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The battle between vinyl and digital DJing is one that is being held for decades. In modern-day club life, the majority of DJs play digitally, leaving the vinyl records behind at home. There is obviously a good reason for that. Why would you carry a full bag of heavy records to a venue when you can also take all your music on a laptop or a USB?
Knowing that DJing digitally makes your life so much easier, you can ask yourself why vinyl DJs still exist. Well, with many forms of art, artists don’t always choose the easy path and go for more curation and experience. In this article, we dive into why people still prefer playing on vinyl and what the difference is between vinyl and digital DJing.
Physical Interaction With Music
The one obvious difference between the two artforms is that playing music with vinyl is a physical experience, whereas playing music digitally is not. With that comes a totally different experience of how a DJ plays their music.
If you are a vinyl DJ like me, you understand the beauty of the tactile feeling of cueing up your record, riding the pitch for beatmatching, and slightly nudging the platter to make sure the tracks are aligned. This tactile way of DJing forces the performer to be present. Literally every step of the art of DJing is a manual one to take for a vinyl DJ. From cueing up your next song to beat-matching by ear, there are no shortcuts when it comes to DJing on vinyl.
The Art of Track Selection
One of the perks of being a vinyl DJ is that you know the music that you have, and you know it well. You can’t get around without knowing your collection in and out if you are playing physical music. The benefit for the crowd is that when a vinyl DJ performs, you know this person is very selective with their music. You can expect that all songs have been carefully curated and that the songs match neatly.
You have to imagine that every record in the collection of a vinyl DJ has a personal story behind it. Chosen for certain moods and special occasions. So, you can trust that when a vinyl DJ plays at a venue they understand when to play which record, knowing that this person spends hours searching for the tracks.
Sound and Imperfections
Have you ever been to a concert where the band or artist that was playing was just too good? So good that it started to sound like you were listening to the artist’s Spotify playlist? Sometimes, some unplanned events or imperfections make the experience unique. It makes you feel like you are actually listening to an artist, and not a robot.
The same goes for listening to DJs during a set. You can be sure that with a DJ set on vinyl, some imperfections are going to occur, and to be honest, that is totally fine and actually builds to the experience. It happens more depending on the genre that the DJ is playing. For example, disco is a lot more difficult to play on vinyl than house music, but the way that the vinyl DJ corrects these small imperfections shows that you are seeing a true artist at work. It brings character and depth to the set, allowing you to feel more connected to the music and the artist.
Vinyl DJs vs Digital: Cultural Differences
Apart from everything that has been explained before around the beauty of DJing on vinyl, there is one aspect that sets this art form apart from its digital counterpart, and that is the community. It is really easy to spend hours in a recordstore, talking with the owner and getting recommendations from other diggers. There is nothing more exciting than digging for great music in a record store and sharing your findings with fellow diggers.
Next to that, it is very common to come across great music from artists that you have never heard of before, digging through a record store. The exploration and discovery that digging for music brings is unmatched and can never be replicated the same way when searching for great music for your digital catalogue.
Final Thoughts
In essence, what matters most is that the artist is playing great tunes in a smooth way that perfectly fit together. Whether that is with vinyl records or digital mediaplayers, it does not matter that much. I believe that playing on vinyl gives an extra touch, based on what I explained above.
Apart from that, being able to mix on vinyl makes you a better DJ in general. The feeling you develop for music and the mixing without digital help contribute to smoother and better-sounding mixes in the long run. Also for digital DJs!
