So, I’ve begun the laborious task of transferring all my records to digital format. This is no easy job. In the process I have also collected another 1000+ records, it’s going to take ages! I have been working on this for about 2 months and must have down around 200, both sides all the tracks. I’m also being very meticulous about recording them and making sure that I add all the meta data to each of the files that is created. I had also gone to the effort of creating a Discogs account and adding each of the records to My Collection , discogs is great for listing and cataloging your vinyl or CD collection…. I’m a fan…..
So I finally cracked and bought ProTools 10, I got it cheap. Since I am currently a student I am entitled to all sorts of discounts, including software from big vendors like Avid. Protools 10 is industry standard, I honestly don’t know why, it is seriously lacking in the features that I am used to in Cubase, the interface seems simple and dumbed down and using it feels like time travel back to 2002….. Never-the-less, if I get future post production work it will at least allow me to give the client something that they are expecting, even if it means that I do the work in Cubase and export it to PT10….. this is what Hans Zimmer does….! Anyway here is a crappy promo video from Sweetwater, and if you are switched on you will realise that many of these ‘new’ features in PT10 have been available in Cubase since 2005, I think the commenter’s agree….
I have now promised myself that I will start blogging again everyday, It shouldn’t be hard. I just need to be less lazy! This is the first of a long run I’m sure….. I have something very special here today, a mix that I have done for a friend of mine. Sadly he passed away recently and my last conversation with him was about how he had enjoyed my music and I promised him a mix, this is the mix I promised him. I have posted it here for you all to enjoy. If you would like an mp3 version for you iPod then get it HERE
Well what can I say, it’s been hell busy! I’ve got so many things to blog about but very little time to say them all. I need to tell you how ‘Happy 2 be Hard’ went, and I need to tell you about a job I did a the Roxy in Parramatta as the FOH sound guy, my new vocation ! But for now I will keep it brief, there’s an awesome party and you should go to it! There enough said….. get down to the Imperial Hotel on Saturday night to see Nik Fish, Jumping Jack, Abel, Paul Holden and Shade cut it up on the decks, and a special live set from Vic… It’s gonna go off !!!
Hare you Happy To Be Hard ? Well if you are not and you want to be, then you should show up tomorrow night…. I’ll be spinning tunes at Happy To Be Hard a Paul Holden party…. You should come…. Nothing but the best happy hardcore tunes from the mid to late 90’s. I’m on early , 11p-12a, and will be spinning tunes with a very happy vibe to get things warmed up. Then we can hang out…..
As you may or may not be aware, I have gone back to school, doing an audio engineering course. To say the least, it’s a trip, being in class with people that are about half your age and already having the understanding of most of the stuff so far. I say ‘so far’ because I am expecting it to get a lot tougher when I get into the Diploma level stuff next year. Recording and live sound are things which I have little experience and will be expected to master, no worries, that’s why I’m there! Anyway, amongst other things they expect me to do assignments which generally involve either listening to music or sitting in the studio for hours on end writing music, both of which I am very comfortable with. One of these ‘assignments’ involved listening to a piece of music and analyzing it, you know, number of bars, key, that sort of thing. I decided to take it a little bit further and actually try to reprogram the entire track! I’ve done this before, but this track was probably the most difficult one that I have done to date, crazy 303’s and FX sounds. The original track is Devil by Infected Mushroom. Now if you know this track at all then you will notice that this is not the entire thing, that’s because we where only give the first 5 minutes to analyze and the track gets really nasty after that point and I didn’t want to make things to difficult for myself. Anyway this is my cover version, which I did over two sessions in about 8 hours… enjoy….
I have some fantasitc goodies for you all today. Finally I have found a decent place (and way) of storing all my DJ sets, Mixcloud. What great thing this is, free to use, unlimited storage, zero restrictions it seems. One problem, it’s not possible to download any of the sets… B-( However I think that is almost irrelevent now given the connected nature of all our devices, and besides there are ways of working around things like that, I’m sure you are clever enough….. anyway my profile is HERE, and below is what you will see if you click the MIXES link at the top of the page.
I only recently heard that at some time in the past Queen released the 24 track masters of Bohemian Rhapsody. I really don’t think they where ‘released’ more like leaked, probably at a time when a re-mastered version of their tracks was being done. So, I went hunting and found it on the interwebs… ahhhh fantastic interwebs! and I could not resist the chance to take a listen and mix the track for myself. All I can say is that this must have been a feat of engineering prowess, nearly every second of all 24 tracks was used up, the engineer would have been working overtime on the faders to get this down, it would have been a fantastic performance in it’s own right.
This youtube clip is the end result of my attempt at it, with all the advantages of a modern DAW. I had fun with it, I did not reference the original because I figured there was not point in just doing the original over again, I wanted to put my own spin on it. I wanted to beef things up a bit and bring the vocals and harmonies out more, they are so epic! I took a little creative license with some panning, especially on the vocals to make the mix move around a bit more and I also went through and cut out a lot of noise and applied noise cancelling where required to get rid of that dirty 1970’s grunge. Anyway, it is what it is, I could play with this for days, but it’s always good to call it over and move on to the next thing. Oh, and you can download a high quality version here.
Finally I have sorted out how I am going to get my music to the masses. On my old website I had this dodgy setup using a tool called Zina, it wasn’t perfect, but it allowed me to list my tracks in albums and track what downloads where occuring. But now we have soundcloud and its way better, However as with most things these days, to make it any good I had to pay them some money… well that’s the way things are now I guess. It’s all there, old/new/bad & good, I only get 12 hours of storage however so I will only be keeping the last 5 DJ mixes on there. I expect that I will eventually have to delete some tracks aswell once I get around to writting some more…..
After scowering the youtubes for hours, looking at old skool rave videos I finally found a clip of me playing a rave ! Watch the video below and flick forward to 3:00 minutes. I can’t quite remember the setup because things would change every gig, but on the left is an Amiga and I think I am playing with the sampler and mixer in the middle…. good old times. I should also add that the backing music isnot mine, and if you skip forward to the credits at the end you will see a cheesy photo of me…. that’s me on the left…. lol !
