Over the Air on the Blackberry Playbook Live
Category: italic+mixing
The pacemaker is back baby…
The original pacemaker team did say on a forum of pacemaker fans they were working on a mobile app but I had no idea about this…
Found via Guy West on twitter, Engadget broke the news that the pacemaker was coming back as a RIM blackberry app.
News just in this morning, however, is that the DJ tool is back as a PlayBook app thanks to an exclusive collaboration with the tablet’s maker. Details are sparse right now, as the information spilled at RIM’s event this morning at MWC, but we do know that there will be auto beatmatching, vinyl mode with scratching, digital mode, looping, loop travel, pitch control, beat skip and “pro level” effects. All we have in terms of availability is that it will be out this spring, with no word on price.
On the pacemaker teams facebook page and Pacemaker forum for more details…
Today we proudly announced a partnership with RIM / BlackBerry at a press conference at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. As a result, we’re porting the technology of Pacemaker® Device onto the BlackBerry PlayBook.
After investigating a wide range of mobile platforms to make a digital transition we selected the PlayBook due to its highly responsive user interface. DJ’s requires very low latency and the PlayBook delivers very well on that aspect.For those who don’t own a BlackBerry PlayBook please stay tuned as we have future plans for other platforms as well.
Btw, our next stop will be the South By South West festival in Austin Texas, so if you’re there, let us know 🙂
I’m very tempted to go down to CEX and pick up a 2nd hand Blackberry Playbook but I’m sure Android isn’t far behind…?
There’s a open life in the Pacemaker yet
Just when I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to switch back to using a laptop to dj… I receive a email message from the new Pacemaker community…
As you probably know we were trying to get hold of the Pacemaker source
code so we could see a future for the Pacemaker.We have now had contact (has joined our forum) from Jonas who was to
original inventor of the Pacemaker and founded Tonium. He has purchased the
rights to the Pacemaker design & software back, and intends to take this
project forware again!Not only that he has already offered that the GPL’d source code WILL be
made available on Sourceforge.We are yet to find out Jonas’ intentions, but this is exciting news for all
us Pacemaker users. Keep checking our forum for any updates.
Jonas posted a message on the forum…
Dear PMD users, I invented Pacemaker back in 2005 and founded Tonium later that year. It makes me very happy that PMD is still alive and being used, despite the lack of support and hardship that I know you have gone through. I even recognise some of you from the good old Pacemaker.net days – Sox, Migzy, Regis and many more, you are all remembered.
Developing Pacemaker was among the most exciting things I have ever done. It was a project that came out of a pure passion for music and a feeling that it had to be possible to create a DJ system in the size of an iPod. Developing Pacemaker was also the toughest thing I have ever done. Starting from scratch with nothing but an idea for a hardware device. Luckily, I was very naive and did not foresee the challenges lying ahead.Following the launch and our expansion in the spring of 2008, I was exhausted. We had basically expanded from two people to more than thirty in just a little bit over one year, while developing PMD, PME and Pacemaker.net. Honestly, I was a little bit over my head in managing the kind of company Tonium had become. Therefore I stepped down as the CEO in May 2008. That proved to be a mistake. I was not too impressed with how the company was managed going forwards. But that said, it was not easy for the new management, they were in for a great challenge given the global economy crisis, the smartphone revolution and new disruptive music services popping up. And now, as you all know, Tonium have ceased its operations.But! I have some news for all of you. On Thursday January 12, it will finally be official that my new company 100 Milligrams have purchased the intellectual property rights for Pacemaker, something I have been trying to do for years. Taking part in this venture is my long time friend Daniel Wallner, co-founder of Tonium and the engineering genius behind Pacemaker®. I am also happy to say that we have added a fresh face and a third member to our core team, Olof Berglof, an innovative designer and marketeer. We have also been able to get a little bit of funding and the three of us are now working day and night to transform Pacemaker into the new music and technology landscape.
We would also like to help supporting PMD users in the best kind of way. Your forum is fantastic and we will point people in your direction as well as trying to be here ourselves as much as possible. When it comes to hardware problems, we will try to be as helpful as we can by providing component information, schematics etc. Unfortunately we cannot promise new firmware versions, at least not for some time. We just do not have the necessary manpower. However, we will in time make sure the auto upgrade from Pacemaker® Editor is working and the GPL source code from Pacemaker Device will be available on SourceForge.
I will personally update you on the progress of the New Pacemaker Project and let me know if you have any questions or ideas.
Cheers,
Jonas (@jonorberg)
How awesome is that!!!
Can’t wait to see what comes next… Open is the way forward, open hardware, open software, open idles…
The late night mixes
A few mixes I’ve recently posted to MixCloud recorded from my Pacemaker… Both mixes are on the darker tip hence the late night titles… Looks like I’m going to have to consider switching back to laptop djing in the near future, as the pacemaker gets older and older. In the meanwhile I have 2 mixes for your listening pleasure…
This mix is both dark and light, a little something for the winter nights. Recorded on a cold late night in December
- Spotlight – Jornvan Deynhoven
- Ultracurve – Cosmic Gate
- Intruder – Armin Van Buuren vs M.I.K.E
- The Labyrinth (Part One) – Moogwai
- Circles (Andy Blueman Remix) – Robert Nickson
- Constellation (John O’Callaghan Remix) – Thomas Bronzwaer
- Surrender (Sneijder vs John O’Callaghan Remix) – Full Tilt Feat Deirdre McLaughlin
- Intution (Mathin Roth Remix) – Marninx Pres. Ecco
- Comet – Skytech
- Frozen – Dogzilla
- Turbulence – Klauss Goulart
- Body of contact (cosmic gate club mix) – Cosmic Gate
- Rheinkraft (extended mix) – Oliver Klein
- Everything’s Been Written – 8 Wonders
- Nothing Else Matters (Aly & Fila Remix) – Max Graham feat. Ana Criado
- Casino Fire – Matias Faint
- The string which binds us (8 Wonders mix) – Arnej
- From the Earth (Breakfast Remix) – Andrew Bayer
The late night ear killer mix by Cubicgarden on Mixcloud
This mix is pretty dark and moody, its full of crumbling tech beats and progressive cycles. You certainly want to take it easy with the volume control on this one. Recorded on a late night like the late night intruder mix.
- Body of Contact (Cosmic Gate club mix) – Cosmic Gate
- Kalopsia (Monogato’s Filth remix)- The Blizzard
- Strike – Signum
- Intruder – Armin van Buuren vs MIKE
- Rheinkraft (extended mix) – Oliver Klein
- One Night in New York City (Chris Leibing mix) – The Horrorist
- Transponder – Mauro Picotto
- Casino Fire – Matias Faint
- One for you (Oliver Klein remix) – Oliver Klein
- Ninety – Sander Van Doorm
- Strange Bends (Kyau vs Albert mix) – Sebastian Sand
- Joy Energizer (Psycho mix) – Joy Kitikonti
- Shnorkel – Miki Litvak & Ido Ophir
- Panic Attack – Simon Patterson
Goodbye, let’s mix…
I moved away from lets mix years ago even before they did the dirty on the Pacemaker with Pioneer, although its still a shame to see its going…
It is with great regret that Let’s Mix today announces that the Letmix.com mix streaming site will go offline on January 1st 2012. This decision follows the reassessing of our licensing restrictions, alongside a critical evaluation of the business case for our service. Our intention to expand on our operations had fundamentally outgrown the Let’s Mix site.
The closing of Let’s Mix is not the result of complaints from copyright holders. It is a decision based on the equation of cost for hosting and delivering copyrighted components, versus the ability of monetizing use of the site.
We found that as the business of music streaming evolved, so would we need to. Had we desired for Let’s Mix to grow any bigger, we would also have been forced to impose strict limitations on mixes in ways neither we nor our users would have wanted to. Faced with the proposal of sacrifizing user experience and scale, we were forced to reach the difficult decision of seizing all activity at Let’s Mix.
It has been a great pleasure to enjoy the hours upon hours of mixed music, and we are thankful for the many discoveries we have made listening to your mixes.
We have already begun offering our members the ability to download their own music mixes when logged in to their accounts. These are after all your music compilations, and we encourage you to download backups of these unless you don’t already have these in place.
Access to the service in its entity will be terminated on January 1st 2012.
Good to see them providing Data portability of mixes at least… Maybe the ability to transfer to Mixcloud would be good… Although looking at the export ability, it only allows you to download the media file and none of the metadata…. Shame
The Satisfaction Zero mix
Its been a long while since I’ve uploaded a mix to Mixcloud or even Soundcloud. So I decided to throw together a mix on the pacemaker and stick it up. Its a strange mix of some classics and some new tunes. Nothing over thought, just good music mixed together…
I present the Satisfaction zero mix
- D.N.A – W&W
- Language (Santiago Nino Mix) – Hammer & Bennett
- Lift – Sean Tyas
- Skyfire (Alex M.O.R.P.H Mix) – Shogun
- Everything’s Been Written – 8 Wonders
- The Strings Which Bind Us – Arnej
- Beautiful Thing (Photon Project Remix) – Andain
- Ramazing – Ram
- No More Alone (John O’Callaghan Remix) – Giuseppe Ottavian Feat Stephen Pickup
- Without You (John O’Callaghan Remix) – Dogzilla
- Ultracurve – Cosmic Gate
- The Situation (Liquid Life Remix) – A Situation
- Ramsterdam (Jornvan Deynhoven Remix) – Ram
- Intuition (Original Mix) – Marninx Pres. Ecco
- Big Sky (Agneli & Nelson Remix) – John O’Callaghan Feat. Audrey Gallagher
- Black Is Back – The Blackmaster
- Cream – Blank & Jones
Stem based mixing coming your way soon?
One of the killer ideas which came out of the Mozilla Festival in the Dj challenge was the idea of Stem based mixing…
The idea is great and I think there’s plenty of momentum behind it. Daniel James and Fin Stamp worked this idea through and now there’s a post on the Mixxx forums. Here’s the details of the post…
At the Mozilla Festival in London last weekend, I took part in a Hack the DJ workshop, looking at ways to take digital DJ’ing to the next level. One of the ideas proposed was stem mixing, using multichannel files in DJ applications. A proprietary implementation of this idea is Fireplayer but this app is built with the intention that users will buy remixable versions of (a very limited number of) well-known songs from an in-app store. I would like to work towards a new open standard for stem mixing, something that is compatible with sharing our mixes on the open web – legally, of course – but could also be used by record labels that sell tracks to DJs.
For example, eight channel Ogg Vorbis files where the first two tracks are a stereo mix of the drums, third and fourth stereo bass, fifth and sixth stereo vocals, and seventh and eighth tracks everything else. This means that you can mute or solo individual stems in the mix, giving you the versatility of four-deck or eight-deck mixing but without the problems of keeping many decks in sync, since the stems within a single file are locked on the same timeline. Also, it makes using the mixer a lot simpler than for many-deck mixing, because you don’t need to keep assigning the crossfader to the various different decks.
Of course this means that the eight channel .ogg file has to be prepared specially for DJ’ing, but this is already possible in Audacity. So we have a file format, and an editor, but what we don’t yet have is full support for stem mixing in open source DJ applications. Sweep supports scratching on eight-channel files, but it doesn’t have a mixer. Mixxx has a mixer, but doesn’t support multichannel Ogg files (yet), as far as I can see.
So, what do you think? Is stem mixing a genuinely useful feature that will allow DJs to be more creative, or will it fail if the best music continues to be available in stereo only? Please add your comments below
I like to think this could be massive thing because although you might be able to get the Stem’s of a tune if your a international superstar dj and have contacts in high places. But if your just a bedroom dj or even play out quite a bit but not a popular name, getting access to the stems of a tune is near impossible.
In fact what were trying to do is standardise the format, so it means the bedroom producers and the massive music businesses can compete on a level platform. This might strike fear into some but when the stereo track is no more and everyone is expecting the Stems of the track as standard, then you will have to go along with it.
Ogg Vorbis is a great starting point and knowing it can support up to 200+ tracks is great for future capability. There are a ton of questions of how it works for a Dj but its certainly a challenge which will be fun to have. I just hope we can stay away from the logic/alberton type interface…
Can’t wait to mix with Stem’ed Ogg Vorbis files…!
End of the zune, ipod and the pacemaker?
I think we can pretty much say its the end of the road for the Mpeg3 players.
Microsoft pretty much ported the zune software to their new Microsoft Phone 7 operating system, Apple have done the same and look to be killing the ipod range finally. The single purpose music player is pretty much out for the count.
So what about the Tonium Pacemaker?
Well Tonium went bust a while ago… and the thread is tonium alive? charts the disastrous mistakes which were made over time…
Now everyones trying to get the source code, so we can try and extend the life of such a great product…
Can’t believe I’ve owned the product for over 3 years now, I was one of the first to get it. A whole year before Engadget even. I really hope the community can get the source code because besides the poor battery life and dodgy recording of mixes on the device. There’s already people hacking in SSDs into the Pacemaker, so there’s plenty of people up for compiling and hacking around.
Interesting segway – we’re finally setting a challenge for the next evolution or even revolution in djing at the Mozilla festival later this year…
What happened to Dj Hackday?
On the cusp of BarCampMediaCity (next weekend) I’m trying to think about all the things which follow on afterwards.
One of the events coming along in the next 2 months is the Mozilla Media Festival which use to be the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival.
Things are still being sorted out but they got a great team of people including Michelle Thorne, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino and Arran Ross-Paterson. Its happening in my old college Ravensbourne which moved to North Greenwich a few years ago.
I’m hoping to pull together a great team group of people from different companies to be involved in our dj hack challenge.
As mentioned before the best hacks, ideas, etc will go forward into use during the Future Everything 2012 festival.
I’ve emailed quite a few people with this rough description of the challenge and a link to my related presentation
Audio and Music making has gone a revolution, things like Ableton Live and Live Looping has brought new ways to create music. But Dj culture is still focused on 2 decks and a mixer. Next-generation DJ kit has not taken advantage of innovations in music making and has become stagnant. Dj culture has always been forward thinking, but has stalled in the internet era.
So far I’ve convinced, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, RjDj, etc to be involved… But what I’d really like is some more software and hardware makers.
I got talking to Dave a while ago and thought wouldn’t it be cool if we could get the guys behind Free and Open Mixxx software to come along. Of course Ableton would be a natural fit too. Both I’ve contacted… I’ve yet to contact Native Instruments, Virtual Dj, Serato, etc. Hardware wise it would be great to have Vestax, Pioneer, Technics, Numark, etc involved.
There’s also a thought about setting a VJ challenge to go along with the Dj challenge, but thats just thinking out loud via the guys at Future Everything.
Of course if you can help with any of these companies, please drop me a comment or email… Once BarCampMediaCity is over, I’ll be all over this challenge.
The end of #Startupbar, for now…
It started so well but ended quickly when one of the 4 owners of Arcadia bar decided to give it up… Unforgeable we’ve were talking to the owner who decided to pack it in…
So that means no more lovely ladies doing there make up as they start there friday nights… (you got to love Creative Commons licensed images on Flickr) I’m sure they will be back in the future…
Now the future of Startup bar is in doubt but fear not, its not over… We’ll be looking for a new venue to host Startupbar… Till then you can sign up to the growing community on Facebook.