OxyKon

HA, suck shit Perth peeps. Oh wait that's me

Welcome dude

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More separate exposure, keep each name isolated to a genre and fans for longer, so many time you see producers who start out with 1 specific genre and once they start branching out some fans won't like that

It’s undeniable that a lot of DJs who have entered the field in the last decade lack proficiency at one of the core skills of DJing – beatmatching records by ear. Today, guest contributor Steven Maude shares insight on using features in DJ software to your advantage while learning how to beatmatch. MORE THAN BEATMATCHING There’s a view (one often propagated by people who were DJing long before Traktor and Serato came along) that using software on laptops doesn’t really “count” as DJing because you don’t need to beatmatch. Algorithms for beat detection usually work well enough these days that software can usually have a good go at this for you. It’s a slightly odd opinion, and one that might actually do DJing a disservice. The implication is that beatmatching is so important that there’s little more to DJing than that. Just get the beats matching up or push the sync button, and, that’s it, congratulations, you are now a DJ and your membership card will be in the post! Track selection and sequencing, transitions between tracks, EQing, and harmonic mixing are major skills that sync won’t handle – and lot of it is down to personal preference and choice, as well as the type of music you’re playing. Beat matching or syncing should also be that same personal preference, but knowing how to do both is extremely advantageous… WHY BEATMATCHING IS WORTH LEARNING Having said all that, there are still good reasons why it’s still worth learning: 1. Lets you use other equipment: Imagine you only ever rode a bicycle with training wheels; great, you can ride a bike all day long – until you have to use a bike without them. It shouldn’t be too much of a struggle to adjust if you end up playing on CDJs or vinyl/DVS. 2. Sync is good, but not always perfect: Annoyingly, Traktor still uses a fixed beatgrid. (Serato actually has beat warp markers) Provided a track has a well-defined BPM, which most electronic dance music does, it does pretty well at detecting it. However, a simple beatgrid can break down with tracks with live, unquantized percussion or where there are particularly unusual rhythms or switch ups. Knowing how to handle cases where sync fails completely or where minor adjustments (e.g. with tempo bend) are necessary is essential to keep beats from drifting. 3. No need to analyze and beatgrid tracks in advance: Analyzing is always a good idea, as Traktor’s tempo-based effects and looping will be off without a correct beatgrid. On the other hand, being able to throw a new track into software and immediately play it without worry is really convenient. 4. Mixing into the end of someone else’s set: Some DJs will start afresh; some will beatmatch into it. Choice is a good thing. No DJ software beat matches to an external sound source (as far as I’m aware). 5. Beatmatching is good practice for listening closely, especially when you’re trying to selectively “tune” in and out from the track being faded in. This is useful regardless of how you’re beatmatching (e.g. for EQ purposes). A BEATMATCHING WORKFLOW WITH DJ SOFTWARE First, you’ll consider the computer to no longer be a focal point – but a reference and grading device for your attempts at matching two records. We recommend: -Putting the laptop off to the side -Dimming the screen brightness completely -Covering up the waveforms + BPMs with other windows or even a sticky note You can beatmatch manually with any controller that has jogwheels or (of course) with digital vinyl systems. Need a guide on the core concepts of matching tempo and phasing? We recommend watching this classic DJ tutorial from Ellaskins (note that he’s got cards over the BPM readouts). WHAT TRAKTOR OFFERS FOR A BUDDING BEATMATCHER Traktor has several features to aid beatmatching. If you’re learning to do this manually, the natural inclination is to think, “OK, if I’m learning to do this myself, I shouldn’t use any of these tools .” But when you’re learning to manually beatmatch, these features are can be used as self-teaching tools. Traktor’s Phase Meter – Quickly grade your beatmatch attempts Phase meter: You can practice with the phase meter to see how far off you are after you think you’ve beatmatched correctly, or just check how far off the beat you are when hitting play or scratching in a track. The phase meter shows you how far ahead or behind the current track is relative to the playing master track. If the bar is in the middle of the phase meter, the track is in phase with the master. In the example above, the track is over a quarter of a beat ahead. (Note that both tracks you’re playing need to have correct beatgrids otherwise the phase meter is likely to be misleading.) Of course, you can always use your ears for this, but the phase meter gives you a quick visual indication of how well you’ve done. Check your BPM numbers to see if you’re close. BPM counter: You can check BPMs immediately when you think you’ve matched tracks as well as possible. The best way is to add a BPM counter to the deck header (Preferences > Track Decks > Deck Header.) This gives you a direct indication of how far off a match you actually were; if you’re only a couple of hundredths of a BPM out from the track that you’re mixing into, you’re doing pretty well. Importantly, you can see that you’re improving even if you haven’t quite got the hang of it. To reuse the bike analogy, the learning curve is pretty steep. First, you fall off a lot, then you start riding albeit a little wobbly. I found beatmatching pretty similar: for quite a while, I couldn’t manage it, then all of a sudden I could (though quite badly). You then become steadier and grow in confidence with practice. (One gotcha with beat gridding is that if Traktor may well have detected a BPM half or double what it should be, e.g. tracks at 140 BPM might be detected as 70 – this doesn’t mean your beatmatch is incorrect) Try using sync to hear what it should sound like. Sync: One exercise often mentioned in beginner beatmatching tutorials is to mix two identical tracks. When starting out, I found this sounds cluttered and slightly confusing. Unsurprisingly, it’s sometimes really hard to distinguish the two tracks as they sound the same. Using different tracks might be easier. However, the tracks you’re using might not be the same speed which leads to the chicken-and-egg problem: how can you beatmatch before you’ve learnt to beatmatch? If you’re not sure what a “perfect” mix of the current two tracks should sound like, the sync button will give you that too. You can then nudge one track slightly out of phase with the other using tempo bend to easily hear the difference (for example, what it sounds like when a monitored track is ahead versus the live track). Record your mix and listen back your attempts Recording: It’s not always easy to judge how well your beatmatching is while you’re actually doing it. Recording your practice and listening back to see how it actually sounds to a listener is pretty simple with one click. Are the beats matched together perfectly or not? Did you let the beats drift at all through a blend? A TIP FOR LIMITED MIDI CONTROLLERS Tempo faders on many MIDI controllers are short. Many MIDI controllers have pitch faders that tend to be on the small side. This makes it difficult to accurately beatmatch, since precise adjustments (hundredths of a BPM) are tricky. A great workaround is to MIDI map a knob as a fine pitch control with a much smaller range. This lets you lock in to the rough BPM using the pitch fader, then use the knob to make very small corrections. As long as software doesn’t perfectly get beatmatching correctly with zero preparation, there’s still a need for beatmatching. Not only that, software can actually help you practice and improve too: I self-taught myself beatmatching with Traktor and a MIDI controller. Let me know if you’ve done the same. Source: djtechtools.com

The original set of DJ tech tools were the record, mixer, and turntable. After over 15 years of music sales moving to CDs and digital music files, reports from 2013 are showing that vinyl sales are actually rising – up 31%. Are DJs a driving force in this resurgence? In today’s article, we reached out to DJ-centric record stores around the US to find out if vinyl is really making a comeback. 2013 MUSIC SALES NUMBERS Nielsen Soundscan is the music industry’s sales tracking system that links point-of-sale systems in over 14,000 retailers (digital and brick and mortar) all over the US and Canada to a centralized database. Soundscan has been tracking sales data since 1991, and complete information on digital sales since the advent of the iTunes Music Store in 2003. They released their 2013 end-of-year numbers in January and four major revelations came to light out of the data: Digital sales stagnated: Track sales dropped 5.7% and album sales dropped .1% Overall album sales dropped: Down 8.4% (with CDs being a big part of that) Streaming rose 32%: Services like Spotify and YouTube accounted for over 118 billion songs streamed Vinyl album sales rose 31%: Vinyl only comprises 2% of the market but is still the largest rise out of any data point, selling 6 million albums in 2013 In fact, vinyl has actually been on an upswing in the United States since 2005 and these rising sales have been the trend in other countries as well – with vinyl record sales doubling in Australia and the United Kingdom, A lot of the commentary surrounding last year’s sales notes that unlike the vinyl sales in previous years that focused on re-releases, this year’s top 10 vinyl albums sold, listed below, are new albums of popular music. Daft Punk — Random Access Memories Vampire Weekend — Modern Vampires of the City Arcade Fire — Reflektor Mumford & Sons — Babel Mumford & Sons — Sigh No More Queens of the Stone Age — …Like Clockwork Bon Iver — For Emma Forever Ago Lumineers — Lumineers The National — Trouble Will Find Me Justin Timberlake — The 20/20 Experience MARKET HEADWIND: RECORD PRESSES CAN’T KEEP UP Record presses hard at work at United Record Pressing (photo credit: URP’s Facebook page) A second big indicator that vinyl records are in high demand was made apparent in a recent article on Vice’s Motherboard. Demand for new pressings is very high at the extremely limited number of record pressing plants in the United States (only 16 major presses exist). United Record Pressing, a major pressing plant, has three shifts of production employees in order to keep up with demand – allowing the machines to run nearly 24 hours a day. In an interview last year, Chad Kassem, owner of Quality Record Pressings, told the New York Times, The same New York Times article goes on to discuss how Soundscan’s numbers mentioned above actually might miss a large number of albums that are pressed and sold direct to fans by artists – estimating the number of records pressed in 2012 is closer to 25 million. RECORD STORES FOR DJS Good Records in New York City But have DJs been contributing to this increasing demand in vinyl records? We reached out to a number of record stores in the US and Canada to find out. In New York, there’s an upswing of new record stores that have opened in recent years – including Rough Trade, a massive 15,000 square-foot store in Brooklyn, which opened in November and is actually an international expansion of two London shops by the same name. Across the East River at Good Records in Manhattan, owner Jonathan Sklute told us that his vinyl sales have been growing every single year since opening 9 years ago. We asked him if DJs were key customers: Not far away at the well-established (opened in 1975) Rock and Soul record and DJ equipment store, owner Sharon Bechor has seen a similar upward trend over the past couple of years – with DJs buying more 45s and casual listeners buying 180 gram vinyl LPs. In Toronto at the 24-year-old Play De Record DJ shop, co-owner Jason Palma has also seen sales trending upwards for vinyl records – not only for his core DJ customer, but also for the average music listener. We asked him if a “back to vinyl” concept had caught on among Toronto DJs: Mount Analog is a recently-opened dance music store in LA. On the West Coast, we’ve started to see small independent music stores with a focus on attracting DJs start to open in the last few years. In Los Angeles’s Highland Park, Mount Analog has been open for about a year and a half, selling techno, house, and dance music. Co-owner Zane Landreth knows of at least 6 different records stores just in Highland Park that have opened in the last 3-4 years: Across town, one of the oldest record stores (1977) in LA is Bagatella Records in Long Beach. Owner Steve Mintz is a bit more trepidatious about the a resurgence in DJs playing wax. He’s seen younger people getting into the market, WOULD YOU MOVE BACK TO VINYL? Really think about it – would you consider leaving digital tools and moving back to a more simple record bag of your selections? In putting this article together and reaching out on Twitter, we’ve heard three different types of responses: No, vinyl is outdated / inconvenient for gigs Yes, I made the move or would consider it I never left vinyl / Still play records on a regular basis Let us know your own thoughts in the comments – is vinyl a realistic future for some DJs, or is this just upsurge in sales temporary fad? Source: djtechtools.com

According to Exqlusiv.com, Tomorrowland’s second weekend may be in jeopardy after the people of Schorre, Boom petitioned to bar ID&T from hosting back-to-back weekends at the historic Tomorrowland site. The residents of the surrounding areas attest that by limiting it to only one weekend the nuisance created by the festival’s 100,000+ attendees will be limited. The lawyer representing the local residents claims that Tomorrowland does not have the necessary permits to expand to a second weekend and that, given the time frame, there will be no opportunity for further negotiation between the townspeople and the festival. Source: dancingastronaut.com

above: Shadow Child, a house producer who went by the name Dave Spoon EDM culture titan Tiesto made big news this weekend when he went on the airwaves of the BBC and played what many are calling a tech and deep house music set (overall it was more progressive than deep, but then again we’re not the genre police). It turns out that Tiesto isn’t the first to genre jump, as the Australian EDM blog Stoney Roads has put together a list of producers who have changed their aliases to make what many are calling “deep house”. 1. Will Bailey (electro/fidget house producer) is now Lowsteppa. 2. Lee Mortimer (electro/dubstep producer) is now Friend Within 3. Dave Spoon (electro producer) is now Shadow Child 4. Foamo + Rack’N’Ruin (electro producers) are now Gorgon City 5. Mensah (electro/dubstep producer) is now New York Transit Authority Source: magneticmag.com

deadmau5 may have (or may have not… hmm) abandoned his Twitter account, but that doesn’t mean his Facebook can’t make noise. Yesterday, while everyone was prepping for the Super Bowl, he revealed that he had actually gone through with his 2013 plan of giving his Coffee Run famous Ferrari a Nyan Pop Tart Cat make over. If you’re someone who appreciates automobiles, don’t trip, it looks like this was done by Sekanskin, a company that specializes in wrapping automobiles. So no paint jobs were harmed in creating this look. In a later post regarding his bathroom wallpaper, deadmau5 wrote “Isn’t it fun to do things your own way and just not give a fuck? try it, you’ll like it. I promise.” Call us crazy Joel, but we would have been happy to have the Ferrari. In white, just like they intended. But I guess we don’t have ‘vision’. Source: magneticmag.com

Hipsters around the world are burning their V-Necks and record collections as Tiesto has done the unthinkable – he’s gone on the BBC and put together an Essential Mix filled with techno and house music (a little progressive house leaning, but hey it’s Tiesto!). Tiesto, most famous for his trance sets, has been showing up and playing house/techno on more and more occasions – like on HARD’s Holy Ship. Well now he’s put it to record and done a Clublife Afterhours set on Pete Tong’s heavily influential Essential Mix radio show (this is Tiesto’s first Essential Mix since 2006). You can listen to the mix here on the BBC. But in the mean time, take a look at the tracklist for proof: Tube & Berger and Juliet Sikora Come On Now (Set It Off) KITTBALL Tim Berg Seek Bromance (Dear David & Posse Version) WHITE LABEL C-Block So Strong (Christian Cardwell & Nigel Stately Remix) WHITE LABEL Lexer Dream & Love (PINGPONG Tanzt Mix) (SonneMondSterne Private Bootleg) WHITE LABEL Thodoris Triantafillou & CJ Jeff and Emeli Sandé Endless Love x My Kind of Love (Gemini Remix) WHITE LABEL Stefan Biniak Mad In Love (Unfinished Sympathy) WHITE LABEL Parra for Cuva Wicked Games (Feat. Anna Naklab)SPINNIN’ DEEP Cedric Zeyenne Feel You FEEL YOU, ENORMOUS TUNES Kyodai Music Rises Up (Feat. Stee Downes) (Claptone Remix) MUSIC RISES UP (REMIXES), EXPLOITED SoloWg L.O.V.E WHITE LABEL Masquer There Was The Smell Of Grease (Florian Paetzold Remix) WHITE LABEL Chaim Meital De Razon – Love Rehab (Feat. Meital De Razon) BPITCH CONTROL Masker Sempervivum (Alain Diamond & Libex Remix) HOLLISTER RECORDS Niconé Candelaria (Feat. Narra) (Philip Bader & Niconé Remix) STIL VOR TALENT Funkerman Age Of Love WHITE LABEL Imogen Heap Hide & Seek (Joy Kitikonti Remix) WHITE LABEL Newbie Nerdz, Moonwalk and Fractales Hysteria LOUDER MUSIC Chris Malinchak If U Got It (Maze & Masters Remix) RELENTLESS My Digital Enemy Shamen SHAMEN, VUDU RECORDS Joris Voorn Ringo GREEN Funkin Matt Alive WHITE LABEL Matt Goldman & Gazzo Six Point Five WHITE LABEL Veerus & Maxie Devine My Beat SUARA SHOWROOM 21, SUARA Oliver Heldens Gecko MUSICAL FREEDOM Source: magneticmag.com

I would definitely be keen on some scratch samples, I'm working on a few dubstep tracks with spitfire and I reckon they could work with a couple of them

Not even having a kid and getting married made Skream stop touring or making music, it's all I could think of

Says the guy that's in dere once a month

Whipped

Welcome dude

i wanna do some vinyl shopping while in melb, i guess this will be lunch on that day

I'll be the judge if its a true Cheesesteak where abouts is this place to get them

Nice one dude, yeah mixing gigs are heaps of fun, I haven't had a decent gig in ages

I really like it, its nice and simple and has a cool look to it

spitfire showed me it today, i was so stunned

I was so drunk the nek morning I had to skip breakfast with you guys, y'all met up with drc1 and Beatless, and come back to me in my underwear pouring my self a redbull and vodka

That 1st night was just drinking vodka and beer, the kraken came on the Saturday night

Dude I was so fucking hammered, 1st night in a new city, we went to 4-5 bars, drank all the things and then andyman walked me to the end of the street and gave me directions to the hotel #drunkanddirectionsdontmix

I upgraded us to a twin room with an extra bed, figured be better for all is to have a bed