SoundWhore

Jesus Christ, the last few days I have been tagging my music collection like nobody's business - having discovered MusicBrainz Picard for the Mac, which basically searches for metadata based on audio fingerprints and id3 tags - which has been quite revelationary - think Beatport Pro but with bells and whistles on!  It's taking a bit of getting used to - but my god it is worth it - files which i have never been able to get tagge properly before now, all tidied up - which is a very good thing, considering I am now using iTunes to plan my sets and playlists - as I can node them up to Traktor - or for that matter any where else such as Rekordbox.  All in all, a good thing this!

 

I have always been an audiophile - menaing that my music has had to be at 320kbps - or now I'm playing with AAC, at least 256kbps - taking into account the sound system that I'm going to be playing on.  You have many people who think that you should play loseless or WAVE files - but as long as it sounds audibly great - isn't that what matters. 

 

An going to start a few re-edits - of a few classics this evening - taking my point from one of the men behind Groove Armada - Tom Findlay, who's just released a new LateNightTales compilation featuring re-edits of disco classics such as Etume's Juicy Fruit amongst others.  I've done a few before now, such as Todd Terry's remix of Missing by Everything But The Girl - half way through the track, the track seems to go off by half a beat - at the main breakdown - so have had to warp the track, to keep it all in line - and this sort of editing is a good base to get into producing I believe.   

 

Traktor S8 - Yay or Nay?

I was extremely excited to see the reports of the S8 coming out and now the images are out and the videos have shown what it can do - some thoughts.

No jog wheels. Which makes me think that this is an mashup of Maschine, the F1 and the Mark 2 X1. Is this going to be for those of us who are using the S4 right now, I suspect it isn't. I think it's going to be used predominantly by DJs such as MK who use the above in their sets right now - it'll be interesting to see what is heard at Fabric tonight where Terry Francis and Davide Squillaci have been premiering the S8 to punters.

Would I get it, probably not immediately, I'm going to be needing convincing that the lack of jog wheels is a positive step, several of my fellow DJs down here are of a similar opinion, one of the very essences of DJing is the ability to be able to scratch - and although I can barely do it, it is an ability that cannot be faked by effects or samples.

What this is however, is an evolution in DJing, just like the Numark NV is for Serato. For Traktor users like myself though, the ever increasing rumours regarding a Traktor software update makes some think that perhaps the S8 is the start of an new evolution of Traktor from NI.

B xx

Traktor and The Remix Decks - An Odyssey...

Fucking hell, that was fucking torture - no I'm not talking about my doctors appointment this morning, that wasn't too bad actually, in fact things haven't been too bad on that front, we've finally got a date for our CBT therapy to begin, next week in fact, so we can finally see some progress on that front for a loooooong time. But leaving that aside..

Not as easy as it looks!

We have spent the last few nights working on some remix decks for the Traktor F1, which I purchased little over two months ago. The very idea of Remix Decks being incorporated into digital DJing was something that people were sceptical about at the time of the F1 being released, but it has transformed the way that DJs constructs their sets in advance in the same way as those who use CDJs use Rekordbox.

Like a lot of DJs that I know, I prepare my sets in advance - setting up cue points, loops, and my effects before rocking up at the bar or club that I'm playing that weekend - I would argue that any DJ worth their salt probably should be working along these lines because that way, you're not fucking around with cue points and prepping loops - whilst you should be rocking that bar or club.

So, the way that I've doing it is this, I've this evening siphoned through this years Bargrooves albums which I have bought and have found sixteen particular samples which I think could be of use in my early evening Deeper set - I've separated the samples into four particular areas, drums, melody, percussion and vocal - for obvious reasons - I'm dropping the drum loop down to about 60% volume, so it doesn't overpower the main volume. This way the clubbed can notice a subtle difference to the mix, but not to the extent that it is too much.

Now, when you've done your Remix Set, go up to the Track Collection. Imperative you do this. Drag the set over to the collection, and once you've given it a name - the samples will be saved into the Collection.

Simple when you think about it. But fuck you have to work at it!!

B xx

 

 

B xx

At The Chalkface

media Evening all,

Have just spent the last few hours here at the Surgery working on a few things of note. First things first, we've updated the blog site, so you can get all of my latest news and views directly here, theres links to all of my social networks - so that's good - though I'd like to be able to link videos of tunes directly from my iPad instead of having to wait till I'm with my Macbook Pro and linking directly from YouTube, which is a bit of a cunt. 

Secondly, and more rewardingly I've started work on siphoning through my music library for samples and one off snippets to use via my F1. Now the way that I've done it is looping said tracks on the track deck, and then drag said sample onto the remix deck, and I had quite a bit of fun mashing a few samples together, which I'm going to work on gluing together ahead of my set on Friday at Sousa.  

There is an awful lot of potential with the remix decks, in fact when you think about it - the potential is endless.  Exciting!!!

I'm going to now try and link some more quality tunes on here for your perusal!

B xx