Tech and Gadgets
Great news for all DJTechtools fans and MIDIfighters across the intarwebz:
DJ Techtools is selling decals. You will be able to choose from ‘DJ TECHTOOLS’, ‘MIDI FIGHTER’ and even the famed ‘PLAY/PAUSE’ logo.
They are available in black and golden, amongst other colors.
Please check this DJTechtools forum thread for more info.
Upon receiving my HDJ-500, I decided to give ‘em a thorough lookover by means of a review.
Toon of Tonecontrol.nl was kind enough to have me test this beauty for a period of 10 days, after which I could decide to keep it or sent it back.
Almost needless for me to say that the HDJ-500 was completely blowing away all the prejudices I had against ‘em, to have me decide to keep them.
While mailing with Toon, we came to an agreement to conduct the review in dutch.
Follow this link to read it.
With all the MIDIcontrollers that people can get in the nearest musicstore or webshop, it’s getting easier to get yourself a MIDI controller that fits your needs.
But what if, you find that one controller is getting close, but is not close enough. At that point you can choose to DIY a modification to multiple controllers, or even build one from scratch.
Enter Ray, who as Controlled Demolition is the current BeatBattle champion in Germany.
Even though the Akai APC40 came close to his liking, he thought the Akai APC 40 was not enough.
The Akai APC40 is one of the best designed controllers for Ableton Live, Ray thought it was still lacking control.
He decided to merge this controller with an Akai APC20, in order to fulfill his needs.
He merged these two and decided to call it APC80. Many think 40+20 would be 60 but, being that this modification leaves you to dabble with a grid of 80 buttons, this name only seems logical.
I had the change to get to know Ray through MIDIfight club, the party that had me going to spin tunes in Tresor Berlin earlier this year. But all I can say is; this remarkable cool guy has devised a beast of a controller.
Here you can see both Ray and the APC80 in action. I have to warn you though, all speech is handled in German, but all commands are done in MIDI. And you know the creed: “In MIDI we Trust!”, right?
Not too long ago, me and my best friend Daniel started thinking about a project that had to do with vocals and harmony.
We decided back than, that we needed to go in deeper into Reaktor.
Since than, months have passed, and now Tim Exile comes along with this nice kit called ‘the Mouth’.
According to Native Instruments:
Electronic artist and innovator Tim Exile showcases “The Mouth” – a new software instrument that can turn any audio signal into music.
Sing, beatbox, or send a drum loop into it, and “The Mouth” comes to life as a highly expressive and somewhat unpredictable synthesizer, vocoder or talkbox-like instrument.
The Mouth can be used as a stand-alone application and as a plug-in in a DAW or host sequencer, covering all kinds of live performance and music production scenarios.
More info here: http://www.native-instruments.com/themouth
Can’t wait to get my paws on this beast!
One and a half years ago, I had the opportunity to look at some blueprints supplied by Native Instruments. The concept blueprint was than called Traktor Pro CTRL.
It was delivered in print, as that I was able to check the blueprint in 1:1 format. (real- sized print) This basically came down to an A3 format paper sized controller.
After reading through the specs, it became apparent that the controller would also feature an on board soundcard, cue section, effect section, EQ section, crossfader and above all, 2 decks.
Native Instruments than asked all fellow thinkers to answer an online questionnaire, in which we would share our views on the blueprint.
One of the more frequent answers would end up to be;”make it 4 decks”.
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Almost 14 months later, rumours started to turn up, pictures and youtube vids were getting leaked. It seemed that Native Instruments was getting ready to unleash a new breed of MIDIcontroller with accompanying Traktor Software.
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More and more information was being spread, and I was still bound by my NDA with Native Instruments. So I was not able to spread my knowledge on this matter.
With the 1st of November set as release date, all information is already open to the public, and I guess I am allowed to share this little story.
Demos are starting to turn up through the Netherlands and through twitter we had the opportunity to check out the Native Instruments Kontrol S4, as it was called now, at ToneControl.
This cool company that arranged a demo night last Monday and My buddy Marc and myself wanted to check it out badly. The demo night turned out to be a minimeet of the AboutDJ.nl forums, as that Wesley(dj_wb) and René(Rendoe) were there too.
Leon of Native Instruments, brought in by company owner Toon, was a great guy that showed and demoed the little beast.
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First thing I did was actually whip out the old design blueprint and compare size and layout. The size was the same, buttons were not changed that much, but, as mentioned earlier on, two decks were added, not to mention the all new looper, that basically adds a virtual fifth loop deck, that can be used as a layered looper.
(Think photoshop with image layers, or your average DAW software with tracks.)
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Leon guided us around many features of the software and controller, and even left us some time to play around with the controller.
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It’s hard to believe, but at first I was only in it for the software. After playing around with the controller for a while, I am actually thinking of selling my current setup and buy this bad boy!
Here’s the rest of the pictures worth sharing. Props and thanks goes out to Toon van Veelen too, as he supplied a few of the pictures featured below, and ofcourse being awesome enough to arrange this demo evening!
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Ever wondered what to do with your old vinyl bag? Here’s a quick hack that will pump new life into the old DJ bag.
Since I used, fellow Restricted Sessions/Lime member, Rick’s Magma Vinyl bag for the MIDI Fight Club in Tresor, I wanted one for myself.
The space that that bag offered, enabled me to hold my MacBook Pro, both my MIDI controllers, my soundcard, cables, headphone and still leave me with enough room to still drop in clothes and a big towel.
Through fellow AboutDJ member Royce, I received my own Magma vinyl bag and decided to do some small modding of my own.
I decided to make a small section in which my MacBook Pro would be stacked against the padding of the bag, so that that will leave me with a nice space in the rest of the bags main compartment.
No ‘how to‘ pictures, as it it a fairly simple add velcro action to make this happen.
The pictures were created with my mobile phone, so the quality is not too high this time.
Een leuk voorbeeld dat Creativiteit je enige beperking is.
Zie wat Tim Exile doet tijdens zijn – PROMO – live sessie voor Rob Da Bank, BBC Radio 1.
Hij maakt gebruik van een microfoon, twee BCR controllers, een BCF controller en een Reaktor ensemble om dit geheel plaats te laten vinden.
