schofield

^ Why aren't the players appearing?

My first post here, but I thought it worth mentioning. My listening this morning to start my work day is centred around the earthly elements, both albums released overnight... https://merkabamusic1.bandcamp.com/album/elements https://shamansdream1.bandcamp.com/album/the-four-elements Loving both!

Ecometric - Self [ Self Released ] appears to be a mix-set on soundcloud only (i.e. basically a dj mix of original material). And it's only mp3. Is it a preview of an upcoming release? Or have I missed where to buy it from bandcamp or elsewhere?

I agree. There's some great psy breaks music in that style and tempo.

Looking at all those releases, it was a good week. Discovered the GeOMetrae album yesterday; it sounds really good. As does the Suns of Arqa one. The Hedflux & Grouch EP is a cracker - hardly downtempo! I played it loud on Sunday and young kids were bopping around the house to it - they seemed to enjoy it!

Next week will be tough, with Ayla Nereo's Hollow Bone Remixes and Subaqueous' ReCreate remix albums both out now. Both are pretty great.

I have enjoyed streaming 4bstr4ck3r's EP over the last week. Pretty funky stuff. Not too glitch-hoppy for me - still remains pleasant to the ears. I bought the Desert Dwellers album last Friday but haven't had a proper chance to listen actively yet. My passive listens have been enjoyable but I was distracted by goings-on around me. My vote was for Drrtywulvz Animal EP - I like it a lot. I'll have to do a bulk purchase of Merkaba music soon - the label has been releasing somewhat prolifically over the last months, I can't keep up!

The Living Light remix album is my pick for this week. Been looking forward to it for a while now.

^ That's a pretty cool article. The second video at the end is good too - there's something sounding not too dissimilar to KLF toward the end.

I quite like that article. It leaves me somewhat inspired. It could probably be twice as long and talk more about the modern era.

I really like Symbolico - The Art Of Dream Travel. It's also the only one I have bought this week.

I love the Mindex EP. And thanks Snowdrop for mentioning Man Of No Ego - Web of Life. I may have otherwise glossed over it, but I listened to it yesterday after I saw your post and liked what I heard. Some promising tunes on there.

Here's my mix from the Chill Stage at Rainbow Serpent Festival, Sunday, 25 January 2015. It's been an honour for me to play there for the last 8 or 9 years (I should check how long, maybe next year will be my tenth anniversary set...). It was a Sunday morning, 9-11am. The mix starts out rather contemplative - as do Sunday mornings generally - before pitching up into some beats and a bit of here and there-ness. Anyway, it's a great festival and about the only one I get to these days. Hope you enjoy... Ross (Schofield) https://soundcloud.com/voonbag/chill-dj-set-recorded-live-rainbow-serpent-festival-2015 Tracklist: Tina Malia - Jaya Bhagavan Padmasana - Evolution Living Light - Perihelion Hang in Balance - Midnite (NAs-ja Remix) The Books - Chain Of Missing Links Ajja & Cosmosis - Around The Bend Mr Squatch - Safe in Sound The Human Experience - Lion Heart Subaqueous - Dusk's Dawning (Feat. D'answer) EurythmY & Electrypnose - Further Austero - Fuerza Brutal Origamibiro - Vitreous Detachment Giyo - Parisian Girl Dirtwire - Back Home Pickin' On Series - Oppression (The Human Experience Remix) Akshin Alizadeh - Southern Man Kalya Scintilla - Feeln' Good saQi - Spirit's Cradle ft. Worth and Leah Song of Rising Appalachia Ajja & Cosmosis - Rhodes To Nowhere saQi - Incantation Lou Reed vs Lunar Sound vs Austero - Step Beyond the Wildside (Schofield Mashup) Zen Baboon - Optimist Bees Pink Floyd - Keep Talking (Lucid Vision Remix feat. Melody Lines) If you want to you can find me here: https://www.facebook.com/schofield74

Thanks for the tip. You may be on to something there, and for $100-150 bucks it's a relatively small outlay. Has anyone used the Akai MPK Mini Mk II? Could be a decent starter and companion for the APC 40.

I used Reason many years ago when I wasn't time-poor. It never came to much but I found it easy to use. Now I am time-poor (work and family commitments will do that) and I am contemplating starting to learn to produce music Ableton from scratch. I already use it for dj-ing, so I have some knowledge of how the clips and scenes work etc. Learning the instruments will be interesting. Lot's of you-tube videos and tutorials methinks. If nothing else it is provide me with an additional music-related hobby. I might need to get a midi-keyboard at some stage though, but I want to learn some stuff first and make sire I will stick with it. I already have an APC40.

I use MIK. I have found it works really well. My workflow would be: Use MediaMonkey to ensure correct tags and file-naming conventions (e.g. Artist/Album/Track_number - Artist - Track_name). Drag into Mixed In Key to find the key and the bpm. In truth, Ableton is just as good at finding the bpm. Drag into Ableton to warp the tracks and update the clip names (one track per clip) to BPM - Key - Artist - Track_name. The clips appear in my Ableton library sorted into genre folders and then sorted by BPM and then Key and then the artist and track names. Works for me. I can find tracks I want to play in my Ableton library or I sometimes use the MIK search function to find tracks that I may not have warped in Ableton. I actually - maybe stupidly - let MIK scan my whole music collection when I got it, which took days! And I wish I didn't do it and the search and sort functions are pretty basic and I would like to remove thousands of the tracks from it but it would be a very tedious process. But it has it's advantages and sometimes searching by key and bpm I find some random tracks that will fit well into a set. As a sidenote, I have found that since I started mixing harmonically, I probably now do it too much! In that I try to always go for harmonic harmony in the mixes, meaning I exclude many tracks because 'on-paper' they are harmonically unmatched. However in reality they might still work. But I am working on that and trying to retrain my brain to not worry so much about what the key is what other tracks are in related keys and just select/mix what sounds good at the time. Harmonic changes in a set also have their place, especially in downtempo mix sets. *edit in bold.

That was what got me over the line into digital dj'ing in the end. I was forever burning cds - (now I am forever warping tracks) - and had piles of them everywhere. I was really running out of room for them. That said, soon I will have to cull my digital music collection as it is ever-expanding and some old stuff I don't listen to anymore.

Great post. I generally don't do the zip folder with the cover art, cue file and text file. However I do embed the cover art into the mp3 (320) and enter the tracklist into the lyrics. The cue file however I do think is a good idea for the reasons you stated above. I use Media Monkey to add the tags in much the same way that you have above. I also agree that the tracklist should aways be presented. So many times I've wanted to purchase music I've heard in a dj mix and haven't been able to identify the track or artis. It's annoying!

I started out with cd players - Denon 2600F and later Pioneer DMP555s (which I love, and which have the BPM down to 1 decimal point). I still have both cd j setups because you can't really get any decent money for the Denons anyway, and I like the Pioneers. Now I use a laptop (Asus) and Ableton for dj-ing, with an APC40, external hard drive and external soundcard. Warping tracks takes a bit of time but the upside is that I can dj without headphones. (I don't dj very often anyway, it's more of a hobby than a profession for me. but music is my passion regardless). I'd like to get the APC40 MK2 at some stage, I think. I like that it is USB-powered.