Coachella is full of news and surprises. But beyond No Doubt’s amazing reunion, Blur’s bemused reaction to the audience, and Lauryn Hill’s appearance on his son YG Marley’s set, there are certain moments that have caught our attention. No, the topic of discussion centers on the number of “technical mishaps” surrounding Grimes and her DJ sets. She repeatedly apologized to the packed Sahara Tent crowd, which erupted into angry cries at times, and even apologized after her set. Mistakes happen, and I’ve been to a few DJ sets where things got messed up and I had to think on the fly. That’s just the name of the game. Not everything will be perfect. The difference in this situation is that you are completely reliant on “outsourcing” the Rekordbox BPM process and having someone else set up your tracklist. This clashed with Grimes’ inability to match tempo. That could have been avoided if she had listened to the set beforehand.
This speaks to a more important question regarding the relationship between technology and over-reliance on methods of artistic process. For example, Pro Tools reduces the complexity of music production and was once the standard for mixing. This made it easier to remove gross inefficiencies in my compositions and made them sound better. This problem occurs when you rely on something like Pro Tools so much that it takes away the natural creative flow from the musical process. If the vocalizations of your Pro Tools-powered songs are artificial, it will show up in your live performance (if you choose not to lip-sync to a backing track, which is your privilege, of course). DJing requires you to be in tune with the mood of the crowd, identify the type of crowd and the music/tempo that gets the best response, and act accordingly. The auto-sync button is provided for “emergency” purposes and there is no alternative to running this button. Of course, you can learn how to program how a violin sounds in your computer, but a more valuable method is to learn the instrument.
In the world of technology, there is a push to integrate AI apps and components into the creative process. That’s because there’s this idea that all creativity is algorithmic, that creativity is typed into a prompt and spit out like a Pepsi machine. In fact, it’s because of those 10,000 hours that groups like Justice are so adept at recreating sets in new ways from songs they’ve heard before. It’s tempting to jump the line because you feel entitled to it – but you’re only entitled to the results of the work you put in. Grimes should know this, since she’s an artist with five albums under her belt. It takes a huge amount of time and energy, as does the DJ who has to think about what the Bonnaroo crowd likes, as opposed to the smaller parties in Ibiza. It’s just a respect for the audience. It’s your gratitude to them that determines how much you’ll be hooked. I don’t particularly like people bombing, so I hope Grimes’ words about everything being better in the second weekend are true. More importantly, it’s a warning that technology is best used as an aid, not a shortcut.
Photo credit: MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGES
