# DJ Tiesto - what is he doing?



## Hannes_F (Jun 13, 2007)

Hi,

whenever I am in our local electronics store they show a DVD of a concert of DJ Tiesto (www.tiesto.com)

I am not sure I understand what I am seeing there. This guy has tremendous success by ... making music ... but in a way I still want to understand.

First, he does not seem to produce any original music but uses records (that is why he calls himself DJ, clever hehe). So he basically is a sampling artist.

Then he loops everything endlessly and dances a little with it. Looking cool is much more important in this genre than musical content. This is a serious conclusion - sympathy seems to be the key.

Every now and then he twiggles a knob. The music changes _sloooooooooowly_ without appearent connection to the knob twiggling. But everybody seems to love it. The chicas are like hypnotized. Do I sound jealous. Well I am.

I suppose if he would play in a bassline on a keyboard at the beginning, the crowd would say 'Nah, he is _only a musician_'

But he is more. He is a loop-using fader mover. He is a DJ. He is a worldwide acclaimed star with multiple awards and platinum sellings.

Very much food for thought for me.


Hannes


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## Niah (Jun 13, 2007)

People don't care about any of that they just wanna dance and have a good time. Especially if we are talking about dance music.

Nothing wrong with that.

Don't except art comming from the pop world man. :mrgreen:


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## Hannes_F (Jun 13, 2007)

Niah,

I am honestly asking myself what I can learn from it.


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## MacQ (Jun 13, 2007)

DJ Tiesto is being a DJ.

That's all. He's playing records for people, and beat-matching and mixing them. That's pretty much it. What makes him "popular" is partly hype, and partly the fact that he chooses good songs and assembles them in his live sets in a particular order for maximum crowd approval. You have to realize that a lot of times people are going into a kind of (often drug-induced) trance when they listen to this music (hence the name "trance music"), so to ride that for maximum effect, a DJ with a talent of reading the crowd and crafting his sets can become quite popular indeed.

So popular, that his compilation albums sell platinum, etc. Often what happens (and I know this from direct experience), is that a DJ such as Tiesto will sign tracks produced by other musicians to his own label, and then release these tracks in his mixed compilations. In this case, he's not the producer, he's just the A&R for his own label ... but he is "releasing" new material, though he didn't himself produce it. He's basically just a promoter at this point.

He also produces music, and though it's not all that exciting or artistically interesting, his name as a DJ has made his releases successful. Plus he gets hired to remix other artist's releases, to lend them some sort of "scene" credibility, which at this point is pretty diluted since he's seen in many circles as a sell-out. Which he is.

So in conclusion ... is Tiesto a genius? No. Is he lucky and shrewd as a promoter and proselytizer of his own "brand"? Absolutely. 90% marketing, 10% talent.

He's just a glorified jukebox, after all.

~Stu


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## VonRichter (Jun 13, 2007)

Never forget that the mainstream music world has absolutely nothing to do with music. o=< 

If you are really wanting those kinds of phony chicks bad enough to put on a record and move a fader and call yourself a musician, have at it. But be careful for you wish for, you might not be happy when you get it!!!!!!!

>8o 

PS

I know a lot of people in real life with no musical talent whatsoever who "DJ" and call themselves musicians. Their "art" consists of taking CD's composed by other people, putting them into the player, and pushing the play button. Amazing talent eh? One... er... "friend" of mine claims that it takes special talent to play the right songs in a row and that I could never understand his genius. Riiiiiiiiiiight.

They are by far THE most pretentious and egotistical group of psuedo-musicians I've ever encountered. The ones I've met, anyway. One guy was bragging to me about how amazing his extended crossfade is. About a week later, he's "mixing" at a party I happen to attend, and he does his crossfade between every song. Guess what? It's just a crossfade. A longish one. That's it. One fader up, the other down. That's an incredible magic skill to him, that according to him I could never accomplish without years of practice and listening to "the inner rhythm of my soul" (actual quote!) 

I mean... at least rip some crap up and mash some things together creatively... just pushing play doth not a musician maketh... sucketh a tranny walrus, mastadon soup boullion cubes, floateth in atrocious psuedo language spewed randomly on forumeth, euthenasia, youth in asia, you thin, asia, you, then asia, then... THE WORLD! specular highlights, MY GOD SHE'S HAVING A BABY!


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## Niah (Jun 13, 2007)

Hannes_F @ Thu Jun 14 said:


> Niah,
> 
> I am honestly asking myself what I can learn from it.



You can learn not to be like him. That's start. 

Seriously he may be popular but he's also considered a joke by many who have a little understanding in music or in the genre. Respected and Tiesto are two words that you don't see often on the same sentence.

...and what Stu said.


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## choc0thrax (Jun 13, 2007)

:lol:


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## Patrick de Caumette (Jun 13, 2007)

I think this is a discussion worth having... (but I have no notion of who Tiesto is)


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## VonRichter (Jun 13, 2007)

Likewise, I have no idea who the topic of discussion is, except what posters have said. For all I know he blows Beethoven out of the water as easily as taking a dump.


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## CFDG (Jun 14, 2007)

I used to share Hannes's point of view, but I went to a kind of rave once and I understood where the talent is, while having mojitos at the bar.

The art in DJing is to master very long crescendi, keeping everybody convulsing on the dance floor for hours. I have to admit, it's not as easy as it sounds, a single bad choice/transition and you got your whole crowd drinking mojitos at the bar with me.

A composer dances like a standard concrete brick, studies Ligeti scores for hours, wants to buy a gun everytime someone snap fingers on 1 and 3, cares a lot about panning the first violins L33 and the second violins L21. A non-composer wants to have fun with 50Hz and needs to thank someone, that will be the moving dude with a headphones set (probably L on the right ear, sacrilege, ultimate sin!!!).


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## Hannes_F (Jun 14, 2007)

Actually there _are_ some very interesting things about it:

- Music choice. Find the right song for every moment. It is not as easy as it looks like. I am a DJ now and then and it is much harder than I ever thought. I tend to say it can be an art.

- The event character of it, and the identification possibilities. Between a pianist on stage and the public there normally is a big felt distance because everybody knows that for him it is practically impossible to play Chopin or whatever. But people can much better identify with a DJ because he the only thing he appearently needs is feeling (but a lot of it), and only minimal technique.

I am not done with it yet, still thinking.


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## VonRichter (Jun 14, 2007)

Well. 

Everything is wonderful genius art when you do enough drugs.

Let's all get messed up and go to a rave!

Dammit, I feel at peace with the world and want to touch everyone around me.

You'll never understand the secrets of the universe like I do unless you take this pill.

I JUST WANT TO BE ENTERTAINED!

You know what, art is a waste of time. What does it matter if you're going to die anyway? 

The thing is, all we need are boxes of jello and lot's a nyquil, and probably latex replicas of Bob Hope's biceps. The three pillars of modern life, glistening on an altar made of living squids suspended in molten marshmallows.

Join me in the airtight garage as I rev the car. Convertible, of course.


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## Herman Witkam (Jun 14, 2007)

I'm ashamed of being Dutch :D

Actually, I prefer DJ's like Armin van Buuren.


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## MacQ (Jun 14, 2007)

Really? And here I thought he was a Dutch National Hero!  

But seriously, I'm with you on Armin. Much better DJ (for my money), plus I really dig his tracks.

The sad thing that I find with dance music is, you're not getting paid to make it. You're getting paid to play DJ gigs at clubs because of the promotional use of the record that you produced. So, you release a single to get bookings as a DJ, not as an artist. It's bizarre, but I guess it works.

~Stu


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## navidson (Jun 14, 2007)

Tiesto has managed to tap into a very commercially viable form of electronic music, and he's probably the best entertainer of his target audience in the same way Harry Potter is to people who don't really care for reading books. DJing requires less skill than people pretend it does (unless we go into Turntablism which is a whole different ballpark), it's not hard to learn to beatmatch and picking the right track for the moment is not difficult in the Trance genre, especially when it refined itself to the same Access Virus synth patches in 1999 and hasn't evolved since. 

It's easy to sound snobby about it (and I realise I do, but I don't care! Vla ha ha), but if you explore a little more into the history behind the 'modern' DJ (start with the Jamaican soundsystems, follow it through to the Bronx street parties, backtrack to what was going on in the Disco clubs in parallel, see how the two converge to form Techno which is subsiquently hijacked by the Brits and the Germans and splinters off into the mainstream conceincious) you'll come across the people and the genres that have much more artistic and musical integrety than the current popular face of electronic banality.


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## Patrick de Caumette (Jun 14, 2007)

VonRichter @ Thu Jun 14 said:


> Well.
> 
> Everything is wonderful genius art when you do enough drugs.
> 
> ...



Whatever it is that you are smoking, I want a piece of it =o (o)


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## VonRichter (Jun 14, 2007)

Nobody is knocking disco music as such. I will lay down the synth beats all night and make Jared from the Subway commercials shake his formerly massive azz, sending shockwaves through the atmosphere, knocking satellites out of orbit, curdling bean dip, whatever.

It's just plain retarded when someone pushes a play button and calls themselves a musician.

Sure, we could get philosophical and pull a phat juicy John Cage and say it's all valid, yadda yadda, everything is valid, turds, roses, art is purely subjective, there is no art, everything is art, blah blah whatever. But you can make the oblivion/infinity/nofinity/nothing/everything/nothingandeverything/somthingelseexceptnothing/spermwhales/DianaRoss argument when talking about any subject.


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## handz (Jun 14, 2007)

Dance music dont need to be good, its more about how many drugs or alcohol you have in you.


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## Hannes_F (Jun 14, 2007)

handz @ Thu Jun 14 said:


> Dance music dont need to be good, its more about how many drugs or alcohol you have in you.



... except Salsa. The best dance music worldwide for me, I love it (most of it). Even have entered a national competition in salsa dancing once. >8o :roll:


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## Patrick de Caumette (Jun 14, 2007)

Dance music can be very cool in my book.
It all depends on what you dance to...


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## Ed (Jun 14, 2007)

Its wrong to generalise "dance music", as it is to generalise "orchestral" or "rock".


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## Herman Witkam (Jun 14, 2007)

MacQ @ Thu Jun 14 said:


> Really? And here I thought he was a Dutch National Hero!



He is kind of - lol. I strongly dislike him though  



MacQ @ Thu Jun 14 said:


> But seriously, I'm with you on Armin. Much better DJ (for my money), plus I really dig his tracks.



I like the sounds he uses. It somehow sounds different from most dance music I have heard. He is from the same small town as me, btw. I remember that he was playing in this place here in town, called Nexus.



MacQ @ Thu Jun 14 said:


> The sad thing that I find with dance music is, you're not getting paid to make it. You're getting paid to play DJ gigs at clubs because of the promotional use of the record that you produced. So, you release a single to get bookings as a DJ, not as an artist. It's bizarre, but I guess it works.
> 
> ~Stu



Yeah - A few people I know are producing dance music. As far as I know, they only get paid for the gigs, and those aren't exactly big gigs yet. These guys also do music & sound design for TV though.


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## VonRichter (Jun 14, 2007)

Getting way off topic now, but who cares!!!!!!!!! :mrgreen: 


What is "dance music" anyway? Music with a "danceable beat"? 

If that's true, plenty of masterpieces are "dance music". The Rite of Spring is "dance music". Last I checked, that piece was a nuclear bomb of awesomeness.

If we are talking the "4-on-the-floor + arpeggiator synth + Exctasy" genre, well... I have a few opinions about that and I'm about to shoot my mouth off about it right now and you're going to read it.

1: synths rule

2: arpeggiators rule

3: the "electronica" genre has managed to make these two very cool things as boring and uncreative as possible.

4: i would LOVE to have my mind changed. Please direct me to brilliant material being composed in this genre. I like the "noise" it makes, but the compositions are as exciting as watching paint dry.

Again, this could be great stuff if some musical talent got involved in the genre... there MUST be a sub-niche of people putting out really great stuff in this style.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Jun 14, 2007)

VR, 

4-on-the-floor+synths and electronica have as much to do with each other as country and classical guitar. Electronica mostly refers to music that you would listen to for mood, for inspiration, for taking imaginary voyages, for head-nodding, but not for dancing at a big party. If you're looking for the really good stuff in electronica, and not just a quick fix, check these people out:

Pan Sonic, Aphex Twin, Bjork's Post, Thomas Brinkmann, Ryoji Ikeda, Vladislav Delay, Carsten Nicolai, Amon Tobin, Prefuse 73, Squarepusher, Pole.

As for DJing, I really dig turntablism, which is quite different from strictly djing for a party. It's very much an artistic performance that demands skills tha come from years of training. See Montreal's Kid Koala, for eg, and tell me that he doesn't have musical talent:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KbFIGFv4GLQ

http://youtube.com/watch?v=br8HqC3QwtQ& ... ed&search=


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## VonRichter (Jun 14, 2007)

Ned Bouhalassa @ Thu Jun 14 said:


> VR,
> 4-on-the-floor+synths and electronica have as much to do with each other as country and classical guitar.



Well OK, excuse me for trying to be polite!!!!!!! :oops: I was just going to call it "techno", but I thought someone would attack me for not doing the absurd subdivision of genres that ravers practice. Change one beat an 8th note, and they give it an entire new genre name. Who cares what you're supposed to call it, techno, trance, house, country, soul, funk, pop, pop rock, country rock, metal, heavy metal, death metal, hardcore, hardcore punk, punk, hardcore metal, grindcore, emo, emocore, screamo, new wave, no wave, nofi, lofi, nu wave, grunge, post grunge, happy hardcore, dub, post punk, BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. I never claimed to be an expert on pop culture music genre terminology. So forgive me for getting my technical terms wrong. 

I think you could make some pretty kick butt tracks even with 4-on-the-floor drums blanketing the whole thing. I mean, in theory. I haven't actually heard anything remotely interesting from the genre. Usually it goes like this:

1 Start with block chord strings intro

2 song proper begins

3 repeat same filtered saw bass for 1000000 minutes

4 a single arpeggiator pattern fades in an out over that

5 once in awhile, fade in a 16th note snare roll. (The crowd goes wild... retards are easy to please, apparently)

6 take more drugs, have unprotected sex with random strangers.

:wink:


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## navidson (Jun 15, 2007)

> I haven't actually heard anything remotely interesting from the genre. Usually it goes like this:



You would have done if you hadn't ignored Ned's list of awesome artists!  You might then see the extreme diversity that goes far and beyond 8th notes. Amon Tobin is probably the most relevent, he's a demi-god of sampling. 

Techno, by the way, is a very specific type of music that originated in Detroit around 1988 and is a world apart from what most people use the word "Techno" to describe. It's not even a very good name to begin with, 'Kraftwerk inspired music done in someone's bedroom with 2nd hand Roland synths' would be more descriptive (but less catchy).

Those Kid Koala videos are awesome, thanks for linking... I've never seen him perform before despite enjoying his music a lot.


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## VonRichter (Jun 15, 2007)

navidson @ Fri Jun 15 said:


> > I haven't actually heard anything remotely interesting from the genre. Usually it goes like this:
> 
> 
> 
> You would have done if you hadn't ignored Ned's list of awesome artists!



Excellent. I will assume this is proof, based on both of your endorsements, working in tandem, reinforcing each other, swirling in a graceful duet through time n' space.

I only listen to pop country. If it doesn't have huge 80's reverb on the snare, steel guitar and bad accents tacked onto hair metal power ballads, then it's not for me. How serious am I? What if I were being COMPLETELY serious right now? WHAT IF I WERE ROLLING IN A PUDDLE OF LARD!!!!!!!!!!!!

What would you do then! Yes I follow questions with exclamations! And I am damn proud of it.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Jun 15, 2007)

VR,

I'm beginning to think that I wasted my time replying to your post. In fact, I will wait for a sober post on your part before engaging with you again.


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## Hannes_F (Jun 15, 2007)

I feel my thread has been hijacked.


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## bryla (Jun 15, 2007)

Niah @ Thu Jun 14 said:


> Respected and Tiesto are two words that you don't see often on the same sentence.



er.... you just said it yourself ^


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## VonRichter (Jun 15, 2007)

Ned Bouhalassa @ Fri Jun 15 said:


> VR,
> 
> I'm beginning to think that I wasted my time replying to your post. In fact, I will wait for a sober post on your part before engaging with you again.



Ned, maybe it wasn't clear, but I was accepting the artist recommendations as valid and thus considering myself newly enlightened. :wink: 

I have no interest in drunkeness, being high, or anything of the sort. I am almost completely straight edge in that regard. Alcoholism was a big problem with most of my recent male ancestors, so I have a strong incentive for NOT following in their footsteps.

Cheers,
-VR


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Jun 15, 2007)

And there's also a distinction between djing and turntablism. I believe that in the right hands, a turntable can become a music instrument. In order to do the kind of things that master turntablists do, you have to practice for years, flick switches at an incredible tempo, play with pitch in real-time, have rhythm, pacing, know when to leave silence... like playing the valves of a trumpet. Most new instruments are not recognized until many years (decades) after their invention. Look it up. After all, the record player has only been used as an instrument (scratching) since the mid 70s, and turntablism only really took off in the mid-90s or so.

As for the drugs, well, a good read is Miles Davis' autobiography, the one he wrote a few years before his death. Boy, nearly every great jazz player was on smack or some other drug or booze. I can't imagine no longer enjoying 50's jazz because I find out that many players were on dope. Should I not appreciate a Baudelaire poem because I found out that he was high on hashish? Is there no value in rock either, since many fans are high during the concerts? I'm pretty sure that Mozart had some good stuff up his nose, as I'm sure did his patrons and court groupies.


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## artsoundz (Jun 15, 2007)

Yeah-the turntable thing is cool.. It's too bad Dj'ing isnt about that. The potential there for great muscians playing scratching and spinning is untapped at the moment. We'll see.

Drugs.I didnt say I would appreciate music more or less if it was related to drugs.I take music on it's own merits. But after all these years, the drug thing is still a drag. Getting tired of the myth and most of those kids will probably agree 20 years from now.-Not worth it or necessary.at least the excess.

If I could trade Jazz for all the pain heroin and alcohol/drugs has caused.-no contest. It would be cool if Bill Evans were alive today-happy and alive doing whatever. Miles, Coltrane.Their lives were more important than Jazz. But I would argue specifically Jazz had more to do w/ the expression of an entire culture of people.put in an unbelivably horrific situation. Out of that came a beautiful nonviolent answer for expressing pain and celebration of life.

But the whole dj'ing rave/drug scene is coming from some really different space. It's just too much about designer drugs-scene-style-not inventive musically.It just doesn't seem paricualrly deep.but I seriously don't mind the music part.I'll always listen. the bass is cool. but I do get bored easily.

As for the earlier comments on sex- I think it's the first generation that's got it right. The girl on girl thing ...That just seems right to me......

Sorry to go off topic.


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## VonRichter (Jul 20, 2007)

Here's an enormous crowd watching maestro Tiesto push the play button on a paint-by-numbers remix of Samuel Barder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O666kGBEvF0

I love the comments where people think it's an amazing new tune, then someone corrects them and says "no this is just a crap version of the William Orbit original from years ago!", then another genius steps in and corrects THAT person, saying "ITS THE TUNE FROM PLATOON, JACKA$$!" then someone else steps in and corrects all of them and points out that it was composed long before the Vietnam War even happened, let alone the movie Platoon.


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