EXY San Diego

Last Friday I DJed at EXY in downtown San Diego. EXY had a great vibe that reminded me of some of the restaurants that I loved in San Francisco. What really surprised me was their DJ set-up. I was not expecting much, but they had definitely thought ahead and planned for the laptop DJ. Both the mixer and the dual CD player were Denon. But what surprised me was that they had coupled the matrix input of the mixer with a patch panel.  Plugging in my sound card was a snap and once I selected the channels on the mixer I was up and running.  No digging in the back of the mixer.  Even better, for guys that brought their own TT's they had two channels set-up for that along with a grounding post.

How much should an artist make?

Here is an idea that has been percolating in the back of my mind for a while, "How much should an artist make?"  In pretty much every music rag now days there is an article on either the industry being in a downturn or how disappointing the first day sales were. 

Where did we lose focus?  To be successful in the music industry is it all or bust?  It seems as if a musician is deemed a failure unless he or she is making millions, but why can't we be successful for just making an honest wage?  If a musician, producer, or DJ can make enough to live successfully off their music, let's say $50,000 a year, is that not successful?

It may appears that the music industry is failing, and it is sad when a small record label closes, but I am looking forward to the future where a group of people can start a label on the internet for a minimal investment.  If the label takes off then they can make their money back through selling the tracks, merchandise, and touring.  Sure they won't be making millions and buying airplanes, but if you are doing what you love...

Of course the argument against this is that without the major labels screening out the crap how will the average know what to listen to?  But isn't that what Radio and club DJs are supposed to due?  Find those great tracks and share them with the world? 

- Charles Cushman

Looping on the Fly in Ableton Live

Here is another subject that keeps coming up over at the ALDJ forum, looping on the fly in Ableton without using a mouse or keyboard.  Ableton's looping capabilities is one of the key reasons why i use the program.  Being able to create loops on the fly on time and not having to monitor them as they play is a great asset.

From the ALDJ Forum:

"Here is a tip for looping on the fly that I though most people already did. I thought this one was kind of easy, but based on this quote and a conversation I had with someone else maybe it is not so obvious:

In Live 6, to loop on the fly assign a midi button to the "Track Status Display" for each track that you are using. Then also assign a midi button to the loop on-off, start point, and end point button. I have my global quantization set to one bar, but if you want to create finer loops set it for something smaller.

To capture a loop on the fly hit the button for that track's status. Note that the status button only works if the track is playing. Now that you can see the wave form for that track hit the start button where you want the loop to start and the end button where you want it to stop. If your warping is tight, you now have a perfect loop. To exit the loop turn off the loop button.

A couple of notes.

- Make sure that you are looking at the correct song before you start the loop. Every now and then I loop the wrong track and it takes a second to realize what is going on.
- If you hit the track start button the track will go back to the beginning.
- If you turn off the loop, but realize it was the wrong moment as long as the playhead is in the loop brackets you can turn it back on.
- If you are not sure where you want the loop to start you can "ride" the start button, i.e. hit it over and over to it feel right. The loop open bracket will just keep on moving. Then when you feel that you have it right just close the loop. This works because the loop automatically defaults to include the entire song."

-Charles Cushman

i-phone

x-mas is almost over and the presents have been opened. I hope everyone had a good day and received the presents that they wanted. The big shock for me was my wife buying me an I-phone, and yes I can blog from it as I have just proven :)

Merry Christmas

-Charles Cushman

Photosynth

I am not the biggest fan of Microsoft, but they do come out with some interesting ideas now and then like this one, Photosynth.

Photosynth is a program that combines thousands of snapshots to create a seamless view of a space. The program also makes it extremely easy to flip through a large collection of pictures on line. The photos shown in the clip and examples are tourist locations, but I see this application have a great affect on nightclub photos. The two things I don't like about looking at photos online are that:

a) They are a pain to go through, especially if the net is slow that day.
b) Where is my picture? Wait I found it after looking at 50 random shots.

Now imagine this program. You could flip through the photos in seconds, guests could add their pictures to the collection, and with the thousands of pictures that are taken at a nightclub over the course of a year a pretty strong virtual environment could be created.

How cool would that be?

-Charles Cushman

Can Vinyl be Saved?

I am not sure where I saw it, either at slate or beatportal, but recently I read about how some independent record companies are letting people download digital copies of the albums that they buy on vinyl. What a great idea. You get the best of both worlds, the quality of vinyl for home usage, and a copy to take on the road.

As a DJ I am sad that my turntables are slowly gathering dust. Although Ableton is my primary DJ vehicle now days, I miss the tactile feeling of vinyl. When friends come over for our monthly Second Saturdays party I often forsake the computer to play on my CDJs and TTs. The only problem is that my vinyl collection is becoming dated and I need to go record shopping. But I don't want to buy vinyl, because lets face it, ripping vinyl to DJ with is a pain in the butt. Especially for us people who have a limited time.

However, if I could buy a track, either from the local record store, or from an online store and get both a digital copy and the physical copy I would go back to buying records. Sure it is more expensive, but to have a physical copy for the archives, or random parties where they will only have TTs and I don't feel like hauling a computer would be worth it. Also, limitations also drive innovation. Sure I could only buy one record for the price of four downloads, but I would make sure that that track is essential.

Could this idea work, unfortunately probably not, but a boy can always dream...

-Charles Cushman

Technology in the DJ Booth, Part 2

So how are clubs adapting to the changes in the DJ booth? Most of them, well, are not, but some are. The approach being taken by the forward thinking clubs largely depends on the crowd they are catering to and subsequently, the DJs that they book..

The clubs that cater to the traveling DJ, i.e. superclubs and destination clubs, work around the limitations of having a set DJ booth through several means. Some clubs customize the DJ booths for the headliner and change their setup every night. This can be typically found at clubs that have a stage for the performers and not a set DJ booth. Examples of this set-up would be Ruby Skye in San Francisco and Avalon in Los Angeles. Clubs that have a more traditional DJ set-up, such as 1015 in San Francisco, or Circus in Los Angeles have gone another route. Circus depends on DJs doing a sound check early in the night with the equipment being installed directly into the DJ mixer while 1015 has installed a patch bay accessible from above that lets people easily reroute the audio going into the mixer. These systems work at these clubs primarily due to the star power of the DJs that they bring in and the fact that the equipment is not typically plugged and un-plugged through the course of the night.

Going down a notch to the smaller club, lounge, bar arena it can be seen that a new standard has emerged. Along with the CDJs, and Technics turntables either a Serato box or a Serato certified mixer can be seen more and more often. The multi-format nature of these venues have lead DJs to rely heavily on the Serato system. Venues, tired of having their gear ripped apart night after night are providing the necessary equipment for their DJs and if they don’t want top invest in a box that might walk away they are turning to patch bays specifically setup for the Serato DJ to plug into.

The last arenas we will look at are house parties and underground raves. At these events DJs are lucky to find working mixers much less anything beyond turntables. The only positive is do to the temporary nature of the setup there is typically more than enough room to plug into the mixer prior to a time slot, just be wary of pissing off the vinyl diehards.

Technology in the DJ Booth, Part 1

It used to be easy.  If you owned a club and wanted to have DJ perform you only had to provide two turntables and a mixer.  To make it even easier there really were no choices.  The turntables were technics, and depending on the era the mixer was Rane, Pioneer, or Xone.  as time progressed the only new choice was cd players, and once again a dominant player came in to being, the Pioneer CDJ-1000.

As a bedroom DJ, if you had dreams of playing in the clubs you bought what they had.  If you did not have the money you might go cheap on the mixer, but in the end we all wanted to have what would be in the club so that there would be no surprises.  Some of us who were a little crazy would buy accessories, such as samplers, drum machines, or effects boxes.  But the people that used those in the DJ booth were so few and far between no special allowances have been made for them.

Now days things are different.  While there are still DJs that use only vinyl or CDs, there is a growing number of users who use alternate systems such as serato, final scratch, traktor, or Abelton Live.  To go with these programs are specialized hardware, soundcards, DJ mixers, and controllers.  

How is this advanced in technology, coupled with the multiplicity of choices going to effect the DJ booth, and conversely the bedroom DJs choices?  In part two of this blog I will examine how clubs, bars, and Rave owners / promoters are addressing (or ignoring) the situation and in part three buying options for the bedroom DJ will be looked at.

IDJ2 v. Pacemaker

Last year, in 2006, my wife pre-ordered me an iDJ2 for my birthday. It had only been recently announced and appeared to be a great device for those events where you want to DJ, but don’t want to bring turntables or CDJs. After waiting several months I soon grew tired of the delays and started focusing my attention on Ableton Live.

Now, over a year later, the iDJ2 has been released. However this release has been completely overshadowed by the Pacemaker, a device that has been labeled as the ultimate portable mixer. What affect will these two devices have?

Although I have not had an opportunity to play with either one of these, I do have some first impressions that can be summed up as: Pocket DJ, why? iDJ2, I want.

The pacemaker in its simplest sense is an iPod with DJ controls. It is ultra portable and battery powered. Unfortunately, to make a device so small the users had to compromise on the ability to control the parameters. The user is left with a screen to monitor what is going on and a circular input device to control pitch, EQ, song selection, etc. While this appears to complicated, I am hoping that in practice it is easier than it sounds.

However, no matter how easy it is I don’t think it will be able to compare with the iDJ2’s ease of use. It is based around the concept of combining the controls of a 2-channel DJ mixer and two CDJs into one small package. The parameters are controlled by physical knobs that people are used to and it has a color LCD for song selection. The biggest thing that the iDJ2 has going against it is the iDJ (a device that was really a toy) and the lost of positive hype due to the delays in its release.

So why would you buy a pacemaker? Well, as the ads say, you can DJ on the bus! Although I am not sure when I would be interested in doing that. What does the iDJ2 have going for it? It is an entire DJ package based around the device everyone has, an iPod (with all the ease of use that that device entails).

At roughly the same price which device will be more successful?