Just enough rope...

Although few might admit it, we musicians/artists/performers are, to a greater or lesser degree, narcissists. As such, the offer of my own monthly column with free rein regarding content should excite me wildly.

In many ways it does and I'm looking forward to it. There is no chance of being misrepresented, no chance of being misquoted, I won't have to discuss things I'd rather not discuss and I can edit and re-edit every word I write. However, having accepted the offer, the thought that this might be something of a Faustian bargain hit me.

With me being the source of the articles, every word I write my own and with everything online being archived I realised with some apprehension that I may have been given just enough rope with which to hang myself.

With that in mind, I make the following promise: I'm going to open myself up a little, in the knowledge that it could all go horribly wrong. If I hang, I hang but hopefully we'll have a little fun a long the way and I will particularly encourage interaction via comments or even twitter.

And so, let's move on to the topic I'd like to mention today...

I recently traveled to Japan to appear at the Labyrinth festival. The line-up was fantastic, the weather beautiful and the food exactly what I wanted: ramen, gyoza and katsudon, amongst other things. The festival spanned three days with my performances happening on the first and third days.

On the second day, I stayed at the hotel for the morning to do some work. Then, a delicious late lunch of katsudon.

After, I headed down to see the last hour of Daniel Bell's DJ set. I wish I had arrived earlier as I haven't enjoyed a DJ set so much in many years. Dan was playing indescribably great house records and, for a little while, I danced like no-one was watching. It felt good.

Watching him play was an education, the set was all vinyl and executed respectfully and expertly. He simply chose a record, cued it, mixed with little fuss or fanfare, and continued in this way record after record. I say he played "respectfully" because he allowed each record to do its own thing before introducing the next with subtlety and again allowing it to do its own thing.

Great records in the hands of a great DJ can take on greater significance but I fear that this is becoming forgotten and the kind of skill exhibited By Dan that afternoon will one day be a lost art.

The effect of today's technical milieu and the ceaseless tech-evangelism of one or two of our most prominent DJs seems to be that younger DJs are being encouraged to use new tools to re-edit, loop, chop and combine music to conform to their own personal view of how music should be and to make it their own.

In many ways, this is a very positive development. It will surely bring us new sounds, new ideas and ultimately be of benefit. I'm all in favour of progress, when it is indeed progress.

Should we see music as a linear or non-linear artform?

It is significant that Dan was using only vinyl but his set raised questions for me that go beyond the usual arguments about vinyl versus other formats. Such arguments often stress the convenience of digital systems for the traveling DJ, ease of distribution, ease of promotion, universal access to huge catalogues of music, lower barriers to market entry, so on and so forth. Today I have other concerns.

My first question is question is: "Should we see music as a linear or non linear artform?". My second question is, "If we regard music as non-linear, how does this affect the relationship between musician and DJ?"

Music is unquestionably temporal. It is experienced "in time". The way in which a certain piece of music changes over time is one of the things which gives it its character. Some music changes a lot over time, some changes very little. The important thing to remember is that the rate of change and degree of change have traditionally been within the control of the composer.

However, thanks to technological developments, music has for some time now had the potential to be regarded as non-linear. A DJ can decide at will to deconstruct and reconstruct any piece of music in real time. Of course, there is something tremendously exciting about it but this development also raises issues of authority, experience and skill.

When musicians work, they may call upon a repertoire of skills acquired through years of study, experiment, sacrifice and experience in order to develop structure and narrative in their music. They construct their works to be dynamic yet coherent and, thereby, hope to produce work which has meaning and has lasting personal and cultural value. These are good reasons to respect the linearity of what musicians produce.

In the current moment, DJs are being encouraged to see music as non-linear. When a DJ plays music chopped into loops he restricts himself to adding dynamics exclusively through a set of techniques which, although perhaps effective, are necessarily limited to his own experience.

The set can become homogeneous, lack vibrancy, and be a listening experience that's far from ideal. Playing music in this way ignores the wealth of experience musicians have in providing structured work, it ignores the original intentions of the musician and by reducing tracks to loops, DJs ignore the rich variety of compositional and structural approaches taken by disparate musicians which could give their sets an energy and dynamic they currently lack.

If musicians are to be placed firmly at the bottom of this hierarchy, what is to encourage us to continue?

Moving to my second question, by choosing to turn the linear into the non-linear, DJs assume a position of authority, establishing a new hierarchy with themselves at the top and musicians at the bottom. Musicians in this system can be considered a good source of raw material but when it comes to structuring things, well, leave that to the DJ.

Some DJs are indeed up to the task and have a level of skill and experience equal to or beyond that of the musicians who supply them with "content". Unfortunately, many are not and many do not.

If musicians are to be placed firmly at the bottom of this hierarchy, what is to encourage us to continue? If what was once linear is to become truly non-linear then what is to encourage us to spend day after day in our studios, deliberating over the minutiae of the structure of our work? If we abandon structure and simply produce loops, then we submit to our role as "content provider" and devalue our culture in the process.

I'm no Luddite. I have been using a computer to DJ since 2000. Back then, I used a modified Reaktor patch and a self programmed Max patch running on an apple G3 powerbook with a Peavey PC1600x hardware controller. I'm currently using Ableton Live 7 and an Allen and Heath Xone: 92.

Of course, I can use this set-up to play music in a linear fashion and, for the most part, I do. However, it does not force music to be regarded as linear in the way that vinyl does.

As anyone who has followed my music will know, I believe strongly in the positive power of limitations. I'm considering a return to playing vinyl and I can feel a certain groundswell as many people begin to do the same. Can vinyl make you a better DJ? Perhaps in the sense that it forces the linear view, I might have to answer "yes".

Donnacha’s website and twitter.

Newest release: Donnacha Costello 'Ten Thousand Hours' on Look Long (LNG4) Released on one sided vinyl 02.10. Distributed by Word And Sound.

Upcoming dates:
30.10: Pod, Dublin
07.11: Watergate, Berlin
18.12: Loft, Barcelona