No dj in their right mind would want to be called a "composer", unless it was a separate activity. Most producers of "pop music" or anything even further away from orchestral music would never call themselves a "composer" either, and most djs are not even producers. But many producers dj to get paid gigs, play their own music, and whatever.

The observations most people think are elitist show up when they think the music they have studied and practiced for years is somehow more a quantifiable measure of their "talent" musically. This is where most such musicians get told to go blow it out their ass because most of them are nowhere near good enough to think as highly of themselves as they do. They aren't banging out Rachmaninoff on a piano from memory. They are no-one special either, amongst a global population of musicians. They are merely average, and the more they tell you about how good they are the more average they are likely to be. It's why no-one else ever notices their genius and so they have to tell you about it.

If you think what Craze and others can do with simple tactile control of a mixer and a few turntables is easy or does not require probably more practice than figuring out a clarinet, stop typing and let's see you do it. They may care about what other DJs and DMC judges think in worldwide competitions; not what some Second Chair flute player thinks. It's ok for any "Fake composers", there are plenty of fake djs too. Neither are a protected title.

 

Last edited: Dec 16, 2025 at 10:30 PM

The thing is people assume a trained musician is trained in only one area. If they are an experienced musician they are comfortable in any style and can play any style and if they compose as well, they can do anything from an Orchestral score to a techno tune, to a Jazz Big Band piece, to a Hip-hop rap piece, to a pop ditty. At least the musicians I've been blessed to work with can. Maybe I've just been lucky, though I know we make our own luck. There is a difference between being qualified to the highest level and a Genius. Two completely different things. The first is a reality the second is someone else's perspective. if a person calls themselves a genius, be concerned, they probably are not.

 

Last edited: Dec 16, 2025 at 10:36 PM

Ok, experience doesn’t get to set a universal definition. It explains your background, not where the line has to be drawn for everyone.I too have been doing this for decades, that doesn't mean i can say any composer who doesn't play an instrument is not a musician.

Your “pencil, manuscript, piano” test is just one form of musicianship. By your logic, a lot of modern music doesn’t count at all. turntablism, live electronic, musique concrete, found sound / ambient, etc etc. That doesn’t make them invalid, just have a different tool set and process.

As far as "stealing", musicians have always performed music they didn’t write. Orchestra players, conductors, jazz group working standards, cover bands, etc. None of that is considered stealing. Musicianship is control, interpretation, timing, and shaping sound over time, not ownership. Calling arranging “not composition” is correct, but irrelevant. Arranging is a recognized musical skill, taught formally and practiced professionally. DJs who reshape structure, pacing, phrasing, harmony, energy etc, in real time, creating a narrative / telling a story, are practicing a musical skill that is literally taught in music programs. That is musicianship, regardless of whether the source material was authored by them or not. And the copyright / Spotify stuff is a completely different conversation. Law decides ownership and money, not whether something is a musical act.

 

Except you were talking composition of course there are cover bands DUH. Claiming composition for remashing someone else's music is theft.

 

The main one kind of people who get called elitists are the ones who would look at someone else making music, and then determine they were in some such position to be the judge of wether that person is a musician, or not.

"I get to condemn what someone else does because i'm a "Composer" and they are just mere vinyl librarians."

What qualifies someone for such a high title of "authority on what music is"? They could have been the chimes player from your local high school marching band. Now they are a "composer" simply by writing stuff down. So like Audiophiles, your'e now in some imaginary position to tell everyone what is "acceptable as music" and isn't?

It's the thinking that some one opinion outweighs those of others is what make someone an elitist in the scenario.

 

ooh respect for the Mills drop. Though personally something like exhibitionist mix is cool but very pedestrian compared to his raw 90's DJ sets. I caught him a handful of times across the 90's, and in a club very loud the energy levels and propulsive sonic excitement he created were something else. A perfect example of a DJ very much having their own creative personality. No other DJ or gig I've been to has sounded like one of his sets.

 

I won't dwell too much on this, but I'd like to clarify two points:

A composer, strictly speaking, is more closely linked to the concept of "author" as the creator of the "raw material" (chord progressions, composite timbres, original melodies that form songs, but mind the fact that even this purist and idealized view is problematic: Bach transcribed and reworked Vivaldi’s pieces, Brahms built upon excerpts from Paganini, Stravinsky utilized pagan folk songs, Debussy, Pergolesi, and John Williams is essentially Wagner on postmodern steroids. In other words, intertexts are always being 'hummed by the muses'). But, for them, music is construction: from the note to the work, from the part to the whole. A 14-year-old might make something sound good on a computer by instinct or luck, but that is not equivalent to the technical mastery of an instrument that takes decades to learn. Furthermore, after mastering an instrument, the next level is mastering the act of establishing relationships between sets of notes and their interconnections (inventiveness, musical intellect, etc.).

A DJ, however, is a transignifier who takes fragments of reality (recordings) and organizes them to create something that did not originally exist (modifying what is already there). In this sense, the DJ is a curator/editor assembling a puzzle with pieces others have manufactured. Here, music can be collage, performance, and installation (the Hakim Bey's TAZ, the ephemeral installation). The objective technique of a DJ lies in the rhythmic manipulation and the collective impact it promotes, not just in the origin of the note.

I’ll close with this: If the traditional author values the origin and the raw material (and I’ve heard many concert music composers say: 'I compose for my artistic instinct, not to be appreciated!'), a DJ's performance celebrates the function, context, and destination of the work... DJs are perhaps the pure essence of liquid postmodernity and, In that case, they are most probably a symptom of such a reality.

 

Last edited: Dec 17, 2025 at 8:12 AM

Judges in music = people who examine in Universities and competitions for anyone, whether the performance was satisfactory enough or their dissertations met the criteria to receive the award of a degree or respectively, to win whatever the prize was in the competition. So yep. There are people qualified enough to judge and some people who finally show they are not and how little they actually know.

 

Last edited: Dec 17, 2025 at 8:23 AM

The modern musician at home on their PC or laptop:

These days, computers come equipped with a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), notation programs, and sequencers where you input the notes. You load samples or presets from others; you've purchased them, so you're legally allowed to use them.

You play an instrument—perhaps you learned to play guitar at some point, but now you're missing drums and bass. What do you do? You buy drum and bass software from Toontrack.

After reading the manuals and familiarizing yourself with the functions, you start creating a rhythm, adding a bass line and your own guitar playing, which is recorded in your DAW via a USB audio interface.

Once the song is finished, you'll focus on mixing and mastering. Perhaps you'll share your finished song with the world on YouTube.
The questions are: Is he an artist? Is he a musician? Is he a creative person? Who owns this music he created?

Based on my understanding of modern, individualized computer music, I would say he is a creative artist, a musician, and therefore the song belongs to him. Of course, this view is open to debate, and arguments for and against it can be made.