Fruity Loops on the Mac!
I can’t believe it people. This is probably my number #3 all time wish of my life time, just ahead of #4 world peace, and right behind #2 death to smoochy.
I came across this link: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=117801
It introduced me to this little gem of an app, Crossover.
The instructions are simple
download crossover (buy it, it’s cheap!) from http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/
install it.
launch it, create a “new bottle” and install the windows (and only) version of FL Studio.
To unlock it, simply use crossover again – right click on the dock icon and select run command – it’s basically like terminal. Type in regedit and hit enter. Then the registry opens up… next just import the reg file.
The amazing thing is I am getting absolutely no latency for FL Studio. It’s totally the bomb!
First iPhone App launched
Do you ever think of search topics during the day, but then forget about them when you’re surfing the Internet? SearchPad is a must-have iPhone app that is designed to make it easy to remember your search ideas. It’s for people on the go, curious minds, and those that don’t always have connectivity (or the opportunity) when an idea pops into their head.
Our first iPhone app, SearchPad, has been approved by Apple and is available in the App store for $0.99.
Introduction to SearchPad
Tutorial
Ableton DJ Setup
This is my new ableton live DJ setup:
Ableton Live DJ Setup
8 Tracks total broken down as follows:
Track 8: Turntable B
Track 7: Turntable A
Track 6: set up to grab loops in real time from 7 or 8 (see “Loop Grab” below)
Track 5: open, prob for beat loops
Tracks 1-4: “Crates”
Send A: Ping Pong
Send B: Open
Send C: Routes all incoming audio to Deck A
Send D: Routes all incoming audio to Deck B
Tracks 1-6: output to Sends Only
Buttons assigned for each of 1-6, such that it toggles – one push turns up send C to 127 and send D to 0 (zero), a second push flips this. The result: any clip on any of the first six tracks can be routed to Turntable A/B (tracks 7 or 8).
Clip Preparation
I take each clip and put it through Mixed in Key, renaming the file as
Key – BPM – Track Name
Next, each track is broken down into parts – with different start points and sometimes even loops. This enables me to jump around from section to section of songs.
Here’s the trick:
I use Track 2 as a copy of Track 1, and Track 4 as a copy of Track 3. Why?
Well, if I route 1 to Deck A and 2 to Deck B, then I can jump around in a song arrangement by triggering different sections, and then cross-fading between the channels.
Loop Grab
I use Bome’s midi translator for a few things, such as the send toggle on tracks 1-6. I also use it to convert a button push into a series of key strokes. One button on my controller routes audio from Turntable A into track 6 and arm it for record. Another button turns off the routing to track 6 and puts it back into play mode. Similarly, a button routes audio from Turntable B into track 6 and arms it. Again, another button disables this.
The routing occurs by sending Turntable A/B into Send E, and Send E is setup to route to Channel 6.
The key here is muting channel 6 during recording b/c if you don’t, it will create a feedback loop!
This technique allows me to grab various parts of whatever is playing, do it in real time, and work it back into the mix. Now I am just playing with this, though I’m not entirely committed to it… Given how every track is cut up, I can already trigger parts of songs… so I’m not sure if I’ll use this feature, but we’ll see!
Bome’s midi translator
At some point I’ll be posting a video of how the rig is set up w/the APC40. While I recently picked it up, and have enjoyed figuring it out, I am very much looking forward to max4 live (I have no max experience at all) — I suspect it will be a lot more powerful, and run native, with respect to modifying the APC setup.
Posting the set, Follow me on Twitter
If you have any questions, hit me up.
At some point I’ll also post the ableton setup w/bomes w/the video… can’t promise when, given life’s busy but I hope to do it soon. In the meantime, follow me on twitter @loopscious.
Later.
Electric Zoo Festival 2009 NYC
Mulder van Grrrruuren
I went to the Electric Zoo Festival at Randall’s Island Park yesterday, September 5 2009.
The headliner was Armin Van Buuren – the international superstar DJ that’s ranked #1 globally.
I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but Armin was all about making jesus-poses, raising his phones like he just won an oscar (or wimbledon)… The smoke and lasers… fantastic visuals! But one thing was conspicuously missing – the mixing.
Yeah, I think he totally faked it. In fact, I would bet money that it was pre-recorded. He would basically go into a build, then as it built up Armin was all about posing as if he were a god – and BOOM the beats would slam in, while he was still quite busy posing. Actually, I think he may have cut out the volume a couple of times… but other than that, I couldn’t tell that he was doing anything.
So what does it mean if the world’s #1 DJ is Armin Vanilli? Does this mean that it’s okay for me to put together a perfect recorded DJ set and dupe people as well? Does it mean that the best DJs in the world should just be a mix off an ipod?
I also think it sucks for other performers like Deadmau5 – who was clearly working it. Or Robbie Rivera, who totally rocked. Sleepy & Boo, who were mediocre at best – but at least were really mixing.
Armin probably got paid the most – probably even had a rider in his contract that had him be the only performer on the main stage at maximum volume. He probably had them push him to 11.
Yeah, Armin writes some pretty solid melodic trance tracks. Nice selection. But as a mixing legend, either it was an off day, or this his how he always does it (all the pictures of him online show him posing)…
Inspired by Armin, my dog Mulder is now a superstar DJ too. The picture is of Mulder at the first ever Electric Poo Festival – where he will be headlining next year. (I make the mixes, Mulder just poses, crowds go wild)…
Organizing a Massive Sample Library
After spending most of this week completely obsessed with locating a software solution, I came across perhaps the most affordable, scalable, network sharable solution there is….
iTunes.
Yeah – check this – when you launch it, press and hold the <alt> key. It will allow you to create a new library on the same computer!
The trick is to make sure all the samples have unchecked boxes. This way, when you play one item, it stops after it ends – and doesn’t go on to the next one!
In terms of organization – I have it set to auto organize files. I use the Album Artist for the top level folder name, e.g., Drums, and the Album for the sub folder, e.g., Kicks – 808.
If anyone has any alternate solutions (for the Mac) let me know!
fyi – the cubase tool media bay looks cool, but you have to buy and run the full app (they don’t sell it separately).
still, am pretty psyched about itunes!
Ableton Live DJ File Mgmt Pt2
For starters – my hunch is that Ableton wasn’t designed for the purpose of DJing. It just happens to enable people to use it that way… As such, the file mgmt isn’t optimized for DJs – no sense of “crates” etc. But its popularity as a DJ app is likely what has inspired the announced partnership with Serato (though not much news since the announcement of what this actually means).
FYI – I think producers are drawn to Live for DJing, while traditional wheels-on-steel (or on plastic for CD DJs) are more attracted to Serato or Traktor. That said, I’m a producer first so Ableton makes perfect sense to me… Plus I am (generally) willing to put in the prep time, but after not being smart about it (at first) I decided to get smart…
Early on, I didn’t really commit to a process (or rather I didn’t really think about it at all) and ended up warping a ton of tracks and putting sets together. Then over time, as I organized my source files, I found myself re-warping tracks a lot – which sucked. Then, of course, Ableton 8 came out, which forces complete re-warping anyway.
Given that track prep is tedious, these were my priorities
1. to create a master MP3 library, that is well tagged, and free of duplicates
2. to create a file mgmt / workflow that eliminates the need for me to re-warp tracks
My setup: MacBook Pro 13″, Ableton Live 8, Apc-40, and other gear that isn’t relevant here…
Creating a Master MP3 Library
Software used: Mixed In Key, Name Mangler, Music Renamer, Droffit, Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes, HxMusicConverter and iTunes.
Mixed in Key – for harmonic mixing…
http://www.mixedinkey.com/
this does a decent analysis of music and tells you what key signature it’s in. Well it uses a code, the Camelot Wheel they call it. It’s off sometimes, but my rationale is that if it’s off, it’s off with everything in the same way, which should theoretically tell me what will blend together properly… so the key itself isn’t relevant (unless I’m remixing/writing original content over these tracks).
Name Mangler – free utility for bulk renaming….
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18487
I love this tool… I use it all the time!
Music Renamer – bulk rename utility…
http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=186
This is a DANGEROUS utility… it allows you to rename a file based on it’s ID3 Tags. It does bulk processing that you cannot undo. Be careful with this!
Droffet – used to flatten folders…. FREE / Donationware….
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27921
This utility basically flattens folders. For example, have a Depeche Mode folder with subfolders of their albums, with the tracks inside those folders… I want to get rid of all the sub folders, put them in the top level folder, so I use Droffet.
Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes… FREE / Donationware…. Excellent resource for scripts that one can customize!
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/
I use a lot of these, especially
Super Remove Dead Tracks
Artist to Album Artist
Music Files/Folders not Added
HxMusicConverter… utility to “over-ride DRM, various formats, etc.”
http://www.hxmusicsoft.com/
DRM is really annoying b/c even though I paid for these tracks, I cannot process them through Mixed In Key and tag them properly. So I found this app as a workaround. It works great. Basically lets you burn a virtual CD of music and retains the tags etc.
Step 1: Let iTunes Organize your Library
Note: I put my master library on an external hard drive and pointed the iTunes library to that drive/MP3 folder as the master library.I did this so iTunes would put artists into their own folder. It decides the folders based on album artist tag, not artist. So here is where Doug’s script of Artist to Album artist came in handy.
I went through my entire library (which is large) and ensured that the artists were named properly. Note that
Depeche Mode and
Depeche Mode
Are not the same artist. Even if there is a blank space at the end of one and not the other, iTunes will treat this as two separate artists, i.e., create two folders.
So I went through and painstakingly reviewed my entire library, tried to get as many of the tags right as possible. Used the “Show Duplicates” feature – which helps but isn’t always right on, and essentially threw out all the duplicates I found (kept the higher bit rate ones if possible).
So basically iTunes made “crates” for me (folders) – organized by Artist.
Step 2. Turn off iTunes Auto Organize and Auto Copy to Folder, Flatten folders with Droffet
This is a critical step to do – because if I kept this on, it would rename my files and I have a very specific format for file naming.Next I used Droffet to flatten the folders within my MP3 Master Directory.
I don’t care to drill into folder after folder down through artist, each of their albums etc. The iTunes library and ID3 tags will tell me what the album is, I don’t need to chase it down through filepath.
PLUS, I wanted to simplify Ableton’s browse menu and not have to drill into folders and sub folders there…
Step 3. Mixed in Key and Naming Conventions
I then ran everything (!) through mixed in key. I set it up such that the Key overwrites the Comments, the BPM gets put into the BPM ID3 tag, and the file is renamed in this format
Key – BPM – Title – Artist.mp3
Now mixed in key doesn’t work on all tracks – i.e., it can’t process mp4 or m4v or those funky extensions. This is where HxMusicConverter came in.
Step 4. Back to iTunes, Ratings, and Playlists
*** MAKE SURE THAT iTunes Auto Organize and Auto Copy is OFF! It will undo all the Mixed in Key processing (i.e., rename the files!)
Rebuilding iTunes Library
When I launched iTunes it can’t find any of the tracks in it’s library, as the locations and filenames have changed. So I can either select all tracks in the library and delete them OR use Super Remove Dead Tracks script by Doug’s Applescripts.
If the option to Keep Files popped up or Move to Trash, I would Keep them.
The goal here is to rebuild the iTunes library so it now references the tracks in their present locations with current file name conventions.
Ratings
I put together a bunch of playlists for sortation purposes and set my iPhone up to automatically sync “checked tracks”. This allowed me to cycle a lot of music into my phone, which I would take with me on the bus to work (I live in NYC!), spending my time flipping through tracks quickly and rating them. Anything that got a 1-star was slated for deletion!.
Because I had the iPhone set to synch automatically and only the checked tracks, the ratings I put in the iPhone would get transferred back to the master iTunes library. I would then go through and find all the 1 star tracks and delete them – not from the Playlist but from the main Music library (Move to Trash).
Again, the purpose here is to get rid of crap I will never play.
Note: for years I would hold on to tracks even if I didn’t like them, thinking I might sample some beats and riffs, etc. During this process I realized I’ll never listen to that crap and wouldn’t sample it anyway when there are so many great tracks I do like, and listen to, that I’d sample first and foremost. This realization allowed me to purge a lot of crap!.
Step 5. Back it UP!
*** I am a backup fiend. Although I am listing this as Step 5, I really did back up my entire library a few times through this entire process to a second external drive. At this point I was basically using 2 backup drives. One would be backed up less frequently, the other drive I would repeatedly format the drive and copy my entire current library (as I was doing the above processing). The main reason I wasn’t synchronizing it was I didn’t have a good sync program, and I was still purging and changing many things…
Step 6. Enter Ableton
Later on I’ll write about building a set, and my setup, etc. But the question that Benny asked was how to get music from iTunes into Ableton.
First and foremost, it is critical to understand that when you drop or load a track into Ableton, it creates a “.asd” file to accompany the music file. This contains all the Ableton metadata – warp markers, loop points, etc. If you move this file out of the directory from the original, or rename the original, this then results in your having to rename the .asd file or re-warping etc.
As a result, I wanted to have a master music library that would feed both iTunes and Ableton, so when I warped a track, I would warp it only once!
Building Crates in iTunes
After the long and excruciating process listed above (this is not for the light hearted), I put together playlists in Ableton. Basic stuff – I made an Electro House playlist and put tracks into it.
Getting files into Ableton
This is the easy part… You can drag and drop directly from iTunes into Ableton. AND you can do this in bulk. So I selected a whole bunch of tracks from my playlist and dropped them onto an Ableton Audio Track in CLIP VIEW. Make sure you have enough scenes (vertical slots) to accommodate the number of tracks you are dropping in.
Why I am anal about filenaming
You’ll notice when you drop a track from iTunes into Ableton, it puts the file’s actual filename in the clip. Ableton doesn’t read ID3 Tags, which means if I didn’t rename the files as
Key – BPM – Title – Artist.mp3
I would have to look up the Key in iTunes (remember, Mixed in Key is set to overwrite the comments ID3 tag) OR I would have to manually rename each clip in Ableton. So I did all this work so I could be really really lazy ultimately!
PLUS now I can scan through the clips and find all the tracks that start with “1A” and know that, according to Mixed in Key, these should be in the same Key which means I should be able to stack them.
Warp Away!
The best part is I am now warping tracks located on my external drive in my master MP3 folder – which is where it places the “.asd” files.
So now as I’m warping tracks, the .asd files are right there in my master library. Which means when I open a new set and drop that same music file into Ableton, it will automatically pull up the correct warping etc. – so it’s done only once!
Step 7. Adding new tracks to the Master Library
I follow similar steps as above but don’t rebuild my library each time.
I take a folder of new tracks. I ensure that they are named properly – note that throughout the process I do use Name Mangler to do things like remove track numbers in bulk… so let’s say I have these tracks
01 Awesome Band – Song 1.mp3
02 Awesome Band – Song 2.mp3
03 Awesome Band – Song 3.mp3
I use Name Mangler to remove 18 characters from the start (killing the “01 Awesome Band – “) and then append this to the end ” – Awesome Band”
so the result will be
Song 1 – Awesome Band.mp3
Song 2 – Awesome Band.mp3
Song 3 – Awesome Band.mp3
If the filenames aren’t clean like this, but the files are properly tagged, I’ll use Music Renamer to do the job. What I am going for is to get this at least to be
Title – Artist.mp3
Now I run it through Mixed in Key, resulting in
Key – BPM – Title – Artist.mp3
Finally, I will then manually place the music into the Artist folder in the Master Library. If the Artist doesn’t exist in the Master Folder, I create a folder with the ArtistName, and put the files directly inside that folder (no subfolders!).
Yes, this is tedious, but it’s like keeping a lot of records organized in crates. You alway have to manually put the record in the crate in the right spot if you want to stay organized!
Compilations
One of the things I hate about iTunes in general is how it handles multiple copies of the same track on multiple albums. One would think they could come up with ID3 Tags that allowed the same song to be linked to multiple albums!
Anyway, my process is the same for compilations – including putting the tracks into the appropriate artist folders.
Updating iTunes
This is where Doug’s script “Music Folder Files Not Added” comes in handy. I run this script and it will tell me what is in the Master Music Folder that isn’t in iTunes. Then you click add, and it adds the new tracks into iTunes Library. This way I don’t have to rebuild all the time.
Answering Benny’s questions:
Q: You allude to creating playlists in Itunes, but I’m not seeing how you are getting that into ableton.
A: I drag and drop iTunes tracks or tracks inside a playlist onto the Ableton Clip window. You can’t drag the playlist icon itself, you have go into the playlist itself select those tracks, and drop them into Ableton. If they are already warped, the tracks will come up quickly, if not then it takes more time.
Note I set the Decoding Cache to be local on my machine – Ableton will convert MP3s into WAV files. Some people keep only WAV files, I use MP3s b/c My library is enormous already and I don’t want to keep everything as a WAV file.
Note that there is no synchronization between iTunes and Ableton. In other words, if I update a playlist in iTunes it doesn’t add those tracks into Ableton. That is manual.
Q. Are you exporting each playlist to your external drive?
A. I don’t export playlists. I keep them as a part of the master library. Ultimately, once I build my Ableton Set and if I want to not rely on the external hard drive, I use the feature “Collect All and Save” in Ableton, which will import all the files used for that set into the folder.
Q. What happens when you add more tracks to your playlists in iTunes?
A. See Step 7 – this is how I add more tracks to my iTunes library. If I want these new tracks in Ableton, I drag and drop them into Ableton directly from iTunes.
Q. Are you using a combination of smart playlists and dumb (manual) playlists?
A. Yes both, but these are for sortation purposes only. Again this helps me select what I put into Ableton. iTunes isn’t automatically updating the Ableton sets.
Q. What do you do if some tunes are located in more than one playlist?
A. That doesn’t really matter. Again, iTunes is being used as a file manager – so I can quickly jump through playlists or go to the main window and find a track. I can sort by Genre, Comment (which is the Mixed in Key code), etc – when I find what I want I put it into Ableton Clip view and warp it (if it’s not already warped).
This is the beauty of using a Master Library!
Q. How are you creating that set?
A. I will do a separate post on this later. But mainly I use two audio tracks as “crates” where I pre-load tracks, everything is warped, etc. I use 3-4 tracks as the turntables – two for tracks mainly, and two for extra stuff like loops, samples, etc. This setup doesn’t preclude me from dropping tracks in on the fly (from the Ableton browser — which I can quickly go to the artist folder within my library, find the track etc., and not have to dig into subfolders).
Q. How pre-prepped are the clips in term of session view?
A. Session view is the traditional DAW view… like Logic or Digital Performer. I use clip view to DJ. So nothing goes into session view… unless of course I am recording my DJ live, which records into session view. I am triggering everything live in Clip view… so again, nothing in session view.
Q. Is there any room for true on the fly improvisation/selecting of tracks/clips?
A. ABSOLUTELY. This is why it’s called “live”. I recommend against digging through your file browser and preloading as many into your set as possible… and only go find stuff in case you need to…
Q. Are you throwing everything in session view somewhere? or.. are you working from some sort of file browser organization…. and then dragging some clips in from there.
A. I think I explained this above, yes?
Q. Also. for each track.. would you have a range of 1-10 clips prepped, including the full track to choose from?
A. I am not super clear on what you’re asking here…
I have 2 tracks dedicated to crates containing full song – these are “holding tracks”. I may have another 1-2 to hold clips and samples etc. I typically will loop parts of tracks on the fly, so I rarely have duplicates of the same song, but sometimes I do, where I isolate part of it etc.
>>> btw, i actually have the essa 3 ‘found’ release from back in the day.
>>>>> Awesome.
I hope this helps! If I get time, I’ll include some visuals/screengrabs or a video…
How to: Ableton Live DJ Setup – File Mgmt
I am turning this post into a how to series.
I have done a lot of research into various DJ setups for Ableton and the main problem that everyone is experiencing is file management for DJing. Ableton’s browser view is ok for the producer (which is what I do primarily) and pretty difficult to use as a DJ. That, in my opinion, is the single thing that makes Serato – their ability to organize files in crates, etc. Hopefully the “announced partnership” will yield better file mgmt in Ableton itself.
I’ve been making electronic music for over two decades and have gone from having a lot of gear to slimming down and focusing on portability. My DJ setup now includes the MacBook (i have a 13″ pro), the Akai APC-40, and various soundcards (am waiting for the new Native Instruments to come out).
The challenge: a lot of music that is unorganized.
Before we even get to Ableton, there’s a lot of music / prep work to be done.
I decided to create a master external drive of all of my music. This is a FW 400/800 drive for fast transfer. I chose this b/c my MBP 13 is my work laptop and I’m going to dedicate my MBP 15 for music (killing all Microsoft apps on it, it’s 500GB drive + 4GB ram + all music). The external lets me work on my master library regardless of what machine I am using.
Step 1: put all the music into iTunes, let it organize the files
I then spent A LOT of time searching for duplicates, using Doug’s Scripts for iTunes (goldmine really) to copy artist to album artist. All of these changes were being reflected in real time in the file/folder organization. This literally has taken weeks.
iTunes let’s you “show duplicates” though this isn’t always accurate. Typically I find them visually by scrolling through the list and looking for track length times to be the same, or by name, etc. If I do find duplicates I always delete the lower bit-rate version, if there is one.
I also went through excruciating detail in listening to every track and giving it a rating:
1 star = I will never play, it sucks, so kill it
4 stars = I really like a lot
5 stars = I will definitely DJ this out!
So in addition to killing dups, I also get rid of things I will never listen to or play. I always used to keep stuff thinking one day I would sample it, but why would I sample a track I hate? Exactly, let it go!
Step 2: Mixed in Key – key signaturing the tracks
www.mixedinkey.com – if you don’t have this, get it. It’s well worth the $$ and honestly it’s inexpensive for what it does.
What does it do? It key signatures all music files (can’t work on AAC or DRM protected files, and a few other formats, all of which are easily converted to MP3.
I have mixed in key set up to update the ID3 BPM tag and also add the key signature to the start of any comments. I actually killed all comments in general, so it’s just the key sig in there.
FILE FORMAT – oh yeah, there’s a lot of DJ’s who play WAV files. Ultimately Ableton converts the MP3 to WAV anyway. I don’t keep my music saved on my master drive as WAV files – there wouldn’t be enough space! Rather, i prefer to use 320 kbps MP3 files, but sometimes settle for 192Kbps.
Step 3: BACK IT UP
Yeah, after two months of going at this, it’s time to back up the drive…. especially since I was about to embark on bulk processing…
Step 4: MediaMonkey
Now that I’ve cleaned up the duplicates and used mixed in key to process every track, it’s time to rename them. MediaMonkey is a PC only app, like iTunes but different and better in some very important ways. One thing it does it does is bulk process – which you have to be careful about!
I do use it to look for more duplicates (that’s sort of a never ending process). But mainly I use it to “organize files” which enables one to rewrite the file name using ID3 tags. I set it up to write into the same drive (it renames the original so you won’t end up with duplicates) and use these fields to determine the new file name:
<comment> – <bpm> – <title > – <artist>
so the outcome file may be
1A – 120 – This Track Rules – Cool Artist.mp3
I let MediaMonkey rename each file accordingly.
The reason I did this is Ableton doesn’t read ID3 tags, it merely puts the file with the filename onto the clip slot. So instead of having to manually rename everything in my set with the key sig code and bpm, I use MediaMonkey to do it in bulk.
Step 5: iTunes again – but turn off auto organize files!
After all the processing, the iTunes library won’t recognize any of the tracks and show a “!” next to the name if you try to play them. I simply deleted everything in iTunes (hit Keep Files if it found any).
IMPORTANT: At this stage TURN OFF “AUTO ORGANIZE FILES AND FOLDERS” as this will remove the Media Monkey renaming effort etc. I tested this out a bit before I did it en masse, so I didn’t screw it up!
Now everything gets put back into iTunes, and I have to re-rate tracks. Earlier I was looking for the 1 stars mainly, because I was in purge mode.
Throughout the process I have spent a lot of type cleaning up the ID3 tags, updating the genres etc.
Step 6: Build PlayLists
I use the Playlist feature to create “crates” etc. to organize groupings of things I will be playing.
NEXT INSTALLMENT:
Building a set in Ableton Live 8
Electro House set on the stove
Currently working on organizing my music library in preparation of a few new sets. Lots of work involved…
ITunes is kind of cumbersome. The whole mp3 system is fraught with unnecessary duplication. The same track on multiple CDs exists as multiple copies. Why don’t they make a system that points to a single instance of the file? Oh well,I am not a software engineer…
The process I am involved with is tedious. Includes finding and killing duplicates then rating all remaining tracks. One star means delete. 4 or 5 stars are tracks I play. The remainder I keep maybe for sampling purposes, maybe I will get to playing them someday, etc. But I don’t hate these enough to kill them.
Once that is done I am then properly tagging the remainder, even adding comments, key signaturing everything for harmonic mikxing purposes, and normalizing volumes etc.
Then these get put into playlists.
Finally we leave iTunes and move on to dropping a playlist worth of tracks into ableton for warping. Ableton takes a lot of prep work but is worth it.
Looking to have a set ready in september. Stay tuned!
(this was written on an iPhone – pls excuse typos!)
Sullivan Room NYC, DJ Stress
Thursday night I went to see DJ Stress and his new monthly Drum & Bass night at the Sullivan Room near NYU in New York City. First off the space and sound system is one of my favorites. For those that don’t know the venue, The Sullivan Room is a hidden gem. Some really top name DJs and performers play there. It reminds of me of days of old when electronic music had a die-hard underground following. There were even people there last night decked out in rave-esque style, which brought back great memories.
DJ Stress was on playing a combination of vinyl and Traktor. It was impossible to tell what was what, the sound quality and mixing was fluid, and flawless. I am not sure what sub-genre of Drum & Bass he was playing. The last time I went to a D&B party was in 1997 called “Physics” with DJ Dara and DB playing! The stuff of Stress was tight, and very groovy. There were no vocals, no MC, no jungle-type raucousness. Instead, it was at times very electro-sounding synthy, driven by tight breakbeats.
Unfortunately, being a working mean (translation, old man) I couldn¹t stay that late. I missed the live act, who allegedly was using an Akai S-1000, Amiga sequencer, and was carting around a Zip drive. Wow, that¹s totally old school at this point! I was really interested, but again couldn’t wait until 2 am for them to start!
If you’re a fan of Drum & Bass, this is the night to check out. If you were a fan of Drum & Bass, this was a nice re-introduction, knowing that there is still a scene and still quality new records being produced.
