Last week, a friend of mine posted something of an epiphany on Facebook. He’s a really nice chap — a turntable rocking DVS user who plays out on the wild all the time. But uncharacteristically he forgot his headphones, leaving him in a bit of a pickle, one that saw him do something he’s generally shied away from — use the sync button.
And he liked it. And the crowd danced. And the DJ world did not end.
He’s never been an enemy of the sync button — indeed he’s an active advocate of using new tech to create and play music. It’s just his choice to practice the craft of DJing in a traditional way but using elements of new tech.
And I’ve seen this over and over, where successive generations of media purists and technology haters have untwisted their knickers, removed their blinkers, and actually tried the thing they’re blindly hating on, rapidly followed by picking up all the toys they’d previously thrown record distances from their prams. Granted, they might not be converts, but I’ll happily settle for not hating. The world has enough of that right now.
WHAT HAS CHANGED?
In the whole scheme of things, not a lot since I wrote my own opinion piece all those years ago. It’s certainly not the technology, which has remained largely the same, and still requires a reasonable level of DJ skills to get it work close to the way many think thought. It was assumed that you pressed the button and your gear immediately read the crowd, picked the best track for the moment, chose the right point to drop it into the mix, applied just the right amount of EQ and effects, and knew precisely how long to run the blend for.
It did not. It never has, and most likely never will.
Instead, as people have found out, the sync button will at best beat match, and not always on the one either. BPM analysis is 95% accurate, and depending on the music finding the one isn’t bad either. And if you haven’t taken the time to prepare your tracks, checked the BPM, key, and beat grid, you’re still likely to create a cacophony of chaotic car crashing.
Instead, I feel it’s the people who have changed. Like all new technology, it hits an initial human barrier of reluctance. A few lemmings just automatically accept without question and use it from day one. Some human guinea pigs are curious and have a dabble. Others sit back and wait for the tech to mature, because there’s really nothing wrong with what they use now. But a good number will just reject it out of hand because people are people.
And it’s this mass of unquestioning accepters to tentatively interested users that eventually drag the naysayers and haters more towards their way of thinking. Not everyone you understand — not every lump of new shiny is going to work for every DJ. But it would be nice if people tried it before passing judgement.
CREAM RISES
Or shit sinks, depending on your tolerance for potty talk. But this is true, no matter what the newfangled tech is. It doesn’t make people into DJs, but simply gives a wider group of people access to it. We’re at a point where everyone with a mobile phone can be a DJ to some degree. Get over it.
But the difference between good and bad DJs does not depend on the use of a single button. Being a DJ is about everything else from track selection, understanding music structure, beats, bars, phrasing, key, BPM, energy, pacing, crowd reading etc… the list is exponentially longer than a list with “sync button” at the top. And regardless of technology, good DJs will always rise above bad ones.
SO WHERE ARE WE AT?
Like CDs, DVS, controllers, laptops, touch tech etc, I feel that we’re now in a phase where acceptance is happening on a wider scale. There has been enough online content exploring the sync button, as well as people like my friend posting their own experiences to allow others to form more complete opinions rather than simply knee jerk hating.
Not everyone is open minded of course, and there will always be those that hate simply because they can. Reading social media posts about new tech always has the same trolls hammering the same venomous blinkered full caps words of fear (yes fear) and loathing into their keyboards, somehow misguidedly believing that a single person’s viewpoint will be changed when they do. “SYNC FUCKING SUCKS #REALDJS4LIFE” is not a well articulated argument — it’s just ignorant blind hate. And those DJs you put on a pedestal probably use sync now, just like they use all the tech you previously hated on before too.
STILL HATING? OR EMBRACED THE MELTING POT?
Feel free to post your well written and reasoned discussion points, and I’ll happily engage for days with people who oppose the use of the sync button. Be warned — I have strong well articulated opinions on this subject. But I would genuinely love to find out why you still oppose it, if you’ve adopted a live and let live attitude, or especially if you’re one of those DJs that is hugging the ever-growing melting pot of new DJ stuff.