creating a trip over a certain time span, depending on the length of their set. The shamans of the night, taking the crowd to a higher consciousness through music.

With all the technical progress during the last few years something really strange happened, all of a sudden you find people behind the decks that have little or no clue of what this is all about. Not only since the EDM hype in the USA the profession of being a DJ somehow reached superstar status, putting them in one line with ‘real’ musicians or other celebrities, exploding the fees of the most wanted and one might ask himself ‘is this is all right’?

The inventor of the sync button is, in my humble opinion, the left or/and right hand of the devil, with this little feature it became possible to mix two tracks without having a clue of how to match two tracks by using a pitch to adjust their speed until they are synchronized. This ability had to be learned step by step as it looks a lot easier as it really is, you need to have a fine feeling for rhythm and should know the tracks really well to create a good mix.

The sync button makes all this irrelevant, or that is what some might think, as it automatically synchronizes the beats, making it easy to blend from one track into the other. Yes i said blend, not mix, because to create a good mix you must know the right moment of both tracks to take the listener on a journey without any friction, unless you do it on purpose. But for some, with this button the only thing left do do is shake your arms and pretend you are the greatest DJ on Earth.

As Derrick from Tone of Arc says, ‘your cheap hotel living, shitty food and overpaid DJ fee does not give you the right to treat others like shit just because you think you are the shit! ‘ As a musician or DJ you have a great responsibility, music is the universal language so you better know how to speak it, otherwise you should go and get a ‘real’ job.

We all heard about big DJs playing prerecorded sets on stage, often with the excuse that if something goes wrong the show would be ruined – wtf? So what are you doing up there if you fear to fail?? The latest addition to this frenzy is the appearance of Paris Hilton ‘performing’ at ‘Foam & Diamonds’ – mama mia, as if we did not see enough mediocre performances in our super clubs during the last years. And i bet my left pinkie she has no clue of what she is doing! But as it is so hip to be a DJ she needs to disgrace this profession as well. And i thought with all the topless DJanes we already hit rock bottom…