Are DJs Musicians?

[Thegrandwazoo]

Of course they are. I don't care if you make music with a grand piano or a cat and a pointy stick, if you make music you're a musician. I don't give a single tinker's damn about DJs, but it's not as simple as just playing a CD or an mp3 as many believe and people love it, it's music. That's like an upright bass player saying an electric bass player isn't a real bass player, it's asinine. You don't have to like or even respect it, but it's music.

 

[P_Robyn]

So where do people like Jan Jelinek fit in? To me, he's definitely a musician. I never think of him as a 'DJ' at all.



I find some of his 'music' very listenable, and always interesting and 'unexpected'. Maybe it stems from the basic human desire to find order in chaos . . . .

 

[davec]

The always implied slams on cover musicians- i find troubling. The majority of orchestras are loaded with the highest-trained musicians on the planet and most
of them are playing covers- that someone else wrote, albeit 100-400 years ago.
There may be new compositions( not written by the first violinist nor the bass section) but Mozart and Beethoven, et al
pay the bills.

Not a slam at all. Just a different skill set.
We all start as cover musicians!, some become very good and expand and put them self into the music. Others become very skilled and are able to replicate at a very high level. Some still yet develop in there own creativity and create original music. Then there are a ton of guys like me that can play an ok cover, and hope to entertain people while having a good time themselves.
I’m not an artist, I’m barely a musician, but I’m a hell of a bass player.

 

[yendor8530]

It really depends on the dj. Someone who has the ability to select blend and move a party, to me is not a musician. There's nothing wrong in what they do but I think there's a difference. Someone who manipulates sounds, generally in a percussive way, would be as much of a musician as their skill allows for. I find dj Scratch and Jazzy Jeff to be great examples of using a turntable musicality.
Not to throw too many stones but I would take a musical dj over ALOT of people who play instruments

 

[Tigerpig]

Someone like Terminator X made a craft out of it, most are just record player players, especially these days where they don't use actual turntables...ermmm….You can make a musical instrument out of decks...I guess the less of the original track you play before you disturb it, the more original and 'musical' it is....I don't like tracks that basically use huge portions of the original material and claim it as something legitimately creative.

 

[Doner Designs]

I’m speechless that this is even a real question.

 

[vid1900]

1973

 

[vid1900]

2019

 

[retslock]

No. They have skill but they aren’t musicians. They could perhaps be called performance artists.

 

[factory presets]

Hence:

View attachment 3818166

I was gonn ask what people thought about it.

Also the Pooty Tang song. Wha de tah?

 

[DrMole]

Of course they are. I don't care if you make music with a grand piano or a cat and a pointy stick, if you make music you're a musician. I don't give a single tinker's damn about DJs, but it's not as simple as just playing a CD or an mp3 as many believe and people love it, it's music. That's like an upright bass player saying an electric bass player isn't a real bass player, it's asinine. You don't have to like or even respect it, but it's music.

Liked for the idea of making music with a cat and a pointy stick- we have 9 cats- the pointy stick can be fashioned

 

[factory presets]

Liked for the idea of making music with a cat and a pointy stick- we have 9 cats- the pointy stick can be fashioned

Be hard to get them in tune I'd imagine

 

[red_rhino]

I don't care if you make music with a grand piano or a cat and a pointy stick,

Liked for the idea of making music with a cat and a pointy stick- we have 9 cats- the pointy stick can be fashioned

These statements need clarification. In this scenario, who has the pointy stick? You? Or the cat?

Either way you're going to have some explaining to do when Animal Control inevitably shows up.

 

[DrMole]

These statements need clarification. In this scenario, who has the pointy stick? You? Or the cat?

Either way you're going to have some explaining to do when Animal Control inevitably shows up.

No worries there- Egyptian God cats are reincarnated and think they won the feline lottery if they end up in our house- This used to be my chair-
Not concerned about thread derail in a train that was off the rails from the OP

 

[GlenParks]

What is the difference between an instrumentalist and a musician?​

 

[Paul New]

Normally I try to avoid pedantry, but since this thread is essentially encouraging it...

First, if a musician is "Anyone who composes, conducts, or performs music" then by definition a DJ (not counting the "playlist->shuffle button" type) then there are an awful lot of DJs who are musicians - Skrillex, Deadmau5, Minnesota, etc., because they compose. Not all DJs compose, of course, but still. Broad brushes. :EDIT: The focus for the "no" answers seem to be with people sampling other music, but that's ignoring a huge swath of DJs who create content from scratch. And like someone said earlier, lumping them all together is a bad faith way of arguing.

Second, it seems like the biggest hangup here is that "they don't play an instrument," which I guess is valid from a very myopic point of view. After all, people who play an instrument have dedicated years or decades learning to make music with their instrument. How dare some kid with a PC find a new way to make music, amiright?

Never mind that many of them have dedicated years or decades learning to make music with their computers - that means they're musicians, as far as I'm concerned. I've never once thought Trent Reznor wasn't a musician because a majority of the music he has created has almost entirely been composed, recorded, and produced digitally.

But hey, as long as he doesn't call himself "DJ NIN" or something, he's different.

Never mind that the bar for what a "real musician" actually is always happens to be just below whatever level the person commenting feels is appropriate. Sort of makes it seem like the definition of "musician" is pretty subjective and thus flawed.

If they do indeed create from scratch, then some DJs are musicians. In that case I would say that some musicians also function as DJs. Of course a computer can be an instrument. But that is not the same as rearranging content which someone else created and presenting that as new product. That’s a producer. Nothing wrong with producers, but they are not musicians.

 

[jamro217]

Are you a musician if you need strings on your bass to make music? Seems fair to me.

The strings on my bass don't automatically reproduce someone else's work. I have to manipulate them to get sounds which could be considered music. If you use a recording of nature sounds or jets flying overhead and somehow fuse them into a rhythmic pattern, then that could be considered music. Stealing somebody else's work is just that and doesn't deserve credit. It deserves jail time. If a musician decides to allow you to use his/her record to distort and reshape in any way you so choose and they perceive your input as art/music then that must be accepted as a secondary form to the first. (You can't build anything without raw materials.) I think of this in terms of having a really imaginative recording engineer or producer. They may not sing, write music or play an instrument yet they take the raw material from the recorded tracks and make them something special. They don't usually consider themselves musicians. Being a musician and an engineer are two different skills. One person may have both but they are not always linked. There are some great musicians who are completely useless in the studio. They play their parts and leave the technical stuff to the engineer. I know, let's go over the TalkDJ and ask them if bassists are musicians.

 

[cnltb]

I get the point. My point is with most instrument you need to know notes, scales, Harmony, intervals, etc There isn't what I see a study of music but rather creating sounds without knowledge. That was my point before many schools did not have a proper music department so the kids created their own.

Yes.
That said; as kids we learn partly by copying what we hear, hence benefitting from the skills others have. a bit like a teacher-student relation ship. where the students benefits from the fact that the teacher or mentor is able to read write , name all the notes etc.

 

[Mark Ambler]

What is the difference between an instrumentalist and a musician?​

A drummer?

 

[Mark Ambler]

Success does not equate with musicianship. Doh!
Can you easily play Twinkle Twinkle little star, or Old MacDonalds got a farm, or the Alphabet song or even Baa Baa Black Sheep on DJ equipment? If that's a stretch, how about Donna Lee? Autumn Leaves?

The DJ's equipment is a performance tool, regardless how adept they are.
I'm sure some DJs are very talented, and may be very musical, but they're not playing chromatic musical instruments.
The vast majority of music is realised with CHROMATIC instruments, OK, y'all?

Hah, call me old fashioned