We have jumped far into the deep end of the digital pool. There is no lifeguard, no floaties on your arms and no grab holds in site. Time to figure out how to swim. Developing cool technology is the easy part, thats well under way. Figuring out how to use it in an artistic and emotionally compelling manner is another thing all together. Once that is complete then boom, all those nay-sayers will line up in droves. Until its complete digital djing or “controllerism” is just a term that loosely describes our direction not a cohesive creative movement.
Many, many times I have heard people say: “gosh how did you become a professional dj? That must be so hard!” Or other djs complaining that they could never go full time because the competition is too tight. Well, I can tell you first hand that its not hard to make money, get gigs and even go pro. Naysayers might point out: “Your just lucky or you have special talent- not everyone can get the gigs you have gotten”. Nope, wrong on both accounts. I am not lucky and not even that “talented”, just terribly persistent and painfully stubborn. You see by putting yourself in the frame of mind where you can accept the possibility of easily making good money by doing something you love (sharing music with others). You have taken the first and most important step to making it happen.
A few months ago I wrote a piece on the term “Microwave dj”. This negative description is used by a lot of different people to easily identify their personal interpretation of a push-play Dj. I expected the piece to be controversial but is was more miss-understood than anything else. A regular reader and fellow blogger put it best: “I sort of took offense to the article at first, but when I saw one of your youtube videos I totally understood where you are coming from - your motivation for the article is: if you’re going to be using a laptop to dj you better be putting it to good use… I think people who don’t understand that about you will think that you’re trying to defend that traditional dj culture but you’re really advocating change in a weird way.”
Readers are Saying