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Who
said paranoia doesn’t pay dividends? For Cap Capello, paranoia
means merely being prepared for an unimaginable emergency.
If his house were engulfed in flames, for example, and his
DJ equipment and CD collection were incinerated, within
hours Capello would be back up and entertaining.
How is this possible? Does Capello own duplicates of everything
and store them in a concrete underground bomb shelter, alongside
canned beans and bottled water, like the cold-war-fearing
folks from the 1950s?
Not
quite. For music at his gigs, this New York-based single
system operator uses only computer-based MP3 files, of which
a duplicate version is backed up on a 60GB hard-drive at
his parents’ house. So, in the wake of a catastrophic emergency,
like a flood, mudslide, earthquake or a nuclear-reactor
meltdown, Capello would only need to rent sound and install
his back-up MP3 program. He’d be ready to rock-n-roll, as
usual, on that same day, with his entire music program intact.
Welcome
to the 21st century.
Of course, there are disadvantages to MP3 DJing, too. We
found out what they were and asked four MP3-only mobiles
why they haven’t been deterred from diving head first into
the digital domain.
 Cap
Capello
It seems like quite a few mobile DJs in upstate New York
follow Capello’s lead when it comes to trying new things;
in the last two years, 15 of his competitors have followed
Capello into the world of MP3 DJing. “A couple of the nation’s
top computer colleges are up here,” Cap explains, “and that
leads to everyone being a bit more geeky.”
A
number of advantages enticed Capello, a DJ veteran of more
than 20 years, to take the great digital leap of faith.
“First and foremost is the flexibility that digital media
such as CDs and records don’t give you,” he says. “The ability
to read and react to a crowd and to make a different selection
within 15 seconds of when a song ends is phenomenal.”
Of
course, the changeover wasn’t easy for Capello. It took
him more than a year just to convert his music program to
MP3s, and even then it wasn’t a one-time investment. In
the three years that Cap has been digital DJing, technology
has changed so rapidly that his set-up has had to evolve
along with it. “I started out with internal IDE hard drives
and an external SCSI hard drive running through a PCI card,
and then all of a sudden USB came along and so I changed
the operating system and threw in a card. Then I found out
that USB hard drives are the slowest thing God ever created.
Firewall then came along, and that’s what I’ve gone to now.”
Because
of the constant upgrades necessary for his computer hardware,
Capello’s financial investment will take years to offset.
But then again, he needn’t worry about replacing or repairing
a mixing board or a CD player; same goes for scratching
or losing a CD. And he says the subtle changes in his show
make DJing much easier.
A
self-proclaimed computer geek, the brain of Capello’s road
show is a Sony Vio Slimtop, a 110-volt desktop computer
system. All of the components are individualized. The flat
screen is separate, the keyboard is separate, the mouse
is separate, the PCI cards are separate, and the hard drive
is separate. “If any of those items were to fail,” claims
Cap, “I can replace them instantly. That’s as opposed to
using a laptop, in which case I’d have to send the whole
thing in if something failed.”
In the beginning, Cap devised a formula to determine which
songs to burn as MP3 files. “My basic criterion is if the
song was Top 20 or better, according to the Billboard charts,
I’ll burn it. If it doesn’t crack the Top 20, I’m not likely
to be asked for it so I probably won’t burn it.”
Of
course, Capello’s rule is tempered by experience. “The Romantics’
‘What I Like About You’ only went to number 49,” he adds,
“so it’s not a hard and fast rule.”
One benefit of MP3 DJing that Cap loves is that it gives
him the ability to re-master his own music, setting him
apart from other DJs. “If you go to hire a DJ and that DJ
says he uses CDs, that DJ’s ‘Celebration’ is going to be
the same as any other DJ with CDs. For example, I took the
original version of the song ‘Celebration’ and increased
the beat four-percent through a professional audio program,
as opposed to simply letting it run in its lethargic early
’80’s tempo. Now I find that people who hate ‘Celebration’
will dance to it because the tempo is stronger.”
Of
course, anyone can increase the pitch on a professional
dual CD player and achieve the same effect, except then
they’ll have “Celebration” as performed by the Chipmunks.
According
to Capello, many of the perceived disadvantages of digital
DJing, such as a computer glitch, are easily addressed.
In his two years of digital DJing, Capello has yet to experienced
a glitch. “In peoples’ minds computers are an ogre,” he
says. “But if you look at the failure rate of a computer,
the propensity of a mixing board to fail is four times greater.
How many people carry a back-up mixer? Fear of computer
failure is similar to the fear of flying. There are more
people killed annually in donkey accidents than in plane
crashes, but we still have people who think flying is unsafe.”
Then
there’s also the perception among some clients that all
of Capello’s music is obtained illegally through some Napster-like
music service. “That’s a perception that I take very personally,”
he says. “I tell clients who imply that that I’ve never,
ever used any downloaded music that hasn’t been paid for.”
Tony
Burkholder
Many of us began DJing simply for fun or side income, and
northwest Illinois mobile Tony Burkholder is no different.
Six years ago, Burkholder started DJing in his dad’s bar
for $25 a night, simply for the thrill and to gain experience.
But
while some DJs make a decision like going digital only after
years of planning, Burkholder is a bit more impulsive. He
invested in a computer DJ program after simply seeing a
magazine advertisement for the product, and today Concrete
Sounds is 100-percent digital.
“Before
I went digital, I was carrying around eighteen cases of
CDs, and then one day I saw an ad for DJ Power,” says Burkholder.
“I thought about it, and I called up and ordered one of
their ‘lunchboxes’.”
This
guy is attracted to the convenience of things simple. “I
love this thing,” he says. “At the end of an evening, I
just fold the system up and I’m gone. I don’t have to carry
in my own monitor or anything because the tower and the
screen and the keyboard are all together. Sure it’s expensive,
but I’ll have that paid off in a year easily.”
Besides not having to carry around a bunch of CDs anymore,
Burkholder says other obvious benefits make computer-based
DJing worth the investment. “A lot of places around here
are older buildings, and when you get 400 people out there
jumping around, your CDs are likely to skip. Plus, with
MP3 files you also don’t have to worry about your CDs getting
ripped off.”
Burkholder’s
clients also enjoy the fact that their entertainer can be
out on the floor more with the guests. “This system has
a remote control, and you can go out on the floor and still
control the volume. With CDs it’s hard to be alone and stay
out on the floor, but this program automatically cues up
songs and plays them for me. I don’t line dance, but I’ll
get out and meet the guests and do the ‘Chicken Dance’ and
‘YMCA’ with them.”
It
took Burkholder two months to burn the 11,000 songs he wanted
as MP3 files, and he burns additional songs regularly from
his monthly subscription to RPM. His future goals include
getting more music and maybe even a computer-based lighting
controller. “I’ve heard a lot of DJs say they don’t want
to spend the investment necessary to get into spinning with
MP3s, but it’ll pay itself off quickly if you’re busy enough.”
 Professor
Jam
Another fan of mixing with computers is Florida-based digital
jock Professor Jam. “I’ve heard of guys who say that using
computers takes the creativity out of DJing,” says Jam,
“but I’ve found no creativity in trying to find the exact
same cue point that I found the night before and the night
before that and the night before that. I can find a cue
point on my computer, save it on the hard drive, and it’s
right there ready to go, night after night.”
Jam
has endured all the disco fazes. Since his start in 1977,
his equipment has evolved from a basic home stereo unit
to a behemoth of a computer in the late ’80s to store a
song database, to MP3. He claims there is not one drawback
to using computer files for mixing, and its greatest advantage
is that it frees him from the constraints of the DJ booth.
“If you’re going to do a gig that requires continuous contact
with your client and you need the time away from the booth
area, a computer can do the mix for you. It frees you up
to do more interaction and entertainment.
“I
know guys who pre-burn their CDs for interactions and dinner
music, but you can’t change spontaneously. With a computer
you can create those mixes on the fly and make changes at
the last second.”
Jam’s
advice to others considering the computer realm? “If someone
tells you that you need a 2G hard-drive, get a 10G hard-drive.
If someone says you need 36MB of RAM, get 94MB of RAM. I
believe in going overkill on these things, because what
is tight now may not be tight two months down the road.”
Brad
Booher
MP3 technology isn’t just for “Disco Duck” veteran DJs.
Brad Booher started Iowa-based Thunder & Lightning Entertainment
less than two years ago, and began using MP3 technology
soon after.
“We actually started out using CDs, but we soon found out
that it’s easier to manage MP3s,” says Booher, who has about
4,000 songs in his collection. “It’s a lot easier to create
catalogues of music and manage the files. There’s some pretty
amazing MP3 software out there right now, and although we
currently use a Win Amp and a plug-in, we’re looking at
an actual MP3 hardware mixer.”
Booher brings along a CD player to gigs, but not because
he’s worried about computer failure. “We bring it along
just in case someone at an event brings a CD they want to
hear.”
To
be sure, bells and whistles are what does it for Booher.
“My program has an automatic mixing plug-in, where I can
adjust it for songs to fade out over a so-many-second amount
of time and fade in over a so-many-second period of time,
and then we’ve got pitch control and beat control and a
lot of other options,” he says. “As technology advances,
my guess is that we’re going to get a lot more of these
options too.”
Besides
the wow factor of DJing by computer, Booher also likes the
ease of printing playlists for potential clients and arranging
music for a night. “If someone calls and wants a list of
all our music, all we need to do is print out a list of
our MP3s,” he says. “We create a playlist for the whole
night, and then for a specific wedding I’ll click on the
songs the clients want to hear and drag them into whatever
order they want. If we want to speed something up in the
order, all I have to do is move it up on the computer and
go back onto the floor.”
The
only downside for Thunder & Lightning has been the cost,
as they are a relatively new company and struggle to offset
their investment with only a couple wedding receptions a
month. “It costs a lot to do MP3s,” Booher says, although
he is quick to add that the convenience is worth the expense.
“It is a tremendous, time-consuming venture,” says Cap.
“It took me well over a year and a half to create MP3s of
all my music, spending anywhere from four to eight hours
a day, and it’s an ongoing thing now with new music. But
I’ve got 13,000 songs on my computer and that’s cool.”
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