serato.

when it comes to dj'ing i'm old school. i drag the crate with the vinyls, suffer the bruises on my shoulders and deal well with a basic mixer and two decks. i'm no purist, though, and i do play cds (and have even tried ipod dj'ing way back in 2004, no click wheel...) and get a kick out of great cd players and funky mixers with effects.

i feel somewhat hesitant about the new generation of laptop djs. my feelings are not based on the format of the music, but the use of software for mixing. selecting a great playlist is not always easy, but i still think some essential part is missing from a set where the computer does the hardest job.

last night at beatroot i was surprised to see a dj with a laptop with swirling images, a pretty efficient looking beat counter, a list of what seemed like mp3s and vinyls spinning. i watched him handle the records with telltale ease: the guy obviously knew a lot about spinning vinyl. curious, i walked over to the booth, checked out the laptop and noted that he wasn't using any phono inputs on the mixer (meaning there was no music coming from the vinyls). was the guy pretending to dj? why the lavish performance?

so i took a minute to figure out what he might have been doing and proposed he was mixing mp3s by using some specialty vinyls. and he told me about serato scratch live which "is a DJ solution that comprises of the Serato Scratch LIVE software, Serato Control and an audio interface from Rane" according to the website. instead of vinyl crates, he brings a laptop, two vinyls and a small usb box. the software does not mix anything, and it seems the only point is to enable the dj more variability and a better back. the downside is that with unlimited mp3s there's easily too much to choose from, and one does need to start remembering the names of songs and artists instead of recognizing sleeve art.

such a great invention comes at a pretty steep price, but if you play enough, it may just be worth it. i'm just not sure how having such a system set up at one of my gigs would be interpreted since i already gather quite a lot of speculation about my skills or lack thereof. the laptop girl who really cannot play but fakes it well?