This Master project explores my development as a performing DJ and delves into the question: How could my knowledge and experiences of producing music and performing live combine with the DJ set? Through artistic research and logs, I discuss my experience of developing as a performer and DJ. I look at what I can take from my time producing and performing live sets in Ableton Live, focusing on two specific shows: one for Klubb Kosmos and the other from my Master concert. These are examined in parallel to my development as a DJ, where I have highlighted some DJ gigs and the experiences I gained from them, eventually merging these two worlds together to create a hybrid performance.
The process of my findings spans from autumn 2021 to winter 2023, culminating in the presentation of the final results as a performance of the hybrid set at Cornerteateret, Bergen, on 22 December 2023. The performance of the hybrid set is not to be looked at as a final product, but rather as an indicator of where I am in the process – and as a stepping stone for my journey after completing the master’s degree. This is the start of my hybrid exploration, and I aim to implement my findings in my DJ gigs moving forward.
The hybrid set is not to be looked at as the “right” way to do it, but rather as a suggestion on “one possible way” to do it. The results of the live performances and DJ gigs play a crucial role in this Master project, serving as key findings to unite these two modes of performance. My hypothesis is that performing a hybrid set will spark creativity, contribute to authenticity and uniqueness, and make me stand out as a performing producer-DJ in an otherwise crowded scene.
Motivation
In 2019, I had a duo project in Berlin where we performed live sets with our own productions and live vocals in different clubs. The audience was regular club goers, meaning the standard had to be on par with that expected of DJs. The positive feedback from this project made me optimistic; I could perform for people dancing without having to know how to DJ. I didn’t have access to DJ equipment and after trying to learn vinyl (without much luck) I assumed this format was not suited for me.
A pivotal change happened in 2021, when I gained access to DJ decks to play digitally. My perspective shifted, and I realised this was something I could successfully learn. Not only that: I could have an immediate response from my audience without spending months producing the music first myself. Instead, the tasks were in other areas such as finding the right music to play, doing the selection, creating a cohesive mix-set with tension and release, reading the crowd, and actively participating in the audience by dancing – moving away from excessive concentration on technical equipment.
In the realm of DJing, unless you are playing with three or more decks, the time where you need to focus is in the transitions, and when searching for the next track if the set isn’t preplanned. I can attest that this gives a lot of time to dance to the music – tracks in house music are generally between 5-7 minutes long. My experience – both as someone who enjoys dancing to other DJs and as a performer myself – is that I feel extra joy and excitement when I see the DJ is also having a good time.
BERLIN
“The fall of the Berlin Wall was not only a political revolution but the start of a cultural awakening that reverberated from German clubs around the world” (Braun, 2019).
In the autumn of 2013, I made the move to Berlin, and had my very own cultural awakening by going to the city's many clubs that explored house and techno music. It amazed me how people came together on the dance floor, where the shared energy was palpable. There were moments of a shared understanding of being connected through the power of the DJ, and the feeling became euphoric. It was a give and take between the people on the dancefloor and the person behind the decks, a symbiosis.
Dr. Steffen Damm and Lukas Drevenstedt describe club culture as a “phenomenon of people meeting in clubs or in similar spaces (e.g. open-air concerts, warehouse raves or festivals) characterised by a program focused on music, restricted access of a certain nature to create a protected space with its own rules, and a community to listen to music, dance and socialise” (Damm & Drevensted, 2019, p.8). The club culture in Berlin is world renowned, with people coming from all over to visit different clubs in the city. Damm and Drevensted (2019) continues to explain that the essence of Berlin’s club culture lies in the combination of music, dancing, and socialising in safe environments. The clubs in Berlin work as a safe space both for the artist and audience. The prohibition on filming or taking pictures in the venues means that everyone can free themselves from the idea that they will be recorded and “judged” in the aftermath.
In 2019, the gallery C/O Berlin curated a photo exhibition titled “No Photos on the Dancefloor! 1989 - today Berlin”. The exhibition featured works by photographers like Camilla Blake and Wolfgang Tillmann, who were granted rare access to capture images inside the clubs since the fall of the wall and the reunification of east and west – a historic moment that jumpstarted Berlin’s evolution into the cultural hub it is known for today.
There are many famous clubs in Berlin today, but among the most infamous is undoubtedly Berghain. It is known especially for its strict door policy and well-known utterances of its ruthless bouncers, saying phrases like “heute leider nicht” (“not today” in German). If you do get in, you’ll pass the entrance and the wardrobe and enter a huge hall, where walking up two flights of stairs plunges your body in the throbbing sub-bass of techno – truly a transformative experience.
While Berghain is the name that “everybody” knows, there is a second dancefloor called Panorama Bar, and this dancefloor is by far my favourite. Most of the time this dancefloor is for house music. For me, the experience of house music is interactive, uplifting, and sociable, in contrast to the more introspective, meditative quality I associate with techno. Both genres serve distinct purposes, each resonating uniquely.
According to the Artium Dashinsky, who created a statistical overview of the people who have played at Berghain over the years – “The Numbers of Berghain, 2021 edition” – some of the top DJs that played at Berghain and Panorama Bar are Tama Sumo, The Blessed Madonna, and Steffi, Boris, Marcel Dettmann, and Ben Klockx. The first three are DJs who play music in the same direction as I do, and my dream is to one day play a hybrid set of my own at Panorama Bar and “share the stage” with these icons.
The moments that truly stood out to me on the dancefloors of Berlin were when the DJ invited a vocalist, or they had a techno live set, or added other live elements. Especially one night at the venue Südblock a few years back comes to mind. Someone started playing the saxophone together with the DJ set and people went wild. I think these early experiences have significantly influenced my evolution from producing and performing electronica with club inspiration to producing, performing, and DJing high-energy house music.
Club music and culture
“How can you know where you’re going, if you don’t know where you’ve been?”
- Tajh Morris aka. Turtle Bugg
Advancements of new technologies throughout the last century and the development of club music go hand in hand. From the invention of the radio, to amplifiers, vinyl players, and the art of vinyl pressing; each innovation has played a pivotal role in shaping club culture. The emergence of mixers, drum machines, recording equipment, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) – a standard to transmit musical notes, timings and pitch-information between instruments, and digital audio workstations (DAWs) – softwares for making music on laptops, like Ableton Live – represent a crucial nexus of elements. Together, these technologies have all come together to facilitate the experience of going clubbing and listening to DJs and live artists play.
The predecessor to the jukebox was the “Nickel-in-the-slot”, coin-operated, Edison Class M Electric Phonograph in 1890: a phonograph with four listening tubes that enabled people to listen to records (Burgess, 2014, p.113). The jukebox was invented shortly after in 1889, but was only commercialised in the 1920s after the additional amplifier was added instead of the listening tubes. This way bars, restaurants, clubs, and other venues could have cheaper music, as they didn’t have to hire a full band (Brewster & Broughton, 1999, p.53). Parallel to this was the boom of the radio and the radio DJs. Chicago’s first radio disc jockey, and the first female radio DJ, was Halloween Martin, hosting the morning radio programme Musical Clock from 1929-1946 (Connelly, 2022).
Martin one year after graduating from DePaul. (Image courtesy of Special Collections and Archives)
In the article “It’s Not the Mix, It’s the Selection”, Fikentscher (2013) quotes Passmann’s (1971, pp. 54-4) feedback from listeners to The Musical Clock: “I dance all over the house while I comb my hair or make toast. Snappy music in the morning is so invigorating. Many times I hum all morning the last song I heard when I left the house.” Fikentscher compares this feedback to reactions of clubbers and podcast listeners from today (Fikentscher, 2013, p.134). Even though people had long been dancing to records by listening to the radio, and in venues since the invention of the jukebox, the transformation of club culture as we know it today happened when people started “the revolutionary concept of dancing to records played by a disk jockey” (Brewster & Broughton, 1999, p. 52-53).
“From the late sixties through the early seventies we can see the evolution of dub mixes in Jamaica, disco in Manhattan, and Hip Hop in the South Bronx that eventually connected the needs of the DJ and dance club audiences directly back to the recordings that producers would create” (Burgess, 2014, p.114).
When retelling the story of the birth of house and techno music – the two major genres in club music – it is crucial to highlight the influence and impact of African American producers, DJs, and audiences together with the queer community, and the African American queer community. Mel Cheren, also known as the godfather of disco, accentuates this in the documentary “Pump up the Volume: A history of House Music” by saying: “From the very beginning it was the gay and black people that really kept dance music alive” (The DJ Mixtape, 2020, 3:36).
In “Beyond the Hustle: 1970s Social Dancing, Discotheque Culture and the Emergence of the Contemporary Club Dancer”, Tim Lawrence writes that before disco emerged from the underground, discotheques were open to gay people. However, it was illegal for them to dance with the same gender, as required by New York state law. Dance culture was kick-started in the 1970s – especially at two parties, “The Loft” and “the Sanctuary” – because clubs had mostly gay people on the dancefloors, who were known for bringing high energy. At these parties they were able to dance together without a dance companion of the opposite gender. This development was also significantly influenced by the socio-political events of the time, such as 'The Stonewall Riots,' heading towards gay liberation (Lawrence, 2009). Laurence (2009) continues to describe the club scene in New York at the time:“A series of legendary private parties (including Flamingo the Gallery, the Paradise Garage, Reade Street, the SoHo Place and the Tenth Floor) emerged out of this moment, while the public institution of the discotheque also received a second lease of life that culminated in the opening of Studio 54 in 1977” (Lawrence, 2009).
House
Originating from disco, and prior to that, from soul and R&B, house music emerged in Chicago (Gogstad, 2019). DJ Franckie Knuckles, known as “the godfather of house” – resident of Paradise Garage, one of the biggest clubs in New York at the time – went to DJ at the club The Warehouse in Chicago. There, he brought the high energy of the gay scene and merged it with the straight scene. Initially playing disco, a new sound began to emerge at The Warehouse. At the record store Imports Etc., people came to get the latest music played at the club. The shop put up a sign with the abbreviation “house”, and people started asking for the new house music. From there, the name became history (The DJ Mixtape, 2020, 14:50).
Something essential to house music was the addition of drum machines, giving it an extra groove (ibid.). House music of this time was recognised by vocal samples from disco or soul records, a melody line from an organ or piano, a synth-bass riff, and a 4/4 rhythm (Gogstad, 2019). The “four on the floor” rhythm is essential in both house and techno, and is a kick on each singular note, creating a thumping sound that follows the beat.
Known as the “godmother of house” is Stacey “Hotwaxx” Hale, who is still active today. In an interview for the online magazine Mixmag, the journalist Jaguar highlights the “unsung black women pioneers of house music”. Hale talks about the fact that, when history books were written about the start of house and techno, women were overlooked. She explains she had to personally request John Jammin’ Collins to include her name in the “hall of fame in the techno museum”, as he had omitted it despite knowing her personally (Jaguar, 2020).
The same happened in the UK to DJ Paulette, who was a resident DJ at the famous club, The Haçienda. She ran monthly parties where she hosted her own dance floor named Pussy Parlor at the gay club night Flesh – however, when Peter Hook wrote the book “The Haçienda: How To Not Run a Club”, he did not mention her, even though her name was on the poster every month for four years (ibid.). In the same interview with Jaguar (2020), DJ Paulette emphasises that this exclusion affects the historical narrative, as the book is referenced in research, perpetuating the notion that women were not integral to the scene. Despite their relatively small numbers, women were indeed present – and their voices and contributions are crucial. This issue contributes to the monographic history later discussed in the research project.
In the 80s, female DJs typically emerged from the gay scene. In a 2021 interview with Bill Brewster, one of the authors of the book "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disk Jockey," DJ Paulette explained that at straight parties, men wouldn't allow them to play, labelling it a "big boys' club." DJ Paulette noted in reference to the gay scene, "They didn't see having women behind the decks as a bad thing or a weakness. They saw it as a strength" (Brewster, 2021). The 90s marked a shift, with female DJs becoming more visible at both gay and straight parties (ibid.).
Techno
The producer-DJ trio from Michigan – Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson – were known as ‘The Belleville Three’. Influenced by the new house music from Chicago and the emerging new wave sound from Europe with synths and drum machines – especially the German group Kraftwerk – the Belleville Three played prominent roles in shaping what we now recognise as the distinct sound of Detroit Techno. What set them apart was their incorporation of the drum machine Roland TR-808 in the early 1980s, and later the TR-909, into the vinyls they played. This innovation shaped the sound and quickly spread through the house and techno community (Hoffmann, 2005).
In the 80s, and still today, there is a strong connection and musical exchange between the two techno cities of the world, Detroit and Berlin. “Starting in December 1989, pioneering house and techno records from Chicago and Detroit were imported to the Berlin DJ scene by the record store Hard Wax, located on the ground floor of a building on Reichenberger Straße in Kreuzberg” (Hoffmann, 2022). Hoffmann goes on to say that in 1991, Berlin’s first techno club, Tresor, opened its doors. To this day, Hard Wax and Tresor remain crucial points of connection between the Detroit and Berlin techno scenes.
Known as one of Berlin’s techno pioneers is Ellen Allien. She has been a “driving force behind Berlin’s thriving electronic music culture for decades” (Bunker, 2023). Today, the techno scene is booming with many female producers and DJs around the world, such as Nina Kraviz, Amelie Lens, Rebekah, and Anetha (ibid.). Others are Sama AbdulHadi, ANNA, Nastia, and Amanda Mussi. The list goes on.
Distinguishing between club music and EDM
Electronic Dance Music (EDM) traces its roots back to the disco movement of the 1970s, and over time, it became an umbrella term for various dance genres. However, a significant shift occurred in the 2010s concerning the perception and use of the term EDM. The genre underwent commercialisation, associating it with a specific sound. For the public, EDM ceased to be a broad category encompassing all dance music genres; instead, it evolved into its own distinct genre. Producers and DJs like Swedish House Mafia, Avicii, and Kygo exemplify this stylised approach (Aamli, 2022).
Due to the emergence of a distinct EDM sound, there is a conflict in using the EDM terminology when referring to dance genres such as house and techno. To address this, the term "club music" is used as a substitute, specifically when referring to the style of EDM that predates the 2010s.
Norwegian Pioneers of Club Music
House and techno music were spreading across the world, becoming especially prominent in the UK, the island of Ibiza in Spain, and Goa in India. One of the big influences for the Norwegian club scene was the Icelandic icon, Björk, who collaborated with an electronic music group from Manchester called 808 State – their name being inspired by the Roland TR-808 drum machine. This drum machine was the same type that Juan Atkins and the other DJ producers from Detroit and Chicago used in their productions. Björk was introduced to acid house, and cites the rave scene in the late 80s as being a big inspiration to her music. In the 90s she moved to London, and started producing herself. It was here that Björk created the genre crossover between electronic club music and pop that she is still known for today (NRK, 2023, ep. 2).
By the end of the 80s, the Norwegian artist Per Martinsen – AKA “Mental Overdrive” – brought the influence and inspiration of club music from London to the northern coastal town of Tromsø, Norway. He sparked a community of house and techno enthusiasts, including 90s pioneers such as Bjørn Torske and Røyksopp (NRK, 2023, ep. 1). After some time they moved to bigger cities such as Oslo and Bergen. Bergen, my hometown, has seen the likes of many artists succeed.
«(…) Röyksopp, Annie, Casiokids, Bjørn Torske, Erot, Ralph Myerz and the Jack Herren Band, Kahn and Skatebård (all of them linked to the famous Tellé label) did all launch their careers in the narrow streets of Bergen before heading abroad and playing at stages all over the world» (Mosnes, 2015).
Trying to identify central women, queer and non-binary figures in Norwegian club history has been challenging. While researching, names such as Annie come up – but discovering their roles beyond being vocalists is difficult. It is unclear whether they were also producers, as sources provide scant information. Through word of mouth, I was directed towards three DJs: DJ Langeling, DJ Sunshine, and DJ Vera. However, as they were not producers, written sources about them are sparse and difficult to find. Vera Danielsen, DJ Vera, was interviewed by “Skeivt Arkiv” – the national archive for queer history in Norway in 2017 – where she talks about the queer club scene in Oslo in the 90s. This is during the time when she herself was an active DJ (Skeivt Arkiv, 2017, Vera Danielsen). DJ Sunshine, alias Elin Már Øyen Vister, is also one of the pioneers of club music in Norway. Though compared to Mental Overdrive, the information about them is hard to come across. One extensive interview was done in 2005, but it focussed on the fact that they were being taken off air – after completing three years of hosting a radio show at the national radio station, NRK. DJ Sunshine also resided in London for years, where they presented at Rude FM and DJ’d at clubs like Blue Note (MysteryMix, 2008).
The transnational online database ‘female:pressure’ defines women* as AFAB (assigned female at birth), transgender, transfeminine, transmasculine, intersex [+gender optional], genderqueer, gender nonconforming, a-gender and/or non-binary. It is this definition I am referring to in this text. I understand that even this definition may not be complete, but for the purpose of this research project I will follow this definition. At the same time knowing that every DJ and producer owns their own identity.
What I interpret from these “small” findings of women and non-binary DJs in the US, the UK, and Norway, and also the importance of the queer community in club culture, is that they might always have been there – but they are simply not remembered properly. That is why, I would argue, it’s especially important when researching club music and culture to find and enhance these voices. As defining myself as a queer female producer-DJ, I want to know that we always had a role in the scene, and that I am not contributing to silencing anyone’s voice. My aim is to highlight some of these important figures and their contributions, as the cis-male perspective is much more easily accessible.
Music Production and Electronic Sounds
Before electronic music and dance music even existed for DJs to play, there were pioneers experimenting with how to make music. Their main creative sources were the electronic sounds from the new machines and technologies that emerged after the time of Edison's inventions.
The rich history of electronic music traces back to the latter half of the 19th century, with Thaddeus Cahill (1867-1934) emerging as a central figure of that era. Cahill invented the Telharmonium (patented in 1897) – a precursor to the electronic organ, radio, or even music streaming (Holmes, 2012, p.8). The original patent of the Telharmonium described the invention as “a device with electrical tone-generating mechanics, devices for building and shaping original tones, a touch-sensitive polyphonic keyboard for activating the tone-generating circuitry and a speaker system for reproducing the sound” (ibid.). Cahill insisted that “the ability to produce music using technological means is a shortcut to musicianship” (ibid., p.10) – a perspective that faced some resistance during the early stages of electronic music development. Another important invention from this time was the Theremin, created by Leon Theremin (1896-1993). Patented in 1924, the Theremin made its debut performance in the USA in 1927 (ibid., p.20). Operating on a "beat frequency method" to produce sound, it involved "moving the hands in the vicinity of two antennae" (ibid.). The Theremin gained popularity as a prominent electronic musical instrument, and had several influential female performers, not least Clara Rockmore.
During the second world war, pioneers like Daphne Oram (1925-2003) started experimenting with the field of electronic sounds – and a new world of music emerged. Oram had read a book which predicted that “composers in the future would compose directly into sound instead of using orchestral instruments” (Sisters With Transistors, 2021). Though not clarified in the documentary, Oram here most likely refers to the text “The Future of Music: Credo” in Silence by John Cage (1937), where Cage explains that “it is now possible for composers to make music directly, without the assistance of intermediary performers” (Cage, 1937). Oram was a co-founder of the BBC's “Radiophonic Workshop” (1957), exploring something they called “radiophonic effects”. Her male colleagues had decided against using the term “music”, as sounds had never been considered music before and they worried about alienating the public. Just as Thaddeus Cahill had done 50 years prior, Oram disagreed, and in 1959 left the BBC to set up her own studio instead where she could focus on the music of electronic sounds (Sisters with Transistors, 2021). Oram is also known as the inventor of the Oramics Machine – a machine that could “synthesise and sequence sound by painting lines and other marks on glass and film strip”.
Another pioneer from the time is Delia Derbyshire. She was a mathematician and had a love for abstract sounds and stated in an interview: “I did all sorts of things I was told I couldn’t do. I think I’ve always been a very independent thinker” (Sisters With Transistors, 2021). Derbyshire also started working for the BBC radiophonic workshop in 1962-1973, where she produced the famous Doctor Who theme song. This song was vital to “changing the perception of people not liking electronic music” (ibid).
Burgess (2014) explains that music producers are composers in sound. “They fix creative ideas, not as musical notes and instructions on a page for interpretation by performers, but rather, directly to a medium that also captures subtleties of individual performances and timbral qualities. Music production fuses the composition, arrangement, orchestration, interpretation, improvisations, timbral qualities, and performance or performances into an immutable sonic whole” (Burgess, 2014, p.1). This means that music producers have the ability to construct an entire song or musical piece independently, aided by certain technological devices. The roles can be divided, but it is possible to do it entirely on your own – to be both the performer and the composer.
This experimentation with sound and new technologies also includes other female pioneers: to name a few, Pauline Oliveros, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel, Bebe Baron, Eliane Radigue, Laurie Anderson, Susan Rogers, Sylvia Moy, Ethel Gabriel, and Sonia Pottinger (Sisters with Transistors, 2021; Forrest, 2023).
https://sisterswithtransistors.com/ALL
In her review of the book “Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound” by Tara Rodgers, Gavanas (2010) writes that “Pink Noisesis an extremely important contribution to the study and documentation of electronic music, because, unlike previous literature on electronic music, Tara Rogers refuses to stop at the ‘thresholds that have silenced women’s work in historical accounts’” (Gavanas, 2010, p.98). Common in both the academic realm and the popular press is the idea that DJing is a “male-dominated occupation, in which the DJ is generally described in the masculine singular third person: ‘he’, ‘his’, ‘him’” (Rietveld, 2013, p.4). This is also true in the discussion around electronic music and music producers. Challenging this narrative are scholars like Farrugia (2012), Hutton (2006), Rogers (2010), and Rietveld (1998), all highlighting female contributors, key figures, and pioneers within the scene (ibid).
DJ set vs. live set
In between live sets and DJing, there is an essential difference in terms of the content the artist is working with, as well as the different music technology being used. In simple terms, a live set is a type of “laptop performance of electronic music and sounds,” while a DJ plays and mixes other people's music through their DJ decks. More extensively, this can be explained as “any performance of electronic music live, using music production equipment (samplers, sequencers, synthesisers, laptops), rather than a DJ mix, which uses a media player and mixer to blend pre-recorded audio material" (Paul, n.d).
To reiterate, the DJ set and the live set are two different mediums. They share a commonality in that both allow electronic music “sets”, seamlessly performed through transitions, guiding the audience on a journey from start to finish. Although there are some live sets which follow more of a concert format – meaning they give people time to applaud in between tracks – the live sets I will continue referring to in this research project are continuous performances, and with the purpose of playing for people on the dancefloor.
When discussing performing either live or as a DJ set, Mark J. Butler (2014) describes an “interplay between process and product”. This refers to the dynamic between the improvisation of recorded products and/or the improvisation leading to a product (Butler, 2014, p.2). The role of the DJ is to make the selection of music while they “combine, and manipulate parts of records to form new compositions that differ substantially from their source materials” (ibid., p.6). For the live set performer, the sound material can be a combination of prepared material and elements added live during the performance. Different artists have different approaches to their live set, but it is common – especially in solo live sets – to have some recorded material together with improvised and/or live components.
One important aspect of live sets, in contrast to DJ sets, is that you need to have a sound-check, which is typical to all concerts. This is a run through of sounds and segments you will play during your performance, testing the levels and making sure everything sounds good for when it’s “show time”. All venues and sound systems will impact the sound in a certain way, and this is why it’s important to test these things before people arrive. For DJ sets it is not as essential to sound check because the tracks they are playing have already been mastered, meaning the sound levels should be balanced. To have the best quality of sound on the speaker system it is recommended to use wav or aiff files - “both high quality audio formats and suitable for DJ-performances” (Platt, 2022).
DJ sets and live sets differ in length depending on the artist and the venue, but generally a live set is shorter than a DJ set. It is also better paid, given that it is viewed similarly to a concert – even if that set is played in a nightclub. It is perfectly normal for a live set to be 30-45 minutes long. This is in contrast to a DJ set, which can last anywhere between one and a half to four hours. Some terminology to be aware of for the DJ set, is that the wording changes from a “set” to a “mix” when the set is recorded. For live sets, this change in wording doesn’t happen.
DJing
“Dance takes countless forms and serves diverse purposes in society but humans as a species seem to like dancing, and music and dance are inextricably intertwined” (Burgess, 2014, p. 112).
The DJ has to be able to engage a dancing crowd, take them on a journey on the dancefloor, and create a memorable experience. There is art and technique behind it; it's not simply a matter of pressing play. Taking elements from other tracks and adding them to the one that is currently being played involves: mixing, EQing, beatmatching, phasing, phrasing, gaining, adding effects, and so on. The concept of “reading the crowd” is also essential to DJing, meaning that the DJ “reads” the response of the crowd and navigates their energy to keep the dancefloor going.
In 1970s New York, the disco DJs started adding intros and outros to energetic tracks with less melody and more rhythm. This made the tracks easier to transition and was more sonically pleasing to the ear. It was continued by house and techno producers, and is still produced like this to this day. This way it’s easier to hear on the headphones when tracks are beat-matched, before turning the fader up and getting the track out through the sound system. Beat-matching is to “bring the tempo, beats, measures and phrases of records into perfect alignment” (Butler, 2017,xii). It means that two records can overlap and the DJ can “create a constantly sounding, never interrupted mix” (ibid.).
As a listener, you should experience the transition as a seamless transition from one track to the next. This is also a place where the DJ can add their own artistic flair. In an interview with Ableton (2023), the DJ-producer Gigola said that she felt there was music creation in mixing the transition of the tracks of others. This sentiment is something I also relate to – that overlap of the second track with the first, creating new sonic experiences. I have practised this a lot, letting the tracks play together for a long period of time, seeing what unfolds and making sure the two tracks remain aligned.
Today, the industry standard to perform a DJ set in a club is to either do it the “old school” way, with vinyls on turntables, or the digital way, with DJ decks. Both involve using a mixer. There are also some DJs who use the DJ controllers - a single unit deck connected to the computer with a DJ software like Serrato. I will not refer to these types of DJ controllers further in this research project. The industry standard mixers are the Xone models from Allen & Heath and the DJM models from Pioneer. DJ decks are also known as CDJs, and are made to resemble turntables. The industry standard DJ decks are from Pioneer. They allow you to use CDs, hence the name CDJ. However, the most common and convenient way nowadays to access your music is with a USB stick. The DJ builds and creates their music library with collected tracks, which is then downloaded, put into folders for organisation, and analysed through Rekordbox, a software corresponding with Pioneer. Finally the music is put onto the said USB stick, and is ready to be plugged into the decks.
The reason for analysing music tracks through Rekordbox is to ensure that all the information of the track is displayed on the CDJ. This way, when you are DJing, the screen of the decks will show the BPM of your track. It allows you to easily adjust and match different tracks without having to determine the BPM of the running track by listening and adjusting the master tempo by ear, as you would do when playing vinyl.
An extensive DJ glossary by Hercules can be found here: https://www.hercules.com/en-us/dj/glossary/
The style I play
Developing your own sound as a DJ takes time. For me, the building blocks of my music library arrived through enjoying certain types of music, visualising people dancing to them, and wanting to dance myself. After a while, adding tracks to my library, I could sense a red thread developing; connections between tracks forming, even though some music is more loungey, and others more high energy. I refer to high energy tracks as peak time tracks, as they work very well when the energy of the crowd is at its peak. Even though I have certain tracks that I especially like and have chosen for my music library, nothing is set in stone. Sometimes I have an idea of something I’d like to try out, but am unsure how it will be received. A special thing about being a DJ is that you can quickly test out your ideas on an audience, compared to if you are a producer or live performer.
As previously discussed, house and techno work as umbrella terms due to their association with club music and the emergence of subsequent subgenres. Trying to define which genre you’re playing can be a tedious task for a DJ, and with my DJ colleagues it’s something we continue talking about without ever fully landing on “the right answer”. It has happened that one may think they’ve identified their precise genre, but then find someone else associates it with different subgenres. Tech house is a good example of this. If I say “I play tech house”, a lot of people would jump to conclusions about what kind of tech house it is. However, within this style there are many variations. It’s also typical to play a combination of several subgenres in one set.
Tech house is a musical genre that originated from the fusion of house and techno. From the 90s to the 2000s, tech house transitioned from the underground scene to mainstream popularity, with producers steering the sound in a more commercialised direction. In the documentary “What Happened to Tech House”, Resident Advisor explains that “tech house became largely associated with big room commercial clubs, and the term was often casually used as a pejorative to describe any mid-tempo dance music thought to be in bad taste” (Resident Advisor, 2021). Minimal emerged as a subgenre, functioning as a rebranding of the old-school tech house from the 90s, minus the associated commercial elements (ibid.). “Minimal”, “minimal tech house”, or “minimal deep tech” are subgenres, which according to Samplesound (2023) are “highly rhythmic and uses simple but effective rhythmic patterns, with a strong emphasis on sound modelling and evocative atmospheres” (Samplesound Team, 2023).
When creating a DJ set, the foremost consideration is to think about which tracks seamlessly flow into one other. I have found that the key lies in choosing music from genres that resonate both with the dance floor and my personal preferences. The common aspect of my selection of music is the percussive elements. Additionally to house I tap into sub genres like minimal, tech house, deep tech, African house, and Latin house, with the BPM ranging between 125-130.
Live Sets; the laptop performance
“In recent years (particularly since 2000) the laptop set has become equally common; in this type of performance, musicians use computers, specialised software, and a variety of hardware to transform and reconfigure their own precomposed sounds in real time” (Butler, 2014, p.6).
Ableton Live
“Ableton Live is one of the most popular DAWs for producing music” (Hahn, 2023).
Ableton is a combination of three components: Live, Push and Link. Live is the software for producing, recording and performing music, Push is the hardware that corresponds with Ableton Live - working as an extension of the software, and Link is a feature that enables you to connect with other computers. Link is especially used when performing live with others, so you stay in sync and don’t go out of time.
In an interview with Vice (2016), Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke – the co-founders of Ableton – said that the roots of Ableton could be traced back to the early techno scene of Berlin in the 90s. This was when the two friends were artists performing as the duo Monolake. They were also computer programming students, and invented softwares to aid the playing of their live dub-influenced techno gigs (Slater, 2016). With the help of a colleague, Bernd Roggendorf, Ableton was founded in 1999, and the first version of Live was released in 2021 (ibid.). This software was quickly picked up by electronic musicians looking to get their productions out in a live setting – and the software continues to transform how people perform electronic music.
One of the biggest features that distinguishes Ableton Live from other DAWs for performing live is the “session view”. Unlike other DAWs, where the structure of the track is unfolding horizontally along a timeline on the laptop screen, Ableton Live's session view allows for a non-linear approach. This enables the performer to create loop-based compositions which can be played – or “launched”, as it is also called – cued, or stopped exactly when needed. This means elements can be easily added and removed, which is beneficial for playing live.
In session view you work with “clips”, which are either audio or midi files. These are played in “scenes”, which represent the entire sequence of clips. The clips can either be played once or looped. They also have global quantization, meaning they get played in sync.
Working in session view allows you to introduce each audio or MIDI file freely, without the constraints of a predetermined timeline. This flexibility is particularly advantageous for live performances, as it enables you to add or remove specific clips and elements whenever you choose. This concept of launching clips has a similar approach to the Soundsystem culture of 1970s Jamaica, where “dub mixing” involved “loops of audio [being] mixed and manipulated live through a mixing board and various effects units” (Paul, n.d.).
While performing a solo live set, you have to find the balance between which clips are played back and which elements are performed live. It involves determining the right mix of melodies and rhythms that run while you, as the performer, shape certain elements of the sound, creating a visually performative experience. Striking the right balance also means staying connected to both the technological equipment and the audience, constantly adding and removing elements.
Ableton Live has a unique set of features within its DAW that distinguishes it from other music production programmes. They make it especially well suited for live performances of electronic music. More recently, the concept of Ableton’s session view is being adapted by other DAW programs such as Logic Pro and Bitwig Studio.
My setup
My live setup consists of my laptop with Ableton Live, Ableton Push, a midi-controller with pads, knobs and keys, a sound card, and a microphone for vocals. The selection of this equipment is determined by a financial aspect – it is the equipment I have collected over the past years. Getting new gear can be costly, so the expansion of my setup is a gradual process.
The setup in Ableton includes a variety of clips, samples, and stems, where I launch scenes on Ableton Push. Stems are “stereo recordings sourced from mixes of multiple individual tracks, such as drums, vocals and bass” (Kody, 2021). Dividing the track in this way makes it possible for me to place the stems as clips in session view, where I can mute and unmute parts and add new elements as I wish. This approach enables me to execute a dynamic “live remix” of the tracks.
There are also some sounds that are connected to my midi-keyboard that I can play live. I have two different bass instruments which I created through sound design, one with an arpeggiator and one for long notes. I also had some scenes with vocal harmonies and some for violin that I recorded and processed for one track. Additionally to the scenes, I had midi-mapped some different instruments that I can play live on the midi-keyboard. The live elements were: bass, an arpeggiated bass, and a synth sound.The vocals are midi-mapped to have one clean channel and one channel with effects. The plug-in I have for the vocal effects is Tantra2, providing a “stuttery” and percussive quality to the vocals.