Category: italic+mixing

A hackday for Djs…

Time for a hackday for djs?

View more presentations from Ian Forrester

Recently I’ve started thinking its time for a hackday around djing… And BBC R&D should be interested in the idea. So instead of writing a paper I started writing a presentation quickly giving an overview of some of the justification why I felt a hackday was a good idea and what aspects of djing could do with hacking…

A lot of people have said, but surely there’s already music hackday… why would you feel the need to do something around djing…? Surely that fits into music hackday…?

Well yes it could do, but music is maybe too broad for a dj hackday… On slide 2 and 3, I push the idea of djing and recorded music oppose to making music. I’m quite rude about Alberton live which I don’t mean to, just think there’s so much more to the future of djing that making music.

I hope to improve the presentation which was done mainly for Social Media Cafe Manchester. There was quite a bit of insulting vinyl and thats not my aim really, and theres a lot more thinking around feedback mechanisms for djs which I need to add. Anyhow, you can read the PDF on slideshare.

Dj mixes rebooted…

pacemaker_sonar_june_2007_10

Counting from a few posts ago, I’ve been thinking…

A while ago I suggested to Mixcloud the concept of mobile playlists tailored for Mixes, but they didn’t really see the point. But recently I suggested the same thing to Dirty Si and he was a lot more receptive to the concept. Right now when I do a mix, I tend to create a piece of metadata to go with the mix. The NFO file (yep straight out of the darknet) contains the playlist order and any other metadata I feel is required. I would use PLS, M3U or even XSPF but I’ve just done something to scratch my own itch. I might switch to using XSPF with a namespace for my own metadata and add the SMIL namespace. There’s a whole bunch of hacking which needs to be done in this area…

Playlists do not equal mixes…

I’ve been thinking about this even more recently since Google and Amazon’s music locker systems.

Everyones been thinking about singles or albums. But I’m thinking way beyond that. What about mixes? Imagine if the necessary metadata was in place to create extra special experiences around mixes?

But why even mess around with the metadata when you can mess with the actual mix its self?

The Pacemaker (for example) right now, stores the actions of the dj and then recreates the mix using the tunes on the host machine. I’m wondering if you could grab that data and turn it into something like MIDI then you could really do some revolutionary things to dj mixes.

Would it be possible to setup a Amazon EC2/Google app instance which could read the midi data and use the raw tunes to create a stream in real time? What effect would this have on listen to mixes?

Once again, I’d really like to hack around with this stuff if I had the time.

The White Space Conflict mix

  1. Dark side of the sun – Rory Gallagher
  2. Breathe (Blake Jarrell remix) – Anna Nalick
  3. Wonder of life (F&W remix) – Tukan Light
  4. The strings that bind us – Arnej
  5. Please save me (Push remix) – Sunscreem vs Push
  6. Everythings been Written – 8 Wonders
  7. Gouryella – Gouryella
  8. Unexpectation (Dengavs Manus mix) – Vengeance
  9. The Truth (David West Remix) – Handstrong feat Tiff Lacey
  10. Language (Santiago Nino Dub tech mix) – Hammer and Bennett
  11. Nothing else matters – Max Graham feat Ana Criado
  12. 1999 (Gouryella mix) – Binary Finary
  13. Constellation (John O’Callaghan remix) – Thomas Bronzwaer
  14. Invisible Touch (Ferry Corsten’s Touch) – Bohina

Another new mix by myself, once again recorded via the analogue input in my laptop because the pacemaker’s own recording system is still screwy for myself. In actual fact I did record the mix twice at the same time, once on the pacemaker and again on my laptop. One sounded far better that the other as you would imagine. In actual fact I’m very tempted to upload the busted pacemaker mix, so people can hear the screwy recording but I’ll have to make it clear on another site (maybe archive.org) what its up there to do.

The mix is recorded while relaxing one day recently in my house. So there’s few mistakes, unlike when I’m attempting to mix while walking the streets of Manchester or heading down the wrong way in Irlam….

I’m tempted to upload this to soundcloud too, even though I somewhat dissed soundcloud for its lack of mix support. But the ability to download and licence the track is killer and mixcloud seem not bothered about ever supporting downloads of the mix. Meaning a whole group of people never listen to the mix because frankly who wants to listen to a mix on there browser? Even with the nice fuctionality they have around tracklistings and all that… Its still flash and worst still its mobile flash and once again Flash kind of sucks even on Android…

I a while ago suggested to Mixcloud the concept of mobile playlists tailored for Mixes, but they didn’t really see the point. But recently I suggested the same thing to Dirty Si and he was a lot more receptive to the concept. Right now when I do a mix, I tend to create a piece of metadata to go with the mix. The NFO file (yep straight out of the darknet) contains the playlist order and any other metadata I feel is required. I would use PLS, M3U or even XSPLIF but I’ve just done something to scratch my own itch. I might switch to using XSPLIF with a namespace for my own metadata and add the SMIL namespace. There’s a whole bunch of hacking which needs to be done in this area…

An appetite for disruption mix

Its been a long time since I have done a mix and recorded it mainly because my pacemaker no longer reliably records mixes any more. However I can record mixes the old way using my laptop and the analogue interface.

I also switched from soundcloud to mixcloud, which unforgivable doesn’t have the option to download the actual mix like soundcloud use to. But I expect I’ll upload it somewhere else in the near future for those who want it on there portable music player.

So here’s the first effort… I bring you my appetite for disruption mix.

How to use the Pacemaker editor with Ubuntu via wine

How I got the Pacemaker editor working under Ubuntu with Wine

This should be a easy task but Tonium did something to a later version of the free pacemaker editor, so it no longer worked. In the meantime I personally have been running a virtual machine just for the purpose of taking tunes on and off my pacemaker. No one could work out what they changed in the later version but although you could get the software to work, it wouldn’t recognize the pacemaker device at all. I even stuck it on WineHQ to see if that might help…

Many people tried different ways to get it working but none of them worked. Tonium unhelpfully said it was only supported on Windows and Mac.

But they came back with…

Yeah i am aware of this. ubuntu runs a program called ‘wine’ that emulates windows so you can still run windows only programmes such as this. was just wondering if anyone out there had experienced similar problems…

i have looked on ubuntu forums and pacemaker should run fine, apart from it being a bit fiddly to unmount sometimes.

Then today I had a good think about the problem and started thinking out of the box/experimenting over lunch. Last night I was convinced I would need to install a Github version of Wine for the USB to work and thought I’d install wine from source while eating my lunch.

But before I got to remove Wine, I thought I’d have a online search again and look through the wine settings again. Surely someone must have the solution. I found someone who suggested there might be a read/write problem with the pacemaker and suggested the following.

chown yourusername /media/yourpacemaker

chmod u=rw /media/yourpacemaker

After that I thought for a while, surely theres nothing magical happening. I mean Tonium are using open methods for most of the software and the build of the pacemaker. Even the config files are simply .xml files. The only illusion so far is the stm files which seem to be the analysed raw data stuffed in xml files. So we’re talking low level methods to make it all work, surely this would extend to the way Tonium did the method for putting tunes on the actual device. In actual fact, Musicinstinct2 had already started building a manager for linux and got it mostly working except for the stm file part. Then I had a moment of genius…

My thoughts I documented on the pacemaker getsatisfaction help list.

I got thinking that Windows simply mounts the Pacemaker then the Pacemaker Editor simply looks at a certain drive letter. The problem we’ve had is as default Wine sets the Pacemaker hard drive as drive E: as default. Windows from memory allocates drive letters from Z backwards. That or Tonium through they would be clever and use a letter which wouldn’t normally be used!

I also thought about upgrading my Wine to support USB better but I started thinking, wine can see the pacemaker as a drive if I select it. So it must be the editor which is at fault.

So the first thing I did was mounted the drive under Z: Y: X: then used different advanced options to see if that made a difference. By pure chance on the 1st time I loaded up the pacemaker editor it automatically showed the contains of the Pacemaker. I thought it was a mistake and decided to close it down and load it up again. Bingo! Exactly the same thing. So I did some crude operations like copying files, renaming files, etc. They all pretty much worked.

At this point I had to share my joy with the world by posting up this post.

After this I did some tweaking so it could see my music collection, etc and discovered the option of type was essential to the whole thing working. I had by pure chance selected floppy disc on the correct drive letter. I also tried removing drives to see exactly which drive it was expecting, and discovered it was all about X: it seemed. Without waiting I wrote up the whole thing on the community maintained forum.

Mount the Pacemaker as usual by plugging it into a linux machine (I’m using Ubuntu 10/10 64bit edition)

I set the pacemaker to be writable using,

"sudo chown yourusername /media/yourpacemaker"

"sudo chmod u=rw /media/yourpacemaker"

*warning if you don’t understand the command don’t type it in… and I’m not responsible for anything which happens.

I’m assuming you already have Wine 1.3 and the Pacemaker Editor installed…

In the Wine preferences, setup a new drive letter X: and set it to /media/Pacemaker

Then set the type under the advanced options to floppy drive.

Now start the pacemaker editor with the pacemaker connected to the machine and it should come up and you can drag files on and off it.

Now in hindsight it might just be the floppy drive option not the drive letter and I’m unsure if you need to make the pacemaker writable using the commands above. But to be honest, I don’t see them harming anything and I’m sure someone else will narrow the instructions down soon enough.

The only question left is if Linux pacemaker users will see this or not? I certainly hope so…

New Pacemaker firmware 16219

Pacemaker

Forgot to blog this but it seems like Tonium has pretty much disappeared from the scene but some how they uploaded a secret firmware upgrade package… If you have a Pacemaker and would like to try out the new firmware, here’s the details of how to do it. Bear in mind, this firmware is not official and was found on the pacemaker download site by chance. So its very beta, you have been warned

  1. Point you browser to this address: http://www.pacemaker.net/Default.aspx?documentID=158&
  2. once there you’ll be presented with a XML file… now Copy The sessionID… Then point you browser to this address : www.pacemaker.net/Default.aspx?documentID=159&FirmwareVersion=16219&SessionID=(SESSIONID)&DSN=00AA0xx101XXX
  3. Note Look at the address where is says (PASTE SESSIONID) cut that part and replace it with the ID you got from browsing the other page… once done you’ll can download the firmware file..
  4. Once downloaded, rename it to .ZIP… extract it…. the put the extracted file on you pacemaker in the .pacemaker directory (if you can’t find the .pacemaker directory make sure you can browse hidden files on your OS)… once done unplug the pacemaker and the update will be installedWarning: As there’s no official release, theres no manual as well…

You can also download the firmware here, if you can’t be bother doing the session ID thing.

I’ve installed it on my own and not noticed any side effects except the very small one of losing all my previous setup. After 5mins it was all back to as i remembered it.

New changes seem to be.

  • BeatLock – The beat lock has been much improved according to some people. I always use my ear so it little difference to me.
  • Snapping loops – I think the loops now snap to the beat, making it much easier to loop
  • Beat jumping – You can now skip jump beats if your timing isn’t quite right, this could be useful.

I would have liked to have seen more, but the community is getting organised so we may see some serious hacking very soon. I do wonder if they will respect the GPL by giving us all the source code.

Mixcloud, a service built for djs

In a quick follow up to my previous blog post about soundcloud… I’ve now spent some time with Mixcloud and to be fair its not bad. I’m considering switching over, not because I don’t like soundcloud but because its just not the greatest place to host mixes.

My only problems right now is the ability to upload a decent quality recording (the whole file has to be less that 100meg in total) and the ability to upload multiple types of files under the same mix.

The pledge of mixcloud

The playlist editor is great. It supports Serato playlists (which I’m hoping are in XML, so I can easily convert them from my nfo files I currently use.

Playlist control

Even better is the timestamp method which allows you to jump to any position in the mix and tie it to a point on the playlist. Excellent stuff
Complete timestamp control

Mixcloud doesn’t have the polish of soundcloud but its certainly a better fit for djs. As far as I can see the whole thing is free and it even has competitions you can enter (just like lets mix). Its also UK based which is great (soundcloud is Swedish). If I was speak to the guys behind mixcloud, I would say please please add,

  • The ability to license content including creative commons
  • Allow people to download the mixes if the dj allows it, like soundcloud do.
  • Allow alternative versions of the same mix (this could be a nice pro feature, pro users get access to the transcoder)
  • Add the ability to comment on sections of the mix and the whole mix if they want to
  • Groups are a good idea (they work well on flickr and soundcloud)
  • Spend a little more time on the design of the site if possible

Thats my list really…

Soundcloud from a dj point of view

I love soundcloud but it has a few issues if your a dj and are uploading mixes like I am.

Before I run through them, I want to make sure people understand this isn’t a startup assassination, soundcloud is a dream come true but its not perfect for people uploading mixes. Hopefully this will help improve there service after my tweet on Thursday. Its also worth mentioning that Alex Meyers recommended Mixcloud which seems to be a sound cloud knock off but aimed at djs and radio producers. I’ve yet to really try it out, but I’ll try and give it a shot before posting this blog entry.

Terminology and comments

Here is my latest mix, the geometry set. Soundcloud does a excellent job displaying the waveform, and allowing you to add comments to a part of the track but the terminology is wrong. This isn’t a track, its a mix or some would say a set. Which confuses things even further. Also adding comments to a 60mins mix is tricky at this level. Now before you tell me you can zoom in as such, the point is that comments on a 60-180min mix is kind of a bit of a joke when looking at the wave form like this.

Talking about termology again… What record label do you put the mix under? What catalogue number? What Key and even what BPM? I know there all optional pieces of metadata but it all adds up to a service not very friendly towards mixes.

There use to be an option under type for mixes but thats now gone. The best option I can use to put my mixes under a type is recording or live. Why did mix go away?

Sets and playlists?

Unless you were to upload all your tracks to soundcloud and add them one by one, it seems to be frankly impossible to add a playlist. I end up copying my playlist from a my *.nfo file to the comment field. Ideally Soundcloud would have support for the metadata which dcloud, mixccomes from systems like VirtualDj, Tractor, etc. If not allow me to specify when mixes start and finish. The Pacemaker software I use does actually do this but I want to transfer that metadata over to the web. This may be a problem which can be solved while were hacking the pacemaker.

What I see other people do is add comments to specify the areas of a mix, but to be frank its a bit of a hack and not a very good one at that. Here’s Mark Schouls latest and greatest as a example of how the comment area can be used to hack/divide the mix up.

Even the lets mix has this ability to define a playlist/tracklist by using the metadata of the software your using or allowing you to edit it yourself. Here’s me editing my own mix, one step beyond entropy.

It seems like a hassle but to be honest, if I’m uploading a mix roughly once a month, its going to be worth me doing the hardwork of filling this stuff in. And heck if soundcloud can automaticlly work this out by uploading a file of some kind, even better.

Interestingly Mixcloud does the time stamping straight after you upload a mix. I’ve yet to see how effective it is, but at least it has the option baked into its DNA.

Downloads

I love that Soundcloud supports Creative commons licenses but what bugs me is that you can only upload one type of item. So if for example I upload a Ogg Vorbis file, soundcloud will ask you if you would like to allow them to create a mp3 of that file for the flash player. Great but if you go to download that file (rights permitted, you have to enable this) it will only give the person the choice of the file you uploaded first time. Aka you upload a Ogg, you can only download a Ogg, not the Mpeg3. Even worst you can’t upload multiple files, say for example a low quality version for people to download and a high quality version for those on a better connection.

I usually upload a Mpeg3 because its the most universal, although my pacemaker generates Ogg Vorbis files. I would however like the ability for the Soundcloud to generate alternative versions or for me to upload alternative versions of the same mix.

I would really pay to see an option to dump files to Archive.org because although I like soundcloud, I don’t really trust them to host my files forever. Just like Blip.TV, if its a public or creative commons piece of media, the option should be there to send it to archive.org.

My other concerns are so very small and not really worthy airing in this blog post. But to give you an idea of what I mean, the flash uploader certainly winds me up sometimes. I know theres a html (old skool) uploader but its also a pain to use when uploading a massive mix. Tiny things, nothing major.

End of the day

Soundcloud is great but its really not a great place to put mixes, they could almost do another sound cloud site change a few things around including the business model and make it just for mixes. In actual fact when Alex Myers said about mixcloud, I did think it was soundcloud but setup for mixes.

The Geometry Set

The Geometry Set by cubicgarden

This is my latest mix on my pacemaker. Lots of new tunes and some classics returns.

Its known as just the geometry set, but why? Well most of the mix has something to do with geometry in some way. If you think you can work out the link in each tune, feel free to comment below.

You may have noticed this is also a much shorter mix that I usually do but it didn’t feel the need to be long and drawn out.

Ladies and Gentleman, I present The Geometry Set…

The Geometry Set by cubicgarden

  1. Endless Wave (albion remix) – Kamaya Painters
  2. Heal – Electrique Boutique
  3. Arctic Globe – DJ Governor Presents Orjan
  4. Strange Bends (Kyau Vs Albert) – Sebastian Sand
  5. Shadow World – Thomas Bronzwaer
  6. Call The Galaxy Taxi (Martin Roth Nu Style Remix) – Plastic Angel
  7. The Spring – Ernesto and Alex Fisher
  8. Ultra Curve – Cosmic Gate
  9. Exposure – Gareth Emery
  10. Perfect Wave – peter martin pres anthanasia
  11. The string that binds us (8 wonders remix) – Arnej
  12. Intution – Marninx Pres Ecco

The wrong end of irlam walkabout mix

The wrong end of irlam walkabout mix by cubicgarden

Another mix by myself (Dj Cubicgarden). This time its the wrong end of irlam walkabout mix. As you can imagine I did this while walking around Irlam (yes its a real place, near Manchester) and I kind of got a little lost. It was certainly the wrong end of Irlam, as the kiddies started gathering wondering why I was there, and what this weird thing I was clutching was (the pacemaker). Anyway, I made it out of irlam safely but unfortunately without my scooter, which also now needs a new battery.

The mix is far from perfect but its an enjoyable mix of trance. There’s a lot of new stuff mixed in with some old favorites. The problem with walking around doing a mix is you can’t see the screen very well when selecting tunes and things like buying a ticket or showing the inspector your ticket can really put you off the pace of a mix.

Anyway, hope you all enjoy it, here’s the playlist…

  1. Collider – Thomas Bronzwaer
  2. Man on the Run – Dash Berlin with Cerf, Mitlska
  3. Perfect Wave – Peter Martin pres Anthanasia
  4. Ninety – Sander van Doorn
  5. Jelly Tracks (rippin & drippin mix) – Oliver Klein
  6. Roundabout – Sam Sharp
  7. Breathing (push vocal mix) – Rank 1
  8. Off the world (large remix) – Martin Roth and Alex Bartlett
  9. Passionate (fire & ice remix) – Leon
  10. Intution (martin roth remix) – Marninx pres ecco
  11. Into the danger (M.I.K.E remix) – M.I.K.E vs Andrew Bennett
  12. Listening – Aly & Fila feat Josie
  13. Severn Cities (V-One Living Cities remix) – Solar Stone
  14. RAMsterdam (jornvan deynhoven remix) – RAM

The secret garden sunshine mix

The secret garden sunshine mix by cubicgarden

So my latest mix is online, I’m sorry to say I uploaded while at TedXSheffield (it was break time and the wifi was pretty fast). I got to take the wifi as it comes because it looks like I won’t get connectivity till the end of the month now.

As always the mix can be downloaded from soundcloud if the flash player doesn’t take your fancy or you want to listen to it on the go. I would upload a OGG version (the pacemaker defaults to ogg actually, so creating a mp3 version requires extra time and effort) but soundcloud don’t really support versions of the same stuff, I’m considering going back to blip.tv for media uploading. The playlist is below, Yes I really like Thomas Bronzwaer, he’s got a style of trance which really plays to my ear, this is also the reason for Collider twice.

This mix was recorded on my pacemaker while sitting outside in the sunshine of my new shared garden at Islington Wharf. Not my best mixing but entaining and well worth a listen. Thanks to Simon Lumb (@dirtysi) for the new Gouryella remix. I love Gouryella and this remix is pretty true to the original in lot of aspects. Enjoy…

  1. Man on the run – dash berlin with cerf
  2. Perfect Wave – peter martin pres anthanasia
  3. The strings that bind us – Arnej
  4. Be with me – Coast 2 coast feat Amanda Jami
  5. Collider – Thomas Bronzwaer
  6. denva – Ronski Speed
  7. Massive Motion – M.I.K.E
  8. Rainmaker – des mcmahon
  9. North Pole – Nitrous Oxide
  10. Sincere (pulsar remix) – Firewall
  11. The pride in your eyes (martin roth mix) – Tillmann Uhrmacher
  12. Collider – Thomas Bronzwear
  13. Resound – Thomas Bronzwear
  14. Constellation – Thomas Bronzwear
  15. Gouryella (gigolo remix) – Gouryella

Crowd sourced a mix

Its started when dirtySi said about getting some new trance and I was already buying some from audiojelly. Anyway he thought about doing a crowd sourced mix by opening it up to people online to set the playlist. I later thought it would be good if we use the same playlist to do similar mixes.

Yep, crowd source a set list, hours mix, around 10-15 songs – but we get to swap in a favorite and decide the order.

So it started… dj cubicgarden and dirtysi are now taking requests. Try and make it trance rather that generic house or some other genre. Actually it might be worth me or si post our tracks. If someone can suggest somewhere that would be great.

The pulse of a nation mix – Hospital mix

The pulse of a nation mix by cubicgarden

I had a listen to all of my mixes I recorded while in Hospital, and this is certainly the best mix of them all.

This one is certainly the best sounding of the bunch which includes the the amazing recover mix, the outta of hope mix and of course the pulse of a nation mix. Its a good length too at almost a hour long. The mixing isn’t perfect but its good enough for a listen. The choice of tunes is also good, a nice upbeat selection, I must have had a good day the day I recorded this mix. As always enjoy it… oh an you can directly download this mix using this link.

  1. By your side (martin roth remix) – the thrillseekers feat gina do
  2. Strange bends (kyau vs albert) – Sebastian Sand
  3. Grooveline (matt darey) – Blockster
  4. dark side of the moon (marc van linden remix) – Ernesto vs Bastian
  5. Intution (martin roth remix) – Marninx pres ecco
  6. the truth (david west remix) – Headstrong feat Tiff Lacey
  7. Circa Forever (R.E.mix) – Rapid eye
  8. The wave (svenson & gielen remix) – cosmic gate
  9. a new dawn (virtual vault remix) – steve forte rio
  10. So much – Vince Nysse
  11. Ultracurve – cosmic gate

One of the mixes while I was in Hospital – outta of hope mix

The outta of hope mix by cubicgarden

I had a listen to most of my mixes I recorded while in Hospital, and there some good stuff there. Its going to take a while to recover and make them decent for sharing because sometimes I had the cross fader in the wrong position which is a shame or forgot to do something equally silly. Anyway here’s a nice short one to kick us off. As always enjoy…

  1. Above the sky – Airwave
  2. Cafe del Mar (Marco V remix) – Energy 52
  3. Are you fine – Kyan vs Albert
  4. Sincere (pulser remix) – Firewall
  5. Language (santiago nino dub tech mix) – Hammer and Bennett
  6. Shadow World – Thomas Brozwaer
  7. Lately (Riley & durrant mix) – Airbiscuit
  8. She wants him – Moussa Clarke & Terrafunka
  9. Into Something – Richard durand
  10. The Blizzard (Monogato’s Filth Remix) – Kalopsia
  11. Gamesmaster (matt darey 1999 remix) – Lost Tribe

Mix transfer from elsewhere, great but…

Upload mix

Lets mix has launched a new way to upload a mix. Enter a url of a Mp3 and it will grab it and upload it for you. This should be a standard feature on a lot of social sites. The next step would be upload a RSS feed and it would strip any links to mp3s.

What I don’t get is Let’s Mix generally, is it use to be based around the Pacemaker and now the pacemaker seems to have been forgotten. For example when you upload your mix, it gives you the option of where you made the mix. So you got all the usual options like live, virtualdj, pcdj, etc but no pacemaker option.

Let’s mix is a weird place right now, I can’t work out if there trying to replace Soundcloud.com or do something different. They had better sort it out before I have a uploaded library on both.