Pitching down the classics

This post is about a certain kind of tune that I've been getting quite into recently - modern House tracks that heavily sample the vocals from old tunes but in a new and original way, rather than just ripping out the lead vocal and sticking a new beat over it. It's been trendy over the last couple of years to replace the vocal downwards to make it suitable for contemporary deep house, and this technique is often used to awesome effect. Sometimes it's the whole vocal, sometimes just a snippet, and I’ve been actively seeking out songs like this recently.

A core principle of my DJing is attempting to link the past to the present - giving credit to the great music of yesterday whilst looking forward to today and tomorrow. Whilst I now play a lot of older stuff (like before I was born old!), and I don't have the money or the inclination to keep my collection bang up to date with all of the latest gems and future classics, I do like to try and keep at least a few toes closer to the present day, and having a few tracks like this alongside other up to date stuff helps me to do that whilst keeping the links to the past. These, and modern songs with an old school flavour, which are also in vogue at the moment... but those are for another time!

Anyway, below are a couple of tracks that demonstrate what I'm on about, along with the songs that they evolved from...

David Keno - Upside Down

It's pretty obvious where this one was lifted from, but it's a good example of the detuned vocal technique. Not quite enough Funk for my liking, but good all the same.

Sylvester - Mighty Real (Sixth Avenue Remake)

This one's an absolute belter, and a staple of my sets. Sylvester's usually falsetto voice is repitched to produce a haunting deep house track with added funky saxophone towards the middle too. An absolute winner, and one of my favourite tracks of the past year!

Coat Of Arms - Is This Something

A couple of years old, but another good example - just taking a small bit of the Faith Evans original and twisting it into something completely new and different.

Louie Fresco - New Hateration

On a similar tip to the one above, this one takes a fairly small portion of an old R&B tune and reworks it into a modern house track. I’ve only just downloaded this one, but chances are it’ll make an appearance in my next mix!

Navy Shade - Oh My Love

Special mention for this one even though it’s a bit different to the others as the vocal is kept at the original pitch. I mention it here because it’s got Luther’s voice a capella, which is really useful, and the original is one of the best songs ever recorded.

Do you know of any songs like this that I can add to my collection? Please leave me a comment if you do!

Out of (auto)sync

I’m a digital DJ, and I like to use all of the tools at my disposal to make mixing music more interesting, varied and easier. There’s been a debate bubbling along in the digital DJing world since pretty much day one about the ‘sync button’. For those that don’t know, this is a button, present in virtually all DJing software, that when pressed synchronises the speed and timing of the incoming track with the playing track, so theoretically doing away with the need for manual beatmatching. Supporters say it leaves the DJ free to do other, more exciting stuff rather than wasting valuable time getting two tracks lined up and at the same speed. On the flipside, people argue that it’s taking the skill out of DJing, and making it too easy - even going as far to say it’s not real DJing if you’re letting the computer do all of the work.

For years, I’ve been firmly on the pro-sync side, but recently I had a partial change of heart… a Sync-epiphany even. Now I started off DJing on vinyl, and so learnt to beatmatch the traditional, 'hard' way. Beatmatching is genuinely difficult and confusing when you first start to learn, but I’ll always remember that buzz I got when it all clicked into place, when my brain suddenly understood what it had to do, and once you’ve nailed it, it’s a skill that never really goes away. But then I went digital, and the sync button took that time consuming step away, freeing me up to search for the next track, or play with some effects, or whatever. With sync, you can mix more freely and do tricks like never before, slamming in a new track with a few seconds’ notice, perfectly in time, every time.

But what I didn’t realise was that despite the liberation that sync gave, it took me further away from the music, and actually ended up limiting my development and enjoyment of the DJing craft. I became lazy, knowing that my tracks would automatically be perfectly aligned. I became restless, with little else to do than bang in track after track, chopping and changing every few minutes because I didn’t have much else to do. Ultimately, I became bored, and for a while DJing seemed pointless and devoid of any purpose.

Shifting my focus towards funky music started to throw up some problems on the sync front - auto sync is all well and good when you’re playing House with its nice regular drum machine generated beats, but a lot of the old Disco and Funk that I started listening to was drummed by hand and so wasn’t at a constant tempo, so sync is of limited use for these. This caused me to rethink my strategy and brush up on my beatmatching skills, just so I could work these tunes into my sets. So I bought a jogwheel equipped controller, deactivated sync and removed the visual guides that I’d come to rely on such as the phase meter and BPM readout, and jumped back in.

The difference was dramatic, and pretty unexpected. By turning off the autopilot, I suddenly had to think again, and actually listen to the music. It made me feel like a real DJ for the first time in ages. It’s weird, but it’s as if having that connection to the music through the jogwheel and pitch fader bought me closer to the music; my role was active again after previously being just a glorified spectator. And sharpening up those beatmatching skills (which like riding a bike you never really lose, but they can get rusty over time) made me less afraid to play those amazing old tunes that don’t have a perfectly constant tempo. And I’ve come to appreciate that sync doesn’t always get it right - beatgrids aren’t always perfect, and a DJ should always trust their ears above everything else. Having a bit of natural tempo drift isn’t always a bad thing; everything being mechanically and rigidly perfectly in time 100% of the time can be.

So now I’m occupying this middle ground between the promoters and the detractors of auto sync. I still use it, but I try not to become overly reliant on it. Some days sync suits me, but other times I keep it more for emergencies, and try to keep a large percentage of my practising restricted to manual beatmatching so I can keep my skills sharp. That way, although I might rely on sync more at a gig, I know I’ll be able to fall back on to CDs if I hit any technical problems. There’s nothing wrong with auto sync at all, but I firmly believe that all DJs should at least be able to manually sync two tracks together, if only for the increased closeness to the music that you get from having to manipulate it with your hands. It’s fun!

There’s lots more about Sync mixing on one of my favourite sites, the excellent Digital DJ Tips…

www.digitaldjtips.com/tag/using-the-sync-button/‎
www.digitaldjtips.com/2013/02/how-to-move-past-select-sync-djing/‎
www.digitaldjtips.com/tag/sync-button/‎

Where do you stand on this? Does it matter? Is it cheating?! Let me know in the comments! 

The wonders of technology...

My next blog post was due to be about the variety of DJing equipment that I've owned over the years, and how I've ended up with my current awesome set up... But my experience over the last few days has inspired me to shelve that one for the moment and change the subject slightly. This post is less about Funk, more about lack of it.

Technology is a wonderful thing, and I make no secret of the fact that I'm a bit of a gadget geek. Digital DJing, aside from the obvious advantages and expanded possibilities that it offers, is the perfect way to indulge in my twin passions of music and geekery. My current setup is advanced, carefully thought out, expensive and almost perfect. Almost. Over the last few days I've been having sync issues. Without going into too much detail, I have two Macbooks - one powerful new one for DJing, and my previous older one for other stuff. I use the older one for day to day sorting out of tracks - beatgridding, tagging etc in order to keep the DJing laptop fresh and used only for what I bought it for. I then sync my music collection between the two via personal cloud so that changes on one are automatically copied to the other. This usually works pretty well (although recently it's been a bit slow), but over the last few days it's kind of come crumbling down. I'm not sure what I've done, but it's got confused somehow and isn't working properly. No data has been lost (I'm very, very careful about this sort of thing), but it's a headache that's stopping me from mixing. I'm reluctant to do any DJing when the collection isn't fully synced as I've lost data by doing that before, and it's currently copying the entire collection back on to both computers excruciatingly slowly. All I can do is wait, and hope it works. It's already gone wrong once which led to me having to start the whole process again, so here's hoping.

What this highlights, aside from my obvious incompetence at true geekiness, is a modern DJ's increasing reliability on technology, and their increasing vulnerability when it all goes pear shaped. Luckily I haven't had my equipment crap out on me during a live gig for a while (it happened to me during a competition once, it wasn't good - hence the expensive macbooks that I've used ever since) but this has been, and is continuing to be a pretty annoying experience. I would say it's making me yearn for the simpler days of two turntables, a mixer and a stack of vinyl, but it's not. Digital DJing offers so many more possibilities, and is definitely the way things are going. Don't get me wrong, there will always be a valid place for those who choose to keep it old skool, but with my limited budget I'd never be able to collect and mix the range of funky music that I currently can if it wasn't for digital. The digital DJing artform is very much still in its infancy, and problems like this are a fact for those of us near the edge of what's possible, but would I go back? No way!

But most of all, it's reminded me how much I love DJing - not being able to do it all week has left me at a loose end, and I'm itching to get back behind the (digital) decks and crank up the Funk again!

Audacious Groove #4 (Assorted Funky Business)

THe latest episode in the Audacious Groove series takes a slightly different tack to the three before it - whereas episodes 1-3 focussed mainly on one broad genre, this one's more of a mixed bag. We start with a bit of old funk, pick things up to a quick bit of reasonably obscure disco, then there's a longish section of retro 80s sythy type stuff - although it's not all old stuff - bit of Chromeo and the like in there. Then we finish up with a couple of more recent bits like a new track from Duck Sauce, and my retro song of the moment to finish. Steppin' Out by George Howard might just be the happiest song in history!

As previously, I fell foul of copyright issues when trying to upload this, but managed to remedy this - we have a nice gentle orchestral intro to start instead now ;)

I'm pretty pleased with how this came out, and I hope you enjoy!



TRACKLIST

MFSB - Summertime
Curtis Mayfield - Superfly
Kool & The Gang - Funky Stuff
Ann Robinson - You Did It
The Gap Band - Shake
The Rebirth - Evil Vibrations
Joe Coleman - Get It Off the Ground
Sylk 130 - When The Funk Hits The Fan
Jacques Renault - Can't Nobody Love Me
Althea Forest - Hey Mister
Class Action - Weekend
Chromeo - Night By Night
Breakbot - Fantasy (AB Mix)
Strip Steve - Breakin' (Lorenz Rhode Remix)
Dayton - Sound of music (Lucan Edit)
Shook - Tonight
Cashmere - Try Your Lovin'
Duck Sauce - Party In Me
Duke Dumont feat. A*M*E - Need U (Skreamix)
Les Loups - Elephant & Ivory
George Howard - Steppin' Out