The good ol’ days

The times, they are a-changing…

I’ve been a DJ for quite some years now. I’m not very famous as of yet, but I just love mixing music and seeing people dance to it. Because I’ve been DJ’ing for longer then a few years I still own a huge amount of vinyl records. And call me melancholic if you wish, but mixing music using records, two turntables and a mixer is still my favorite way of performing. Applications like Traktor DJ and Ableton Live make it a lot easier to perform, since I don’t have to worry (much) about beatmatching and I can make loops to make the mix suite my taste. It makes it easier to focus on the set itself, instead of having to worry about two records running out of sync. Sure, I prefer vinyl, but the times have changed.

Now that I’ve learned a lot about the production of my own tracks, I still dream (like I’ve been doing since the ’90’s) about having my own vinyl records cut, producing mix CD’s and releasing white-labels to give to other (more famous) DJ’s. But again, the times have changed and actually pressing my own records is becoming less and less likely every month. Even if I would fork-out the money to press records, the number of recordstores are ever declining. I’ll just have to settle for iTunes, Beatport, Amazon MP3 and the likes if I wish to sell my music.

But this is where rights & collecting agencies like RIAA and BUMA start to piss us artists off… They are desperately trying to hold on to the “old world” of music: CD’s, vinyl, tapes and stuff. These companies made sure that you’d get whatever money you where entitled to when, for instance, your music was played on-air or was used in a TV show or was placed on a compilation. These days they are actively trying to stop the use and embedding of youtube video’s, wanting bloggers like me to pay €130,- a year for embedding six Youtube video’s. But guess who’s profiting from this move? It’s not the artists I can tell you, ’cause we artists profit from the free promotion that Youtube video’s has to offer. On top of that, most of the video’s I embed on here are Creative Commons. No one makes a profit from Creative Commons, so where does the money go then? The cake is a lie I tell ya.

YAM – Yet Another Mix

Today i created another mix on Ableton Live. Being used to mixing only with vinyl, and the occasinal CD, i was bored by the idea of mixing on a laptop. And when i tried Traktor DJ i was kinda right about my hunches. But sure enough, ones i found out how to DJ in Ableton, and got a controller to make use of all the midi functions available in Ableton and Traktor. I really got the hang of digital mixing.

Abletons great warping algorithm makes mixing a lot easier, due to the fact you don’t need to keep an eye on the pitch, and spend all your energy in making great transitions using the “EQ Three” or just making the audience flip-out with additional effects. It did fail to warp Shlomi Aber’s freakside however. The first section of the tune warped beautifully but ones it got to the main break it somehow thoughtit needed to play half-speed. I havn’t figured out how to fix this either, as i don’t feel like warping the whole track by hand. And changing its speed back up caused the first section to speed up as well.

These kind of troubles won’t be found in Native Instuments Traktor DJ Studio. The algorithm used in this app finds the BPM quickly. And will update it during scanning of the waveform. Every now and again it will think a (for instance) 126 BPM track is 63BPM (half speed), but will quickly change back to 126 after hitting play. The only real nag i could find was the precision of the pitch, and i not sure if i should be unhappy about it or not.. It’s so precise that i had to make small changes to the pitch more often then i have to using vinyl! This is a real drawback for me, on one hand i would like to make pitching less tedious. (I don’t make many mistakes on vinyl decks, but still.. Lesspitching is more focussing on the mix.) On the other i want the “feel” of mixing on real decks, without having to drag a hundred kilograms of vinyl with me to every gig.

There is a perfect solution to my problem though…
It’s called Traktor DJ Scratch. Two timecoded vinyl’s or CD’s combined with a low-latency soundcard and an application capable of stretching the waveform. Software and hardware like this is not new. I tried different “scratch” versions in the past, with good results. So i guess i got to invest in a 4-in,4-out soundcard and combine this with Traktor DJ Scratch. Ableton will allways be handy for productions and the occasional concept mix. So i’m still happy using it.

Traktor DJ is temporarily available for half price! For just €99 it can be yours. Through an official seller or the official website;
http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=traktor3_us.
The offer is valid till the 30th of September.

New DJ-set

I just finished a new mix using Ableton Live lite and my fairly recently bought M-audio X-session Pro. You can check it out for yourself in the mixes section.

I hope you like it, and send me some feedback if u do. I would appreciate it very, very much!