The DJ Producer Continuum

If one were to traditionally define a DJ they would be confronted by confusing imagery:

A person who announces and plays recorded music, especially pop music, on a radio programme or a discotheque.

In my opinion the recorded music this definition refers to is not original material, it is a sampling of top 40 hits from whichever genre the DJ is catering to and a smattering of the DJ’s personal favourites. The act of DJ’ing is independent from the task of creating original songs.

While most DJs have their sets partially pre-planned, a true DJ mixes it live: lost in the crowd’s energy, set lists change and beats materialize out of pure passion. They take requests, they artistically string songs together, and work furiously the entire time to keep the crowd dancing.

A real DJ gives off a vibe; they fill the room with an excitement which can only be obtained when the entire audience truly believes the set is 100% mixed live and on the cusp of falling short.  I recently saw Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike and as far as I am concerned they were ferociously mixing their entire set as it progressed: they were hard at work earning the thousands of dollars the audience had forked over to attend the show.

For DJs touring with larger-than-life stage shows this is rarely a reality. One blatant offender of the moniker of DJ is Steve Aoki. This in no way diminishes the prestige that has rightly been attributed to Aoki’s career it merely re-labels him as a jet setting party-starting producer: his sets come premixed with little more required then a few manipulations to keep his well oiled rave machine moving forward.

He spends more time showering the audience in champagne and smashing cakes into the faces of crazed youth then he does mixing live. In saying this, Steve Aoki gives the audience a party experience they won’t soon forget (more than likely a good portion of his audience does forget but only due to overdosing on ‘good times’), and he is an outstanding producer. But is he a true DJ?

From this perspective many of the top ‘DJ’ acts in the world could be defined as producers:

The individual who supervises the arrangement, recording, and mixing of a record. They oversee the stage production of a show.

As concert goers we are paying for an experience. We are no longer paying to be blown away by the jaw dropping mixing skills of a DJ; we are paying to see their productions. Both previously arranged set lists and ever-growing lightshow extravaganzas. No doubt these parties are worth it. With such a boom in popularity you can’t stop DJ’ing from evolving as an art form.

This doesn’t mean true DJ’s don’t exist. There are shades of grey. David Guetta will give anyone who calls him a producer a very polite yet subtly dirty sneer.

*In a greasy French accent*   “Excuse me? I have been at DJ since I was 17. DJ’ing is who I am. I mix beats and make people do naughty-dirty things on the dance floor. Producing good beats expands my audience to the mainstream and brings the masses into my world. The world of the DJ. You uneducated swine.”  ...or at least that’s what I see him saying...nicely of course...he seems like a nice guy.

On top of this, a handful of DJs put on live radio shows once a week and for an hour or two take on the traditional role of a DJ: most successfully Armin Van Buuren and his State of Trance phenomena.

Defining a boundary between DJ and producer is hard because every show an artist plays is different. A few years back I saw Tiesto in Vegas and when I asked the guy at the door when the show would be over he said, “When you invite Tiesto you don’t tell him when he has to leave. You let him do his thing until he isn’t feeling it anymore.”

I’ve seen Tiesto a bunch of times but that night he seemed to truly live in the moment:  he genuinely didn’t have any idea where his set was going to take him. He was fully immersed in the act of DJ’ing and that energy was transferred onto the global audience. When he finally finished at around 6:30 in the morning everyone was exhausted, but the experience had been priceless. 

Perhaps there are DJ safe havens scattered around the world: small self sustaining environments where DJ loyalists can find an experience rapidly disappearing from global landscape of EDM.

As true DJs slowly fade into the past and producers rise from their ashes to become the new rock stars of the world, what will become of the art of DJ’ing?

We love the massive shows. Everyone craves that moment when two songs you never thought would fit together are mashed up. And no one can deny a ridiculously dance worthy freestyle beat.

The world of EDM is growing and evolving at an ever increasing rate.

Will it find a balance between DJ and producer?

While concerts grow in size, will the art of DJ’ing continue to flourish or will it become a relic of the past?