Odds & Ends

2008-11-19T05:25:46Z

Last class, everyone performed. And Channa brought in some Planet Earth video that he put a mirror effect on which made for a sublime experience. I think this is great footage to DJ with, especially for electronica. Erkon used his guitar in his set, along with some great Turkish grooves and some original recorded music. Very creative, Erkon. Good job. Anna brought in one of those new Korg nanoKontrol MIDI controllers - I think these things are great bang for the buck. And compact to boot. In other news, we are still in search of a venue. I think it's more likely we are going to have this on Dec 7th, a Sunday, rather than a Saturday. This is actually better for us because it increases our chances of getting a nicer venue. Al and I are still working on securing a location, but please let us know if you come across anything. I will post more info here as it develops. About your final sets, don't kill yourself. Aim for a great 10 minutes. If you want to go longer, do so as long as your comfortable. Don't forget to look at the audience. And Channa, we're throwing you up there, so work on something before you leave the country! So we do have our classroom available on the 6th. Al and I will be there practicing or working on something, so please feel free to drop on by if you need help with anything. I think we also have to do course evaluations, which are really important, so we might have to have you come in and do that anyway. I can't remember if you can do this online. Also, we may have a guest speaker, in which case, I will announce that here and you should all come in in that case. Other odds & ends: VDMX is a realtime video mixing and effects software that can be an alternative to Quartz Composer. It is more user friendly than Quartz in that it is a higher level of control, whereas QC is very low level and you have to do things by hand. VDMX is not free, but you can get a trial and check it out. There are some tutorials here. subOctave is a VJ from SF with some creative mashups. Check him out. Below the fold, some photos from class. How do you rotate an image in HTML??? Oh well. ]]>

How to Grab Flash Videos From the Web to use in your DJ Sets

2008-11-19T03:08:41Z

Here's a quick tutorial on how to grab flash videos off the web. First of all, this is Safari specific. If you use Firefox, there are probably other methods (use Google and look it up if you really want to know). 1. From the page where the flash video you want is embedded, from "Window" menu in Safari, pick "Activity". ]]> PS: To take screenshots: Cmd-Shift-3 takes entire screen Cmd-Shift-4 gives you cross hairs Cmd-Shift-4, then spacebar, lets you screenshot a whole window. Holding Ctl for any of those puts it into the clipboard instead of saving to a file.

Roundup - Double Lecture Nov. 15th; Performance Venue Search

2008-11-04T03:21:19Z

Announcements: Our next and last class is Nov. 15th. We're gonna have an optional extra session from about 1:30pm on for people who have missed lectures or who need help. This is your LAST chance to get feedback from us on your final performance/set. So please come prepared. Dec 6th is showtime, and we need help finding a venue. Please put your feelers out there and give us some ideas. We probably don't need a super large space. The hope is we can put on a good show for our friends and fellow artists. Just email me or Al and let us know if you can help secure a location, or have any leads. This is important! Get on it. Last class was pretty much a workshop. We had Channa lead the way with an acoustic performance that showcased another powerful aspect of Ableton: live instrumentation, recording and sampling on the fly. So you can see the possibilities here for adding novel aspects to your DJ set. That was straight ill, Channa. Blake pointed us towards one of the coolest MIDI controllers I've ever seen - an motion capture exo-skeleton called Gypsy from the UK. At $1000 bucks an arm, it's pricey but not ridiculously so. Your imagination is the only limitation with this thing. Good lookin out, Blake.

Sets

2008-10-28T17:28:13Z

Reminder - we have class this Saturday, Halloween hangovers notwithstanding. Also, if you're interested in checking out other DJ's sets, there's a few good ones here.

The Art of Digital DJing: Class 3,Oct 18, 2008

2008-10-21T03:13:21Z

Things we covered: some DJing tips, more about controllers, an intro to Quartz Composer and Video, and Effects in Ableton. DJing Tips for Ableton we talked about: 1. Work Vertically. Al and I don't go more than 4 tracks wide, and we work our way down (and up) when we are performing sets. And Group stuff that sounds good together so you don't have to hunt around much. 2. You can drag your clips in the clip view back into your file browser, and Ableton will remember those clips as is - ie, specific loops, the stop/start marker, etc. That way you don't have to set it every time. You can save loops that work well and then recall them anytime. You can also drag and drop groups of clips that mix well together, and bring those in to any project in the future, or even during a live set on the fly. 3. Use meaningful names. It's easy to forget which clip is what, so useful naming helps. Name the intros, the choruses, and even use lyrics out of the song to remind you what the vocals say. You can use your own naming convention, such that D can mean drums, and B can mean Bassline, and C means chorus, etc. 4. More on warping - other tips: turn off that metronome once in a while and rock your body to the beat just like you're on the dance floor. Your body moves with the beat and you'll be able to pluck out that one in your head because you'll feel it. When you've located a "1", move any numbered marker there, right click and set it to your 1.1.1. If the marker doesn't move (because of anchors on either side), double click it to yellow and it will move. Next, right click again and say "warp from here straight". Adjust your next few bars, then hop to bar 30 or so and check there, and then check and align near the end. With some hip-hop, it's easier to pick up the 2nd and 4th beats per bar. You can then use those markers (the X.2 and X.4) to line up those 2nd and 4th beats and it works just as well. So, what is the 2nd and 4th beat in hip-hop? Usually the beat you clap your hands to (a snare). Listen to the clip: Hip-hop hooray (clap) hooo (clap) heyyyyy (clap) Hoooo (clap). etc. It's easier to hear that sometimes.

]]> Ableton Effects Al went through some of the most useful effects. You can also experiment with the "Audio Effect Rack" (the first category under the folder Audio Effects) and the "Performance & DJ" presets, which Ableton has provided as go-to effects for DJs. Some of them are hit and miss, and mostly based on the core effects we covered in class. 1. Your workhorse - the Auto Filter. Toggle between high, low and band pass and move those cut-offs (the frequency that marks what passes and what doesn't). The Q value is resonance, and it is the the sharpness of the "wall" of the filter. The higher Q value, the flatter the wall, but some frequencies get boosted and the sound changes. This is fine, and sounds good most of the time. You can mix in and out songs just by sweeping this filter, ie, taking the bass out of one song with a high-pass filter moving to the right, while bringing in a new track with a widening high-pass filter moving to the left. Experiment to get the feel. If there's any one effect you'll need when DJing, it's this one. 2. 8 band and 3 band EQing. You can use these to isolate or accentuate vocals, drums or instruments. For the 3-band EQ, you have kill switches like some DJ mixers. The Auto Filter above can replace the banded EQs for the most part. 3. Chorus - makes it sound like 2-3 people are singing instead of one. 4. Flanger - a time based filter that mixes two signals, delaying one slightly and gives you a metallic tube-y sound. 5. Redux - Decimation in bits and or sampling. Sampling decimation gives you a video-gamey simplicity sound. Bit reduction increases the noise, so it sounds like a bad radio channel with a lot of static. Again, these may sound great some times and horrible other times. It can be highly sample dependent. 7. Filter Delay - I like this one. There are 3 band pass filters, with delay and amount of feedback. The effect is a cool, in-sync echo-ing. To get longer echos, increase the feedback. If you use this in send and return, you can take the Return volume up and down and have a cool trailing effect. 8. Ping-pong - similar to filter delay, it's a left-right delay juggler synced on the beat. The beats are divisible into 16th notes. Play with those numbers to get a feel of the effects. 9. Reverb - Effectively, how big a space do you want your music to sound like? When you hear music indoors, the sound bouncing off the walls adds a long tail to the music so it sounds like it's prolonged. The bigger the enclosed space, like a temple or church, typically the greater reverberation. It's all the latent echoes you hear dissipating that cause this phenomenon. Sometimes it's good to add a little reverb to live vocals to give it some realness. Hooking up MIDI and other hardware to use with Live One of the coolest things about this class is Laptop DJing without the laptop. To do that, we use controllers, which really can vary in size, shape, function and usefulness. Controllers come in two flavors - MIDI and HID. MIDI devices we've covered - you can edit the MIDI map in Ableton once you've plugged your device in. Make sure you've gone to your Live Preferences and told Live that remote and track are lit "on". That's easy enough. Next, what about non-MIDI controllers? These are things like Wii controllers and joysticks. These controllers are called HID devices, for "Human Interface Device" devices. As long as it has a USB connector, it's most likely usable. We focused on doing this on Macs because Mac OS comes with free software called Quartz Composer that helps us use HID devices. PCs are a whole different ballgame and we're looking into it. But for now, let's talk Quartz Composer, or QC. Essentially, QC allows you to detect an HID input and translate it to MIDI. When you have QC running, the system can interpret signals from your HID device and present them as MIDI outputs to Live for mapping. It's that simple. Hooking up HID controllers, like the Wii drums we had in class, is something few if any DJs are doing. If you do this, you're truly at the vanguard of hi-tech DJing. QC can also work with video, and you can lump effects on that video synced to your music or hardware inputs. Getting started: A tutorial to install QC here. Also, VJ Shakinda, a VJ from the Ireland has 4 more videos on QC called an Irishman's Guide to Quartz Composer. You can check them out here. And from Al, a brief summary of what he covered of QC in class: Here are some steps to get back to where we were on Saturday: 1) Drag a Movie into Quartz Composer. That will create a "Movie Loader" patch with the path set correctly to point to the movie you dragged in (the one labeled "Ms" in my picture below). 2) Open the "Patch Creator" and find the "Billboard" patch. Drag that into your project. The Billboard patch is what actually draws an image to the Viewer. If you want to, you can change the "Width" of the Billboard patch to make the image bigger. 3) Connect up your movie. Your Image output from your Movie should be the Image input to your Billboard. 4) Find the "MIDI Controllers Receiver" patch and drag that into your project. If you don't know which MIDI controller you actually want to use (by number), you can learn it. Once you've dragged in the patch, select it and choose "Patch Inspector" from the Toolbar (or hit -2) - that will give you some settings for the patch. Choose "Learn Controller to Observe" and twiddle your knob - the right controller should show up as an output from the patch. 5) Decide how you want your MIDI controller to modify your image. Here are a few ideas: a) Enable: The easiest thing you can do (but not the most interesting) is to hook your Controller to the "Enable" of your billboard. If you do this, any positive value from your controller will mean your movie is visible, but if your controller is twisted to 0, the image will be hidden. b) Effects: Another interesting thing you can do with a controller is modify some kind of Effect. There are tons of effects, but I will illustrate with a Gaussian Blur. In the example below, I am using the MIDI controller to modify the Radius of a Blur patch that I've placed in between the movie and the billboard. MIDI controller values are always 0-1, so you may want to use something like the "Mathematical Expression" patch to get larger values (In my example below, I've multiplied the value by 50.) Click to enlarge graphic below. c) Triggering: If you have a movie that you want to retrigger everytime you hit a controller (like a pedal), you can use the controller to reset the time on the patch to 0 with every hit. By default, the Movie Loader patch will play at a constant rate - if you want to retrigger it, you will need to tell the Movie Loader patch to get its "Timebase" externally. Control click on the Movie Loader to change its "Timebase" to "External" - that will give you a "Patch Time" input. Hook it up as follows (click to see full pic below): Additional resources: Quartz Compositions Also, if you find more tutorials yourself on YouTube or elsewhere, please let us know in the comments. -G

College Night at The Getty Center

2008-10-11T20:57:07Z

Al and I will be DJing at the Getty for College Night on Thursday. Dan Savage is gonna be there! The theme is politics and humor with a special exhibition in the West Pavilion. Hope you guys can make it. Bring friends. I'll be opening for Al and then helping him out with video during his performance. Here's the 411: College Night at the Getty Center Date: Thursday, October 16, 2008 Time: 6:30–9:30 p.m. Location: Getty Center Admission: FREE with student ID; reservations suggested, but not required. Call (310) 440-7300 or check out their site and use the "Make Reservation" link. It's probably gonna be chilly so dress warm. Although they will have warmers, they tell me.

The Art of Digital DJing: Class 2, Oct 4th, 2008

2008-10-04T20:48:03Z

We had an exciting class 2, and you were able to control music with the iPhone and a game controller. Next class: Oct. 18th. In two weeks. Assignment: 5 track set, 3 loops per track, with controllers and effects. Warping - some of us were still having trouble. Tips - your "1" doesn't have to be at the beginning, it can be anywhere. So if you're having trouble, drop that 1 down somewhere else you're comfortable. Next, look at bar 2,3,4,5 and line those up. Then jump to bar 30 and check there. You can check the end of the track too and see if it's lined up there as well. You should be good to go. Trouble shooting - if you're having trouble warping, you can just warp a loop that you want. Go to that area, and you can anchor down the markers and force them to the beats in the loop. That's the poor man's method, but hey, it works. Also, I think Channa will post up a YouTube tutorial in the comment section. Just practice and you will get really comfortable. MIDI controllers - we went in to how to plug in, have your computer recognize them and how to map them in Live. It's really a taste thing - what you choose to map where, like if you prefer knobs to faders for effects, etc. And remember, you can use more than one MIDI controller too [Channa - that's another answer to your question of running out of things to map too - you can always add another controller to your setup]. You just need USB ports. And MIDI and non-MIDI controllers come in all kinds of styles, from a simple standalone crossfader to a Wii controller. It takes some practice and experimentation to figure out what you like, and it's really fun. PS - the website for that Just Add Music guy is here. And if you get stuck or have questions, post them in the comments section on this blog so everyone can see. Emailing is so Gen X. -G

The Art of Digital DJing - Class 1 Sept 27th, 2008

2008-09-27T21:06:07Z

Hi Guys, Thanks for a great first class. I think we're off to a good start. So, next class is next week, October 4th. First week assignment - play around with importing your own music to Ableton, and "warp" those markers so the songs are lined up with the master tempo. Then look for interesting loops in that song, cut and paste that track down one vertical "Audio Track", and find other loops that you like (this is deconstructing the song into loops). Now you can trigger a bassline or vocals when you're DJing. Remember, with Ableton we're always DJing with loops. Next bring in another track (or 2 or 3) and do the same thing. Play with how and where you introduce these songs into your mix. That's it. If you like what you have, play it for the class. We'll talk more about mixing techniques and monitoring next class, as well as how to use physical controllers. Also, don't forget our "Breakers" segment - that's where you break new tracks/artists that you have dug up, or your own music or compositions. This is part of your grade, so don't forget. Ideally, it's new stuff, but it doesn't have to be. If you've dug rare stuff, you can drop that too. Just use the comment section of this post to post questions, and Al and I will respond to them. -G

Gaming: Apple's Final Frontier

2008-09-17T15:54:46Z

I predicted 18 months ago that gaming would be a part of Apple's competative strategy, and I was right. In fact, I called Apple "Sony 2.0" before the first iPhone was even announced. Now I'm wondering if Apple will go full console like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. If they are presenting the App store as a gaming marketplace, it would make sense to have console like experiences in the home through AppleTV.

Welcome UCLAX Students

2008-09-05T01:36:58Z

For now, this will serve as the course blog. View the course description and register here. Check out our syllabus here [pdf].

RIP: Operating Systems?

2008-09-04T00:14:14Z

Even though there's been an unofficial deathwatches for the OS for at least 5 years (probably 10), the MSM has picked up the meme now that Google is proudly marching out their new Chrome browser. Chrome is a smart play by Google. It's a natural extension of organizing information, which is what Google strives to do. And Chrome is getting raves for it's speediness and neat features like incognito mode. So, are OSes really obsolete? I've been pondering this question for some time. In a sense, relinquishing our computing entirely to the clouds with a mix of surfing and rich internet applications isn't a technical leap. And for most of us, email-surf-post-IM-streaming are 95% of our activities anyway. But that's personal computing. What about corporate or power computing? And privacy? There's quite a few situations that benefit greatly from having an OS controlled microprocessor on your desk - you need "oomph" to edit video, photos, play games, and if you're an engineer, to code, run simulations, etc. Let's not even talk about the bandwidth requirements of an all-cloud ecosystem. Yikes. So sure, there will be a market for thin-clients that connect to the clouds with essentially just a browser on it, but microprocessors and the OSes that sit on them will be here to stay. And while Windows is a horrid OS that the world can do without, efficient, light, or highly vertical OSes (optimized for gaming, multimedia, etc) will likely stick around.

In Rotation: Elzhi, The Preface

2008-08-16T00:27:14Z

I'm a HUGE slum village fan. A big part of that was due to a young J Dilla on production. And that's why I like The Preface, the first solo release by slum v alumnus Elzhi. I feel like it's 2000 all over again. The production, all handled by Black Milk, could easily be mistaken for Dilla himself. And Elzhi holds his own on the mic. Highly recommended.

Cuil not so Cool

2008-07-29T03:04:32Z

Cuil, a new search engine launched today by ex-Googlers certainly got a lot of media hype: front page billing on CNN.com and HuffPo. So I took a look.... First impression: 1. The black screen homepage doesn't look too inviting. Then search results come back at you with a white background. That color transition isn't easy on the eyes. 2. Content wise, Cuil seems competent with popular search terms, although it did hiccup because of the deluge of hits it received today. I got a few goose-eggs when I cuiled my name and again when I searched "highspeed ADC" earlier in the day, although it seems to be behaving now. Cuiling "The Smooth DJ" didn't return my website, or much anything related to music or DJing, but strange pictures of women's underwear. Compare that to Googling the same thing. 3. It's hard to discern ranking of search results. The results page is arranged in columns with no number pairing. After nearly a decade of Googling, this feels counter-intuitive.

Predicting Churn

2008-07-23T01:21:33Z

Elaine Warner over at Compete.com offers a glimpse of her company's tools and the insight analytics can provide. It appears that RIM owners are 3.7x more likely than the average internet user (and more likely than owners of other phones) to check out Apple's website. Ok, you might be wondering how she figured out what kind of phone internet users have. Me too. She just observed the visitor behavior at the OEM sites and made some logical assumptions: if they did things only a phone owner would do, like click on "my-account", they were counted.

Dilla & Mos Def Video Mashup

2008-07-20T04:50:07Z

Amazing.