Hi folks!
Some of you may have noticed that this blog has been inactive for some time now. Unfortunately I have stopped all DJ-related activities for the time being, until I finish my studies. I will be back in full swing as soon as soon as I finish!
So until then, take it easy, and keep groovin'!
Luvvy
I thought it would be cool to have a small slideshow with flyers of my past gigs, displayed on my blog. Since I've already got a slideshow set up for my Myspace page, I simply copied and pasted the same code into my blogger template. It turned out to be a good idea, as it makes my blog look a bit more interactive, as you can see (if you're using IE) on the top left! It could potentially also distract readers though, as they'd see something moving in the top left corner, while they're trying to read a post!
I'm sure there are other better services that offer free slideshows that can be integrated into webpages/blogs, but by having the Myspace slideshow, you can show the same slideshow on both your blog and Myspace. So any changes to your slideshow on Myspace will also take effect on your blog.
So that's one more way in which Myspace can be integrated with blogger! I've posted a couple of more integration tips in some of my previous posts (e.g. see here, and here).
Yup, the man compared to Derrick Carter at the moment will be playing at Tramp in the CBD on the labour day eve weekend. This event is a first for HoolaHoop -- check out the flyer for venue details and ticket prices!! Hoolahoop promises to bring down Jason Hodges sometime soon, which I'll try my best to make it to. This Miles Maeda gig looks a go-er too.
Apparently the manager of the whole RMIT Village -- who was present at my last week's gig -- was happy with the music, and happy with the fact that I listened to him when he asked me to turn the volume down! As a result, I've scored myself another gig at the Social Bar and Cafe tomorrow, but this time for about 200 students.
OK so how does that make me stupid? Well, my stupidity arises as a result of me, again, needing to carry my two turntables instead of CD players, and two crates of Vinyl with a total about 130 records instead of a CD folder. As if that's wasn't heavy enough, I've got 70kgs worth of speakers to carry -- the same Behringer B300s I rented last week!!
Why am I so stupid you ask? Well, it's complicated. First of all, I haven't had the time to burn all my Vinyl onto CDs, so that I could take my dual-CD players, that would weigh around 10kg, instead of the turntables and records that weigh around 45kg. Second, I had charged them last week for the Behringer B300s, which was the cheapest pair of speakers I could find, so it will be difficult to get (lighter) speakers that cost more from elsewhere, and justify it!
Anyway, I need to get a bit more organised if I do mobile DJing frequently. The first step is to buy some second hand speakers (preferably under 20kgs each), and then I'll have to start the time consuming job of ripping all my records onto CDs. Wait a minute... is that even legal?
I had a listen to a new remix by Melbourne man Mike Jules (www.myspace.com/mikejules) and he's getting better and quirkier at every new production! His P. Muzik track already gets plenty of air-time by me, and looks like his new dub of P. Muzik will get even more. His tracks are as quirky and bouncy as they get, but with plenty of surprises to keep them different to the usual 'jackin' sound everyone's familiar with. I think it's now just a matter of time until he puts his three productions into a 12".
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.
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.
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
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).
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!
bop1 [bop] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, bopped, bop‧ping.
| 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. |
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
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?!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
So this blog is ranked 7881 on BlogTopSites, which I initially thought was a disgrace, but then I realised 7881 is still in the top 25%, which is not too bad. The ranking is done by a script (which you get on registering for BlogTopSites), which when copied and pasted onto your blog template (i.e. the main HTML page of a blog), basically counts the number of visitors that come to the site, and compares this number with others that have registered with BlogTopSites. So out of 32,000+ blogs registered, mine is ranked 7881.
If you look at the BlogTopSites button at the bottom left corner of this site, you'll see that there's no number shown inside it. This is because this blog is not ranked in the top 100 (there's only enough space in that button for 2 digits I think!). If you click on the button you'll be taken to the BlogTopSites website, which will show you all the top blogs based on number of visitors. The blog at #1 is currently a fashion blog.
Edit: As of 19th October, this blog is ranked in the top 20%.
visitors.
