DJing and Disability: Part Three – Software and Track Organisation
Written by Maria Witek, Caro Cooke and Lisa Heywood
This is part three of a four-part blog series reporting on a research study about the experiences of Disabled DJs and how DJing can be made more accessible.
In part one, we introduced the study, the researchers and the approach, and summarised the results. In part two, we presented and discussed how our participants felt about and experienced DJ hardware.
In this third part, we present another core theme that emerged from our interview study – DJ software and track organisation. This theme was especially important for our neurodivergent participants.
Most DJs today use digital turntables, and this means that the tracks they play are digital files that require processing and organising via software. Some systems require DJs to bring and connect their laptops to the decks when playing while others require only to connect a USB device. From our research interviews, three subthemes emerged that describe the accessibility of DJ software: standalone systems, one-to-many mapping and track organisation. For the remainder of this post, we will present each theme and discuss their implications for how DJing can be made more accessible.
Standalone Systems
In the interviews, it was clear that many of the Disabled DJs we spoke to preferred to use a standalone system. Standalone systems are systems that can be used on their own and do not require to bring and engage with a computer while playing. Adam Conroy, a.k.a. One For The People, a neurodivergent DJ from Manchester, described how it felt to play with a computer:
I don’t like being trapped behind a computer because I think it’s easy to get your head down, especially in a club where you are trying to read a room, feel a room, especially being neurodivergent, where you can mess up reading people’s body language and stuff.
For Adam, the computer introduced another barrier to the interaction between him as the DJ and the dancefloor. Reading and tailoring a set to the emotional mood of a dancefloor is an important DJ skill. DJs must choose the right track at the right moment to maintain or enhance the emotional wellbeing of the dancers. For some neurodivergent people, such as Autistic people, reading others’ emotions can sometimes be challenging. The way Autistic people read social cues can differ from neurotypical people, and communication can break down when there is a mismatch between these two styles of communication. However, as we describe elsewhere (forthcoming, link TBC), neurodivergent DJs show a great amount of pride and care for their ability to read a dancefloor, suggesting that they can be hypersensitive to the wellbeing of their audience. Hypersensitivity is another trait that has been associated with neurodivergence. In other words, it may require extra effort for neurodivergent DJs to read a dancefloor, but they are just as concerned with creating the right vibe through their sets as neurotypical DJs. Here, we also show that this extra effort can be exacerbated by having to work with software on a computer, as opposed to standalone turntables.
One-to-Many Mapping of DJ Software Settings
While our research suggests that some Disabled DJs prefer standalone systems while performing, using computer software is often unavoidable for DJs working with digital turntables when they are preparing their sets. Many DJ software platforms offer vast amounts of flexibility and customisation when it comes to processing and organising tracks. For some Disabled DJs, this customisation is essential to making DJing accessible to them and overcoming the barriers of normative DJ practices. However, the level of flexibility and customisability can also add confusion, especially when there is no one single way to access a function or setting. Sha Supangan, a.k.a SO SHA, is a neurodivergent DJ based in the Philippines and the UK, and in the interview, she described what it was like to try to enable an audio effect called ‘flanger’, which adds a copy of the sound with a short but gradually changing delay, causing a sweeping filter effect:
I’m trying to figure out how to make sure that if I press the ‘flanger’ effect, it’s the only effect that turns on. There’s something in the settings called ‘controller/effect’… Ok, I’m on ‘effect’, I press ‘apply’’, and now it says ‘release effects on CFX’ and ‘Merge FX’. What does that even mean?! So I try to apply this, but now both ‘flanger’ and ‘echo’ are playing at the same time, so I just gave up and stopped using these effects.
Sha is describing an instance of one-to-many mapping, where a setting in the software is linked to more than one outcome. For her, this was overwhelming and ultimately led her to abandon pursuing the outcome entirely. The multiple layers of options at each step in the process towards achieving the outcome can be distracting and confusing, and can create a barrier to creatively exploiting the software’s different functions.
Track Organisation
A central role of DJ software is to store and organise the DJ’s musical tracks. DJs often have up to several thousand digital tracks, and managing their music collection can take a lot of time and effort. Organising tracks is not a ‘one-and-done’ task, as music collections regularly need reformatting to stay compatible with software or hardware updates. This time and effort was noted by Adam to be a barrier to DJ practice for all DJs, not just those who are Disabled:
This has always been a barrier to DJing, just the amount of time it takes to organise your tracks. Before we started using digital systems, it was the time it would take to go digging for records in record stores. But now it’s the time it takes to go through and reformat your whole music library, which for me is like 30,000 songs.
DJs often organise their tracks according to certain categories, like tempo and genre. In his interview, Adam described his experience with standard categories, such as genre:
It’s the bane of my life. Being Autistic, I can be very literal and the problem is that music genres are such a subjective thing. So you could hear a track and go “right, well the groove sounds housy. But then the vocal sample is RnB and the structure of it is probably more deep house. But then it’s actually got this kind of progressive house vibe to it”. I find that organising tracks can be a nightmare for me.
For Adam, genre is too flexible a category and when a track uses different elements from different genres at the same time, it can be difficult to choose a single tag or label. For him, this is a reflection of the Autistic trait of rigidity, which can include literalism and intolerance to uncertainty. However, there are other ways of categorising tracks, and in our research we found that neurodivergent DJs often categorise in a variety of ways, including:
- Genre
- Beats per Minute (BPM, i.e. tempo)
- Date of Download
- Energy
- Feeling or Atmosphere
- Audio Quality
- Colour
- Season
Gemma Nash – a Mancunian sound artist and former DJ with Cerebral Palsy – described that she would sometimes use a mix of different categorisation systems when preparing a set for a specific venue:
I know the kind of people that come there [to the venue] or at least generally what I would expect, and I tailor that based on the venue or the event or the crowd. And for all the rest, it’s just ‘must play’, ‘heavy tracks’, ‘pop’, ‘trance’, ‘hip-hop’, ‘progressive’, ‘instrumentals’, ‘when I was sad’. My tags are often very emotional.
While standard DJ software often has built-in ways of tagging tracks by BPM, it can be harder to manage categorisation by multiple non-standard tag types. For this purpose, some of our participants reported that colour tagging inside the software, i.e. changing the colour of the track name, could help with organising. The more obvious the colour tagging, the easier the organisation. This was especially important when DJs used laptop software during DJ performance, i.e. non-standalone systems. Colour coding the tracks in the browser can help with the cognitive load of searching and selecting tracks in a dark club space, and this could reduce both physical and cognitive barriers to DJing. As we saw in the previous blog post, colour coding can also reduce cognitive load when working with hardware.
To summarise, we found three key themes in our interviews relating to software:
- Standalone systems, i.e. without the need to connect a laptop, make it easier for neurodivergent DJs to connect with the dancefloor, a skill that they care about but can require extra effort.
- Software settings that are mapped to more than one function can be overwhelming and confusing, and can block creative exploration of the possibilities of the software.
- Disabled people organise their tracks in a variety of different ways, and standard categories like genre can be too restrictive, especially for neurodivergent DJs.
- Colour coding categories inside track browsers can help reduce the cognitive load of working with huge catalogues.
Together with the themes on hardware, these considerations on software can help DJ technology developers create more accessible DJ systems for Disabled people. In the final part of this Blog series, we describe how Disabled DJs in our experienced learning how to DJ.
