Up to and including about 5/6 years ago, there was a major step forward in technology for music. Don't get me wrong, I've been into 'mp3' audio files in addition to my Vinyl and CD collection for quite some time before this, but it's only been recent times that storing your entire music collection digitally has taken over as the main method. Our mindset has altered dramatically, whether you're an artist, consumer or DJ and it feels like mp3's have been around forever, but cast your mind back only by a few years and you were buying CD's at HMV or on Amazon etc. It was at this time that there was an important decision to be made as a DJ. New DJ's had the option of being a 'Vinyl DJ' or a 'CD DJ' - those who are of this crowd will know what I'm on about - your choice of audio medium would immediately define what type of DJ you were and was the cause of long debates and the start of the great DJ divide. Many (myself included, as a 1983 baby) had little option but to embrace both, after all - whilst I've been buying new, classic and rare Vinyl since the mid to late 90's, some things are just too hard to come by and so CD's offered me the ability to build my collection. For me, CD's were instantly integrated into my personal and DJ music arsenal.
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Enough blabbering on about my own experience, this blog instalment is about the question of :''What is 'Digging' and does it still exist?''
If you were unfortunate enough to have been born after the time when certain music was readily available - for example, when Motown was in the charts originally, as a Music philanthropist, you would 'have to' sift through second hand stores, records shops and the like, in search of that one Single, EP, or LP... and at the time, this was your holy grail - the one you'd been looking for since you can remember.
Eventually somehow (maybe destiny and karma mixed with re-presses?!) you and your desired record would cross paths and your search would end and simultaneously commence at that moment - after all, once you've found 'the one', there's instantly another 'one' that you 'NEED'.
I for one was and am still a Digger - I actively go out of my way in a relentless search of music, whether it be something I already know or something that I've caught a snippet of whilst being out and about (you know, when you hear a song, don't remember much other than you liked it and the tune went something like 'la, la lalala, da da de da da' or the lyrics said something particular or there was a violin intro).
But original Digging began and ended with Vinyl. That's it. That's where the term 'Vinyl Purist' comes from and it refers to the mantra of music is only credible when listened to and played on records - which encompasses a more organic sound and was the original way of recording music - making it available to the masses. Dont forget, to make a sound from a record, it involves physical movements and vibrations. So with this in mind, the 'purists' have a point and this translates well to the DJ world where 'proper' DJ's used to be the ones who used Vinyl as it involved the above physical elements, plus human physical intervention. The 'mixing' of records which DJ's employ has on occasion been put under scrutiny as it has been argued that it is an insult to the original tracks which have been crafted from end to end - the result of this argument has been a break-away group of DJ's who source rare records and stage nightclub events where the records are played from beginning to end with no DJ intervention/playing around (no scratching, beat juggling, mixing etc). These DJ's are the very critics of those who opted for Digital DJ methods which seemingly involved less talent and had little integrity, seems to me that there is certainly an element of hypocrisy there. Still that's another argument all together (especially as I'm one of the people who criticised CD DJ's at first.
Things have gone digital and Serato scratch allows a fusion of Analogue techniques with digital attributes - music technology has finally entered into a place where it walks hand-in-hand with the human element.
So with all of this in mind, the simple answer to whether or not Digging for records is still around - yes. I haven't purchased Vinyl for some time now, everything's Digital, although my lifelong quest to seek out new music, artists, styles and genre's is still there in full swing. The difference is that I get the added benefit of finding what I'm looking for and actually hearing it whenever I wish. That said, there are those occasions where you just can't replace Vinyl, as music has fused genre's since the beginning of musical time, so have the ways in which we listen to it. A Digger these days will know this and a true Digger will place more importance upon them music itself as opposed to the machine playing it. Music has always and will continue to remain the constant.
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