The End of Everything Review and Edit

I'm going to try to do what some DJs might call cheating and that's fix the messy spots after the mix has been completed. In Ableton I have the ability (I'm not quite sure how to do this yet) to move tracks, cut them out completely and rework them into the original mix. The two spots that Jason mentioned were two spots I definitely had trouble working with.

The incoming track at the 30 minute mark is Ride by Tiesto and Cary Brothers. There is a lot going on in the intro in that mix. I did my best to filter some of it out using the equalizer but it was really difficult.

The second spot he mentions at 42:30 and as I'm not at my home computer I can't recall the incoming track name. However, I think I warped that track wrong. Remember, warping is when I use Ableton to auto-beat match for me. The warp marker (A place holder telling Ableton where a beat begins) starts too early. After listening to the track I noticed a small beat right before the kick drum (the loudest bass beat). I think I may have warped the track to that rather than the kick. I'll go back and rewarp it and try and plug it back in.

Did you guys like the last song? I LOVE that song. I did everything I could to make that work. The beats per minute on that song is 117 originally and the mix itself is 130. That's a huge difference. Personally, I really liked the effect the song had especially as I manually slowed it down from about 51:10 to 52:10.

These are the lyrics from the last verse of that track. The singer's name is Departure and I definitely have a thing for his voice. I have another track that I'm looking forward to using in an upcoming mix with him as well.

Do you hear me when I weep
Cause I search, I search for peace
If I should die within my sleep
So you know, hold me
Nothing but you can taste so sweet
Do I go? Are you with me?
Cause you know I'm in to deep
Cause you know, know me.

The End of Everything is out now!

I finally finished The End of Everything and I'm relatively pleased with the results. Some of you recieved it via email as sectionz.com has had technical difficulties. If you'd like to take a listen to the new track while I wait for sectionz to come back to life send me an email. I can probably help you out.

The installment isn't without it's imperfections but overall I think it came out well as it's my first attempt at using Ableton exclusively. For those that have heard it I have some questions for you: 1. Do you notice a difference between the Ableton mix and the turntable mix? 2. What were the differences? 3. How was the track selection and placement?

I have a couple of opinions regarding the subject. Id also like to get back to some of my older mixes and tell you what I think of them in the next blog. I'll kind of critique them as I listen to them. Possibly one at a time.

I'm really excited about my next mix as well. Genre-wise it will be a bit different from what you've heard before. If I had to define it I'd call it a mini-mashup. All of the ideas are in my head at this point but it will certainly be done sometime in January.

Edit: I just saw that sectionz.com is back up and running so I'll be adding the addition to the interwebs as soon as I get off work including a link. Remember you have to sign up to sectionz in order to listen to the mix! Happy listening!

Coming Soon: The End of Everything

Yes you heard that correct. Due to recent life changing events The End of Everything will be the title of my next set. I was originally working on another set but it will be forced to wait in line...assuming something can blossom after The End of Everything. That was a pun.

I'm slowly figuring out the Trigger Finger I purchased and making use of it with Ableton. It's actually really sweet. Of course now I want more knobs and sliders so I can use even more effects.

One of the things I really enjoy about progressive house and trance is the use of subtle vocals. They rarely overpower the music in a track. To help illustrate what I mean, lets take a look at most pop music. Often times it is made up of a producer that produces computer generated sounds that dress up an often subpar singer. Good producers are what really make you not want to cut your ears off and hang them on a necklace. They make the track. However, they are rarely given much credit by the masses.

To help illustrate my meaning lets say that you go to a steak house and order a steak with a baked potato. Now, lets say the singer is the steak and the producer is the potato. Obviously the steak house wants you to love the steak, they give you some steak sauce or some carmelized onions on top and make it look really pretty. Meanwhile, that baked potato is just sitting there looking like an ugly ass baked potato.

So you start your meal, ready to devour what appears to be a mouth watering steak when after your first bite you realize it is tough and dry. It's not disgusting enough to send back but you really wished you had ordered the fish at this point. After you eat about half of it you're starving for some substance. Like a potato. You start eating it and it's delicious. You can remember the last time you had such a delicious potato.

Basically the moral of this story is that the only thing that makes that nasty ass steak bearable is the ugly potato. The same potato that you won't remember but might help you forget just how bad the steak really is.

After having written this I also came up with a fundamental difference between electronic music and pop music. In electronic music the producer or DJ is showcased while pop music has the singer showcased. This could even be attributed to what our culture puts value in and what cultures where electronic dance music is more mainstream put value in. Think about it. A pop singer puts the least amount of effort into the process of making their tracks. They sing and veto the production team. Only a few actually write their own lyrics and often the producer is the one that comes up with everything else. Obviously there are exceptions but I think we can agree that Britney doesn't have time in between tell all documentaries, neglecting her children and flashing the paparrazi to come up with meaningful lyrics. I mean, if you have ever heard her speak you'd know she has a hard time putting together a coherent sentence.

Wow, that was a fun rant.
Remember the title, I'm working on it.

More delays...

Sorry about that, I've been quite busy as of late. The learning curve with Ableton has also provided a bit of a challenge. I really do feel that since I no longer have to beat match manually that it is important to make a better quality mix. I want this next one to be much better with mixing throughout tracks. Never fear my few loyal readers, I'll have something put together next week.

While We Wait

Seven Day Stretch

While we wait for the full version of Ableton to show up at my doorstep I'll give you the mix I made the week before Tex Smex. I enjoy this set list alot and most of the arrangement of the tracks, to me are a bit better than Tex Smex. Just click on the above link and it should take you right to the page.

Remember, in order to download and listen to the mixes you have to register on the SectionZ website. Please feel free to give me feedback on the mix as I am a work in progress.

Paying for itself

So here it is. Ableton Live 7. It's in the mail and it wasn't cheap but I did get a bit of a deal on it. After watching people use this program I am convinced it will pay for itself. Not only will it allow me to use it to DJ but I will also be able to produce my own tracks. I was thinking about getting a midi controller or keyboard but I'm not sure which would be more effective at this point. I also didn't want to spend any more money and my keyboard will allow me to do certain things anyway. I'm a bit baffled at how I'm going to set it up with the other hardware (aka speakers, audio interface, mixer) but I'm confident this will allow me to take my mixes to the next level.

I'm also adding a video clip of one of my favorite DJs using Ableton. Watch and enjoy. Sasha and Digweed built the foundation of my love of electronic music and I'm always happy to share that with you.

That thing with all the knobs is called "The Maven" and Sasha essentially invented it to use in his mixes. The idea of a controller is not unique but this is one he developed and engineered specifically for his needs. Pretty cool!

Update to post below

So some people have been having issues listening to the mix below. I believe you have to register on the website in order to listen to it. If you are having technical difficulties add this step and you should be fine.

On a side note Ableton Live 7 is making me froth at the mouth, it's not the rabies this time. After Jason's comments regarding creating my own beats to go with tracks I went to the Ableton site (something I have done before) and stared longingly at the pictures of the full version of Ableton (I am currently using the Lite version).

I then went to Youtube to watch videos and tutorials of people using it and it makes me lust after it even more. I may indeed incur more debt soon but such is the way of progression. Certainly I am in no way an ablebodied mixer with my CD players, but with Ableton's help I can make my mixes more creative by prepping my tracklist prior to recording and then adding variations to the set.

I created a messy loop that I may post for your listening pleasure. I'm also planning on posting one of the first mixes I recorded. I'm kind of working backwards at this point but hopefully you can see progress. I'm also planning on critiquing the Tex Smex Smix once I've given everyone ample time to listen.

Jason, I'm still working on getting the transitions of that mix for you, but I appreciate your feedback. Again, for those that aren't familiar with DJing or mixing, the mix is typically judged as a whole piece of work rather than just snippets. I've gottan compliments on certain things that sound good, but really the tracks themselves aren't my doing. I have limited ability to make something new from them aside from the occassional flanger, echo or loop. It's really the transition between tracks (aka seamlessness) and the track positioning within the mix. Are there areas where you feel like a song doesn't belong or doesn't mesh well with the one before or after? Let me know at what time this is happening. It's kind of like scoring a movie. I feel, even though I've never DJed a party that the partygoers are my film I'm watching and it's my job to control their tempo and keep the movie (dancers) interested.

Wow, that was a lot longer than I thought it was going to be. Happy reading and keep checking back for more updates! <3

Without Further Ado

Tex Smex Smix

Just click the above link and it will take you to a direct page for downloading this mix. This is at a wonderful site called Section Z. They have tons of artists and allow us all to upload our original music and mixes. Once you click on download just give it a few seconds and the mix will start to play. There you'll find information regarding the mix on the link page including each track I used. I hope you likey! I know there are a few issues but give it a listen and tell me what you think!

The night before I made this mix I finally catalogued my CDs that I'm using. I write the artist and title of each track as well as the length and beats per minute of each track. Talk about mind numbing. Luckily I'm only working with about 70 or so tracks. Seriously though it was well worth it as I was able to find tracks in certain bpms without having to blindly skip through tracks hoping I could find a match.

I've made some mental notes as to how I can improve on this mix but I'd rather not write them down as I want you, the listener to have an unbiased ear. You'll need a bit more than an hour for listening but I encourage you to listen to it straight through as that's how it's intended to be heard. So enjoy the music, I certainly did while mixing it.

More came!

So I decided to come back and blog a bit. I have recently (and by recently I mean two days ago) have been using Ableton for more than just recording. It would seem, as I already knew, it has the capability to create different drum beats, harmonies and all that jazz. It's really just the tip of the iceberg since I have the stripped down Subaru Justy version of Ableton but I'm looking forward to using drum loops in my mixes at some point.

Since I'm doing this without any instruction the learning curve is more like an extremely gradual horizontal line but I'm doing my best with the tools I have. The music is what keeps me doing it. I love listening to it and melding it into something different. It's 5AM and I'm ready for bed but I really wanted to let you the reader know that my mixes will hopefully be available for listening sometime soon. I'm currently researching websites that host mix downloads. Granted I wanted to actually mix something tonight rather than research this particular website so I only know vague details. but more on that later.

I'm sure you've all been frothing at the mouth to hear what I've been doing. Never fear it's on the way!

More to come

So today in my quest to get myself back onto a schedule suitable for a daywalker I am staying up until...right now. I put together a mix this morning, it was very hit and miss and very clippy. I'll get more into it later. It was, however, my most ambitious mix to date. Again, more later, possibly with photos.

You're asleep...

...and I'm at work. I make IVs at night and while I'm making IVs I've got one earbud in listening to the songs I'm hoping to mix. I picked up some new tracks and I'm excited to see if they mesh with some of the tracks I'm currently using. Again, progress is slow, I still haven't truly mastered beat matching and I certainly don't know my songs well enough to mix them decently. One of the hardest things I'm finding is trying to listen to a five to 10 minute song actively. By "active" I'm referring to listening to audio cues that let me know when the track is changing from a verse to a chorus to a breakdown to an outro. Knowing when each phase happens is key in creating a smooth seamless mix. At the moment I'm really most interested in beat matching intros and outros as this is the building block of mixing, but when I'm not at my decks I try to learn my songs, all their little nuances. Bars, phrases, cymbal crashes and most importantly timing when bringing in the new track. So hard, but I love the music so that makes it worthwhile.

I done learnt me some such er 'nother

So it's nearly 6AM and I know what you're thinking, "Isn't the Night Shift over??" Well, technically no, I'm gearing up for the first night of my next 7 day stretch which begins tomorrow. I have been so stressed out as of late. I'm going to make an attempt to pay off some student loans and not go to school until nursing school starts up.
Anyway, it's nearly 6AM right? What am I doing? The photos you see are the recording software I'm currently using. It's Ableton Live Lite 6 and there is definitely a learning curve going on. I didn't mix jack s*** tonight and I am so frustrated. I opened up a mix I made last night which I thought sounded somewhat decent. It was a typical 3 track set but the bitch of it was that the recording software only recorded a portion of one of the tracks. Thus, none of my beat matches were there for my listening pleasure. I can see the disappointment in your eyes. Don't be sad, there will be plenty more where that came from including previous recordings assuming I can upload them and post them without getting the hairs on my ass sued off.

Anyhow, I've spent the better portion of 3 hours tweaking and adjusting my computer, Ableton, and my sound card (Fast Track Pro) so hopefully even if the mixes suck the sound quality will be decent and the entire recording will save. One other thing I was able to do tonight was render a live session. I only recorded about a 30 second snippet of a track but I really wanted to see what it meant to render. Rendering is converting the mixes into a .wav file so I can listen to them through a music player or burn them to a CD or (hopefully) make them into mp3s and post them right here on this blog.

I think I'm going to head to bed and get some sleep, nothing like burying yourself in a compost heap of frustration to cure massive amounts of financial anxiety.

Good morning, I'll see you at dusk.

Specs and Texts

This is the gear I'm working with to learn to DJ. I wish the back of the second photo wasn't covered in wires. It looks messy but I swear it's relatively well kept. The following are what you can and can't see:

Mixer: Denon-x120 (This is a two channel mixer but seems quite adequate for my purposes.

CD decks: Denon DN-S1000 (2) (These, and the mixer take up a nice compact bit of space which is great for apartment living! The decks have quite a few effects as well as the ability to scratch. Really, from what I have been reading for the price these are tops.)

Monitors: Mackie MR5 (2) (These are 5.25" Active monitors meaning they are compact and require no external power such as an equalizer which is handy again for the small space I'm working in.)

Computer Interface: M-Audio Fast Track Pro (I haven't fiddled much with this aside from running the output of my mixer into it and sending a USB into my computer. It works relatively well but I do notice clipping at times and am trying to adjust for the problem.)

What you can't see:

Headphones: Stanton DJ Pro 2000 (These have a switch that lets me go between stereo and mono and while I think this is a neat feature I haven't figured out what the point is yet. Either way the headphones seem adequate. They were my second choice so that may be why I'm only lukewarm on them.)

Software: Ableton Live Lite 6 (I had the option to go with this or another piece of software. I chose this program mainly because I'm a fanboy. My two inspirations, Mike Harrington and Sasha both use this software to create beautiful music.)

So now that you've seen my arsenal of equipment I'll tell you what I've done. Slowly but surely I'm learning to beat match. It is a difficult talent to master but I feel like once I've done it progression will come quickly. I liken it to learning to snowboard, remember how difficult it was just to stand up and get going without falling? Once you obtain a sense of balance on your edges everything becomes much simpler. Riding powder or ice and even trying harder terrain becomes easier. Essentially you tend to fall less and less. Once I am able to beat match I should be able to don other tasks in my mixes without having to focus the majority of my song time to matching the beats. I'm looking forward to it becoming second nature. I have compiled a few mixes with two or three tracks but none of these are perfect. I am using them mainly as a training tool. I'm also hoping to figure out how to post them here for your audible discomfort with clipping and all. I guess my hope in creating and maintaining this blog is to keep my drive alive and let people know what really goes into all that work you see on stage. Or for those of you haters, the work you aren't seeing.

So happy reading and listening! Like I said I'm no expert I'm barely a beginner and some of my mixes might turn out like Frankenstein and others I'm hoping will be like the replicants in Blade Runner.

The first and most useless post

I'm really tired but I know I need to get something in here just to get the ball rolling. A little about me: I'm a guy taking on music as a hobby and maybe more. I recently purchased two CD players a mixer and some software to record my mixes. I have always enjoyed electronic music and seamless mixes. Some of my influences are Sasha, Tiesto, Oakenfold, Van Dyk and Harrington (shout out to the AK). While I know I'm nowhere near their level and probably never will be, it's certainly something I aspire to. My next blog will consist of some of the technical aspects of my equipment as well as the songs I'm working with. At the moment I'm laying in bed trying to recover from a long weekend and a bit of a sore throat.