Around 8, I was thinking of going to elements at the Phoenix Landing to see Crook and Lenore (the residents) spin.  I started messing with a drum & bass setlist to sort of get myself in the mood for that.  Shortly before 9, I started trying to make a mix out of the setlist, and finished up that attempt around 10 (when elements gets rolling).

I stuck around here and listened to the mix, appalled at how bad the first few transitions were, but noticing some promising bits and thinking of ways to make it better.  By around midnight I had a new setlist figured out, and thought again about going out to catch the second half of elements.  Then I thought about going to bed, or having something to eat.

Instead, I rubbed my eyes a bit, and went back to the turntables to attempt a second mix.

And…I’m not ashamed.  Link to 80MB mp3 after the break.

(more…)

My once and future digital production partner/sensei writes:

so explain to me the ideology governing the move to use vinyl to control digital audio files - on one hand, i feel minorly poserish ’spinning’ without a set of turntables in front of me, but on the other hand, i would feel minorly poserish getting out a bunch of hardware just for the sake of looking hard in the booth.  are you rocking a hybrid setup, e.g. half vinyl half digital?  do you just like the feel of vinyl?  or what’s the deal?

The more I think about it, my answers become more accurate, more numerous, and less cohesive.  Join me, will you, for a bit of light philosophizing.

The Technics 1200 interface has some awesome objective qualities:

• It’s big as hell.
• None of the controls look like any of the other controls.
• The controls that light up each light up with a different color.
• When spinning, the edges of the platter convey pitch information in an intuitive visual format.
• It has a lot of angular momentum in it, so clumsy human-scale forces can be applied in ways that result in very non-clumsy changes to its behavior.

Having said that, it’s possible to imagine a software control interface with equally well-labeled controls, more features, and zero danger of derailing the show by accidentally bumping the large, very lightweight, fragile object splayed over half of the work surface.  [[[The best available software]]] is far from ideal, but it’s highly configurable, comes with a great integrated mixer with effects and sampler, and doesn’t have any tonearms.  Instead of an external mixer, you could use a midi controller built to look like a mixer (which exist), or you could use a real mixer that also outputs midi control signals (which also exist).

On top of that, [[[Beatport]]] exists, so it’s now entirely feasible to audition lots of potential source material, find the <1% that you actually want to play, then acquire it a) instantly, b) affordably, c) with rights to play it out, and d) in an archival-quality lossless format.

It’s worth contrasting that state of affairs with the world of even 3-4 years ago (to say nothing of pre-2000, to say nothing of pre-internet boom), where the whole dance music economy was based on barriers to entry: a) limited availability, b) high prices, c) singles were generally vinyl only, CD releases were generally mixes (and thus unsuitable for DJ use).

So maybe this isn’t so complicated after all:

1. Past states of affairs, few of which had anything to do with UI design, led me to invest in a set of mixing interfaces.  That’s not just a financial investment of course, but an investment of time, experience, hope, activation potential, etc.
2. The vinyl interface has clear theoretical weaknesses relative to interfaces using software with external midi control, but it also has strengths that go well beyond familiarity.
3. Although my mix output doesn’t heavily feature “vinyl tricks” (scratching, tears, backspins, live braking), I do make light use of them, and I find the idea of backspinning on an oversized midi knob unsatisfying.  To be clear, that’s my problem…not the knob’s problem.  The knobs work; they sound great.
4. More than the feel, per se, I’m more tuned to the sounds of mixing vinyl than I am with the discrete digital alternatives.  For example, wiping a beat back and forth under the needle in preparation to release it into another, nudging a track forward and hearing the whole thing pitch-up momentarily, scraping my fingers lightly against the side of the platter to gently pull a track closer to one following just “behind” it in beat space, etc.
5. Controlling digital sources from vinyl timecode takes the best things about vinyl (the interface, the familiarity, and indeed some cool factor) and divorces them from the ungodly bullshit involved with actually acquiring and maintaining a collection of record singles.

At the end of the day, it’s not really about having the best possible tools.  It’s not even about having the best possible tools for what you personally want to do.  It’s about having whatever tools inspire you to actually do shit instead of just talking about doing shit.  This [[[vinyl timecode shizzle]]] rigged up to [[[Ableton]]] on the recording end got me spending more time at the decks over the past few days than I’d spent in the previous couple of years.