"We All Hit Play" Deadmau5

No love lost here for this knob twiddler, twiddling knobs fine, pushing buttons not-so-cool.  But give the ponce credit for at least acknowledging as such that blah blah due to the needs of syncing the elaborate visual and audio cues to the show out of necessity portions of or the entire show needs to be premixed.  This isn't a huge shocker going wayback to big name DJ talent, in the era of the turntable throwing a mix CD on in the booth, but the stakes is high.   The so-called global phenom Skrillex (shudder) is mixing off two copies of his own CD on his cross country train tour Full Flex Express.

Likewise give Steve Angello the Swedish House Mafia DJ credit for acknowledging much of the same when he said during the climax of his set he has a 'medley mix' that he puts on that syncs to all the visual and pyro cues (see seperate article and clip).  Deadmau5 described the 'necessity' and function of his proscribed set:

okay, so heres me, in a big silly mousehead.. twiddlin a knob or somethin… okay so heres how it works…. Somewhere in that mess is a computer, running ableton live… and its spewing out premixed (to a degree) stems of my original producitons, and then a SMPTE feed to front of house (so tell the light / video systems) where im at in the performance… so that all the visuals line up nicely and all the light cues are on and stuff. Now, while thats all goin on… theres a good chunk of Midi data spitting out as well to a handful of synths and crap that are / were used in the actual produciton… which i can tweak *live* and whatnot… but doesnt give me alot of “lookit me im jimi hendrix check out this solo” stuff, because im constrained to work on a set timeline because of the SMPTE. Its a super redundant system, and more importantly its reliable as FUCK! And obviously, ive done the show a couple hundred times easily by now, so the focus over the past few runs with the “cube show” has been more revolved around adding new audio / visual content to keep it current.
so thats my “live” show. and thats as “live” as i can comfortably get it (for now anyway) of course itll evolve, and change up, but im sure a few key principles will always remain the same.

It seems like the accusation of knob pushing, sorry button pushing, has been getting to Mr. Zimmerman as he continues with his tirade against his detractors that he has a bank of equipment that goes untouched.

Im just so sick of hearing the “NO!!! IM NOT JUST DOING THIS, I HAVE 6 TABLES UP THERE AND I DO THIS THIS AND THIS” like… honestly. who gives a fuck? i dont have any shame in admitting that for “unhooked” sets.. i just roll up with a laptop and a midi controller and “select” tracks n hit a spacebar. ableton syncs the shit up for me… so no beatmatching skill required. “beatmatching” isnt even a fucking skill as far as im concered anyway. so what, you can count to 4. cool. i had that skill down when i was 3, so dont give me that argument please.
my “skills” and other PRODUCERS skills shine where it needs to shine… in the goddamned studio, and on the fucking releases. thats what counts… because this whole big “edm” is taking over fad, im not going to let it go thinking that people assume theres a guy on a laptop up there producing new original tracks on the fly. becausje none of the “top dj’s in the world” to my knowledge have. myself included. 

Deadmau5 (Joel Thomas Zimmerman) Tumblr post