Posted by dave on June 5th, 2008 — Posted in General
Fans of DJ Vadim might have caught wind that samples of his album The Soundcatcher are available care of the Creative Commons remix website ccMixter. Digging a little more it seems that the enigmatic Russian born, London raised and New York based samplist and DJ is stepping up to the plate with some rather intriguing plans afoot. Currently signed to BBE, the home to works from the likes of J Dilla, Cut Chemist and DJ Jazzy Jeff , the accompanying label press guff suggests this is just the start:
“Tracks from many of our new releases and back-catalogue are being uploaded to ccMixter. We know how well you all produce and we want to see what will happen…We believe in music and its power to unite, and this is why we have teamed up with ccMixter - to involve as many people as possible in the music and to seek the finest emerging talent out there.
Soon we’ll be releasing the One Self project, where the whole world is welcome to come and work on an album. We’ll be getting things started with a few accapellas and beats and we’ll just see where it takes us. We’re going to record wherever we go and upload to the site and hand it over to you and see what collaborations emerge.”
This is of course “very Web 2.0” in terms of the great open source trend that the likes of Elton John seem to think needs to be stopped, but there is no stopping the increasing participation in the community creative process. It’s interesting to note it has already been 5 years since the One Giant Leap project displayed the beautiful possibilities of a world of musicianship and music coming together on the same project, through the travels and skills of Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman. With airplanes replaced by modems and the reigns handed to anyone with an interest in participating, only time with tell as to the immediate and continual outcomes.
In the meantime The Soundcatcher is ripe for the plucking though one might take the time to understand the policies and rules of ccMixer. If you’re new to the Creative Commons concept then give the FAQ a read too.
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Posted by dave on April 20th, 2008 — Posted in General, studio
More fun than any new email is a new package in the mail. It’s been a good week for packages all round, with Jaymis getting excited over his brand new Vixid. As for me, it wasn’t so much a brand new device as an old friend coming back into the fray. Cue up the unveiling of a Motu Ultralite.
The curious thing about the history of this unit was that it arrived DOA unbeknownst to my bandmate and myself some many many moons ago. Given we purchased two units initially and due to my being based interstate at the time, we simply used my bandmate’s unit and were happy to know we had a backup if needed. I had planned on using it for a variety of things, but always made do with the rather suitable recording quality of the Novation X-Station instead. Rather suitable isn’t quite rather awesome though. When we eventually tried to install mine we were surprised and unpleased to find it dead to the world. Cue a walk to the filing cabinet for the warranty card and opening Outlook for the first of a few “Its dead, please fix it” emails. To our surprise the process was pretty smooth and we were looked after well, though the months in between posting and receiving the unit were a little much.
So this is a post of excitement that the Ultralite is back and a tip of the hat to Major Music who were fantastic once all things were considered. They took a peek at it in their Melbourne offices before agreeing that it was indeed mightily borked and sent it off to the USA for a closer look. Presumably for their engineers to marvel at how such a faulty unit made it to Australia in the first place, or perhaps to make their Quality Control officer eat it. I think the former is the logical scenario as I have been sent back a completely new unit which is interestingly housed in my original box and filled with the full retail collection of discs, cables and manuals. A little needless but a cute gesture.
As a final note, this means that right now I’m loading the drivers and getting the Ultralite up and running on the Asus M6R to my left which is about to record a certain synthesiser on my right. I aim to record multisamples of the old Roland SH1000 a colleague has left with me for close to a year this week before I pack the studio up and move. I’ll update how I’m going on this during the week and make as much progress on editing sample packs for Kontakt and the MPC before the big move. I’m also expecting more packages to arrive this week so it’s certainly looking like it will be The Week Of The Cardboard Box.
PS: The fact that MOTU stands for “Mark of the Unicorn” still makes me laugh. A little.
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Posted by dave on May 31st, 2007 — Posted in General, studio
Despite the popularity of the MPC samplers I am still amazed how many people spent a considerable sum to purchase one and did not bother to read the manual. In case the reason is not having the manual, heres a copy I have uploaded locally. The MPC 2000XL manual. Right here. Short and sweet. Enjoy.
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Posted by dave on April 24th, 2007 — Posted in General
Dear Hip-Hop,
MF DOOM owns you.
Love,
Everyone on planet earth.
PS: No really… go read up on this incredible artist.
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Posted by dave on April 22nd, 2007 — Posted in General, studio
One of the most talked about music production techniques of the last two years has been a staple of the studio environment for decades, but has reared its mighty head with the explosion of styles such as the techier end of progressive house. Producers such as Eric Prydz/Pryda/Cirez D have cornered a trademark sound out of it and even a Segue live set will feature synths run through ducking on the fly to keep things nasty.
This does of course mean the forums of every DAW and synth manufacturer will be full of “how do i” threads. Some of them are useful, some of them arent. In fact, its not even worth my going into it as there are so many online such as this good one, this thread about it, and even this page. You can faux duck with an Auto-Pan, you can use plugins like Kjaehus’s excellent compressor or you can just get entirely silly. Heres my favourite example of sidechain “ducking” to date, care of the Ableton forums:
Quak Quak 
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Posted by dave on August 9th, 2006 — Posted in General, studio
I think i actually “woot”ed when I got into work and found amongst the usual emails one from Jaymis with the simple text “you need to see this” and this image of Live on a PSP.
What could be more awesome then an Ableton themed loop player for the PSP? Nothing I can think of (at least for the sake of this blog post). Unfortunately thats not exactly what we are seeing here, as one can read in CDM’s PSP Live article. A wireless Ableton controller then. Okay, still rather lovely. I dont think I could take myself seriously standing in front of the Segue or D-KO live rigs at a gig toting a PSP, though it would allow for more self indulgent rock moves then tapping furiously at my MPC allows. Seeing the Live gui on a PSP screen is a lovely thing though, and reminds me of the fun I had with LSDj on the Gameboy, though I can do without frustrating tracker programs thank you very much. Linear sequence arrangements or Ableton’s Session view or GGF!
In any case, the PSP is still a viable platform for an incredible amount of creative digital art implementations so im sure in some small bedroom in Tokyo my dream loop player is being haxord at this very minute…
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Posted by dave on July 31st, 2006 — Posted in Mixes & Sets
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Posted by dave on July 9th, 2006 — Posted in Mixes & Sets
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Posted by dave on July 6th, 2006 — Posted in Mixes & Sets
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Posted by dave on July 5th, 2006 — Posted in General
Oh hi!
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