MixmoDJ promo video

Just in time for the app launch party and it's arrival in the app store tomorrow;






Review to follow shortly on DigitalDJTips!

DJ Shadow instore appearances...

Nice to see Shadow out and about with vinyl again.  He's been popping up doing in-store appearances prior to evening gigs around the UK at the moment.  This clip is from his recent Bristol visit;






Bristol was a bit too far to get to for this, but he's doing the same thing at Rough Trade in London next week (wristband entry).  I'm in London next Wednesday, so I'm hoping to get there!

Nice to see an old Pioneer EFX 500 (the little red FX box next to the turntables) out in the wild though...I'm now tempted to pick up a cheap one on ebay!

A bit of seasonal fun...

If you're feeling festive already, why not check out the Christmas Chopmix?  Not a serious mixing session, but a fun-filled themed hour or so.  The only rule was to play Christmas tracks...maybe best played while decorating your tree.  As a rough guide, the highlight was "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer"!

Thrown together hastily at a friend's house last Saturday afternoon, in a haze of spiced apple cider, egg-nog eating mince pies and yule log;

Christmas Chopmix 2011 by Thechopmixers on Mixcloud

Most of the mix was done using Serato, with a few vinyl choices by myself thrown in for good measure.  We had Novation Dicer's but I hadn't noticed them until quite late on!  The Rane mixer was the TTM 57SL, with all the built in Serato stuff - the faders on this were very responsive and quick indeed.

Back to normality in a short while!

Stanton SCS.4DJ gets a (good) software update

The software (SC-IX) for Stanton's SCS.4DJ all-in-one unit has had a crucial update in the past few days and now sees some really useful features;

• 25% speed increase for screen mode switching
• Grid edits now create/delete lines for BPM doubling/halving
• Playlist auto-generation now built into the unit (under System->Devices)
• Unit can analyze songs on decks, and gives priority analysis of songs loaded
• Playlist location stays resident (i.e. if you were exploring a playlist, you will land back there when you hit 'playlists' again)
• Brand new audio decoding algorithm for more accurate spinbacks and tighter search control
• Greatly increased headphone output
• Boost setting for microphones in the system menu
• Tweaked MIDI output for broader compatibility with programs such as Traktor
• More auto-dj modes for a broader variety of DJ playback situations
• Increased itunes playlists support
• Speed increase when loading a drive that you used QuickGrid on and are associating files.
• Increased navigation speed when handling large databases (+2000 songs and above)

What's more exciting is the release of QuickGrid a companion piece of software to run on your Windows machine (strangely, no Mac version it seems).  This is the external software item that FutureMusic mentioned in their Autumn issue.  The software will analyse your music library, create waveforms and calculate beatgrids for use on the unit.  This should mean you can analyse all your tracks on your more powerful home PC and then transfer the analysed files onto various USB sticks to plug into the main unit.  This will allow the SCS.4DJ unit to concentrate on the main job in hand rather than analysis of tracks.

The release of QuickGrid feels like a very sensible move by Stanton, the only surprise that it wasn't in place on the product launch.  I'd still recommend a hands-on test first before buying online anywhere, but these 2 updates do make it a more appealing prospect for an all-in-one solution.

New features coming to Mixr 1.1

Here's a video posted on their blog recently;



It's nice to see the list of new features covers a few points I'd mentioned in my first review, such as the pitch direction;

• Redesigned UI
• Sample Pad
• Kit Store
• Pitch Adjust
• Track Seek
• Half/Double BPM
• Inverted Pitch

Mixr is currently on price drop down to $4.99;

Mixr price drop until 31st Dec

From today until 31st December, the price of Mixr has been dropped from $19.99 down to $4.99...worth a look at that price certainly....especially with the new features coming soon!

My DJ Player review on DigitalDJTips

My second review for DigitalDJTips, this time on DJ Player 4.0 is online now.  Most of it covers familiar ground as previously done on this blog, however still worth a look!

I've been using DJ Player to put together some ideas for my Food Chopmix and will probably end up doing the whole mix on the iPad using DJ Player with NetOut on my iPod Touch.  The looping cue points are still a lot of fun and you can easily twist a track around to suit your needs (by extending breaks and switching the order of the track components).

DJ Player is currently priced at $37.99 and is a universal UI;

DJ Hombre says "Please play with your food!"

BBC's Masterchef Professionals (sample material for your mix!)

Between myself and a few friends, every year we have at least one or two 'throwdown challenges' to produce a mix of tracks with a common theme.  These are really just light-hearted re-focus attempts on our own music collections and really involve digging deep into the crates to pull out tracks of relevance that fit into the overall mix.  In the past they have been mostly aimed around genre (so last year saw an Old Skool mix, the year before might have been the 80s mix etc).

The most recent challenge is to put together a mix of food-related tracks.  This is much more exciting than the genre defined mixes and should produce a varied selection of tracks.  In the past I've always spent hours going through racks of records trying to find the perfect selection, however for this challenge I'm going to attempt an all iPad set.  The benefit of this really is that I can easily search my Music library and create  playlist on the device ready for use in my DJ app of choice.  Already the playlist features about 150 tracks, all food related.  Some based on the title (eg; Frankie Seay's funk break classic "Soul Food"), some on the artist (anything by Salt & Pepa or maybe Peanut Butter Wolf), or based on lyrics (eg RJD2's "Bus Stop Bitties") and possibly one or two based solely on the name of the EP (such as J Dilla's "Donut Shop").  I'm also going to dig into the DVD collection as well for samples and inspiration, possibly lifting chunks of TV programmes too.

Anyway, rather than keep this sort of fun to myself I thought it might be a useful exercise for us all to share in...so if you're up for it (there are no prizes by the way!), craft a mix of at least 30minutes and upload it onto Mixcloud making sure you tag it with "Food Chopmix" (chopmix being the name of a mix which shouldn't be taken too seriously)...maybe even tag a link to it on twitter as well (#FoodChopmix).  Let's say the close date is the end of December 2011 - so you've got a month, all that time over the festive season to knock together a food based mixtape.

You can use whatever tools are at your disposal, turntables, mixer, midi controller, apps, software - whatever.  It doesn't even need to be done in one take, you can stitch your mix segments together later ... just as long as the tracks are related in some way to food (that includes condiments but probably not stretching to drinks!).

Trust me, it is quite fun when you get into it and it is a good way of looking at your stack of tracks in a slightly different way - you may even uncover a few gems in the process!

Good luck and happy mixing!

PS - If you need inspiration, check out the impressive Transformer mix by Strictly Kev (aired on Solid Steel in 2007)...all tracks based on robots as a theme.

DJ Hombre joins DigitalDJTips

You may have noticed a slight reduction in post activity on the blog recently, don't worry - all is well.

I've been asked to join the team on DigitalDJTips as their iOS app reviewer and general fountain of knowledge! This is very exciting stuff - at least for me anyway!  I'm now part of the team - I even have my own profile page which is great to see...even if I'm playing old funk 45s in the photo!

I've already written one review of DJay for DigitalDJTips and there's more to come...If I'm writing about an app which I've already mentioned here I will endeavour to bring something different to the piece, so it should still be of interest rather than a Copy&Paste job.  I'll also ensure that I post a link to that piece here too, so you don't miss out!

As for this blog, I'll keep posting albeit probably slightly less than before with most of the larger pieces appearing on DigitalDJTips.

Mixmo DJ app coming soon...

Mixmo DJ

An interesting looking app, the UI based around the familiar CDJ type setup.  It looks like a single-deck app, so you'd want to use a pair of iPads with a mixer or even just as an additional input for your setup.







Because of the familiar layout, this app could do quite well - especially among those CDJ owners who are just dipping their toes into the iOS world of DJ apps.

If the audio quality in scratch mode is excellent (ie on a par with DJ Player or DJay) - especially at very very slow speeds, then I'd be very pleased!  It's difficult to tell on the video, but you need a familiar and long sound and push it very slowly back and forth - the lower quality output will have significant digital artefacts and buzzing.  DJay does quite a good job in this respect, so sets the bar high on anything turntable-based in its UI.

No news on pricing yet, but I'm sure this will follow after the launch party on the 1st December;

There are more screenshots on their facebook page, including this nice shiny one which shows you all the buttons...I spotted a Sync button - I wonder if this will match the bpm of the current track with the track on a paired iPad (like DJ Player)?

Minirig - portable speaker

I've only just started thinking about connecting my iDevices to an external speaker for a more portable setup - like partying outside somewhere.  This little unit looks like a decent choice;

It's the MiniRig MR115 portable loudspeaker.  It's rechargable by USB (1 charge lasting 50 hours!) with 15W output and a quality 3" driver.

Full details can be found here.  They are priced at £85 shipped from the UK.

I've just ordered one, so I'll let you know how it goes with an iPad & iPod Touch!

*UPDATE* - The MiniRig arrived this morning, excellent build quality and superb sound - amazing given it's small size.  I can plug this into the iPad directly and have a mobile party immediately!  I'm also going to be using it with my Tenori-On and OP-1...but only when everyone's out of the house!

End of the line for CDs?

It's been coming for a while really, but news posted on DigitalDJTips and Side-Line both seem to be running with the same news source.

Personally, I've got a whole room full of CDs some of which are probably showing signs of ageing - even the official shop bought ones.  I tried my hand at CD decks years back, while I was impressed with the sampling, pitch lock and ability to scratch a CD audio (it was a novelty at the time) it didn't really fit in well and ended up being left to one side for most of the time.

Skip forward to now, and a lot of CD decks (like the Denon DNS 12000 or most of the more recent Pioneer CDJ units) also feature MIDI and USB key capability - so the manufacturers were wise to branch out.

Don't forget we've already seen the demise of the minidisc this year too!

Strangely enough, this afternoon I was just looking into which decks support playing tracks directly from a USB key - I prefer the concept of not taking a laptop to a gig!  With that in mind though, I am still very much mostly vinyl oriented!

Whatever happened to...The Wacom Nextbeat?

When it was released it was priced at an eye-watering £1100, but it seems you may still be able to pick one up via the official website for just under €400 - and possibly cheaper elsewhere.  I think the recent wave of impressive mobile DJ apps has probably nailed the coffin shut on these sort of hardware devices.

If you own one, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.  There was a review on MusicRadar a few years back, so I'm wondering if the product has moved on via firmware updates since then or not.

Red Bull BPM DJ - more details released.

A nice video showing and discussing some of the new features about Red Bull BPM DJ app;





What was interesting is at the end of the video, Phil starts discussing the pricing structure and release date.

The key details seem to be;

• Release date expected: 30th November 2011
• Basic version is free - which comes with 4 tracks to play with.
• For an In-App purchase of $4.99 you will then be able to access your Music library.
• You can upgrade for $6 (or maybe $9) to get the looping functions and FX etc.

In-App purchasing to unlock more advanced features definitely seems to make more sense than having multiple apps which do something slightly different.

He also said; "The plan is to bring software updates continuously"...."the best is yet to come"

I wonder what else is planned?

Anyway, if you're reading this on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, head over to this page where you can install the app (and the Master Out app) for free!

http://www.redbullbpm.com/ade/dj/ 

Still love those stands they're using, they look nice and sturdy too.

DJay review by me on DigitalDJTips!

A couple of weeks ago I was approached by Phil Morse from DigitalDJTips to share my thoughts on the latest version of DJay.  Although I've written about DJay before on this blog, I did try and approach it slightly differently.  There's also some handy tips in there too;

http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2011/10/review-djay-for-ipad-1-4/

Always nice to see your name up in lights on another site!

DJay is currently priced at $19.99;