Saturday, May 23, 2009

Day 142: iPods as sequencers.

Ok, you know you're getting old when people using vintage iPods as sequencers seems radical and retro. What's even scarier in this video is the two layers of retroness. Mario sounds, triggered by a sequencer on a jail broken iPod?

Man just thinking about that hurts my head. I think partly to blame is the fact they look kinda like gameboys.

2/365

p&&l

bang!

Friday, May 22, 2009

Day 141: Free synth Friday.

OK, not going to commit myself to making this a new weekly thing, but how about a free synth to perk up your (probably otherwise mundane) Friday?

Loverly job.

Windows only tho I am afraid fanboys:

Snarf it here: LINKAGE

2/365

p&&l

bang!

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Day 140: Kissy Sellout gives advice to new comers

The dust only just settling after his mammoth tune 'This Kiss' swaggered around the (cringes) blogosphere, we managed to catch up with him and ask him the secrets of his success.

I did the original interview for datatransmission so rather than duplicate it on BTDJ, find the original in all it's glory here.


2/365

p&&l

bang!

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Day 139: How to DJ video tutorials...

I caught some of this tutorial set a while back when they were on episode 1, getting started, and I remember thinking they were good then. Well now they are on lesson 3 and it's getting pretty heavyweight.

Not only that though, but they have gone and given them a whole minisite of their own, so it seemed like a good time to mention them.

Good times...

Mini Site here.


2/365

p&&l

bang!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Day 138: A different approach

Ok, so am going to be in the UK the end of this month, so I kinda figured am going to have to knock out the Phase 5 pretty pronto. Normally I go through the months new tunes, maybe slipping in a few goodies from the previous month that I didn't notice, or just didn't make it.

This month however I have decided to take a different approach, and I hope it might work out for the better. Now I have a fairly substantial catalog of tunes, I have scanned through them picking out a whole bunch of gems that might not have leapt out at me in the beginning, but now as my tastes are settling, and the desire to lay down pure bangers is giving way to a more balanced sound.

The end result I am hoping is that the mix will take a more laid out, and distinctive feel, rather than be the months fairly predictable bangers. In fact just the exercise of going through some 'old' (sometimes even 4 months old!) tunes has made me get excited about the tunes all over again.

How much I wish I had all day to just discover music. That would just be the best thing ever...

2/365

p&&l

bang!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Day 137: Synthesiser Bootcamp.

Subtractive synthesis is a fairly complex subject, yet one that is important to master if you really want to rule at producing.

You could just sit there for hours with you synth twiddling all the knobs, seeing what sounds cool, or you could actually learn what they all do, and then be the master of your music. It's a no brainer really.

What is 'a 'brainer' though is actually learning it, no matter how I approach it, it all makes sense for about 5 seconds, then I've forgotten which thing effects the other all over again.

Below is a fairly no frills, yet informative introduction to Modulation, which is 'affecting sound over time' more or less. But as always with subtractive synthesis... also not that at all. Yeah exactly.

Worth a look though:

2/365

p&&l

bang!

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Day 136: I don't like it.

I've been neglecting the production side of things recently, and this is one of the most important areas I should be focusing on really.

So I dusted off Ableton, and cracked my musical knuckles for the first time in ages. Still in the concept stage at the moment, but secretly that's my favorite stage, when you're just playing with sounds and the tune could go anywhere...

Here is a little snippet of how it is so far, be interesting to see how it changes over the course of the project:








2/365

p&&l

bang!