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On Beatmatching

One of my current obsessions is learning beatmatching – it is a skill that DJs must have, such that the result of using that skill is that you get two different songs playing at the same beats per minute, in phase (the beats hit at the right time), in phrase, and importantly, you don’t stare at a screen while doing so.

Beatmatching involves making small changes to tempo (speed) that are either temporary (using the jog wheel) or permanent (using the tempo slider), in rapid response to what you are listening to (a topic that warrants another blog post, I think), until again, the beats are in phase, the speed of the tracks is the same, you get it right at the correct parts of the track (in phrase), and you don’t look at the screen while doing so.

Seems a little trivial? Well, contrary to what you might think, it is from this (apparently) simple skill comes our parties, celebrations, EDM festivals, and pretty much almost every kind of show that you can think of – it is that crucial.

To me, it is really interesting to think about how to develop that skill, as it involves asking a lot of questions in the head all at the same time, while running the program over and over again:

  1. When should I play the track…
    • In relation to the incoming beats?
    • In the overall track?
  2. When I do start playing the track…
    • Can I reliably and quickly tell:
      • Whether my track is fast or slow?
      • What adjustment to make and in what order?
      • How to perform a sequence of operations to make that adjustment?
      • How to calculate on the fly that sequence of operations?
    • Do I have the physical dexterity to make that adjustment while performing that listening?
    • Am I aware of what is coming next in the song that I may adjust to it?
  3. As an artist…
    • Am I able to create an interesting experience for the listener?
    • Through track selection and curation of a bespoke and varied experience, can I sustain the vibe of the listener, how they feel…
      • In that moment?
      • Throughout the night?
    • Can I create not just an interesting experience, but also a memorable and significant experience that they will remember deeply in some meaningful way as a part of their one and precious lifetime?
    • Can I develop my technical mastery to blend skill and experience, form and essence?

I am sure that there are many other questions that we could ask and many different things I haven’t considered, but the ones I’ve listed here are some of the more interesting ones I have in mind.

Of course, I could just use beat sync all the way and stare at a screen, but that wouldn’t be all that interesting, would it?

Certainly not, when it feels like what I’m doing in learning this is somehow evolving my brain in a strange way that I had never considered before, but that somehow is my privilege now and in the immediate hereafter.

Lots more to come – looking forward to creating more fun experiences for the world!

Curse of Knowledge

I’ve been watching a range of language podcasts featuring David Perrell and also this other guy named William Fitzpatrick, and their conversations have been pretty interesting and sound; I’m not sure why this started, but I suppose there’s an internal part of me that is unconsciously trying to level up and thus is drawn to this kind of thing, that I inwardly and intuitively feel is needed to improve myself as a thinker.

I was particularly drawn to a single reference in Perrell’s conversation with Steven Pinker, though: 

The Curse of Knowledge – the idea that people who are specialized or expert level in their field of knowledge find it difficult to communicate with others, because they are precisely so well-informed that they think everyone knows what they know when they absolutely do not – and because they use abstractions in order to be able to compress higher level concepts and speak about vast bodies of knowledge even outside of appropriate context, they fail to communicate their ideas. 

I find that I am deeply afflicted by that curse, and that a lot of the things I do – create content – write – learn how to speak that little bit more articulately – visualize images more clearly, accessibly, understand the psychology of other people – are things that I am unconsciously doing with a small conscious aim of getting rid of that curse, getting rid of assumptions that don’t belong, and getting myself to be able to better communicate, and generally just get better at being a human being and participating in society – but not just getting better to the level of being some better communicator or otherwise, but to be able to somehow use it to the hilt.

It is a vain little aspiration on my part, but I hope it will come to light 🙂 

Industrial Language

I look inwards much more these days, by the paradoxical consequence of just having more mental bandwidth available – a result itself of doing more stuff from just having the right systems in place, so somehow in this way the things that need to happen happen without my deepest or most conscious effort.

Right now, in reference to the stuff written above, I might go:

What are you doing? That sentence is way too long! Should we use shorter sentences? How about sentences with punch? Ooh, is that the right word?

But I do realize how much of the way I think, see, and articulate the world seems so apparently industrialized; tailored towards efficiency, constructed to facilitate a mimetic carrying-across, the delivery of the correct words in the correct way, that my consciousness in their low resolution dress may eclipse the firmer boundaries of a reader’s consciousness and transport my meaning to whomever should receive it.

Already, I’ve rewritten the paragraph above to challenge that basic paradigm and to overturn it a bit – to let the soul-patterns become that much more varied, no longer homogeneous – for words not necessarily to be “useful” or “not useful”, but somehow retain the quality of being comprehensible in the laboratory that is other people’s minds.

Our industrial language is clear, measured, and specific; it communicates intentions with highest fidelity, increases the probability that the chain of intention will lead to the desired consequences, and thus fulfills a need of capitalism in particular and enterprise at large – it exists for good reason in our age.

But there is a time and a place for it in the bestiary of our personas, both of communication and perception in a world that we could see in ever higher fidelity if only we would challenge ourselves just that bit more.

Returning to that first sentence for a minute…

None of this would have been possible internally for me without the gains of that productivity, that efficiency – the tangible thing that materially shifted things.

Perhaps this is the embodiment of what John Dewey said when he observed that we don’t think our way into a pattern of living – rather, we live our way into a pattern of thinking.