New Toy

Well, the threat of possibly having to move soon has prompted me to get my act together and get some kind of case for my DJ gear.  I have been eying off road coffins as they allow me to keep everything in one place and put the lid on when I'm done.  Essentially, as I do most of my mixing in one place, it is a glorified dust cover.  But if I do want to go out to do a gig and take my own gear, I now have a durable coffin to transport it all in.  As I have a large CDJ, I have had to go for the biggest road coffin there is (short of one big enough for turntables).  So the mixer and the smaller CDJ look a bit out of place.  Oh well, room to grow!

I spent most of last night wiring it up.  I have black conduit running across the back of it - 1 for signal wires and 1 for power.  Everything is nicely cable tied with double-sided velcro so if I do ever need to adjust, remove or add something it is relatively easy to do so.  Now I just need to see how it fits on the desk.  I have a suspicion I won't be able to fit it and the speakers on the desk.  Or if I do, I won't be able to remove the lid without knocking the speakers off the desk as you have to fold the lid back a fair way to disengage the hinge.  If we move to a new place, this should be to much of an issue as the desk will be up against a wall (most likely).  Might see if I can put a strap on the lid so if I want to just lift the lid up and mix without taking it off, the strap prevents it from falling backwards.  Time to get my home economics on!  Yeah baby!

Speaking of which, my meringues are ready and the custard is almost ready for the ice cream maker (no shit - I actually cook fairly well!).

Ciao
Adumbration

I'm Bad At This (Updating blogs, that is)

Well, it's been a while. I was planning on doing at least a monthly mix release but, obviously, that hasn't happened.  Uni and illness just took over.  I hadn't touched the decks in a few months (withdrawal symptoms!) so I thought I'd better get my sorry little arse into gear and do some mixing.
Ended up spending a good 1.5-2 hours mixing house/top 40 at around 127 BPM.  Apart from a sore neck, was actually a pretty good session.  No real stuff ups.  A few bad mixes and track selections but then I wasn't really putting much effort into my track selection - Start at 'A', then 'B', then 'C'... I think you know where this is going.  Obviously at a party or other gig, you'd be more selective with your track selection to keep building the energy in the crowd.  But when you're mixing for yourself, who the hell really cares?  So long as you have fun doing it.

I'm also (slowly) learning how to scratch.  I can usually bust out a good scratch to transition tracks but don't have the confidence to do it live - I only do it through the Cue channel on the headphones.  I'm also experimenting with a little switch on my HS5500 deck which determines if the 'scracth' plays when you're moving the platter forwards and backwards or just forwards only.  Kind of a cheat so you don't need to use the crossfader.  Unless you only want the back scratch, then you've gotta do it the old fashioned way.

Anyway, I'm off for a bite to eat now.

Reactable and Looperman

Well, in addition to learning new things - I have come across to things that I think will be really helpful.  The first almost made me nerdgasm.  It's called Reactable (Reactable Website) and it's a multi-user synthesiser.  It uses a round, flat table that you place small pieces of plastic on.  Each of these plastic pieces do something different and you control them touching the space around them or rotating them.  They link to other pieces based on location on the table top.  While the physical devices costs over nine thousand euros, the iPad app costs $12.  The standard loops that come with the app are,well, boring as batshit.  And this leads into my second discovery - Looperman.

Looperman (Looperman Website) is a website where DJ's and producers can upload small loops, samples and acapellas that others can use for no royalty fee.  This goes great with the Reactable iPad app as it only needs these small samples to make fully-fledged tracks.  I'm currently downloading a few of these to help me learn how Reactable works.  Eventually, I'm hoping to use these in my DJ sets to provide intros, backing, breakdowns etc.  Having lots of fun with this kind of stuff - it's amazing what technology can do these days.

Till next time
Adumbration

Learning New Things

Now that my university semester is over, I have a bit more time to spend on the things I enjoy - like DJ'ing!  I spent a good one and half hours today practicing and trying some new things.  One technique I heard from a DJ years ago who was a warm-up act for Sleek The Elite.  Just recently I've been wondering if I could adapt it to switching between tracks with vastly different BPM's.  I'm not going to much about it now as I'm still working on it and I'm not sure it's really going to work.  If I get it working, I'll post a quick mix between two songs and post it here.

I've also been reading up on scratching techniques.  Now that I can beatmatch reasonably well, I figure it's time to expand my skill set. Scratching will also make it easier to move into Hip Hop, Breakbeat etc as scratching is a common technique in these genres.  Luckily, both of my decks support scratching even though they're both digital media players instead of your more traditional vinyl decks.  Even in house/trance/hardcore scratching can be a useful technique for adding interest in your set or, like hip hop, transitioning between tracks.  As with the first technique, if I can get it, I'll record a mini-set and post it here.

For now, I need to go grab a coffee and do some housework (boring, I know0.

Ciao
Adumbration

Facebook Page and iPad Synth

Howdy every 2 people who follow this blog!

Firstly, Facebook.
I now have a Facebook page up and running.  I'll still continue to post here but the Facebook page will store all photos, events and so forth.  Any new mixes I post will be linked here along with track listings and transition times then linked to the Facebook page.  I'm hoping to post one new mix every month, depending on how busy I am with other things.

To get to my Facebook page, follow this link: DJ Adumbration Facebook Page or search for 'Adumbration' from Facebook.

Secondly, I now have my hands on a shiny new 64GB iPad 2 with 3G (thank you work!).  In addition to using this for remote support of our servers and field staff computers, developing iOS apps on and general entertainment I have also been downloading a few music generation/synthesiser apps.  But just your generic iPad-clone-of-a-physical-device kind of stuff.  I'm talking about your weird and wonderful out-there products that use different methods of generating music, samples of beats on the iPad.  Something like this: Space House for iPhone/iPad for example.  Although I may be a DJ and have played many instruments in my time (clarinet and keyboard to name two),I am not particularly creative or imaginative when it comes to creating stuff from scratch.  So while traditional means of producing may be out for me, these sorts of things are spot on.  I'm having a ball with these apps.  Hopefully, I can create some nice beats/samples/tracks with them that I can use in my regular mixes.  We'll just have to wait and see!

Ciao
Adumbration 

Trying Traktor Pro

Both of my decks can be used as MIDI controllers for digital DJ software known as Traktor (Product Website). There are other products out there, Serato being the other big name in Digital DJ circles.  Instead of playing music from Vinyl, CD's or external HDD's, this software plays directly from a laptop.  The Denon decks are used as hardware controllers - this makes it easier to control the software as your not trying to click on tiny buttons and dials or remember arcane keyboard combinations.  You just use the decks as normal. 

The biggest advantage, for me at least, is waveform display.  Neither of my decks has the capability to display the waveform for playing tracks.  This means I have to know every track I'm mixing inside-out.  I have to know when every breakdown and build-up starts and finishes, when the chorus or verses start and end etc.  Basically, I need to know the complete structure for every track.  As I'm on a hobbyist (and have a dodgy memory), waveform display would really help with this as you can see from the display when a breakdown is coming up.  This can aid with mixes as it makes it easier to determine when to bring in the next track. 

Something else with this software is it has multiple effects units that can be applied to each channel.  Currently, I have no effects unit and am restricted to the three different effects built in to my decks. These are fairly basic effects - High/Mid/Low Filter, Echo and Flanger.  It is also easier to create and edit loops in Traktor and bring in samples.  Of course, with effects less is usually more.  But samples can really make a difference. 

The other main bonus to this software is the ability to record or even broadcast the mix from within the software.  Currently, I have to hook my mixer up to the laptop and run recording software on the laptop.  There is always some tweaking of volume levels whenever I try to record and it's a bit of a pain as I usually hit record and then there's a bit of a pause before I get the first track playing and something similar at the end which I have to edit out. 

The problems I have come across so far is that many of the buttons on the decks don't match functions in the software so I have to resort to using the mouse and keyboard.  The other issue is the HS5500 has a motorised turntable (that can also be used to pitch-bend).  Thus far I have been unable to get pitch-bending working using this.  I know the motorised turntable won't work - that has been stated on Denon's website. 

As yet I am still to actually try mixing with the software - I've just been getting it working and learning the interface.  I will post again when I've had a chance to give it a whirl.

Cheers
Adumbration

February Mix

 Hi All!  Here is a link to a mix I made in February.  I didn't make a note of tracks or transition times for this one - I wasn't actually planning on publishing this.  It was mostly just testing my new mixer, a Denon DNX120.  A sweet little 2 channel mixer which is probably more suited to scratching than hard dance mixing but does the job without fuss.

  Hard Dance Mix - Feb 20 by DJAdumbration