Day 93: Nextbeat footage at Musikmesse

As mentioned earlier, Wacom are moving in to the DJ market. Here is some sneak footage of their 'Nextbeat' in action:

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p&&l

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Day 92: Where were you?:

92.. always a number that resonates loudly with me. The year I had my deep musical awakening, the year everything changed, the year when things would never look the same again.

It's Friday, and I am in a Ravey mood, so why not enjoy some 92 old skool (cutting edge this at the time mate).

And remember, Everything starts with an E.

And check some of the gurn going on in this one:

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p&&l

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Day 91: Ableton 8... looks nice.

I don't normally get excited about software updates. In fact if I were to update every thing I have on my PC, I'd probably be there all week, with about 3Tb of stuff to download.

This looks like a winner tho, and will be looking to upgrade soon as I can get my grubby mitts deep enough in my pockets to buy it:

New in Ableton Live 8:

• New groove engine: new groove library, extract grooves from audio or MIDI, real-time groove quantize. Includes grooves from the legendary Akai MPC and E-mu SP-1200 machines
• New warping engine: warp audio events by adjusting the events on the timeline, updated Beats Warp Mode, new Complex Warp Mode, slice audio files to MIDI tracks based on transients
• Looper: classic sound-on-sound looping without the limitations of a hardware device. Record, overdub, undo and more without touching the computer. “First loop sync,” simple loop management
• New effects: Vocoder, Multiband Dynamics, Overdrive, Limiter and Frequency Shifter
• Workflow enhancements: including real-time crossfades in the Arrangement View, enhanced MIDI editing, group tracks, multiple track selection, a screen magnifier and more

New in Ableton Suite 8:

• World-class sound library: completely new sound library with real-world “Sound Objects,” presets, grooves, templates and, above all, over 1,600 beautiful sounds
• Collision and Corpus: a unique physical-modeling instrument for authentic mallet sounds and creative percussion. Includes Corpus, a separate effect that reproduces Collision’s resonator section*
• Latin Percussion: a collection of acoustic percussion instruments from the worlds of Brazilian, Afro-Cuban and African music, plus a wide selection of clips and grooves for authentic usage
• Operator, Ableton’s renowned do-it-all synthesizer, has been given a major overhaul. New filter types, more modulation routing options and additive wavetable synthesis with drawable partials make Operator more powerful and flexible than ever.
• Plus these existing Ableton instruments: Sampler, Electric, Tension, Analog, Drum Machines, Session Drums** and the Essential Instrument Collection 2**.

*Collision and Latin Percussion are also available separately.
**Boxed version only.

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p&&l

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Day 90: 10 till the century.

Man nearly 100 posts, how time flies. Just a quick one today though... found an interesting article on beatportal about if it's harder to make it as a DJ these days or not.

Not really anything in this article, that I haven't mentioned over the last 90 days I don't think, but interesting to see someone else sharing similar thoughts.

Linky here.

Easy...

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p&&l

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Day 89: March (Just) Mini mix.

Once again, slipping in, just under the wire. The march minimix.

Breaks (remember them) are the order of the day. Track list followed by the direct link then player as always.

After that is the video for Warp by the Bloody Beetroots. Every time I hear it, I do a small wee. best of all I got sent a 320k full release version from the label, so expect it to be all over the April mix. WOOP WOOP!

Miles Dyson - Intro
Ashton - Shuffle for Everyone
Muza yakuza - Blow
Dylan Rhymes - I'm Sweet
Groove Diggaz - get Fresh (Sam Hell Rmx)
Splitloop - Hot Rock Boy
Sonic Weapon - 10 Rapid
DJ Icey - Bassline Hookers
Aquasky - Another Dimension
Napt - The Rollers Ft Skibadee

Breaks Minimix - Direct Download

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Day 88: The living daylights.

Damn this daylight saving time. Yeah ok it's much nicer being light in the evenings, but I keep thinking its like 6pm when really its just gone 9 :(

Got the sample CD back from the printers, looks good, so hopefully they should be back here for the weekend, then I can get on the mad promo offensive.

Not sure whether to knock out the CDs with my latest mix, or whether to do up an mp3 CD with a couple of mixes, stick on my tracks, and maybe some photos/press release gumph. All multi media like. Dilemma dilemma.

In other news, I was gonna do a cheeky one and stick my tracks (in the post below) in for this competition I saw. However, unlike me, I actually read the Ts&Cs, and saw this:

All tracks submitted for this contest become the legal property of DJTUNES.COM. The first 5 anthems will be sold exclusively on DJTUNES.COM.

Kinda put me off it. Annoyingly I have been putting off entering till the tunes were more or less done. Or shall we say, as done as possible before the closing date (tomorrow). So I never got to the reading Ts&Cs part till today.

I've shot them an email for clarification, but I don't spect I'll get an answer in time. It probably would amount to nothing, I'd enter, probably not win, then go about my business. But it would be just my luck that I'd not win, then sell my own tunes on the interweb, only to be told I can't, or something.

Hmm what to do... cos I would still like to stick them in, just for the fun of it.

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p&&l

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Day 87: Track update.

Righty, been stone cold sober this weekend, and boy does it make a difference to productivity.

Remember I had started working on some tunes? Well remarkably I've almost finished two of them! I know, I can't believe it either. To be fair, I will probably look back on these in a year and cringe at their lameness. But for now, as a novice, I am satisfied with my skills.

I say nearly finished. The thing is you could chip away at these things for hours, and never feel like it was finished. Maybe that's the sign of a true artist, never being satisfied :P

In musical terms they are quite brash... which fits roughly with the music I like to play, but I do hope that over time I can add a slightly deeper, more sophisticated edge, anyways, nuff chat, spose I should show the goods. The first two are the sorta finished one, followed by the first clips of them I posted, to sort of show a before and after thingumy.

Let me know what you think...

Cut Loose (Right click save as)



Let me Show you (Right click save as)



Cut Loose - First attempt



Let me Show you - First attempt

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p&&l

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