Contemporary DJing provides a salient site to explore the interplay between traditional physical and emerging digital forms of music and so inform future music technologies
Interesting to understand that current and past practices all inform future music technologies and the interplay between traditional physical and digital forms as a balance.
For many DJs, purchasing music is not only about finding new releases; it also involves unearthing old ones. ‘Crate digging’, or seeking out old recordings, is a key part of the sampling culture that originated within the hip-hop and electronic dance music scenes of the late 1970s and early ‘80s. This is very much an exploratory practice, as the value of a record can lie in anything from a particular vocal sample or a small section of a melody, to a specific drum break or sound.
Seeking out old records and finding them is an exploratory practice. The value of the record is something small like the drum hit or large like the loop.
It is also a practice that is strongly associated with the vinyl rather than the digital format, as many old and obscure records are simply not available to download. The DJs in our study routinely ‘dug around’ car boot sales, charity stores and bargain basements. As it is usually not possible to listen to these records before purchasing, visual information and metadata provide especially important filters for ‘digging’ through record collections and separating the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’. As with buying new releases, DJs rely on some distinctive metadata here: “If you find anything that has certain drummers on it, there’s gonna be good breaks on it. If there’s anything on certain labels from a certain era there’s gonna be good things on it. Anything that has a picture of someone in a spaceship on it is probably gonna be good, unless it’s from the ‘80s … ”
metadata and knowledge through digging is a key factor learnt from the craft and actions of doing. Through digging and finding one can locate what is and who they are within the record, and what to look for.