In/On Time So now I've had a chance to watch the entire DJ Shadow concert DVD. First up - it's great. It was filmed in London - he has three screens behind him onto which are projected a lot of visual effects, montages, and lighting effects. And he stands behind a row of machines - he's got two Pioneer CD turntables (you can manipulate the CD like a record), two Technics 1200 turntables, and an MPC sampler. Basically the entire DVD is Shadow moving from machine to machine, while the visuals play out behind him.

But it's not boring - actually it's quite engaging. Because the whole time you're wondering "what the fuck is he doing?". (Aside - I think he missed a trick here - he should have taken some time to explain to the audience how he was using each machine. Everyone understands the skill involved in playing a guitar or a violin - you can see the fingers move on the fretboard and you hear the sound. But someone stabbing a finger at an unfamiliar piece of equipment that may or may not be making a sound?)

Halfway through there's a little off-stage section where Shadow wanders around getting ready for the show, and he drops the clue as what he is doing up there on stage. He's sorting through his record case, making sure that they're in order and none of the paper stickers that mark where the breaks are have dropped off. He explains that he doesn't have time to sort through records on stage, because "90% of the cues" are so close together there's no spare time.

So that's what he's doing up there - he's cueing sound. For someone like Shadow, all the production work he does in the studio, layering samples on samples, is very hard to replicate on stage. So what's the alternative? Well he could just have a CD player, stick the CD in it, press play and walk off, leaving the crowd to watch a CD player work its way through 60 minutes of music. But that's no fun for anybody.

So what Shadow does is he remixes his work - he plays his own CD's and records, and adds other pieces of his songs to create something familiar but new, just like any DJ does any night in any club. As he makes his way across the stage, placing a record on a turntable, playing a CD, punching out a sample on the MPC, he's cueing up the sounds and then letting them go when the it's Time. Scratching is just cueing very fast - the record plays through and you decide whether to pull it back or push it forward and how fast.

So of course he has to be on time - the song won't stop for him - he can improvise a bit - but basically he has to have everything cued up and ready to go so that when it's time to drop a new sound into the mix there's no stuff ups.

Anyway, that's enough - it's a great concert and I'm still kicking myself I didn't go see him when he was here.  ¶ 8:52 AM