Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of Native Instruments August 16th, 2010 - I'm a big fan of Native Instruments. I like their FM8 and Absynth instruments, and I have a fairly large Kontakt library. One of my next purchases will be Maschine, and I like Traktor Pro quite a bit. Well, today brings exciting news because they've finally released their own standalone controller, the Traktor S4 system. It's a hardware controller with a built in audio card (no doubt using their line of very well regarded audio ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Travy June 28th, 2010 - Remember when I said that I'd learn how to use Ableton Live by doing a mash-up that I'd already done in Logic? Well this weekend I sat down with Ableton and warped some tracks. I liked how easy warping was to perform in Ableton (I haven't yet installed Logic 9 to try the Flextime as a comparison), although when I sped up the track 25% (something I had done successfully in Logic), it sounded like ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Numark June 27th, 2010 - Numark has announced the impending arrival of the MixTrack DJ MIDI controller. Having reviewed the Vestax Spin and using it quite a bit, I can't help but see the similarities between them. Like the Spin, the MixTrack has a touch sensitive platter and like the Spin's twin brother the Typhoon, the MixTrack ships with Traktor LE. While the layout is similar, the platters on the MixTrack look to have the "vinyl feel" surface that most of ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Villinus June 25th, 2010 - Okay, now why didn't I think of this before? Following yesterday's post on hacking an SM57 for easy drum miking, comes another slap-on-the-forehead easy hack. I'm sure you've come across a broken set of headphones that sounded fine, but something broke like the strap, or a deteriorating foam ear cup. Last fall, I wrote about how my set of reliable headphones were deteriorating badly. It turns out that finding a cup in the correct size ... Read More

Xeraphine's DIY Laptop Stand June 15th, 2010 - I was out at a gig a couple weekends ago and although I brought a laptop stand, it didn't work out that well for the environment I was in. One of the problems with playing out is that you can't always control your environment. In this case, having a smaller footprint and having my laptop raised more would have helped out immensely. There are several companies that make good raised laptop stands (Stanton's Uberstand and Griffin's ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Novation June 4th, 2010 - Novation, maker of the Launchpad and series of nifty MIDI keyboards, has just released the Dicer, a mini-MIDI controller that's designed to be a trigger for your DJ software. While it's Serato-certified, you can also map it to Traktor and others. The Dicer bridges the gap between the pure vinyl spinners, and the new cue-point juggling style of controllerists. The interesting part though is not necessarily the device itself which is admittedly nifty and affordable ($99 ... Read More

April 14th, 2010 - J Dilla was a legendary hip hop producer, who unfortunately passed away from illness in 2006 at the young age of 32. During his career, he produced tracks for De La Soul, Common, Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest and many more. Because of his long fight with the blood illness TTP, he died leaving a huge debt. Unfortunately his family are not bearers of his estate and there is quite a bit of controversy surrounding it. Because of ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Roomic Cube March 26th, 2010 - DJ TechTools is a great online community for DJ's who use MIDI controllers, whether they be mix DJ's or controllerists. While many who visit the site are seasoned veterans who moved to MIDI controllers from vinyl, there are many who visit the site who have never DJ'd before and don't know the basics. In an effort to educate these newcomers, DJ TechTools has begun a series of tutorials on DJing essentials. The video embedded below ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Roomic Cube March 19th, 2010 - Do you have some dirty records laying around that aren't sounding their best because of all the contaminates? Well surprisingly you can use wood glue to clean them up. The process involves spreading wood glue over the entire surface of the record (not including the label), and waiting for it to dry. At that point, you peel off the glue and it should have grabbed all the dust, grime and oil off the record. ... Read More

February 24th, 2010 - A couple months ago, I reviewed the Vestax Spin which is paired with Algoriddim's djay softare. As I got used to using the Spin and djay, I got a little more bold and started diving into the more advanced techniques I could get out of both. Because the Spin has a limited amount of buttons, I mapped an additional Korg NanoPad. This allows me to use all of the common features of djay that previously needed to be ... Read More