Archive for the ‘Gear’ Category
ATTIGO TT: The Touch Screen Turntable
Check out this video of touch screen turntables.
The ATTIGO TT was created by Scott Hobbs, a student at Dundee University studying innovative product design. For his final year project he’s created a touch screen turntable that lets DJ’s loop, sample and scratch wave forms just as you would a record. The size of the touchtable is approximately the same as a standard turntable, making the physical interaction nearly the same. Where this takes off is in the flexibility and features included right at your fingertips, no longer locked up on a computer screen. The ATTIGO TT is currently a working prototype, and Scott is looking for manufacturers to partner with.
What gear is DeadMau5 using?
I had the pleasure to help Joel Zimmerman, aka DeadMau5, setup his gear not once but two times at the Austin Electronic Music Festival. Toddy B and I also opened the night and you can hear the last track I played just before DeadMau5 goes on in the below video.
DeadMau5 uses a very unique setup. He’s running Abelton Live on a 17″ G5 MacBook Pro ($2-3k) outputting to an Apoge Ensemble ($2k) soundcard. He’s using a 16×16 (256) Monome controller ($800) for what I’m not totally sure and a touch screen Lemur ($3k) made by Jazz Mutant to control his effects. He’s running 4 stereo outs from his Ensemble to whatever club mixer is at hand, in our case, a Pioneer DJM-800($1600) which was also setup with a Pioneer EFX-1000 ($800). As far as I could tell, he used everything that he brought and used it well.
My laptop is dying
Played a gig on Saturday and the screen turned all Matrix red on me. I’m 100% Serato based and now I realize how bad it is to be dependent on a PC and not CDs. I’ve got to make it through the rest of SXSW with this cracked out screen or go and drop $1500 on a new laptop. Either way, I’m F’d in the A. Here’s a funny video to cheer us up.
Deadmau5 in the stuido
Deadmau5 killed 2007. Here’s a look at his new studio and also his old studio. The 2nd video is worth a look even if its just to listen to Chris Lake describe the gear.
A first look at Pioneer’s SVM-1000
Beatportal reports that Sander Kleinenberg was involved in the development of the SVM-1000. I love Pioneer’s approach to getting big name DJs to help design their products. Its smart both on a marketing and R&D angle.
The SVM-1000 has an impressive range of effects and 96 khz/24 bit studio sound quality similar to the DJM-800 and also boosts a 11″ touchscreen LCD screen.
Pioneer’s patented Multiple Video Blending Technology makes it possible to mix four channels of synchronized audio and video at once. Beatportal reports that the SVM-1000 is the first four channel AV mixer, but this is incorrect. Create Digital Motion got it right and listed the AVM02 as the first four channel Audio/Video mixer.
Having done some VJing back in the day, my favorite new feature on this board is the AV Touch Effects which allow users to touch and affect visuals directly, as they appear on the panel. The mixer has 12 patterns of Touch Effects including ripple, spot, radiation, twist and cube. The drawback is there is no support for DV or HDMI and that Vegas Video is a much better tool for live video mixing. The ideal setup that I would like to see would be two people, one VJ, one DJ, with one person doing the music and one user running Vegas Video and other sources into the SVM. With that type of setup and the assignable midi knobs of the SVM, some truly amazing performances could be made.
Overall, I don’t think this mixer is going to sell well or really bring VJing to the forefront of clubbing experience, but its nice to see the concept being explored. The kicker, the SVM-1000 will cost you $5400.
With all that in mind, I’d like to recount one of my favorite past VJ experiences. I was lucky enough to see Z-Trip, Aceyalone and Gift of Gab at the Fox Theater in Boulder, CO this summer the same weekend that Daft Punk killed it at Red Rocks. Z-Trip had a full visual setup being run on side stage and Z-Trip, being Z-Trip, played his usual non-stop mashup mixture of hip hop, rock, and even some country (Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire). Every track he dropped was accompanied by its music video and as he made his mixes, the VJ mixed in the incoming music video. Some of the videos were super old and I had to laugh, but some really went well together.
Read More on Pioneer’s SVM-1000:
Beatport Sync - killing Itunes and bringing djing to the masses
I just read this article on create digital music and thought I would repost it. The big thing to me is that it beats the pants off of Itunes. I use Itunes for its organizational aspect but I also have a work computer, home computer and laptop and its impossible to keep them synced. Also, Itunes is a huge memory hog on PCs and runs terribly slow even on a diesel machine. Here’s to hoping Beatport takes over the world.
Below is the main gist of the article from create digital music:
Beaport Sync is a free, DJ-friendly music player / librarian / mixing app for Windows and Mac. On its surface, it looks like a hook for online music store Beatport and a beginner-friendly DJ mixer (two tracks, auto tempo detection and time stretching, pitch control) — and it is that.
But aside from the ability to mix and cross-fade, Beatport Sync has some features Apple’s iTunes lacks, which makes it potentially worth a download for just about anyone. First, it has real file format support: MP3 / MP4 / AAC / WMA / WAV / AIFF / FLAC / OGG (plus audio CDs, of course). WMA, FLAC, and OGG are all missing in iTunes. Second, it has advanced meta-data editing and file browsing, making it useful for organizing your music collection. What I really like: not only can you backup your library to external media, but you can browse external media, too. It’s a reminder that iTunes remains pretty primitive for listening and organization — it’s added some decent features, but not so much for the desktop listening experience.
Features include:
- Two-deck mixer with manual/automatic crossfader
- Pitch control
- Time-stretching and tempo detection, for smooth crossfades even if you don’t know what you’re doing (or you’re, say, folding laundry or cleaning your studio and want the software to DJ for you — it happens)
- Rip and burn CDs
- Access external devices for browsing and backup
- iTunes library integration (no playback support for DRMed tracks, though meta-data will appear)
Kerri Chandler rocks Britian with a reel-to-reel dj set
Originally reported on Beatportal. Kerri Chandler took things as old skool as they can get this weekend at Britain’s annual Southport Weekender last weekend when he played his entire set off three reel-to-reel tape recorders.Check out the clips below!It should go as a point to the “Vinyl is King” argument that it doesn’t matter what you are playing on and more what and how you are playing it. CDJ, Laptop, Turntable, reel-to-reel, its all good as long as the DJ is comfortable with it and is playing the tunes the crowd wants to hear. Same goes for the Digital versusAnalog film argument.
Sasha’s Maven Controller
Two more pictures: Upclose In the dark with lights.
Here’s a quick look at something that a lot of DJs have been talking about. I was lucky enough to open the night for Sasha with my great friend and mentor Lance Cashion. I helped setup the booth that night as well and snapped a photo of Sasha’s Abelton Live controller, “The Maven”. To me, its fairly straight forward. Its arranged just like a normal DJ mixer but with each channel having some extra buttons and faders to control Abelton. Here’s a quick run down of how I believe it works.
From top to bottom.
The first button is to start a channel.
The knob is the trim for that channel just like on a normal dj mixer.
The next three knobs are the high, med and low filter controls just like on a normal mixer. I’m assuming that sasha has a eq effect on each channel in Abelton.
The two small faders are two control the wet dry signal for whatever effect he has going on that channel at the time.
Just below that are two buttons, Rec and Cue. Cue is to listen to his track in the headphones and I’m not totally sure what the Rec button would be used for on a per channel basis.
The next section is clearly marked “Channel Level and Clip controls”, so the fader controls the volume of the channel and each botton can start or stop a clip.
Below that is the assign button, I’m not totally sure what this is for. In Abelton, you can assign pretty much any value to a knob or button on your controller so it may be used to assign parameters on the fly from the controller, but I’m not sure why you would need 6 of these.
Below those is the standard Allen & Heath type crossfader setup with a master filter knob and button on either side.
To the right of the 6 channel controls, you have three buttons, which I believe read from right to left, Record, Stop, and Start. These are likely the master controls for the track and don’t get a lot of action. The record button is probably used when Sasha gets in groove with an effect and wants to record his actions.
Below that are 8 knobs and 8 buttons and are labeled Freeform Controls. These are just knobs and buttons that Sasha can assign to whatever effect or track parameter he wants.
Below that are the master controls for Tempo and Volume. I would hate to hear it if someone accidently hit the tempo slider all the way up. I’m sure Sasha has put parameter limits on these to avoid just that.
The last section is the headphones level, 4 leds to show what outputs are being used, Out1, Out2, ADAT, S/PDIF and a led to show that the USB connection is activated. Finally, there is a button to select either the Cue or the Master out for the headphones source.
Let me know if you think I’m wrong about any of this, its all just speculation based on my basic knowledge and experience with Abelton.