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)