Not my best scratch ever, but it’s a scratch nonetheless. In this video, I’m scratching using a Serato vinyl with one of my Stanton T.80s hooked up to Mixxx. I’m also using an M-Audio X-Session Pro MIDI controller instead of my real mixer, so the entire scratch is done with software.
For more info, check out this blog post.
It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about DJ gear. In the last year, I picked up a few new gadgets for DJing and music production:
Quick overview:
I haven’t spent as much of my time making scratch beats as I have writing songs, but I should try to put some of these things to work on some new scratch beats. We’ll see where it goes…
It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted a new scratch beat, but I’ve got good news: Fellow electronic music producer Wolfydolf just sent me a new scratch beat to share with you guys.
Give it a listen:
Download Wolfydolf’s Scratch Beat and make sure to check out his other works on his official site.
Well, it’s been an interesting journey so far. Since I bought my turntables last May, I’ve DJed several small events and house parties. As of yet, I’ve never DJed in a club, nor been paid to do a gig. As it so happens though, I’ve been given the opportunity to play as part of a two-person band playing electronic music. My forgotten aspirations of performing as a scratch DJ (turntablist?) have been given new life because that’s exactly what I’m going to be doing at this live show. Not only is this going to be my first performance in front of nightclub-style audience, but I’m not even going to be DJing - I’m going to be scratching! (How awesome is that?)
If you’re in the Hamilton area, come check us out! ($5 at the door, no clue what time we’re playing, probably 8 pm-ish?) Obligatory MySpace link
I’m probably also going to be playing a synth, along with another fancy new toy I just bought. I’ll leave you in suspense until I write a review of it though.
We’ll see how it goes!
The American Audio Q-D5 has been my weapon of choice for the last year. It’s a middle-end DJ mixer with your standard mixing features, plus an optical crossfader that’s top notch for scratching. It’s a great buy for the price, and my only complaint with it is that the sound quality isn’t quite audiophile grade. I’ve never noticed it while DJing at events, but in the comfort of my own home, it’s much more noticeable.
I’ve heard in the past that replacing the op-amps in audio equipment can drastically improve the quality of the sound coming out of a device. With that in mind, I decided to peer into the innards of my mixer:
Towards the right in the above image, you can see a pair of op-amps:
The one on the left is a JRC 4556AD, with a JRC 4558D on the right. The 4556 and 4558 are common op-amps found in consumer grade audio equipment, but they’re not designed specifically for audio. It looks like the 4556 is used for the master volume control there, and the 4558 is used for the headphone volume. Only two op-amps - I could replace those no problem, right?
After lifting up the rest of the top, I saw this:
It turns out there’s actually 3 separate PCBs which do the audio routing/processing, with 9 op-amps in total. And silly me, after roughly tracing the circuit, it makes total sense: There’s 2 op-amps for the phono preamps, 2 for the channel gains, 2 for the volume faders, 1 for the headphone volume, 1 for the master volume, and 1 for the mic volume. Now, I wouldn’t necessarily have to replace all nine of these op-amps to get a boost in the sound quality, but I think I’d still have to replace seven to stop the audio from getting degraded by one of the plain-jane JRC 4558s. That quickly killed my hopes of getting a cheap mixer upgrade.
One interesting thing I spotted is that each PCB was stamped with a date, all of which seemed to be from different years. For example, here’s the bottom of my crossfader:
I bought this mixer in 2006, but the crossfader was manufactured in 2001. (It’s a damn good crossfader though.) In fact, the whole mixer looks like it may have even been hand assembled.
It’s a shame that it’ll be too much work (and too risky) to upgrade the op-amps in my mixer, but it was neat to see to see what goes on inside a DJ mixer. Enjoy the pics!
I DJed a kegger with Pete last week, and I finally got around to getting a hold of some pictures. In the first pic, you’ll see a pair of Stanon T.80s, my American Audio Q-D5 mixer (still rocking btw), Pete’s Vestax VMC-002 XL, my Hercules PC DJ Control MP3, Pete’s Creative Audigy 2 NX, my Griffin iMic, and someone else’s laptop. There’s actually a few more bits of subtle gear in those pictures, and some more stuff under the table, but I’ll just leave it at that.
I’ve picked up a decent amount of new gear since the last time I blogged, namely the Griffin iMic for audio capture, a pair of Shure M44G cartridges, and the Hercules PC DJ Control MP3. The Hercules is a nice little control surface that’s super portable and works quite nicely with Mixxx.
If you look really closely, you’ll notice one thing peculiar about this next picture:
I’m using a pair of Final Scratch vinyls, but there’s no ScratchAmp in sight, nor is there any Traktor in sight. What the heck is going on, you ask? I’m using a sneak-peek version of Mixxx, which supports use of Final Scratch vinyls with regular soundcards. That’s right - no ScratchAmp, and no $600 down the drain. The vinyl control worked decently well up until I had to crank the volume really high - after that, bass feedback/rumble became an issue because the speakers were right underneath the table. At that point we bailed on the vinyl control and decided to use the turntables for some scratching and the Hercules controller for mixing. If anyone’s interested in using Mixxx for vinyl control, keep an eye on the Mixxx homepage. Hopefully within a few months the vinyl control stuff will be tweaked and polished well enough to make it into a major release.
If you’re looking for good free DJ software, look no further than Mixxx. Mixxx is a completely free DJ app for beatmixing live music and is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux users.
I’ve been a Mixxx user for over a year now, and it’s definitely the best free DJ application out there. I’ve practiced with it tons of times and even used it lived, all without a single hitch or crash. If you play around with the headphone cue settings, you can even hook it up to your external mixer (that’s how I use it).
This latest release adds some cool new features like pitch-independent time stretch and waveform summary displays, both of which are quite useful when you’re performing live.
Check out more of Mixxx’s features, or head straight to the download page to try it out.
Let this be a lesson to any aspiring turntablist/DJ/producer out there: There’s a BIG difference between sampling, and flat out plagiarizing a song.
Take for instance, the track “Do it” on Nelly Furtado’s latest album, produced by Timbaland:
More info about this here.
As both a turntablist and a producer of original music, I totally feel for the original artist. I feel like it’s a complete insult to the entire demoscene, a community consisting of amazing musicians and artists. I would even go so far as to say that the sceners often produce better music than 99% of the mainstream.
It’s not just theft, it’s a crime against real art.
Update: Thief 2.0
(Also, if you listen to Tempest’s song at around 1:38, you’ll notice it’s basically the ringtone (ie. same beat))
