So you want to take your involvement in music to the next step. You've been DJing for a couple of years and have been producing music that's unique; your own style or take that the industry might not be ready for- not yet at least! You've got a crew of [...]
LIVKONTROL, by Imaginando, is an app designed to control Ableton Live remotely via an iPhone or iPad. The beauty of LIVKONTROL is in its simplicity, and I love the fact that it focuses on doing a handful of things perfectly instead of trying to do everything mediocrely. LIVKONTROL connects with [...]
This is a valuable production topic, and one that is sometimes overlooked by new producers in the mixing process: speaker placement and room acoustics. Just to be clear here: A proper understanding of room and recording acoustics can be the subject of years of study, as a whole science—the science [...]
After sitting through multiple gear workshops at the Winter Music Conference, we found that the industry has changed its overall attitude to DJing: It’s not what you use, it’s how you use it – unless, of course, you use iTunes for your set. This sentiment expressed during the Pioneer workshop [...]
In Numark’s extensive product line, the Mixtrack controllers, which include the original, the Pro, and now the Pro II, have been a consistent value product: solid, if not professional-looking, construction for the price, ease of use, and decent integration with Serato software. The latest, the Numark Mixtrack Pro II, essentially [...]
Aspiring producers, singers/songwriters bands and rappers alike, dream to have their music discovered by “big league” record companies and have their singles released and heard on the radio- it’s the dream; isn't it? We've come a long way from the old days where mixed tapes of artists’ demos are somehow [...]
Much has been written about the music industry’s downfall, it’s failure to adapt and the onset of the digital music revolution. The subsequent rise of digital music retailers has, in many ways, democratized access to electronic music that never would have made it onto the shelves of major music retailers [...]
When it comes to the entire DJ setup, from the decision to use a laptop or turntable to the gear itself, the most cumbersome part is the headphones. And, most DJs make this no secret. Look at any lengthy DJing gig (or even an hour-long festival set), and the headphones [...]
Do you remember when Prince changed his name to a symbol and everyone referred to him as the “artist formerly known as Prince”? Well, that situation reminds me of the recent iPad DJ app from the German company “Zerodebug”. The app doesn’t really have a name, just a symbol: d(- [...]
Any DJ, regardless of stage, knows there’s a thin but noticeably divisive line between quality and junk pieces of affordable gear. While nothing exceptional features wise, the Stanton DJC.4 Virtual DJ Digital Workstation falls into the former as the result of its design and excellent variety of MIDI controllers. Solid construction and ease of use [...]