If you can operate a smart phone then you can be a DJ. There's not much more to it than that. A musical instrument, on the other hand, takes dedication, time, commitment and perseverance to become proficient. Most of these things are not traits that the avarage snowflake possesses.
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Are DJs Musicians?
- Thread starter Jazzdogg
- Start date
If you have read the entire thread, I have come down on the carrot side because the binary initial question is lacking.
It is NOT a yes or no issue. Some creators who claim DJ as their profession are clearly musical, creative and make final products that have validity as an art form. Many do not.
Those who claim all DJs can be considered musicians are as wrong as those who throw the baby out with the bathwater, ignoring a lot of interesting, musical work.
I can't believe that 22.7% said yes. Should be 100% Hell no! DJ's are "wanna be" musicians, yes. Musicians? Hell no - what a joke to even say the words musician and DJ in the same sentence. IMO DJ's are responsible for the downturn in live music - and that started in the mid 80s! Bands used to be able to make a living playing the "Holiday Inn Circuit" and various restaurants. DJ's and more recently EDM have contributed to the decline in live band gigs. The only advantage to a DJ is that they can play ANY song requested vs bands have their song list and usually won't stray from that. I've done some great gigs where the client hired both a band AND a DJ and that works well.
Again with the cover musicians: Classical, orchestral, Jazz standard players- ALL the session musicians playing pieces written by others, and the Guy playing Tom Petty in an Alabama roadhouse are all playing covers and are musicians- but that is not the question posed by the OP.
You're correct; I have not read the entire thread. Sorry if I came across the wrong way.
Sorry, I guess I used the wrong phrasing there. Mea culpa, what I meant to say was created by actually forging your own beats in FLStudio etc. Instead of, you know, ripping samples from somewhere else and just modulating and gluing them together.
The answer is still No and there is No Gray area. They do not play an instrument end of story.
If the question is are they artists that is different. The answer there is Yes some of them are.
If the question is are they artists that is different. The answer there is Yes some of them are.
DJ mean Disc Jocky. They don't play an instrument. Unless thay pickup a instrument while DJing.
If I'm not a drummer, but I play finger drums to an original song?
If I play finger drums to a track piecemeal where I'm copying another person's performance note for note?
If I read drum tabs and data enter the MIDI data directly into the DAW without having written the music, nor performed it in an audible way?
What if I launch BFD3 and let it roll a preset loop into my DAW, and then I find another preset loop and play that next?
What if I'm producing a song for someone else and I lay down a synthetic cowbell track for four beats of one bridge in the song?
I'm at a live performance and as a member of the audience I clap along to the song, and the sound of my clapping along with the rest of the audience becomes part of the live recording?
If I listen to a song, and in my brain I hear a melody that is not part of the song, but my own complimentary creation, although I never manifest it in the real world in any tangible or audible way?
The question is not "is that music" or "is that art", but "does that activity make someone a musician"?
When the waitperson picks up your drink at the bar, adds a small garnishment to it and then delivers it to your table, is the waitperson now also a bartender?
If I play finger drums to a track piecemeal where I'm copying another person's performance note for note?
If I read drum tabs and data enter the MIDI data directly into the DAW without having written the music, nor performed it in an audible way?
What if I launch BFD3 and let it roll a preset loop into my DAW, and then I find another preset loop and play that next?
What if I'm producing a song for someone else and I lay down a synthetic cowbell track for four beats of one bridge in the song?
I'm at a live performance and as a member of the audience I clap along to the song, and the sound of my clapping along with the rest of the audience becomes part of the live recording?
If I listen to a song, and in my brain I hear a melody that is not part of the song, but my own complimentary creation, although I never manifest it in the real world in any tangible or audible way?
The question is not "is that music" or "is that art", but "does that activity make someone a musician"?
When the waitperson picks up your drink at the bar, adds a small garnishment to it and then delivers it to your table, is the waitperson now also a bartender?
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I think we generally agree- this is not the Black/white issue that so many seem to only be able to engage. The world is mostly varying shades of gray. But those don't fit into algorithims or models very well.
Most of our scientific models rely on a huge number of assumptions and if any of those assumptions changes or fails to exist the theory, equation or algorithim becomes nonsense pretty quickly despite our wish to adhere to the dogma. See: Cocroft/Gault equation for estimating renal function- relying on stable renal function and the literal fudge factor
Put into the equation. How many of our critical patients have stable renal function after shock, hypovolemia, 3 scans with contrast and and several injections of ketorolac, and numerous doses of Vancomycin and gentamicin?
The equations fall apart. Experience helps us manage these patients based on the science that has become nebulous at best in the above situations.
My screed was not aimed at you Tony, but at all who wish to live in a cut/dry, black and white world. It would be easier, no doubt but that world does not exist.
- Aug 21, 2003
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This stuff kills and is a good example of 'making music' as a DJ...Good example
I worked with DJ Disk before and He is extremely proficient in what He does.
Thread drift: in 2020 a "producer" means something completely different than it did ~40 years ago.
The only similarity is that they both are responsible in some way for some of the sounds that one hears when a recording is played back. But a list of the tasks & duties a contemporary "producer" will acknowledge are their responsibilities would have very little in common with that same list for, say, George Martin or Phil Spector or Quincy Jones etc etc etc. I daresay the intersection set would be nearly null.
Being skilled does not automatically mean being a musician. My dad was a very skilled carpenter. Crap at the guitar though.... To me, being a DJ is a different "art", not a musician, but something else.
As you point out, the initial question is lacking. The question might as well have been, “Do music producers create art?”. Well, there are all kinds of producers, just as there are all kinds of DJs - and then there’s the question of what constitutes a “musician” (something that clearly not everyone here agrees on). I would suspect that the majority of responders in this thread have a very narrow view of the DJ spectrum, and that’s quite understandable. In most cases a DJ is someone who plays recordings and may or may not alter the playback in any creative way. The rarer breed is the DJ/turntablist for whom records provide a palette of sounds to be used in their own performance. Totally different goals and totally different skill sets. I used to watch Kid Koala with the first band he was a member of (Public Enema, which became Bullfrog) and there was no question in my mind that he was a musician in that role and every bit a part of the band as any of the other members).
Simply put, I do not consider them musicians.
Oxford defines a musician as so:
If a computer or deck is considered a musical instrument, the term checks and they are musicians. So far as I know, these pieces of equipment are not.
It could be argued that DJs perform music, but that's not something I feel passionately enough about to fight over.
Oxford defines a musician as so:
If a computer or deck is considered a musical instrument, the term checks and they are musicians. So far as I know, these pieces of equipment are not.
It could be argued that DJs perform music, but that's not something I feel passionately enough about to fight over.
