Extremely Interesting: Human DJs being replicated and replaced....

[andre9000]

Check this out:

DJ-I, the Robot Sound System

It is very interesting what they are teaching this robot to do. However, I don't think that robot will be taking away jobs from the type of DJs who spin at Buzz. Here's why: at hip-hop clubs and such, they could be very useful because all the djs do is throw on any-old record and scratch. Some DJs read the crowd, but more often than not (from my experience) they just throw on all the most popular music at the time, in usually no particular order.

But at other electro-music clubs or raves it's all about the selection of specific tracks based on "reading" what the crowd needs at that moment to hear. So the best djs have been around and know how to read the energy and the emotion of the crowd, and throw on the perfect track. Obviously mixing and blending tracks, and technical skills are important, which is what it sounds this robot can do. But you need the "human touch", and they'll never duplicate that... Anyone else have any feedback?

[scratchapella]

i read about this earlier in some other article/magazine. . .and i agree w/you. . . what could robot possible know about how that one song makes us feel? djing is an art form, a human expression, the music they chose to play and how they play it involves soul and human 'calculation' of things you can't gauge w/quantifiable (is that word?) factors. .bpm, pitch, rpm, whatever. . blah blah blah. . besides i like hearing mistakes once in a while, and seeing how they cover it up/recover from it. . .and another thing, edm is not soul-less white boy music

[scratchapella]

oh wait though. . .i was just thinking about all the tnew shit they have out for djs, protools, final scratch and the like. . .it's not completely two sided, it's not like you're sacrificing efficiency for quality/soul/whatevah. . .w/that kind of technology, and maybe even this robot thingy. . .it's all a matter of "harnessing" (?) the technology made, or adapting htem to encourage further human creativity. . .actually. . .there will always be ways for humans to control how this robot works, the article said it itself. . they're studying famous dj's techniques to model the robots. . .as long as the music keeps progressing in a forward direction. . .b/c efficient and flawless sets doesn't equal progression. . .joo know?

[Kuro]

Also, a machine isn't going to understand that some things sound cool together. It's not going to understand that the vocal snippet in the song that's playing now would sound really cool along with the vocals in another song that it could mix in or that the bleepy sounds in song A sound cool with the drums in song B. I guess the best it could do would be to choose songs to play according to what key they're in and the BPM of the songs, but it'll never understand that some things just sound good together.

[vicman]

maybe they can start cloning dj's....how 'bout a vicman-mistress barbara clone? that would be money!!