If your like me then Deck a Dance has piqued your interest. The impressive list of forward thinking features and “universal” timecode compatibility certainly makes it worth checking out. Oh and the advertising is hard to ignore as well.
Continue reading ‘Deck a Dance Give Away- Winners Announced’
but taking a plastic guitar into the crowd and taping away a solo is some next level fun. In the past 5 years I have experimented with just about every piece of midi gear out there so now its time to raid the game controller closet and continue to find new ways of mixing 2 songs together. The crazy thing is how well cue point juggling techniques translated to the Rock Star guitar. It may seem like a limited controller but with 5 buttons, a 2 way strum bar and some whammy action you can do a lot with a little. I tried every guitar made for guitar hero and in the end this Rock Band edition for the PS3 works the best and offered the most flexibility. Want to try it yourself? Yes, I will be posting pre-set files and instructions soon so you can get your own air guitar button tap on.
Two noteworthy dj stories popped up on the BBC radar today. In the first, English drum and bass dj Grooverider was arrested on his way to a gig in Dubai. Apparently carrying any marijuana into the the United Arab Emirates qualifies as smuggling drugs and will result in a 4 year mandatory sentence. Note to self, international djing is not all champagne and limo rides to clubs overflowing with models. It also includes, among many other things, the following risks:
1) getting charged 1.4 million Euros for playing “pirated” mp3s.
2) having the Brazilian police switch off the lights, pull a world famous dj out of the dj booth and put another one in his place because the club did not pay taxes on his dj fee.
3) getting 4 years in a middle eastern prison for carrying a joint.
All those beautiful adverts you see for controllers and music gear always show the shiny devices floating freely in a wonderland of white space and light. Once you actually get the thing home you’re faced with using it in on a real-life table filled with cables, cups of tea and other pieces of electronic junk. I like to keep my laptop front and center instead of to the side, so mixing involved a lot of leaning over a table for extended amounts of time. There had to be a better way, so I started looking around for the ultimate laptop stand.
At this price point there should not be much of a difference right? Well, one thing we do not like around here is assumptions without any real evidence or experience to support that assumption. So, while writing a new column for Remix magazine about sound cards I took it upon my self to try and find out what separates a $100 sound card from a $800 one. After talking to all kinds of “experts” and engineers and after sifting through mountains of marketing propaganda I had a really hard time really finding any quantifiable differences. This reality is hard for us to accept in a society that places a high value on the price tag of a product. “Its $1000, so its got to be the best right?!”
Continue reading ‘4 Dj Sound Cards under $200 (updated)’
Even after our popular dj bag discussion, I was still searching for the perfect bag for my VCI-100 because after a few international trips I had ruined the pitch faders by not storing the VCI in a good enough bag. The guys at AMS suggested the UDG producer bag and were kind enough to send us one to check out. It looks like the perfect Dj bag for taking a VCI-100 or other small controller on planes but lets see if I ruin another set of pitch faders this summer in europe…..
The pitter-patter of excited chatter has been bouncing across cyber space about a new Dj device called the “pacemaker”. This hand-held player is essentially what everyone wished the I-Pod could do but with more realistic dj controls. Unfortunately it will set you back more than $700 and to be honest, I wonder if anyone will even enjoy using it. Most djs like twisting knobs because it taps into our male psyche in such a powerful way. I just cant see anyone really replacing knobs unless they do so with the one shape we enjoy playing with even more- the phallus. Need proof? Go to your local guitar shop.
Although the non-dj press is raving about how much they love the concept, ”An amazing gadget, this could be one of the biggest hits- Simon Perry, Digital Lifestyles” , it remains to be seen if djs will embrace it. Lately the target market of most digital dj devices seems to be squarely aimed at the bedroom consumer and weekend warriors as they correctly assume that market has the most buying power. While the economics of these designs is intelligent they fail to take into account that this group tends to look to the professional users for purchase guidance. Make a product that is good enough for the pros but cool enough that everyone wants to buy it and then you will have a truly successful offering. To their credit the creators of pacemaker have obviously put a lot of thought and intelligent design into a small package but we are curious to see who will end up using it.
One of our active users, Matt, brought this great little device to our attention. Its a stick on touch pad that is designed to duplicate a mouse surface on your keyboard. Great for your Aunt sally’s desk job but its not quite enough to get djs in a tizzy. However, if you consider that this device is a HID (or human interface device) and you happen to know about a handy little program called Junxion. Well, then wheels start turning very quickly and my nerd side runs around the house excitedly. You see, Junxion will take ANY HID and turn it into very usable midi data. Translation. Stick this bad boy on your midi controller, program it with a HID to MIDI software program and bingo- instant X/Y pad on any midi controller.
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