Not really, these discussion tend to sound that way. But for the most part, I'm optimistic... I'm just championing *better*. Nothing wrong with that is there?fredo wrote:gemzombie- It just sounds to me like you have a fairly grim view of "most swing DJs", perhaps from some horrible DJ childhood trauma.
Most definitely true... I guess i'm a puritan. I like single solutions versus mulitple/hacked things. The long-time geek in me loves the piece-meal approach, but the professional in me does not at all.I won't argue that professional DJ software is ultimately superior as a DJ tool, because it's designed for DJ purposes rather than casual listening. I think others have pointed out, however, that most of the bells and whistles aren't really necessary for swing DJs.
None of you here are brainless oafs, but there are a ton of people who don't bother obtain the level of knowledge that you folks do. These are your standard iTunes junkies who download free (and often mislabeled) tunes. iTunes is the aol of the Djing world for that reason. It gets a whole lot of people online, but is that good?Your argument seems to be less about whether swings djs CAN do a good job with itunes/winamp/media player set ups, and more about what, in your estimation, the "average" swing DJ is actually doing. Either you're basing this on personal interactions with less than average DJs, or you just perceive most swing DJs as brainless oafs.
Truthfully this doesn't really matter for my "argument"... it is what it is.Sure. Have you tried BPM Studio and it's highly customizable cross fading feature? It's extremely easy to set up, and makes one button cross fading (with extended silence... i just give 1-3 seconds of silence between songs depending on the situation). It's a very sweet feature. It's probably not noticeable to dancers compared to someone using iTunes proficiently, but it makes my job a bit easier.Most swing DJs can figure out how to press stop on a track, wait a few seconds, then press play on the next track.
Ya, tis true... those are becoming quite the popular item (I have one that replaced my SoundBlaster MP3+... I love that little thing). The average iTunes user doesn't have a clue that they can do that though.That's funny, most swing DJs that I know that DJ on a regular basis have an external sound card. I see those turtle cards everywhere these days.
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--re: previewing: "For the average person's technical ability, they can't figure out how to do it. So there are a lot of swing DJ's who don't bother."
Most swing DJs get an external sound card so that they can preview while tracks are playing. see previous response.
I don't think so. I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but let's assume your not. Compared to many of the fellow DJs here, I know I'm no where near as knowledgable as them, however for any song I know I can roughly tell you the BPM within 10, so I've never found the need to search by BPM. I tend to look for style/feel versus tempo anyway. I guess this is one of my problems with the iTunes approach. I know a lot of people who do search for BPM as if that's the best way to approach your song choice. This is probably a whole other discussion, but suffice it to say that I think searching for music in this way on a regular basis could be bad for the music selection. I doubt the folks here are doing that.Most swing DJs must not be as knowledgeable as you. I usually search by coolness-factor, I use my jank-ometer for that one.
I wholeheartedly agree. I don't really have that much vested in this... it's just a time killer, so please don't think I'm sitting here in my chair getting all red in the face over the fact that most of you are diggin' iTunes, and think I'm being lame*this discussion is amusing to me. I dont really care that much, I just like a good argument about nothing. It's amusing to me because when listening to other DJs, I'm usually listening to what music choices they make, not to the quality of their software navigation-- but to each their own.
It's a given to me that most of you are playing good tunes... so why not have a little technical discussion on the specifics.Let's put it this way. If my BPM Studio software stopped working today, I think I could do *just as good* of a job with Winamp or WMP. It would just *feel* like more work to me, and I wouldn't be happy.
(On another note, I read where iTunes is offering higher quality non-DRM (but with named watermarking) downloads for 20 cents or so more. That makes me very happy, and would be the only reason I'd install iTunes software again... just so I can download something I realy wanted).
