Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Leaving Madrid, recorded on the plane back to Manchester
Raving in Albufeira, recorded on a long bus ride from Albuferia to Faro. Lots of classics mixed in with a roller coaster ride of tunes
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.
A mix with all new tunes with a classic reminder of the past… Always trust in new trance
My friend Oli asked me nicely if I could do a mix for his new car, after the last mix which I did for his Mazda MX5
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
— Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden) April 28, 2017
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.
Hope you enjoy Oli… play it loud!
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!
Enjoy and remember sharing is caring!
Photo credit comes from lneprz.
In my last mega blog post about Futurefest, I talked about millennials thinking.
Millennials charactistics include
- Multiple things going on
- More likely to do things they are passionate about
- Blur work and play and enjoy it
This very much applies to something I’ve been trying to get off the ground for a long time (5 years!).
DJ Hackday, is a hackday for not only for DJs but for remix culture.
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.
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?
5 years ago at Mozilla Festival I convince the lovely Michelle Thorne of this and I was able to run a prototype of DJ hackday during the festival. Out of it came a DJ first multitrack stem/format called 8trk.
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.
While talking to many people and companies over the years, some of got it and some have asked why isn’t it part of Music Hackday?
I have spoken to the Music hackday people about DJ hackday and made a very clear distinction between what they are doing and what I’m trying to to.
My estimations is the internet 1% rule applies here.
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…
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!
#DJhack posters popping up around #Manchester's NQ. Look out for themhttps://t.co/r7HqZQTkbE pic.twitter.com/qYvtjO94La
— Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden) October 3, 2016
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.
I recorded this mix a while ago, on my travels. I decided to do it after Si Lumb recommended listening to Gareth Emery’s classic set from Gods Kitchen. Myself and Si had a chat about the tunes he used and Si pointed me to listen to his own classic mix sound of cloudbreak.
Both were good but I couldn’t help but feel there was plenty of tunes missing from the mixes. So I present another pacemaker mix first of two mixes using just classic trance tunes.
Photo credit comes from lneprz.
Enjoy the retro tunes and don’t forget, sharing is caring!
Showers and thunderstorms mix by Cubicgarden on Mixcloud
Its been ages since I have published a Pacemaker Device Mix.
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!
Joel alerted me to a interview with John Digweed, Mr Bedrock.
There’s been much talk recently about STEMS. Does Bedrock have any plans to release some of their catalogue this way?
Not at the moment just waiting to see how it works out.
To which I instantly thought… Why the heck would you wait? Get in early… I mean you can’t start the interview with…
Bedrock is always about pushing the music first and foremost?
…and say we’ll wait and see how it shakes out…!
Talked about stems so many times, its time now and Bedrock is one of those people who could pioneer this whole thing.
Could a new sound format change how we produce music? @LJRICH tried out 'Stems' to see http://t.co/67spSMFroP
— BBC Click (@BBCClick) August 24, 2015
Of course I sent LJ Rich and Si a few links to 8Trk which we developed at Mozfest 3 years ago as part of Dj Hackday. Of course Native instruments has been mentioned by me before but it seems to be getting some traction?
@cubicgarden wouldn't it be great if we somehow seeded it? I doubt it, though I'm glad to see steps towards objectbased approaches starting.
— Si Lumb (@si_lumb) August 24, 2015
