When you see DJ"s stroking a record around, or pushing the record back and forth - one of two things is happening.
She is either scratching or beat matching. Often scratching is associated with hip-hop but not exclusively, there are plenty of scratching innovations in regular dance music, but generally they are a bit shorter in duration than the hip-hop style of scratching. But this article is about beat matching and that is the other alternative that our damsel on the decks is pursuing.
Beat matching is working with the nature of dance music at it's very foundation.
Dance music (house, garage, commericial dance and most pop music) is composed in a time signature of 4 beats to a bar, and every 16 beats completes an octave - after which - 'something generally changes in the music'. So you'e listening to the incoming track on the headphones and trying to match that beat (tempo) to the playing track - with the desired purpose to put the first beat on the incoming track on top of the first beat of the start of the 17th beat or the beat after the following octave.
It sounds a bit complicated at first. It's not that complicated in theory but by goodness, it's bloody hard to do with records just by ear.
On average in the 90's I was observing DJ's taking about two years to master beat matching by ear. But the good news is that like riding a bike - it's something that you never really forget how to do. (Although being 'rusty' is a real thing - and when your'e back at it after a few years - beats do get fuzzy sometimes.)
This is what what was going on in the 70's, 80's and 90's in nightclubs. DJ's were mixing vinyl records generally on two particular turntables (the famous Technics 1200's) and beat matching tracks. A DJ in New York City in the 70's called 'Kool Herc' is credited with inventing this style of DJing by looping James Brown (and other) samples from regular album pressings back and forth creating a 'mix'. Confusingly 'Kool Herc' is also credited with founding Hip-Hop but that's another story.
So - what's the fuss?
There is a real vinyl fascination present in the music industry, even to this day it's the only form of physical music still available to purchase, and it's created a kind of puritanical following. People (rightly in my opinion) revere the art of vinyl manipulation and it's culture is celebrated in clubs and to some extent as an exhibition sport online.
But what's really got the purists aflutter is the arrival of the infamous 'sync' button.
No discussion on beat matching can be complete without a mention of how the rise in technology has affected DJ'ing since the 90's. I suppose what hasn't been affected by technology as we look around, and certainly there has been a sea change in DJing.
The invention of software that stores the music tracks, and allows the DJ to simulate the behaviour of a mixer (the device with the knobs and faders on that 'mixes' the two tracks together). This software's prowess even in it's earliest form - took years of beat matching training and turned it into an excercise of pushing the 'sync button' and whala! the two tracks are beat matched.
This invention turned DJing on it's head, and posed some fundamental questions to the art. What is a DJ in fact doing up there now? Is is all premixed anyway and is she just dancing around and looking cool?
It certainly has made me think about what I'm doing up there, and what value I am bringing to the dance floor.
For me, it's all about options. The technology allows you to do new things. Effects in particular have become popular, (if your'e syncing you've got nothing to do for the time of the track - so DJ's started manipulating the sound with an effect).
But options for me also mean choices, I sometimes sync but generally, I play time controlled vinyl records which make the digital tracks behave the same way as a track pressed in vinyl. Or I play 'through' where I turn off the digital decks and use the mixer as a straight analogue device and simply beat match records in the old way. Why? Because I love doing it. There simply is no feeling I know that compares.
When the bass kicks in from the new track on a perfectly mixed two track, and the dance floor raises their arms and lets you know you've hit the spot, it's heaven on earth, right there.
And that's what we're doing, that's the value we are bringing. We're guiding your emotions from one track to another, raising your excitement and gently settling you down again.
Until your'e drenched and satisfied.
