The BPM show is just around the corner. And what can you expect to see there? Oh I'm sure some manufacturer or other will have some sort of new hotness on display. But who cares about such tawdry things when I've organised a battle stretching across both days! And there's one place left on the Saturday event so read on if you fancy entering. But be warned - the entrants so far are all DMC level.
You can get your tickets by clicking on the BPM banner in the right hand column or click this link.
Part of the fun of being a DJ (well vinyl ones anyway) is crate digging - the act of fruitlessly sifting through racks of crap in your local record store for the new hotness, or better still hunting down real gems in charity shops and car boot sales for not much cash. But it's not without it's darker side, which has been rather disturbingly illustrated in a set of images from Dutch artist and obvious digger Stefan Glerum.
The DMC finals start tonight. 2 days and nights of world class turntablism get under way at the indig02 arena in the currently depressed docklands area of Landan village. Please be careful making your way through the streets to the event - take time to look up and avoid the suicidal city traders currently losing their and your shirts in the name of making what money is left in the world. Don't fret - just get thee to docklands and shout for your countrymen. Knowing London, that means the UK will probably be in the minority then.
As I travel around forums, there's almost always a "Show your setup" thread, detailing the OCD stylings or borderline public health offence level rigs that exist in people's cellars and bedrooms. But surely Paul Oakenfold's little setup is the DJ equivalent of top trumps, essentially pwning just about everyone else everywhere.
DaScratch... touch it - control it - ignore the name
Posted by Gizmo on September 20, 2008
So the worst kept secret in recent DJ history is out. The full details of the teased and allegedly accidentally leaked Stanton "DaScratch" (sooo known as the SCS.3d from now on) are finally available for you to pour over and understand. Putting the somewhat questionable name to one side, the SCS.3d puts a fresh touchy feely spin on conventional MIDI controllers and via the archaic but still popular protocol of MIDI lets you take control of your software of choice.
Christmas is much closer than you think. Trust me - before you know it, you'll be scratching your head to try and think of something to give that favourite DJ in your life. Sure, you could grab them some vinyl or slipmats, but no doubt you'd pick the wrong ones. But the choice for DJ watches is somewhat limited - until Flud watches came along. Check out these bad boys.
And djdecks makes 3... well 0.9 but you know what I mean
Posted by Gizmo on September 15, 2008
They say that all good things come in threes, so rounding off the DJ software updates, djdecks gets updated to milestone release rather than the lesser point releases. This is more about making thing better than fixing problems.
I need to get me some sort of software release counter graphic, because you can be damned sure that the planets align and make companies get updates out all at the same time. As sure as night follow day, you can almost guarantee that if SSL gets updated, then out comes a Traktor upgrade as well. Or vice versa. This time, Traktor and its DVS sibling Scratch gets an oh so minor upgrade, just fixing a enough bugs that can be counted on one hand.
Serato's Scratch Live gets another final release under its belt in the shape of v1.8.2. Classed as a maintenance update, it finally embraces the world of 64 bit Vista as well as adding support for the Pioneer CDJ-400.
Ean Golden from djtechtools is a man with an unnatural love, nay obsession with the Vestax VCI-100. This has seen him win much favour with Vestax, to the point where they even made him an outrageously sexy special edition VCI for him to peddle through his site, but not before he'd done a mod of nextlevelness on his own VCI - arcade buttons. Awesome. But now he's applied his skills and hands-on user experience to try and make the VCI-100 even better and has come up with JogGrips, which are essentially nobbly rubber disks that are stickier than my pants at NAMM.
I've always steered clear of DVS systems - partly because my computer is an antique, partly because I don't trust computers to stay stable for more than a minute (yes, even Macs) and also because I can't abide the whole interaction with the computer rather than with my DJ gear. I know this makes me appear as some of luddite, but that's the way it is. But something has come along that seemingly scrubs one of the above caveats from the list. Stanton’s new controller in currently in beta, but looking like an answer to my quest.
As suspected, that helza funky dope faceplate on the reborn A&H xone:02 didn't exactly meet with the approval of the scratchernet. Both here and on djforums.com, the general opinion was that they should stop, right now, walk away from the faceplate and leave it the hell alone. So seeing as I was at PLASA, and so were A&H, I figured that just in case they missed it, I'd share the feelings of the world with them. This I did and back came some insight into the decision.
So... the NS7 has been uncaged, and this DJ hack spent a fair amount of time on it at PLASA 2008 yesterday. I pressed lots of buttons, scratched lots of noises and walked away very impressed. I was subsequently less impressed with my video camera though. It's been a tad iffy since Christmas, and while a gentle smack to the side of it usually kicks it into action, it generally operates at around 50% functionality, and there's no guaranteeing what will or won't work properly. Sadly the sound was very VERY bad on this clip so apologies up front for that. But read on for my thoughts.
The big day has come - when the Numark NS7 was coaxed from behind it's glass force field and allowed itself to be petted by the great unwashed. Yes people, not 1, but 2 NS7s were at PLASA, one of which was fully functioning and quite happy to have me abuse it on and off for a full hour. And I got video of me attempting to cut on it as well, but that won't be up until tomorrow, as will the rest of this NS7 story. There's only so much I can do from train. But read on for a new feature of the NS7...
As expected, PLASA was a barren wasteland in the new gear department. But as dependable as always, Numark pulled a small but heavy MIDI controlling rabbit out of the hat in the shape of OMNI CONTROL - that's all caps to denote its dominance over it's weaker and pathetic sibling Total Control, which is all plastic and puny in comparison. OMNI CONTROL would clearly take Total Control in a fight.
