On the first night of the holiday in Barcelona, we were hit by something of a biblical thunderstorm. It was super humid, so its hardly surprising.
Experiencing almost biblical thunderstorms in Barcelona tonight. It's quite incredible how regular the lightening is and dense the rain fall
— Ian Forrester | cubicgarden@mastodon@cloud (@cubicgarden) September 6, 2018
There is a video but it was so rainy you can’t really see much, so got the Pacemaker out and started mixing late at night. The mix was much longer but I had to cut it back due to some very dodgy mixing as I likely started to fall a sleep.
Another Pacemaker device mix from Finland, this time a lot longer and a lot less polished but its got a certain charm which I quite enjoy. Note the Helsinki scorching remixes, as it would be rude not to play it in Helsinki. Theres quite a few classics in this mix and they still sound good.
Enjoy!
Love Stimulation (PvD love club mix) – Humate
Intruder – Armin vs MIKE
My Beat (Jan Driver mix) – Blaze
Opium – Jerome Isma-Ae & Alastor
Reflection (Extended mix) – Ferry Corsten
Mass Noise 2015 – Fred Baker & Seb B
Running up the hill (Jerome isma-ae bootleg) – Placebo
Helsinki Scorching – Super8 vs Dj Tab
Ligaya (Hiver & hammer remix) – Gouryella
Circles – Robert Nickson
Against the Flow (Astuni & Manuel Le Saux Extended relift) – Stine Grove
Madagascar (Ferry Corsten mix) – Art of Trance
Delores – Indecent noise
Out of the Blue – System F
Everythings been written – 8 Wonders
Imagineer (Alex M.O.R.P.H remix) – Lange
Gouryella (Extended mix) – Gouryella
Without you (Dogzilla dub mix) – Dogzilla
Helsinki Scorching (Alex Morph remix) – Super8 vs Dj Tab
This pacemaker device mix is done during a very busy train ride to the Edinburgh fridge festival. Its a long one at 1 hour 52 minutes, certainly not the longest I have mixed but its a good one. The mix is full of tunes, which I don’t normally play or if they are the alternative mix (b-side)
Its been a while since I uploaded a new pacemaker mix, mainly because I have been so busy and also listening to a bunch of new trance tunes. This was recorded on the way back from York on a train recently.
Of course, any reason to do a good mix while taking planes and trains over the last month. I did this one while sat in Helsinki Airport but made a bit of a mistake with the crossfader which meant doing it again.
@coldclimate expect one hell of a mix from all this time I'm hanging around Helisinki and Munich airports
The mix is a weird of mix trance and dub steppy type tunes. I kind thought of Oli tearing up the road on a summers day. So theres moments of uplifting trance alongside some of dirty dub step. I’ve been playing it while riding around on the scooter and it great.
I mentioned in my trance set from July, that I had recorded two trance sets; and was deciding which one I preferred. The full’on classic trance set won out but I wanted to share the alternative one too. It pretty raw and short but I quite like it, especially since I love out of the blue by system F so much that it was played twice!
Remix culture, sometimes read-write culture, is a society that allows and encourages derivative works by combining or editing existing materials to produce a new product. A remix culture would be, by default, permissive of efforts to improve upon, change, integrate, or otherwise remix the work of copyright holder
My personal thoughts are, DJ culture was new exciting and things were moving and changing all the time. We had vinyl, record players and mixers. But people were innovating and doing new things on top of that. Then the technology changed from spinning discs (Vinyl, CDs heck even Minidisc if you must) to Solid State/Digital. There was a lot of push back and there still is… But you can’t stop the future.
However we adopted the digital methods to do exactly the same thing. You can see this in the vast amount of digital dj tools, 2 decks and a mixer. Skeuomorphism hell! And it needs to die! Because a good 20 years after the first Mp3 dj software (virtual turntables by Carrot innovations). The interface, method and general approch is exactly the same.
2 decks and a mixer (kinda) – 19962 decks and a mixer with extras – 2016
That’s more than half my life time! That has to be some kind of a joke!
Ok under the hood things have changed but not far enough and wheres the distruptive changes? The DJ world still seems to be stressing out about auto BPM? Its happened get over it. For a whole culture built on innovation and creativity, it seems highly ironic?
But this was just scratching the surface of a much larger problem with DJ/Remix culture. I put together some slides which horrible to read back through as they are 5 years old, but its been super useful when talking to people and companies about what DJ hackday could be about. It was due an update and thankfully I can finally tick this off my list.
The 1% rule is a rule of thumb pertaining to participation in an internet community, stating that only 1% of the users of a website actively create new content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk. Variants include the 1-9-90 rule (sometimes 90–9–1 principle or the 89:10:1 ratio), which states that in a collaborative website such as a wiki, 90% of the participants of a community only view content, 9% of the participants edit content, and 1% of the participants actively create new content.
In the case of DJ hackday; out of 100 people…
90 will be consumer (lurkers/watchers)
1% will be makers (creators)
9% will be remixers (editors)
Music hackday cators for the 1% and of course moving remixers and consumers into makers. DJ hackday is moving consumers and makers into remixers. Its a very viable area with plenty of people doing interesting great things already. Everyone we have spoke over the last 5 years have gotten the concept and really want to see it become a real things now.
Myself and Simon have started a Lanyrd page to start building support and getting more people interest. Its also one of Mozilla Festival’s Fridge events, which is fantastic as it shows the progession from its small prototype to a full blown event and Mozilla are always a supporter of remix cultures.
Capitalising on the recent interest in the Get Down on Netflix, which sums up a bit of why DJ/Remix culture is important. I created some simple teaser posters. Expect a proper poster in near future but right now, its about getting the word out. And we’re really targetting those who never thought of themselves as DJs or participating in remix culture. People like you!
As the year counts down towards Winter, I’ll be looking for people to help and other companies to join the DJ Hack. We already have some great names (tbc) and starting to sort out venues for the night events. Of course we already have the MMU Shed for the main hack which is a great space for a hackday. The actual hack dates are Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th January, with a social event on the Friday 13th January and post hackday party on Sunday evening somewhere we can try out some of the hacks.
If you are interested in helping out on the day, know a great venue, like to support in some way, set a challenge or want to come help organise it. Get in touch…
Feel free to ping myself a tweet or drop a message via email, my contact form, comment, etc… I’m quite easy to get hold of.
This one I have been listening to on and off for the last few weeks on my phone as I wonder around Manchester. Lots of new tunes and a less hectic pace of about 135bpm, but plenty of hands in the air moments and smooth mixing.
I also added chapter marks to give you can idea of what was influencing my tune selections.
Enjoy!
Perpetual Motion – Protoculture
Hold that sucker down (Jerome Isma-Ae’s 10 year anniversary mix) – Jerome Isma-Ae
Running up the hill – (Jerome Isma-Ae bootleg) – Placebo
Humming the lights – Armin van Buuren pres. Gaia
Shelter (Photographer remix) – Dash Berlin feat. Roxanne Emery
Hello (Jerome Isma-Ae Remix) – Above & Beyond
Whites Of Her Eyes – Simon Patterson
Stellar – Driftmoon
Brush Strokes – Simon Patterson
Imagineer (Alex M.O.R.P.H remix) – Lange
Seven Cities (V-One’s Living Cities remix) – Solar Stone
The speed and progress of digital djing has been reasonable but frankly it could be better. Yes its the perfect setup for a DJ Hackday, but regardless. I was talking to somebody about the Pacemaker device and started to reminisce about Digital Djing. Now I know I’m going to sound like grandad but I think its interesting to remember where we came from.
I was saying I remember VTT (Virtual TurnTables) which from my memory was the first commercially available Dj software I was aware of. I had a copy and installed it on my 200 MMX desktop computer. It ran ok but frankly it was super basic, no auto BPM, very laggy pitch control and the cross-fader slow to react.
However I have to say it did support multiple sound cards and configurations which would make it actually usable in a real DJ environment. It would play Mp3’s, Wav’s and Aiff’s. Unlimited playback (which on a 200MMX is about 2 songs max). Special effects, very basic sampling and looping.
The thing to remember is this is about 1997, this is 2 years before the height of Napster. The advancement in Digital Djing was CDj’s at the time. For Carrot Innovations to rock up with a DJ application so early and for it to look like something the Djs was use to was mind blowing. Heck Mp3’s wasn’t even legally available outside the darknets! So we had to rip CDs using one of the darknet dodge tools. It was only recently you could do it legally in the UK.
Crazy times…! But thank you Carrot Innovation for creating VTT.
