3 DECK DISASTERS

[SlavikSvensk]

recently a friend of mine--whose musical taste and opinions i highly respect, i should note--said that he doesn't think people should do doubles unless they have 3 tables. i disagree strongly...i think all of us techno heads need to remember that it isn't how you do something, it's what you do. whether that means 2 tables, 3 tables or 4 tables, it's going to blow either way if the dj can't take advantage of the tools he or she decides to employ.

that said, i think the prupose of 3 turntables is to give skilled djs another outlet to improve their mixing. a lot of my favorite experiences have been seeing people like jeff mills and steve rachmad on 3 tables. others have been seeing claude young or derrick may on 2. but this idea that in order to be considered great, or to employ time-honored tricks, you have to spin on 3 tables? no way.

[Sam_Horam]

I play on three for a couple of reasons:

1. Because I think that nearly all the records I play sound better mixed with another. So, if i'm playing on two it sounds great but then I have to take one out to get the next on...which isn't what I want to do.

2. When you first start mixing it's a challenge. And that, alongside playing music I like is the reason why I spent a lot of time doing it. Playing on two is no longer a challenge and is very routine. When I started to play on three it gave me that challenge back again.

As said before if you turn up for a gig and the monitoring is so shit that you can't hear anything then playing on three is pretty much pointless. Nothing is more annoying than that. I sometimes can't belive how little effort promoters put into getting the set up to a reasonable standard.

I would also agree with other posts saying that some djs do say they play on three but don't really (or at all). Maybe they think it will make people think they're better? Especially when you see flyers that say "on 3 decks" next to the djs name. Although that's usually down to the promoter.

[tekku7181]

for me the first thing 3 decks does and what i find most valuable is being able to have the next record cued,,,,a lot of tracks that i play r short and sometimes if a mix is a bit long, by the time it is over there may be very little time to get the next record in( i dont mean getting it beatmatched),,,i mean mixing it in a way that i feel keeps the flow and say being able to have the next 2 tracks up for 90 secs as opposed to 30 secs or whatever...so it can enables me to mix shorter tracks longer bec i dont have to worry about spending any time beatmatching the next track...

i would have to feel quite comfortable w/the system to have 3 records up at once when playing out esp when playing really hard tekno....but i would always rather risk failure than not to take a chance but i wouldnt do it when the booth/system would be a sabotaging factor,,,,

[Stuart]

Then again you get the people that ask for 3 decks but never actually play 3 decks the just end up with a record on it and mix 2 decks.

name and shame them!

I don't do that. But they know who they are.