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UniqueSquared

UniqueSquared
April 24, 2013

Live DJ Remixing #3: How To Get Ideas

DJs these days are really a dime a dozen; they’re everywhere.  I do not hate on the popularity of the hobby – it’s ultimately good for it in the long run, but sometimes it widens the pool of talent so big that it’s hard to even spot where the talent is at all.  Regardless of what kind of DJ you are these days; almost every DJ has spawned from the most basic of all types – the plain vanilla mixing DJ.  This refers to the standard transitional DJ who takes song A and song B and blends the choruses together.  No matter what genre you are mixing this technique can be done to the same effect.

DJs are wise to understand that they need to take their mixing far beyond this starting point.  Cueing and remixing has become more popular, so popular that commercial entities have profited from making this …

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UniqueSquared

UniqueSquared
January 2, 2013

Glitch Electronica In Ableton Live With Mr. Bill

There is a saying that “art mimics life, and life mimics art”.  The same can be said about technological advancements in music creating technology and the culture that surrounds it as well.  When Ableton first implemented its session mode, the developers never expected it to be used as the live instrument DAW that is it so widely used as today.  They figured it would be confined to bedrooms and studios in a purely production setting.  With the latest revision of Ableton, it’s clear that the interface has been tampered with to allow it to be used as live performance tool, above all else.  This is an example of culture influencing technology.

Music genres also have an effect on technology, and vice versa.  If you look closely at the type of FX that are offered on Native Instrument programs, like the Traktor Remix Decks, it seems like they’re geared towards …

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Taylor

Taylor
December 3, 2012

Drumcell Interview: Thoughts on Traktor

With the release of Traktor Pro 2.6 earlier this year, many DJ’s are beginning to take advantage of the new remix deck functionality, better BPM detection, and the new flux mode and macro FX selections. In addition the new hardware  from Native Instruments like the Traktor Kontrol F1 and their first forray into mixers with the Traktor Kontrol Z2, help to make these new features in the Traktor update even more useful. The techno DJ and Traktor specialist Drumcell is not just a former spokesman for the DJ software, but he is an active user of the software and uses it at every gig.

When we interviewed Drumcell he was performing with two laptops: one to use with Traktor and utilizing 4 decks, and the other with Ableton where he was launching clips with Native Instruments Maschine. He noted that in the very near future he will be integrating …

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UniqueSquared

UniqueSquared
November 21, 2012

Will Commercially Available Remix Sets Take Off?

If you were spinning vinyl records before Serato was taken seriously by DJs, you have a few options for remixing songs at your disposal.  A lot of times, a “single” would contain the explicit, edited, and radio edits of a song on one side, and if you were lucky – the other side would contain just the instrumental and acapella versions.  The ability to remix vocals on one track with the instrumental from another is what made the hiphop DJ so versatile, and it was something that really couldn’t be done with electronic music at the time.  DJ tools were also being produced: edited versions of songs with long intros for easy mixing.

With most of our music being sourced digitally, it’s easy to come by remixed versions of song nowadays, in fact, too easy.  Sometimes the only version of a song you can find is the remixed version, with …

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UniqueSquared

UniqueSquared
November 16, 2012

Traktor Kontrol F1 – The Hack Evolved

When Native Instruments released the Kontrol F1 it left a few of us scratching our heads and wondering why they would produce a controller that looks almost the same as the Kontrol X1, which was released long before it.  Native Instruments knew exactly what they were doing.  The release of the F1 was created to correspond only to their “remix decks” – which from a sales point, made perfect sense.  Instead of just creating software and letting other controller manufacturers have their way with it, they designed their controller to run directly with their own software.

This led many DJs to gripe since the F1 actually had everything they would need in a controller, even if they weren’t using Traktor.  It’s small size and square pad layout is ideal in almost any DJ situation – especially for creating and triggering cues on the spot.  Thankfully, hackers had the same thoughts …