maybe not

i've been reading about how awesome the new version of ableton live is going to be (they're up to v.4.0 now. 5.0 is coming at the end of july). it looks like i may not need that much talent after all. this thing is going to be amazing and is going to make dj'ing in ableton itself much simpler due to its mp3 support and complex beat matching.

count me in.


stay tuned for some music review stuff. i've gotten through a ton of music since i last posted.

for those of you who missed my last dj show (6/23), let me know. i can make a copy of it available to you on teh int4Rw3bS. as a word of warning, its huge -- about 300mb.

finally...

there's a new version of alsihad available on the digidesign webpage. this one is for le-based installations and makes it compatible (finally, after 8-9 weeks of waiting) with os x tiger. i installed it and it all seems to work. now i just need talent, ideas, proficiency and skill.

oh well. i'm fucked.

dj show this thursday (again)

this isn't a duplicate post... i am actually planning on dj'ing again this thursday. it kind of dovetails with my goal of taking some time away from the poker. i have a ton of new music to lay on everyone and its my task to make some sense of it this week and present it in a format that won't induce spontaneous vomiting. right now it looks like the new royksopp, new sasha, deep dish from global underground 25, m83, and a bunch of other stuff, dance/trance/alternative and/or otherwise.

i'll send out the email reminder later in the week. if you want to receive the email reminder via my yahoo mailing list, just send me an email (helixx@drow.org) and i'll hook you up.

"paul's boutique in brooklyn..."

i forgot to mention before that i read a cool interview with the dust brothers in sound on sound about their production of the beastie boys' album paul's boutique. they made reference to a site that researches and catalogues the source of all of the samples and lyric references in this deep, technically amazing and genre-ending/defining album. you can find the site here. check check check check it out.

dj show this thursday

i'll be hosting a show on thursday night on malor (i'll post a link on the night of the show). it'll be mostly trance, house, deep house and some alternative and alternative remixes. its going to start between 9:30 to 10:00pm est and play for a couple of hours.

rock on.

its all about being organized

last night i took some major steps towards getting ready for dj'ing with ableton live and the new version of traktor dj studio. my basic setup is this and i proved out its ability to handle the load last with the help of a couple of friends who listened in on the "broadcast".

i've had a lot of organizing to do to get my music collection in shape and available to both of the apps that access it because i had run out of space on my main pc. i have an 80gb drive on my main gaming/ex-music machine but i've had to keep deleting games as my mp3 collection was getting bigger and bigger. at 72gb, on an 80gb drive, i had to make some changes. it took about an hour to move the entire collection to a 250gb drive i have installed on the same machine which wasn't too bad. after i confirmed everything made it safely there, i synched it up with my external backup 100gb firewire harddrive using an app called "karen's replicator" that my buddy rob turned me on to. i think its all kosher now so that's a relief. i had to recreate my itunes and dj studio databases and remap all applications that access the old spots but i'll get that cleaned up fairly soon.

after i backed up the mp3 collection i was able to attach it to the powerbook for dj'ing purposes and i imported my ~11000 file collection into traktor dj studio with a few hitches (this program seems to die when it hits a bad file name or weird id3 tag). i also tried to find a good way to organized the bcf2000 midi controller so that it would work with live4 and dj studio running at the same time. that's proving to be a pain but i've been thinking of ways to do it through control re-use and i'm going to try it out tonight when i get home. there may be a way to not only create a viable mapping but also make it easy to control both apps. i just don't want to hit a button to start a track in dj studio and have it crank up the drum machine in reason or a scene in ableton. i'll post results.

the sound quality was good and with practice i will be able to mix not only between tracks in a specific app but also between apps themselves... crossfade from dj studio to ableton live and back etc. doing so will allow me to create some pretty intense layers and sounds. should be cool.

next steps are to shore up the midi mapping and then to set up beat mapping for all of the tunes i expect to run in ableton (i've already converted about 20 tunes to aiff format for this purpose). then i'll suck some samples out of those tunes for overlays or fades and create ableton live sessions called set lists which will basically layout the playlist and all tracks, overlays and fades. the more organized i get, the easier it is.

i'll also create a playlist in dj studio and between the two come up with a show that's about 3-4 hours long. i doubt i'll play that long but its good to have stuff planned if i'm in a mood, having fun, or still have a bunch of listeners.

i'll probably be practicing this set up over the next week or so so if you want to listen in let me know and i'll foist the address on you. just im me. once the proper shows start, i'll crank up the email list.

on the music front, a buddy at work has given me about 3gb of mixes from the bbc radio shows essential mix, annie nightengale and er... one more. the name escapes me. two stand out shows are the mylo show and the sasha ableton live show, both from last month. outstanding shit. i'll probably mix some of them into my shows in the coming weeks.

here's an update on the stuff i posted about a couple of weeks ago. the ones with the strikethroughs are the ones i've gotten ahold of so far:

death in vegas (satan's circus)
flaming lips (late night tales)
sound tribe sector nine (artifact)
gorillaz (demon days)
various artists (dub massive chapters one and two - produced by bill laswell)
beck (guero)
chemical brothers (new one)
the glimmers (dj-kicks)
daft punk (human after all)
van morrison (magic time, stfu plz)
white stripes (blue orchid)
coldplay (speed of sound)
mike doughty (haughty melodic)
esthero (wikked lil' grrls)
dj mark farina (mushroom jazz vol 5)
hell (ny muscle)
deepak sharma (boogaloo:brooklyn 3:23 pm)
various artists (mayfield: remixed)
sage francis (a healthy distrust)

catching up

music

its been a while since i posted here and much has been happening on the music and music production front.

i read a great review of bloc party's album in remix... lemme find it... here 'tis... a five star review in remix, the only one i've ever seen. here's the text in its entirety:

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

"Yes! Yes! Yes!"
How exhilarating is that, now, you get to enjoy not only post-punk legends in the flesh (thank you, Gang of Four) but also the fruits of their influence? Although the buzz surrounding Bloc Party is near-deafening, Silent Alarm validates all you've heard with enough layered, effected guitars to make you shed blissful tears and a torrent of spastic rhythms, unrelenting hi-hats and well-placed synths to have you dance yourself into hysteria. "Like Eating Glass" and "Banquet" explode with urgency while "Blue Light" and "So Here We Are" retreat with tragic beauty, leaving you positively ravished" - Erin Hutton

heh, ease up there, erin. its my pick for album of the year, but yeesh. calm the fuck down. anyway, go buy it.


new music i want to get:
death in vegas (satan's circus)
flaming lips (late night tales)
sound tribe sector nine (artifact)
gorillaz (demon days)
various artists (dub massive chapters one and two - produced by bill laswell)
beck (guero)
chemical brothers (new one)
the glimmers (dj-kicks)
daft punk (human after all)
van morrison (magic time, stfu plz)
white stripes (blue orchid)
coldplay (speed of sound)
mike doughty (haughty melodic)
esthero (wikked lil' grrls)
dj mark farina (mushroom jazz vol 5)
hell (ny muscle)
deepak sharma (boogaloo:brooklyn 3:23 pm)
various artists (mayfield: remixed)
sage francis (a healthy distrust)
the new satoshi tomiie looks interesting too and there's probabaly a dozen i forgot like the new john digweed (plastic 20). i also want to find the latest sasha bbc essential mix (more below) and the latest essential mix with all of the african stuff overlaid with wicked house beats (ben somebody?). i'll have to look on emule for those, i imagine. cripes, that's a lot of music... (in case you didn't notice, that list was more for me than anyone reading. i need that list of albums all in one place so i don't forget any!)

one last thing. get the new fischerspooner, odyssey. i mentioned it before but this time i really mean it.


music production/home studio
i've been reading a ton of magazines like remix, musictech, sound on sound, tape-op, mix, eq, digizine, electronic musician and such. after a while they all seem to be covering the same stuff but this is usually how i do things when i dive into something new. i just read all i can and soak up every scrap of info i can find. i'll link up some massive links at some point that have sparked interest and gave me some good stuff to mull over as well.

so my brother-in-law (mentioned in my poker blog a few times) was interested in getting into some home production as well. given his music pedigree and massive experience doing studio production he'll be a good guy to go to with questions and vice versa since i've been doing this home studio thing for about a year or more by now and i'm pretty "up" on what apps and tools are out there. we were messing around with ableton live on the powerbook the other night. what a massive program that is...

i should back up a bit and describe my set up and current working methodology.

my current set up for music production, at least the one i'm currently using for most of my mucking about is the following:

apple powerbook g4 (1.65ghz, 1.5gb ram, 100gb hard drive)
ableton live 4 (my daw of choice by far right now)
digidesign mbox
protools le 6.9 (waiting for the os x tiger patch)
reason 3.0
midiman oxygen 8 keyboard
behringer bfc2000 midi controller
at2020 condenser mic
old ibanez strat copy (roadster)
piece of shit acoustic guitar

i have a few other apps that i am just learning (or trying to) like logic 7 express but i am concentrating on learning ableton live just because i love the capabilities of the app. i am probably going to be using it for parts of my dj show at various points too.

i'd say that about 80% of my time for the last couple of months had been ableton live-based loop and sample recordings. i generally rewire reason in as a synth and capture whatever comes out of reason to separate samples in live and work with it that way. i can basically pipe any synth-based stuff right into live or just play over top of the mix and record. i'll also lay down quick drum beats in reason's redrum drum machine and pipe them into ableton live too. the possibilities are wide open.

i was reading in "sound on sound" about how the dust brothers use similar methods to construct their songs and the latest beck came about largely through mucking around with samples in ableton live as well, so at least i'm in good company. when you see sasha doing entire shows (see the bbc's essential mix) using ableton live, you start to see that the possibilities for this app are really expansive. i think as long as i keep creating tunes that engage me and show me i'm moving forward i won't get frustrated. in the past, i've gotten stuck trying to get a particular sound or mix and get pissed and my interest dwindles. i have no real expectations this time and just getting into the learning and gaining experience. i may burn out on it but i don't think i'll throw up my hands in frustration this time.

its cutting into my poker time though... doh!

some other interesting stuff. my brother-in-law brought a book down to the shore house called "mixerman". its a great book written by a famous but anonymous music recordist and mixer on the west coast. its a compilation of a collection of posts he made on the great website prosoundweb.com chronicling his recording sessions with an unnamed band. the book is fucking funny and is worth a read even if you're not a music geek. it hit me at the right time since i'm so into music production right now. you can actually read all of the posts without buying the book at the link above. just look for "mixerman" in the menus. its well worth the read. its long though so be prepared to read. a lot. the book was over 200 pages.


anyway, enough babble for now.