Mini Review: checked out Ableton 8 Demo and Akai APC 40 in person last Thursday @ Dubspot… Ableton 8 Overdrive Effect is totally awesome (digital stompbox replacement) as is the new multi-band dynamics effects. Vocoder has potential, need to tinker with it in hand. The ability to configure what plug in parameters to control in track view is powerful too. Curves for crossfades, nice, but where is this control for the rest of automation parameters?
Straight up: Akai APC-40, I WILL purchase for the studio. What else, build quality of the APC-40 IS totally solid. I do see complications in taking it to a gig, given the footprint of it. There’s room for Akai/3rd parties to develop a proper gig bag to hold this device along with your laptop, sound card, hard drive, cables, etc…. I reckon someobody will do this at somepoint.
Max for Live won’t come out til much later in the year. According to Dennis DeSantis, there are still many ‘kinks’ to work through.
I came across this video from a Music Conference (midiemnet) and thought it was pretty interesting and wanted to share. The gist is quite simple. Connect with your fans in interesting ways (Blogs, Contests, web community, free music giveaways say under creative commons licenses, etc) and then give them reasons to buy your various schwag (products that are un music related, special packaging on music products that are unique/limited). Mike Masnick of TechDirt.com whips through a 280 slide presentation in just 15 minutes using Trent Reznor/NIN as his example of a new music busienss model and how it has worked for him. It’s quite interesting how progressive Trent is continually evoloving and trying new techniques of promotion and gimmicks. It seems to be working for him. Granted, NIN, like a Radiohead were built to fame in the Traditional Music industry model with Major Label support, but they are both leading a new path and new direction. It works for these mega bands, because the masses already know them from being part of the old model. But somebody like myself who’s a nobody aside from my network of Facebook/MySpace/etc. friends is quite small in comparison. I just try to take it one fan at a time. I also can’t dedicate 100% this aspect of life.. or, hire a team to work/promote for me either, even if I did have the ideas and vision. But, that’s okay, I’m fine with being boutique for now.
I’d still like to grow my fan base and hear nice comments from around the world that they dig my music. I’d also love to see how this is working for small time artists and labels. The presenter says it can work for both big (obviousy) and small, but didn’t provide any examples of small, and that what I’d like to know.
Wow. A killer DJ interface for use with Traktor 3/Pro is available for use on your iPhone/iPodTouch. This app has been out for a few weeks but I finally ponied up the $6 purchase. First off, I have NO qualms what so ever in doing so. Here’s my attempt at a review. I’ve also made my own templates for T3 and Pro as the ones provided at the iTouchMidi site are incomplete and you may find greater mileage in using mine if you want. Files will be available at the bottom of this post.
SO basically, after you purchase from the iPhone App Store (no need to jailbreak) and install it onto your phone, you need to MAKE SURE you have a local working Wireless Connection so that the iTM DJ app can connect to your computer running Traktor (3/Pro). Or. you can use your mac’s built in airport card to ‘create network’. Give it a name..and voila…. fire up iTM DJ app on the iPhone and you should be good to go. Don’t forget to connect to this newly created network on your iPodTouch/iPhone as you may be connected to another normal wi-fi network.
This is a pretty new find for me that I’m diggin’ on and just came across his video on his myspace page.
The Dutch Rhythtm Combo sound brings a nice latin/brazillian feel to the nu disco sound and the “Bionaire” single offers up some tasty dancefloor friendly remixes.
check it out in the top navigation, the little blog site and maybe, just maybe, the music itself. First release is a recording that originated in my basement studio in 1993. Yikes!
Thanks to Jeff Carvalho for pointing this video out.
This 64 minute film runs through the 1st, 2nd and barely the 3rd wave of techno pioneers all interviewed about how the music evolved at the time. Cool insights into the relations of the original ‘3’, how the scene evolved and how things got a little ugly when success began to take over in Europe. If you remotely love Detroit techno, then you owe it to yourself to get a little more history from the men who wrote the grooves.
