A DJ stuff post

Today was actually quite productive in many ways. In a nutshell I drew blood, (blood work during a Dr's appt), fixed a broken glass ornament, got a package I feared had been lost, and got most of a playlist for a new DJ set done. I needed a break from working on tracks as I have encountered a creative block in that regard at least on the track I was working on in my last posting. So lets talk about DJ stuff and this set I am putting together tonight.

Many DJ's I find stick to one maybe two genres and or sub-genres musically speaking, I like to mix it up as much as I can stylistically and still make it flow together in a pleasing manner. Though I will say that depending on the event I am playing that will depend on what I play. In the last 10 or so years I have found myself DJing at mostly dark alternative ("goth"/ebm/industrial) and fetish events. Meaning that the music I play at those is dark and edgey. I have in the last year though played EDM nights including an all Trance night which I loved doing. I have a real soft spot for beautiful Trance. But there is always room for crossover, which I try to exploit as much as possible on both ends of the spectrum.

I wanted to do something different from my other two mixes I have up online for streaming, so I set about finding some mostly different tunes from what I would normally play in a typical for me DJ set. I like to throw curveballs at people with the music I play and surprise them. I live for pushing the envelope when I am behind a set of decks. It's gotten me in trouble before but it's always been worth it, plus you cannot please everyone.

I hunted high and low (almost an A-Ha album title!) on two computers and both drives for suitable tracks. and I found a pretty good selection of tracks in varying tempos and sounds. Some are "scene" tracks aka dark alternative but most are really atypical tracks for me to play. More minimal and sparse sounding. The track searching process for making a recorded DJ set can be a flustering experience though you have to find tracks that flow nicely into one another and if you can find tracks that not only flow well together but also are in the same root key then you have struck gold my friend! I am able to find those by ear though there is software for this as well, its called Mixed In Key which works very well from what I understand. I don't have it though. I have been kind of agonizing over this DJ mix for over a week and I have been porting songs over from one computer to the other. This takes time as I have to upload these to a file sharing site then download them on the other computer. My external drive was reformatted by accident and I have not had the time to reformat it :/ But today I was able to find the direction in which I want this mix to go.

When I started doing this DJ thing there were mostly only turntables, the standard to use was the famous Technics SL-1200 Mk2's. At one time I had 4 of these but I sold them which is something I regret as I still have a ton of records I'd love to both hear but also port over to the digital domain. I even have software to remove crackles and pops you get from vinyl. CD decks were around then but you did not see them often and the only brand that made anything good in that area was Denon. I remember the purists scoffing at DJ's who used CD decks and calling them "fake DJ's" I can tell you those CD decks worked every bit as well as turntables there was no magic "auto mix button" at least then. Now things have shifted into the software domain and being a DJ now is easier than ever before, not to mention cheap! But it all still boils down to what you play, when you play it, and HOW you play it. That is what matters people. I have however ported over to the software domain myself, I use Traktor Pro2 with the Traktor Kontrol S2 USB soundcard/controller. It's everything I loved about vinyl decks and CD decks in one package as well as phrase sampler/looper features as well as DAW quality effects all in one sleek package!

Now with software comes all those great features I mentioned but it also comes with a feature called sync, which takes the beat matching element of DJing and does it for you so all one has to do is hit play. I think auto sync has it's place and benefits, like when you are working with 3 to 4 virtual decks and are triggering loops and samples on the fly over the top of all that. But if I am mixing just two tracks I prefer to leave the sync feature off and do it the old fashioned way. Plus it's more fun and it allows you to really get in the groove zone when DJing. Ableton Live has been since version 3 a great tool for DJing but it requires a completely pre-planned set and you have to go in and warp each track so it locks to the project tempo and that is well... To say the least it's a pain in the ass and time consuming. And there is no room to improvise if the crowd is not digging on your set. So I preplan a playlist only for recorded at home DJ sets, and I mix them live on the fly in one take. If I mess up (which does happen) I start over from song one until I get things right.

Now today I got about I'd say an hour or so into this set, but I want to do more. I want this set to take the listener on a journey in sound. To tell a story, you know what I mean? I test mixed the tracks to see which ones flowed well with each other and that takes a few tries with different tracks usually. But So far I have a nice flow starting at 100 BPM up to 112 BPM, then onto 120+. My goal is to end this set at least 128 possibly 130 BPM (for those that do not know BPM stands for Beats Per Minute indicating the tempo/speed of a song). We'll see what happens in the coming days. The holiday is coming up and I have to get back on this track in the studio again, so it's a busy week. But hopefully by next week I will have a full set planned, primed and ready for recording. I'll be posting about it for sure.

Until next time have a fantastic evening :)

An old dog learning new tricks

Hello and welcome! I'm Casey, I am an electronic musician and producer baed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This is my first foray into blogging and I figured it might be a good thing for me to start doing, the grammar may not always be perfect but hey I do the best I can. I am still getting my sea legs with this so to speak and the first posts might just be text but I hope to learn how to add photos and links as I go. This blog will contain many posts about my experiences in the studio while working on tracks and or remixes, and contain my thoughts on gear as well as software, but it will also delve into my life outside the studio as well but without getting too personal. Anyway lets get going :)

Since getting back home from Europe I have really been buckling down studio work wise, I am bound and determined to master Ableton Live 9 and learn all the tricks in it that I can. it's been a bit of an uphill climb as save for a few in person pointers from some Live masters I know and a book entitled "Ableton Live 9 Power" that was purchased for me by a loved one I am pretty much on my own.

I have been told that the real key in live is knowing the workflow of it, that can be said for any digital audio workstation though. But in this particular case it could not be more true as Ableton while simple looking is actually deeper than anything I have ever encountered in my years doing this. It has two views one called "Session View" and "Arrange View" pictures taken of both these views from the project I am currently working on will be at the end of this posting below.

Now to even seasoned digital audio workstation users Ableton is alien looking once fired up. It starts in Session View, this view is more suited I think to someone wanting to use Live in a live performance setting as you are able to launch your midi and audio as clips on the fly as well as use any amount of midi controllers you like and assign multiple parameters from effects and synths, or anything else in live for that matter to said controller(s) which in the world of live electronic music is to put it mildly: AWESOME! Ableton has a reputation for being absolutely ROCK SOLID on stage which is important. I plan to learn more about how Session View works at a later time and utilize it onstage myself. Some colleagues of mine in Norway used Live 9 at a live show recently and said it ran like a champ and was great. That is exciting as no other DAW (for future reference DAW is short for digital audio workstation) has ever offered this kind of flexibility before Ableton came about. BUT there is a learning curve with regard to Session View, to someone like myself who has spent the better part of 2 decades with linear time based sequencers/DAW's Session View can be a bit overwhelming and even scary.

But luckily for all of us the folks at Abelton thought this through and rather than sticking with just one view they offer up another way to view your project: Arrange View. Arrange View is a linear timeline based view that shows your audio and midi in a manner more familiar to someone like myself. Arrange View lets you really dive in and edit parts be they midi or audio and arrange them in a manner many of us are used to. So lets get this straight then; In my opinion thus far Session View= for live shows, and Arrange View= for the studio. Both views offer benefits and the workflow of this program streamlines the music making process overall.


Now all that being said I find myself hungry for more knowledge of this program and it's many features, as well as unconventional ways of exploiting features. In other words using a feature to do something it was not intended to do. So in essence I am an old dog learning new tricks in this program, the book has been a helpful guide as has the lessons I have gotten from colleagues well versed in this program. I have found numerous tutorials on youtube that have proved most helpful as well. But I am having a bit of a tough time none the less as it's a new way of working for me in so many ways. I treat each session with Live 9 as a chance to expand myself both as a musician and a producer. At the time of this writing I am working on a track for a project called Penchant which is the stage moniker of singer/songwriter Denali H. It's a song she wrote on a guitar and it is being transformed into a dancefloor monster little by little, it's what you will see in the photos below. I am experimenting with a bass sound I got off of a synth called Massive using Live 9's features. I want to get that frenetic Electro House vibe to it. It's proving tricky but I am determined to get it right. Speaking of which I should stop blogging and get back to it.

So this will do it for this installment but I will post more as the days come. Please refer to the photos below.


I wish you all the best in your lives, good luck to you all in your endeavours. Until the next time!

Casey :)

Session View where midi and audio is put into clips and can be triggered at will by the user. Now while I understand how it work this view is still a bit alien to me.

Arrange View where the user can edit and arrange in a linear time based fashion. I find this to be more comfy and familiar.