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.
I love mixing with my Pacemaker but I have to admit there are some limitations like the crossfader and effects are a little tricky to do at the same time. So when I bought another pacemaker off ebay cheap and upgraded the battery and HDD to a SSD, I also upgraded that Pacemaker firmware, to include other features like beat-aware loops. That firmware can’t record mixes in the same way unfortunately.
So I’ve always thought maybe I could use the pacemaker with a mixer and record the mix over analogue means. Si gave me one of his old mixers a while ago, so for ages I thought about it but done little about it.
Ok its not great but I was tweaking the setup while I was recording.
So how did I do it…
The pacemaker has two outputs, so I pushed deck A to the main output and deck B to the headphone output. This means the pacemaker crossfader can never be used or touched while mixing. You only use the deck selection to choose the track you want to adjust or play with.
Deck A the main output is cabled to the Channel 1 on my mixer, while Deck B the headphone deck is output to Channel 3 on the mixer. (Channel 2 is mainly for the microphone and other things on the mixer)
I had to adjust the volume and gain on each channel and the pacemaker its self but generally I got it right with some tweaking. I hooked up the output of the mixer to my amp and speakers, while the monitor went out to my laptop with a splitter as its a combined mic/headphone jack.
I recorded everything with Audacity and checked the levels on the laptop.
The results are not bad… It does feel really weird to be using the Pacemaker device and not using the crossfader on the device. In actual fact I messed up a few times earlier on, by using the devices crossfader. I also decided I needed some kind of stand for the device and used a box to mount it half way through the test set.
It was odd but worked, more experimentation is needed…
Children is one of the most iconic tracks in the history of dance music.
It launched a new genre – “dream house” – and although that did not last long, the more melancholy, cerebral sound opened the door for trance music, which would come to dominate clubs in the late 1990s, going fully mainstream into the new millennium.
That sound was a very deliberate choice by Miles, whose real name was Roberto Concina.
Although Children was initially written in response to images of the child victims of the Balkans war as Yugoslavia tore itself apart, the track then took on a different life – and a different motivation. Miles wanted to make it big to help save the lives of clubbers.
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.
There was a mix I did while in Iceland which got me excited while walking around the streets of Reykjavik. It was nick named Reykjavik freezing after the Helsinki scorching tune from Super8 and Tab.
While on the Golden circle tour, I spent a bit of time redoing the mix on the coach back from the Haukadalur valley, the home of the geyser (also known as hawkdale). Everything worked and although this mix is far shorter than my usual mix lengths, its a good energtic mix with a combination of Trance, Tech-Trance and Dubstep. I especially love the mix of DJ Culture into Amino Acids (they worked just too well)
Another mix for those keeping up… This one is a more chilled mix, which I’ve been playing with on my recent travels. Theres some new tunes and some very old ones for your listening pleasure. Love those times with the pacemaker device
Its a nice mix ramping up and down in places, but I especially love the last 2 tracks Mass Noise and Generate, which don’t mix well but work so well. Talking of tunes which don’t mix… Anomaly is a great tune but a bloody nightmare to mix, seems the bpm shifts quite a bit. Anyhow, what a tune! Enjoy!
Fractal – Bednar
Troy (Push remix) – Sinead O’Connor
Arisen – Arksun
Prosac – DJ Tomcraft
Mirrors – Trilucid
Body Of Conflict (Cosmic Gate Club Mix) – Cosmic Gate
Call the Galaxy Taxi (Martin Roth Nu Style remix) – Plastic Angel
A Thousand Beautiful Things (Gabriel And Dresden Tec – Annie Lennox
I will be honest and say this surprised me in my email recently. Originally I got a email saying Patterson’s panic attack mix was the 95th most listened to mix in the tech trance chart but at the time of wring this, its now 89th. I think this might actually be the first time one of my mixes has ranked in the Mixcloud charts, that or the chart feature is still kind of new.
Different kind of mix this time… I decided seeing how I enjoy Simon Patterson’s tunes quite a bit, especially Brush Strokes and White of her eyes. Its time for a bit of mega-mix using his tunes. Someone said to me listening to his tunes is like the perfect driving or running music, as it feels very pacey.
I imagined running like zombies run, then stopping to catching my breath with some chilled tunes.
You have 5 or more tracks by the same artist. This upload may be disabled for listeners in the following countries: USA
Well that Copyright and DRM for you. I scratched the edge and now can feel some of the pain. So I got around the problem by renaming Simon Patterson to a few other names.
Don’t worry we still have plans to move forward with a hackday in the same venue (MMU Shed).
Thanks to everyone who took an interest, we haven’t forgotten you and we’ll be back in touch once we got another solid date. Don’t forget if you would be interested in being involved in the organisation of the event, get in touch.
Its a long mix and lasts about 96mins or through 37.5 kms. The mix is a little rough in parts due to shifting positions and moving for people to get on and off. I took the ring from Prenzlauer Allee clockwise (S41).
Flash (timo maas remix) – Green Velvet
Riff – Sander Van Doorn
Energy Flash – Joey Beltram
My Beat (Ambassador remix) – Blaze
Intruder – Armin vs Mike
One night in New York city (chris liebing mix) – The Horrorist
One for you – Oliver klien
Dj culture – Joey beltram
Jelly Tracks (Rippin and Drippin) – Oliver Klein
My Beat (Jan Driver mix) – Blaze
Nasty (Electric mix) – Re Locate Vs Jonas Steur
Grasshopper (raw version) – Sander Van Doorn
Interstate Emperors – Jeffed
The Redlight (album version) – Green Velvet
Blood Angels (chris liebing mix) – John Startlight
Nackling (tomcraft mix) – Duse
Paperjet – John Tejada
Red Purple – Thomas Schumacher
Ubik (the break) – Timo Maas
Rage Chemistry (Cold Blank’s WMC 2013 Mashup) – Knife Party vs Svidden
Switch (oliver klein & peter jürgens remix) – Beckers
Watch Out (lee coombs back to the phuture remix) – Ferry Corsten
I did a few mixes while in Berlin recently. One while taking the ring anti-clockwise around Berlin (think circle line). The other while out one night walking back from around Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz to U Möckernbrücke and other places. I’ll upload the Berlin Ring one in the near future but this one is dark and certainly disturbing with lots of horrible tunes to bring down your joyful day.
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.
