Beach Party Melbourne - Video

NYE '07 @ Lustre Lounge!!

Lustre Lounge is holding their NYE again this year, and with ticket prices at a very affordable $65/head, two free standard drinks, and prizes for best 'striped', it's set to be one hell of a night!!

NYE '06 and NYE '05 both went off at Lustre, with the Fed Square crowd rushing in before and straight after the fireworks.

So if you're looking for a great way to end to the year, and for convenient access to the most happening location in Melbourne on NYE, Lustre Lounge is the place to be. If NYE '06 is anything to go by, I expect this year to go through the roof, in more ways than one!

Tickets selling now, and they're selling fast.

Frankie Knuckles Short Video

This has got to be my favourite short video. Check out how the crowd goes crazy when the drum kicks in!!

DJ Caravan @ Myer?!

We went shopping to The Basement store at Myer today where some good clothing stores and the Virgin music store is located, and I noticed an old caravan at the basement with some good DJ equipment inside. The DJ was missing, but the caravan was continuously pumping out chilled-out House tunes as well as some pop, and later some more upbeat West Coast House sounds!! Apparently The Basement does have a resident DJ who plays a combination old and new music. From what I've seen online, a live band played at The Basement for their first anniversary.

The equipment in the caravan were 2xTechnics turntables, 2xTechnics CD players, and Technics headphones. The mixer seemed to be a Vestax/Stanton. The monitor speaker was a small one, as the volume level has to be fairly low to make it a pleasant shopping experience, and the speakers were spread out throughout the store.


I'm trying to figure out how to contact the people managing the music at the store so I could have a spin in that caravan! I'd love to spin some happy-chilled out-House tunes while watching the shoppers go by! Can't really play for the crowd though, since I won't be able to see the entire crowd through those small windows! The pictures of the caravan were taken from here.

Quick House Mix Video

I was bored so I decided to put up a quick 10min mix on YouTube. The tracks I chose were from my November '06 Demo. The video is a bit dark but I can't be bothered re-doing it! The tracks in the video are:

1. DJ Freestyle -- Girlz & Boyz
2. Kaskade -- Gonna Make It (Original)
3. Chuck Love -- Soul Symphony feat. Fourfeet (Original)
4. JT Donaldson -- Trust Me (Broadway and Wilson Remix)

Starting Your Own Bar?

So how can someone go about starting their own bar? I had a look around out of curiousity, and found that there are places that can be rented for around AU$60K per year in the CBD for use as bars. Then you'll need a liquor license to be able to serve alcohol, which I think costs around AU$1,300. After that you'll need to get spend on making the bar look appropriate, with couches, lights, DJ equipment, etc. Then finally you can start thinking about hiring staff, getting the promoters and DJs in and running a few nights!

Well at least that's what I think is needed. I'm sure there are hidden difficulties in there that only a bar owner would know! It would be cool to own a bar though -- get a few friends together so you can afford the rent, run your own nights to begin with, and DJ as much as you want! But you'd want to have some very close friends as partners -- you don't want to lose your friendship over business issues! Family members would make better partners I think.

8 Year Old Scratching?

Here's a future DMC World Champ. in the making. An 8 or 9 yr old scratching on the turntables like a pro!!

Frankie Knuckles and Chicago House!!

Here's a video I found on YouTube with an introduction to Chicago House, how it started, where it started, as well as a sneak peak into the home and life of Frankie Knuckles -- one of the founders of house and commonly known as the Godfather of House. The introduction is mostly done by DJ Elbert who has been warming up for Frankie Knuckles for the past 3 years. I'll let the video do all the talking!

Mark Farina MOS Interview - Video

Here's an interview with Mark Farina for the Ministry of Sound CD launch. He talks about how he started DJing at the age of 15 or 16, by hanging around in the DJ booth of a club DJ. He also says how Chicago is an open House genre, which includes minimal, techy, etc., and about how he likes to include a bit of old, a bit of new, something different, deep and some classics in his set, while keeping a good vibe happening throughout. Enjoy!

Cafe del mar

When we went for a dinner last night to my fiance's sister's place, I heard some chilled-out House music playing in the background on the PC of my fiance's bro-in-law. Out of curiousity I asked him what he was playing, and he said it's a compilation called Cafe del Mar. He had pretty much every compilation of their Chill House mixes.

Apparently Cafe del Mar is a real bar in Ibiza, built in 1980, perfectly located near the beach where you can watch the sunset every night, in beautiful scenery, whilst listening to a DJ play very appropriate, chilled-out House music in the background. The bar became popular mainly because of the Chill House compilations released annually, since 1994.

I had a look at the track-listing of the mix that was playing and was surprised to find some really good artists, including one of my favourite tracks at the moment - Trust Me by JT Donaldson. The compilations were mixed by someone named Bruno, and the mixing was pretty average, but the tracks were consistently chilled-out, deep house tunes -- excellent for a sunny Sunday afternoon at a bar!

Coincidentally, my November mix also had a lot of similar tracks to the Cafe del Mar compilation we were listening to, so I downloaded it onto the PC for them to have a listen to later. Here are some other artists in the Cafe del Mar compilations that I was familiar with.

Johnny Fiasco
Julius Papp
Solar House
Roy Davis Jnr
To-Ka Project
Jay J
AlexKid
Ross Couch
JT Donaldson
Collette

Derrick Carter, Melbourne '06 - Video

Derrick Carter, Melbourne '06

After changing my mind a couple of times, eventually I decided to see Carter instead of Chuck Love. Carter played at the Atlantic South Wharf, which was located at the Docklands, but it wasn't the easiest place to find! After driving around the Docklands for about 30 mins I finally managed to stumble into right place.

The venue was perfect! It's located right next to the Yarra, with a small more layed back bar called Alumbra right alongside the main venue, for those after an occasional 'break' from the main act. Lots of nice Buddha statues in the Alumbra made it look very appealing.

Carter was in the main room, which had a large enough area to easily be able to hold 1000. He was supposed to start at 2am but started about 30 mins later (which was good for me as I was late too!), and played a techy/jackin' set, which I thought had a pretty similar beat right throughout. It seemed like most people were just standing around talking and moving their heads than actually dancing. There was a bit of a vibe right infront, but the rest of the crowd didn't look like they were enjoying themselves, including myself! There were a couple of good tracks after 4am, and I heard a couple of backspins and acapellas (e.g. Sexual Healing -- see video), but other than that I couldn't really get myself involved on the dance floor, which was a bit dissapointing. When I saw Carter up-close, I noticed him pitch riding both the turntables and the CDJ1000's with ease, using the eq's well, and I didn't notice any hiccups in his mixing, so he has definitely got some excellent technical skills!!

I was looking forward to catching Clint Hargreaves who was supposed to play at Alumbra next door, but unfortunately, probably because there were fewer people than expected, Alumbra closed before Clint's set.

Overall a bit dissapointed, but I didn't really expect to enjoy the Carter gig as much as a Farina gig anyway, as I prefer the slightly less techier/jacked-up version of House. Some pictures below, and a video coming soon!

Mint Nightclub Brighton

Mint is a very classy and popular bar/nightclub located on the busy Church Street in Brighton. I had the pleasure of playing there last night, and I found myself wondering why I had never been there before. From what I hear from my bro. and his friends, Fridays and Saturdays @ Mint are a full house. For a Wednesday, last night wasn't too bad with a good 50 or so people by 10.30PM. By the time I left at 11.30 it looked like the party was just getting started.

I can see why some of Australia's best DJs (e.g. John Course, Grant Smillie) have played at Mint -- they've got a top-of-the-range DJ setup, including 2xCDJ1000s, 2xTechnics 1200s with Ortofon DJ-S/E carts, a DJM3000 and even a separate 10-or-so band equalizer for that extra control! The DJ booth, like the club, has got plenty of space, and the powerful monitor speaker sits on a stylish silver barrel. There's even a separate silver barrel for the record crate so DJs can look through their crates in style!

"What do they have for us punters?" I hear you say. Well, other than the stylish bar serving some of the best summer cocktails, there's also huge dancefloor, pool table, speakers placed strategically throughout the floor, fancy lasers and even smoke machines. And if the full-house on a Saturday night ever starts making you feel stuffy, go out for a smoke -- Brighton beach is just 2 minutes away!

New Mix -- Soul @ Mint

I've finally managed to get myself to make a new mix after months and months. I'm calling it the Soul at Mint mix, as it was made especially for an Open Decks competition I'm playing at tomorrow (Wed) night, at Mint Nightclub in Brighton. Winner of the comp. gets residency and record vouchers! There's some tough competition though -- the experienced DJ Pound (dj oldfart on ITM) will be playing right after me, and I'm sure there's some other ITM DJs (probably even Mike Jules) that are playing in the coming weeks. But even if I don't win, it's at least it's another venue to add to my list of conquered venues!

Anyway, back to my mix. It's very soulful, so in that way fairly different to my other, more upbeat/"jacking" mixes. The tracklisting is given below, and you can download it from here. It's a 1 hour (70MB) mix.

DJ Freestyle -- Girlz & Boyz
Greenskeepers -- On The Line (Mark Farina Remix)
Kaskade -- Gonna Make It (Original)
Chuck Love -- Soul Symphony feat. Fourfeet (Original)
JT Donaldson -- Trust Me (Broadway and Wilson Remix)
Bryan Jones -- Baby Fever (Original)
Swirl Peepz -- Excuse Me (Original)
Chuck Daniels -- The Get Back
Oliver Desmet & B. Mccarthy -- Disco Dust (Original)
Jay West -- Feelin Sexxy (DJ Freestyle Mix)
Ross couch -- Latin Fusion (Da Sunlounge Mix)
Da Sunlounge -- How Can You Resist?
Town & Country -- Love Could Be (Town Mix)
Natural Rhythm & Trap Groove -- Dancefloor Jazz (Trap Groove Mix)
Herbal Essence 003 -- Disco Inferno

Chuck Love @ Bar Altitude!

One of my most recent faves Chuck Love will be hitting the decks at Bar Altitude in the CBD, on Nov. 24th. Although he's a great producer with some of his tracks (e.g. Soul Symphony and Funky Ass Beat) getting plenty of air-time during my sets, I hear he's equally impressive as a DJ, playing not only on the turntables but also on guitar, flute, trumpet, and a keyboard, all without missing a beat!! I've only heard good things about Mr. Love, so although I'd also love to see Derrick Carter this weekend, considering my financial status at the moment, I think I'll check out Chuck Love instead. Here's the flyer (taken from here).

I Quit!

Last night was my last set at Hush, as I decided to quit. The owner was a bit too much to handle. So although the rest of the staff (management & bar staff) were pretty cool, there's no point in staying there as I really can't put up with the owner.

Besides deciding to quit an hour or so into my set, the remaining 4 hours of my set wasn't too bad really. There were quite a few people at the bar and most of them were chatting and listening to some good House music. My bro. and quite a few of his friends came over too, so it was a nice vibe. Later I started getting a few RnB and commercial House requests, and since it was my last gig there, I decided to give them what they wanted!! I played some cheese for about 30 mins, and while I was packing up to leave, I played an RnB CD that I saw lying around (which happened to be a non-stop mega-mix).

There was an interesting guy who came up to me and started telling me about how I should play music that suits the crowd. But this time, I gave him a good piece of my mind, which included "you want RnB, someone else wants trance, and someone else wants rock -- how do you expect me to meet satisfy everyone's musical tastes", "this is real House music, what you hear on the radio is not, so learn to appreciate it", "House music is not necessarily about packing up a dance floor -- some people like to have a cocktail and listen to some good music. So an empty dance floor doesn't mean people aren't having fun", and "a part of what I'm doing here is trying to educate people on what House music is all about". Any other day I would have kept quiet, but today I realised that I might as well let it all out!

Anyway it turned out to be an interesting conversation in the end. He told me that he knows a bit about House music, and said that he feels that it's all about making the bar your own "house", and treating the bar area like your own kitchen, the fridge like your own fridge, etc., and impressing the people in your "house", with some chilled out music, while they chat to some cocktails on the balcony. A nice thought!

Overall I enjoyed my set. I played a lot of good soulful House (e.g. 'Soul Sympohony' - Chuck Love, 'Gonna make it' - Kaskade, 'Trust me' - JT Donaldson, 'On the line' - Mark Farina remix, 'Baby fever' - Bryan Jones, 'Love could be' - Town and Country) that went well with the vibe and my mood at the time. As far as Sunday Lounge goes, we'll probably start it again at some other bar, sometime soon. Should be fun!!

Free Hosting For MP3 Mixes

After having a look around for a good place to host my MP3 mixes and tracks for free, I came across http://www.orbitfiles.com. The good thing about this service is that they provide 1GB (which is more than enough for 15 one hour MP3 mixes, encoded at 160kbps) of free storage, unlimited file sizes (so uploading that 2 hour mix of yours shouldn't be a problem! But the maximum mix length I've uploaded is 65 minutes), but most importantly, they keep your mix forever, i.e. without deleting it after a month or so like most other services.

Only problem with Orbitfiles is that they don't provide a direct link to your MP3. So you'll have to go to a webpage from where you can download. They do this so that they can advertise on the webpage and make some money out of it. Although having no direct link is fine in most cases, if you want to stream your MP3 file from, say Webjay (which is what I'm using -- see the little MP3 player on the left), you'll have problems, as the Webjay streamer requires a direct link to the MP3. In this case, you can become a paying customer at Orbitfiles, and pay US$10/year (which is very reasonable compared to some other services) to get the direct link, and much more -- including 10GB of storage space!

Dancing To House Music - Video

The following video has some of the best dance moves to House Music that I've ever seen!!



There are at least two more videos that are continuations of the one above. This second clip is more of a documentary on what people think house music is, but has some dancing after around 6 minutes. Go to YouTube for the remaining videos!

DJ Luvvy - Bop [Original] - Unreleased

bop1  /bɒp/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[bop] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, bopped, bop‧ping.

–noun

1.

Also called bebop. early modern jazz developed in the early 1940s and characterized by often dissonant triadic and chromatic chords, fast tempos and eccentric rhythms, intricate melodic lines punctuated by pop-tune phrases, and emphasizing the inventiveness of soloists. Compare cool jazz, hard bop, modern jazz, progressive jazz.

This is my very first House track, made with GarageBand on the Mac, using the samples, drums, etc. provided in the original version of GarageBand. The track has got a groovy (but repetitive!) bass, a few quirks that make it have a slightly west-coast House sound, and fairly hard hitting drums. I preferred slightly softer drums, but GarageBand doesn't seem to have the exact sound I want, or at least I couldn't find it! I might sample drums from tracks I like in the future.

I've decided to call it Bop because most of the song has a short sample of an organ, which sounds like someone's saying 'Bop'! Also, the track has got some eccentric rhythms, like those found in the bebop sounds of the 1940s.

Since it's only my first track, and since I don't really think it's such a good tune, I doubt it's going to end up on a record label, so I'm happy to give it out for free. Also, I'll probably make slight changes to the track, after playing it out a couple of times and based on any feedback I get from others. It also needs to be mastered before it can be played on big sound-systems.

I will be making it available on Download.com sometime in the near future, but until then you can download it from here. Feel free to leave some (positive or negative!) feedback below. You can have a listen to it on little music player on the left.

Beach Party Melbourne!

It's that time once again for the yearly beach party, organised by one of the biggest house-heads in Melbourne, Mr. Jules -- Mike Jules.


The extravaganza will be held on 16th December and has some of Melbourne's finest House DJs lined up, including Matt Promo who recently broke the world record for the longest DJ set (87 hours!). The party will surely be a truly awesome day out in the sun & sand, with some fine House music, right next to the beach!!!

I missed this party last year as it was held on the same day as the Tsunami Fundraiser I had organised, but I'll definitely be going this year. The location is Elwood beach, and a map is shown on the left. The line-up is shown below, more details out soon!!










1-2 little chris
2-3 mike jules + dj luvvy
3-4 cuznmatt
4-5 ben vapid
5-6 matt promo
6-7 ben evans vs blinky
7-8 alex mckenzie
8-9 adrian

If you want to get there by public transport, go to Elsternwick train station, catch bus no. 246 (called "Elsternwick - La Trobe University") from the station, and get off at stop 2. Here's the route map of 246. Stop 2 is right infront of the beach party!

The Weekend

The weekend was a good one, as expected. Stellar Bar saw Clint Hargreaves play a downbeat, funky and groovy House set, that kept everyone's heads bopping the whole time. Sunday Lounge, although quiet, had guest DJ Renee Kuperman, who played an upbeat, vocal, latin-flavoured House set, which was a good change from the layed back tunes that get played usually. Mike played a nice set, finishing it off with some hip-hoppy tracks, and I played mostly new tunes that I bought last week. I also tried out a new track I've been working on (will be available for upload from this website within a week!), and realised that it needs to be mastered properly before it can be played in a big sound system.

Although Clint had told me in the past that he can play a swingy layed back House set if necessary, Friday night was the first time that I actually saw him doing it. Looks like he definitely knew what he was talking about!

Right opposite Hush Bar, during our Sunday Lounge session, there was an under-age party at Barcode. As expected, the pretentious little kids were badly behaved, requiring (at least) 2 bouncers, 3 security guards and 6 police officers to keep them under control. A couple of people were thrown out, and it seemed like the party ended early. No big dramas though, other than a security guard being punched in the face.

House Party + Sunday Lounge = Big Bang

It's a big weekend coming up, with Stellar Bar veteran Clint Hargreaves gracing the decks once more, in what will surely be a tear-jerking set (in a good way of course)! Clint was the first person to start making Stellar Bar the chill-out venue of choice, after which myself (for a short time), Mike Jules and the whole house party crew joined in to make Stellar Bar the house capital of the CBD!

On Sunday, our lounging session at Hush Bar will also be big, with DJ Renee Kuperman coming down all the way from Sydney with a (UDG) bag full of tricks! She'll be playing 8-10, Mike from 6-8 and myself before 6 and possibly after 10.

So if you're into physics and want to know more about the big bang, or just a regular house-head sniffing around for the best tunes, head down to Stellar+Hush bars this weekend! Free entry as always.

Latest Purchases from SubStrata

There's a huge sale on at SubStrata with all items at least 50% off, so I made full use of it. I bought 13 tracks for $110 (including registered post shipping), which comes upto AU$8.50 per record! That's the lowest I've ever payed for brand new vinyl. I picked a couple of gems including Chuck Love's 'Soul Symphony' (which I should have bought a long time ago!) and Kaskade's 'Gonna Make It'. Hope the records reach me by Friday so they can have their first spin on Sunday night!

Childs, Jake - Do You Feel Me: JT Donaldson rmx (12")
Chuck Love - Soul Symphony (12")
Cosy Creatures - Show U The Way (12")
Daniels, Chuck - The Get Back EP (12")
DJ Freestyle - Forest Lake Grooves EP (12")
Fiasco, Johnny - NRG 2 Burn Vol.2 (12")
Hogan, Slater & Chuck Daniels - Stay Tuned (12")
Johnson, Brett & Dave Barker - Silly String (12")
Kaskade - Gonna Make It (12")
Littlemen - A Day In Oakland EP (12")
Saint & Marco Santiago - Igloo #9: Libera Mi Alma (12")
Vernon & DaCosta - Real Food For Pretend Chefs EP (12")
Ward, Shawn - Twilight EP: Fabriani / Jay West rmxs (12")

DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs 2006

DJ Mag has released the TOP 100 DJs (according to 217,000+ votes from their readers). Like the 2005 results, Mark Farina is nowhere in the top 100 for 2006, although he was no. 100 in 2004, no. 79 in 2003, no. 73 in 2002 and no. 57 in 2001. Is this an indication as to where Underground House music is going? If so, it's truly going underground.

I feel a bit of comfort in seeing a house DJ: DJ Dan as no. 5 this year, although he plays harder electro-ish styles of house compared to the chilled-out Mark Farina. Tiesto has gone down to third place this year, and Paul Van Dyk remains first once more.

Here are the results, taken from this website:

1. PAUL VAN DYK – Non-Mover – Highest Trance DJ
2. ARMIN VAN BUUREN – Up 1
3. TIESTO – Down 1
4. CHRISTOPHER LAWRENCE – Up 10
5. DJ DAN – UP 19 – Highest House DJ
6. FERRY CORSTEN – Down 1
7. SASHA – Down 3 – Highest Prog DJ
8. JOHN DIGWEED – Down 2
9. ABOVE & BEYOND – Up 10
10. DEEP DISH – Down 2


11. CARL COX – Down 1 – Highest Techno DJ
12. INFECTED MUSHROOM – Up 14
13. ATB – Down 4
14. PAUL OAKENFOLD – Down 3
15. HERNAN CATTANEO – Down 8
16. JUDGE JULES – Down 1
17. EDDIE HALLIWELL – Non-Mover
18. MARCO V – Down 2
19. MARKUS SCHULZ – Up 2
20. GABRIEL & DRESDEN – Up 9

21. JAMES ZABIELA – Down 8
22. JOHN ACQUAVIVA – Highest New Entry
23. FLASH BROTHERS – Up 43 – Highest Climbers
24. AMADEUS – New Entry
25. ERICK MORILLO – Down 7
26. BENNY BENASSI – Down 4
27. SANDER KLEINENBERG – Down 7
28. DJ YAHEL – Up 17
29. OFFER NISIM – New Entry
30. ANDY MOOR – Up 16

31. DAVID GUETTA – Up 8
32. SANDER VAN DOORN – New Entry
33. RICHIE HAWTIN – Down 21
34. GARETH EMERY – New Entry
35. PHIL KIERAN – New Entry
36. NICK WARREN – Down 1
37. DJ SKAZI – New Entry
38. STEVE LAWLER – Down 8
39. D-FORMATION – New Entry
40. RICKY STONE – Up 8

41. ASTRIX – Up 34
42. ROGER SANCHEZ – Down 15
43. BAD BOY BILL – Down 1
44. SVEN VATH – Down 21
45. THRILLSEEKERS – Re-Entry
46. DONALD GLAUDE – Up 22
47. DJ VIBE – Down 7
48. KYAU VS ALBERT – New Entry
49. CHRIS LIEBING – Down 16
50. TIGA – Down 6

51. MATT DAREY – Up 40
52. BOB SINCLAR – New Entry
53. JAMES HOLDEN – Down 16
54. LANGE – New Entry
55. WRECKED MACHINES – New Entry
56. DION MAVATH – New Entry
57. PETE TONG – Down 8
58. DANNY TENAGLIA – Down 22
59. GEORGE ACOSTA – New Entry
60. BLANK & JONES – Down 29

61. DJ SAMMY – Up 31
62. JOACHIM GARAUD – New Entry
63. TIMO MAAS – Down 11
64. MATT HARDWICK – Down 6
65. FRANK TRAX – Down 14
66. STEVE ANGELLO – New Entry
67. DANNY HOWELLS – Down 42
68. SIMON POSFORD – New Entry
69. JOHN GRAHAM – New Entry
70. DESYN MASIELLO – Down 16

71. MAURO PICOTTO – Down 43
72. MENNO DE JONG – New Entry
73. BT – Up 9
74. SCOTT K – New Entry
75. TALL PAUL – Down 32
76. M.I.K.E PUSH – Up 1
77. FILO & PERI – New Entry
78. DJ TARKAN – New Entry
79. ANDERSON NOISE – New Entry
80. FATBOY SLIM – Down 17

81. DJ SERGE DEVANT – New Entry
82. DJ UMEK – Down 3
83. VICTOR CALDERONE – Down 28
84. DARUDE – Re-Entry
85. FERGIE – Down 25
86. TALLA 2 XLC – New Entry
87. RONSKI SPEED – Re-Entry
88. LEE BURRIDGE – Down 12
89. MARIO PIU – Down 51
90. AXEL KARAKASIS – New Entry

91. STEVE PORTER – New Entry
92. YOJI BIOMEHANIKA – Down 60
93. AXWELL – New Entry
94. STANTON WARRIORS – Re-Entry
95. DAVE SEAMAN – Down 26
96. ROBBIE RIVERA – New Entry
97. ANDY C – Down 27
98. AGNELLI & NELSON – New Entry
99. LISA LASHES – Down 43
100. DAVE CLARKE – Down 64

Isn't It Ironic?

I didn't end up playing at Hush Bar last night because I had a lot of other things to do, and I didn't think anyone would come to see me play, as I didn't send out reminders, and no one gave me any advanced notice (via SMS/Email) that they'll be coming.

But out of all the Sundays that I've played there, my bro. two friends decide to choose last night, to come over and give me a surprise visit! My bro. had come all the way from home by tram, and my friends were in the neighbourhood so they popped in. But since I wasn't there, they had just turned around and left!

It's funny how they picked last night instead of the 16 or so Sundays that I have played there. What are the chances of that happening?!

House Music Production with GarageBand

I tried out GarageBand on the Mac last night. The interface was very intuitive, and it became obvious what the steps needed for making a track were, after messing around with it a bit. There are a lot of samples already provided, ranging from Deep House beats, to 70's Pop beats, to Latin Organs, etc., which provides a good place to start. You can choose a beat and modify it with the drum sounds of your choice, to get, (say) the West Coast House sounds. You can then add the bass, vocals, etc. as layers on top of the beat, to slowly build up your track.

Some of the samples they provide can't be modified though. These have a different icon to the ones that can be modified, so you won't any waste time selecting samples that can't be modified.

I ended up making a basic beat by listening to a House track, and then trying to copy it. It only worked to a certain extent, as it was difficult to reproduce the more subtle instruments. Next on my list is to try and reproduce the Joey Youngman beat!

GarageBand is free, but it comes with the Mac, so if you're not using a Mac I'd suggest another free program MadTracker. Although I haven't personally used it (I did download and play with it, but it was not as easy as GarageBand to get started with), a friend of mine has, and he has made some really nice House tracks with it. Check out his tracks here, and maybe leave some feedback!

Vinyl Recording Machines

Imagine being able to put your own tracks on vinyl records and sell them off to record stores! Well, it's possible if you get yourself one of these vinyl pressing machines/vinyl recorders. They cost around AU$5,300 to buy from Europe, excluding accessories (mixer, amp etc.). Each vinyl record will cost about AU$7 from Europe, if you buy them in lots of 10.

Even if you don't produce, it'll be cool to be able to download a track from www.beatport.com, and press it onto vinyl to take to your gigs! But of course the artist/song names will have to be handwritten, and the covers won't have any art on them, but you'd still be able to play the track on vinyl, instead of a boring old CD. Or maybe even start a small business pressing vinyl for up-n-coming producers?

OK, maybe I'm going a tad overboard here. I may be a vinyl-purist, but I'm not stupid. Anyhow, check out www.vinylrecorder.com for all the details!

House Party @ Stellar Bar

Just got back from the House Party @ Stellar Bar, so here are some pics! The deejays in the pics are Mike Jules (white stripe on black t-shirt), Luke J Sammut (with mic), Dan Sal (light blue t-shirt), Rob Wu (brownish jumper) and Byron Foxx (black jumper on white shirt). Some fine tunes, good vibes and a packed house it was!

Hush Bar Melbourne Central

Being located right inside the busy Melbourne Central, Hush Bar provides a convenient place for relaxing after a meal, having a couple of drinks before a movie, or breathing some fresh air after a busy day of shopping. That's right, fresh air straight from a large third floor balcony, that also provides plenty of space to move around, plenty of seats to have a smoke, and beautiful scenery of some of the city skyline. This summer will see the balcony area being used to host BBQs, while the DJs pump some summery tunes from inside!

The Hush Bar interior is lavish, with red and brown leather seats, comfy couches, fireplaces, TVs, a projector and a very stylish and sophisticated bar, serving every drink in above average-sized glasses! A separate seating area allows people to chat the night away, and the large dancefloor allows the rest to dance the night away. With a good soundsystem and fancy lighting, Hush Bar has got what it takes to give you a nightclub experience.

Latest News From Other House-Heads

Keep an eye on this page -- it contains a summary of the 5 most recent blog posts from other (interesting and blog-updating) Australia-based House-heads! If you want to know what's happening House-wise around Australia, this is the page to be!

If you're interested in any of the posts, simply click on the title and you'll be taken to the full post.

Latest addition - DJ Pound.

Melbourne

Other States

Joey Youngman, San Simeon, CA [Video]

While I'm on a YouTube video review frenzy, why don't I review this one too. This is another short video, this time of Joey Youngman, one of my favourite producers and DJs, playing some jacking house tunes at some club in California. The video was from earlier this year -- probably some time in Jan. There's another video clip of the same gig here.

He's playing Bryan Jones' Chicago Jack (Sound Republic Remix) (not his own remix!) and mixing into another track towards the end of the video. The setup is 2xTechnics, a DJM 500/1000 and two CD players (probably a Denon/ Numark/ Pioneer). And like in Farina's gig (two posts ago), the monitor speaker is on the left.

Good to see him making his funky moves -- (better than the rest of the dancers in this crowd!) and pitch riding with his right hand, on the left turntable, while his other hand is nowhere to be seen (it's probably on the mixer). Reminds me of his gig at FFour last year when he was pitch riding with both hands!

Exporting Blogger to ITM!

ITM provides a free blog for members, so I decided to do something similar to what I did when I exported www.djluvvy.net to Myspace. Unlike Myspace, the ITM blog template allows JavaScript, Frames and PHP, so the process of integrating www.djluvvy.net into my ITM blog was much easier.

Basically, I found an awesome site called RSS-Info which asks you to type in your RSS feed URL, and it then generates an RSS feed reader in the language of your choice (i.e. JavaScript, PHP or iFrames). You then copy and paste the code to your ITM blog template (or any website), and you get live RSS feeds delivered directly to your website!! So now, my ITM blog gets content directly from www.djluvvy.net. You can even customise the look and feel of your RSS feed so it matches your website/blog. When you click on titles from the ITM blog, you are taken to the corresponding post at www.djluvvy.net (although no one really needs to click on titles in the ITM blog, as the full content of each post will be shown anyway). Here are a few pic of what my ITM blog looks like!

One of the main problems with reading RSS feeds is that, the content is not necessarily shown by the date on which the initial post was made. E.g. I had to re-post some of my older posts (see the 'Dinner Plain Hotel video' in the above pic) last night to include them in an extra category called 'Videos', but the RSS reader thinks that this old post was recent -- i.e. it doesn't look at the actual date of the post in blogger.

Mark Farina @ Ohm Video

Here's a 30 second video clip of Mark Farina @ Ohm Nightclub in Portland U.S.A. (supposed to be the best House club in Portland). The video is of Farina's gig from last Friday. I like this video because it's a close-up, and it shows Farina messing around with the mixer when he's right in the middle of a mix.

The DJ setup is CDJ 1000's, Technics 1200s, and one very complex looking mixer! Looks like it's got 4 channels, and a hell of a lot of buttons! I'm dreading the day I go to a gig and get confronted with a mixer like that!! FFour in Melbourne is the only venue I've been to that has a complex looking mixer like the one in the video (FFour I think has got a Stanton/Vestax).

As usual Farina is moving to the groove! He's playing a track on the right CD player in the beginning, and then introduces a track with vocals from the left CD player, by cutting off the bass in the track on the right, and increasing the volume control on the left channel. And this whole time his left hand is riding the CD player's pitch! It's also interesting to see that his monitoring ear is the right ear and not the left (so the monitor speaker should be on the left -- which I think is pretty standard in the U.S.), and the headphones are firmly stuck to his head the whole time, except for a few quick flicks to the left ear.

Hmmm...it's amazing how much you can learn by watching just 30 seconds of Farina!

Exporting Blogger to Myspace!

So I finally went right ahead and got myself a Myspace account. If you don't know what Myspace is (i.e. you've been living in a cave for the past few months), it is the largest blog-centric networking site (or at least, that's my definition of it), and has over 120 million users worldwide, which means, not a lot of people can compete with it, not Blogger, not Wordpress, not Typepad -- no one.


But the problem is, although it's very popular, Myspace has very primitive support for blogging, video and pictures, compared to (say) Blogger, YouTube and Photobucket. So it's only natural for people to want to integrate their Photobucket, Blogger/Wordpress/Typepad, YouTube etc. accounts into Myspace. For me, it's this blog that needs to be integrated into Myspace.

So I went and searched for ways of achieving this, and after many hours of frustration, came across a website called Nooz. Nooz basically allows you to use the RSS Feed that blog sites provide, and make a widget (i.e. image-like thing) out of it. The widget shows you the latest (top 10) posts from your blog, and on clicking this widget, the reader will be taken to the Nooz website where the full details of the blog posts can be seen.

So I created my widget from Nooz (despite what some websites say about Nooz being user-unfriendly), and added the widget to my Myspace site, and it works like a charm! A screen-shot of my Myspace page is shown below.




Apparently, Rhapsody also provides such a service, but you have to live in the U.S. to be able to use it. Since Nooz seems to do the trick for me, I'll stick to it. But if I want a more user-friendly interface in future (e.g. if I want users to be able to click on links within the widget and see the full details of the post) I'll need to start looking at other options.

Melbourne Intnl. Film Festival @ Hush

Hush Bar was hosting the 'afterparties' for the Melbourne International Film Festival on Saturday and Sunday. Apparently Saturday was a full-house, but lots of people turned up last night too, right after a movie at Melbourne Central. Most of them were old and mature, so they didn't mind having a chat and a couple of drinks to some groovy House music!

I was on my best behaviour of course, just in case a producer walks up to me and wants me to star in their next movie, as a small town DJ who makes it big. Suprisingly -- no such luck last night.

Quite a few of my friends turned up too in the 5 hours that I played. Here are some pics of myself and a couple of them.

Derrick Carter in Melbourne!

One of the pioneers of House music - Derrick Carter (Chicago), will be heading down to Melbourne on 18th Nov. to play a 4 hour set!! This is the first time I've heard of the venue Atlantic Southwarf, but it looks like an awesome venue next to the yarra. The local DJs supporting Carter will include Clint Hargreaves and Anyo, both of who I'd love to see again. The full supporting DJ line-up is shown below.

Matt Wilko
Anyo
Simon Dugby
Ganz
Clint Hargraves
Apap
Nicky G

Here's a short video of Derrick Carter at the Coachella Music Festival. He starts with an acapella and then quickly cues and plays the next track which blends in well with the acapella. Then he slams in the base.

William from Radiance

A DJ I met at Stellar Bar a couple of months ago (see the video in the Videos section) called William, happens to be a regular at Hideout Bar (pics from their website on the left) in Singapore, where I will (hopefully) be playing on my next visit to Singapore. William randomly happened to walk into Stellar Bar, and after introducing himself to the boys at the Friday night House Party, scored himself a gig on the same night (he used someone elses records).


I had a chat with William that night and found that he comes down to Melbourne every couple of months, and that he plays at Hideout pretty often. Recently on doing a search for Hideout, I found that William belongs to a House group called Radiance in Singapore, and that they play at some of the coolest bars/clubs there. Check out their website, pictures and mixes here.


Small world!

DJ Luvvy @ Swindlers

Hmm, I just came across this advertisement for my July gig @ Swindler's Bar up in Mt. Hotham. The advertisement appeared on ski.com.au. I wonder why I didn't see his earlier -- maybe I just didn't have as much free time on my hands to search for my name on Google, as I do now! Better late than never I guess!

FFour (F4) Melbourne

I've only been there once, and boy was it worth it! FFour in my opinion is one of the best venues for House music in Melbourne. Although known as a cocktail bar, this place has got a killer sound system, a very sophisticated bar, and extremely stylish interior design. The sound system is comparable to some of the best small sized nightclubs such as 161, and there's plenty of room to dance or relax.



FFour has a night running 5 days of the week, and hosts some of the best international House DJs (Joey Youngman, Bryan Jones, Honey Dijon, Roy Davis Jr., etc.) on Sunday nights, and some of the best House DJs in Melbourne on Saturday nights. The crowd knows their music, and they consistently come down to support their internationals.


Being conveniently located on Lt. Collins St. in the City, this venue has got it all!