You need a lot of little tools to setup, play, organize your various musical activities. Here are some of my favorites, they are all great pieces of software that do the job well, and in an elegant way. Best of all, they are free!
Continue reading ‘Some freewares I can’t live without (Mac)’
When Apple released its I-Phone SDK , developers around the world had a free pass to create anything they could imagine for the multi touch interface. Not surprisingly there has been a small gold rush of apps that allow you to make or manipulate tunes with the newest must have consumer gadget. Here is a short list of some of the interesting ones and not so interesting.
The most exciting thing to come out of Musik Messe 2008 happened far away from the pounding sound systems of the Dj floor but this revolutionary concept will seriously rock the dj and remix world as we know it. Celemony, a German software company, has announced “Direct note access” which gives you control over each and every note in a multi voice recording. Intended for polyphonic sound sources like piano chords or string ensembles, you can pick out any note or notes from a stereo recording and transpose them as you see fit. In one example, the white bearded mastermind behind this technology demonstrated its power on a classic Beethoven recording. “Lets see what would happen if Beethoven had written this piece in minor” he suggested, and within seconds was playing a full symphonic recording back in a different key with no audible degradation to the sound.
Continue reading ‘The biggest development in recorded music’
I don’t think anyone can deny how much fun the ubiquitous Guitar Hero and Rock Band games are. They completely transform gaming into an interactive experience that throws away all the stigmas. You may remember I have been using rock band guitars as a dj controller and some may have even noticed the dj syle controller for rock band on you tube. Activision appears to be melding these concepts into the logical result, a dj hero game. Ripten, a gaming blog, has reported they even filed a patent for the concept many folks have been suggesting for months. Honestly though, who would actually play it and how in the world do they implement it? Crab scratch notation?
This is where you can find a central collection point for TKS files (Traktor midi settings) from around the web and Dj Tech Tools. This post WILL get updated and the following list is just a starting point. If you also want to contribute to this list send me an email to ean @ eangolden.com or post something here in the comments. I will then update the post with the files and a link to your site.
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’
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.
A few years back getting onto the beta-test team of a new dj software meant some serious bragging rights. “Yeah, I got the advance copy of final scratch 1.1.3.5.6.7 , it only crashes about 5 times per hour now, I’m sooo cool.” Then everyone jumped on the open source Linux bandwagon basically saying, “hell, why not let everyone try the damn thing- then we can really find some bugs and not rely on a hand full of lazy beta testors” So lately many companies including Albleton and Serato have allowed users to downlaod new versions in advance. The only catch was they dont really advertise it and you have to know where to look. That trend continues today as at this very moment you can download 2 very cool beta’s including:
1} Serato Scratch Video
Thats right, for free you can get your hands on a demo version of what will be a very hot piece of $180 software. The only catch, you need to own the very expensive TTM-57SL or the software will not work at all. Just follow this link here to download the beta
2} DeckADance for MAC
After an unfortunate accident that left the company without its founder and creator, this new and exciting software has rebounded and is set to release the OSX version of its promising dj software. No hardware required just go here to download the public beta.
Although the feature set is not going to give the majors a run for their money, Djay 2 does contain one offering that is really making me scratch my head. It supports playback of music purchased from Itunes aka DRM protected files. W-W-W-What!? Do you know how hard it is to get the algorithms to play DRM protected files from the apple store? Impossible- thats how hard. Which is precisely why no-one else supports them. So I downloaded the demo to confirm and sure enough, you can sort of mix, pitch bend and otherwise dj with DRM files fresh off the Itunes music store. How can a tiny software company called “algoriddim” (do they also make reggae rave starter kits?) manage to pull this off but Traktor and Serato Scratch cant?
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