Video : Kaskade Atmosphere Live | Part 2

STOP THE TECH-HOUSE TAKEOVER

Much like Japanese Knotweed, the invasive garden plant that spreads quickly and is an absolute bastard to get rid of, tech-house has taken over underground dance music with a death-like grip and is refusing to let go.
From the grime producers frantically re-editing classic tracks to fit the tech-house template to the chart-topping electronic songstresses using the sound on their comeback singles, it’s clear the infection has spread far and wide.
And it’s not only niche snobs who are getting pissed off, but respectable, BBC-approved tastemakers, too. The other day, Annie Mac tweeted: “Aahhh jeez, everyone’s making droney house.” By that, we’re assuming she means the drab, uber formulaic four-to-the-floor built from over-polished percussion, mind-numbingly simple chord progressions and sappy basslines. It’s paint-by-numbers dance music and it’s coming for you.
Clubs in London are currently flooded with these monochrome beats but it’s not just the UK capital that’s in trouble. From Miami to Berlin to Sao Paulo to Ibiza, tech-house has swept through like a dense iron curtain that blocks sunlight and crushes all living sonic cultures in its path.
Imagine a bland new world over which tech-house rules. Dancefloors are awash with soulless, globular tunes that, pitched at 123bpm, turn formerly hype party kids into vacant rave zombies; high street shops stock nothing but cheap aviator shades and V-neck T-shirts; shuffling becomes a recognised sport, replacing football on school curriculums; tribes of suburban lads overturn the local authority and police the streets, enforcing their own brand of steroid-ridden martial law; ketamine consumption quadruples and hospitals struggle to cope with the increase in burst bladders. Things get very, very bleak.
But why the obsession with tech-house? Producers seem seduced by its lowest common denominator template and its sleek, chrome edges. But most of all they seem infatuated with its accessibility and the way it hypnotises people in the club. Tech-house works during the warm up, the peak time and the come down because it literally never changes; it’s aural crack for people who only seem to want a dull, thudding beat. Or something inoffensive they can talk over easily and which sounds half decent after necking a mega pill.
As the tech-house blob bounces into the future of dance music, flattening genres in its wake and pulling hapless beat makers into its sticky slipstream, it’s worth taking stock of what’s actually going on. While visions of a dystopian techy future might be a bit far fetched, this wretched genre is actually homogenising underground dance music. Everyone’s making it and everyone’s trying to make money off it, sucking creativity out of an area of electronic music that should be fervent and forward thinking.
It's not that tech-house is inherently bad or evil; millions of people genuinely do like it. It's just that the march towards homogeneity, towards standardisation with once-experimental producers starting to make slick, vacuous music. Dance music should thrive on difference - anything else is worse than evil - it's boring.
It won’t be easy to get rid of and it’ll be around for a while yet, tentacles climbing up the iTunes/Beatport/Top 40 charts with ease. But there’s ways of combating it. Next time you see your favourite producer start to waver and reach for the tech-house sample pack, go grab them and let them know how you feel. Snap them out of the trance by pledging allegiance to their originality. Because there’s more to dance music, way more, than tech-house.

Credit : MixMag

DJ : Luciano gives and receives lessons on music, technology, and life in a short documentary with South Africa's Bridges for Music

   

It’s an interesting thing that even in a place like South Africa, the music scenes between town and country rarely intersect. Leave it to Bridges for Music, then, to help integrate not only the sounds of South African urban centers with their outlying townships, but also to foster a relationship between artists from the US and Europe and those making their homes in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and other metropolises. Geneva’s Luciano is one such DJ who, earlier this year, made the trip to both entertain and educate South African youth in Langa and Soweto townships on the topic of dance music. But, as is often the case, it turned out that Luciano himself received just as much of an education. He not only participated in a series of free workshops with Vinny da Vinci, Ryan Murgatroyd, and Ready D but also performed with the likes of legendary SA house DJ Black Coffee, Kid Fonque, Thibo Thazz, and plenty others. 

Credit : Beatport

DJ : Women Edging Their Way Into the D.J. Booth

The Nigerian-born London techno artist Nicole Moudaber at work. She is one of the rising stars in electronic dance music.

When the D.J. duo Nervo, the Australian twins Olivia and Miriam Nervo, first began spinning three years ago, they used to shock people just by showing up.

The Viennese D.J. Cassy Britton, who has a quarterly residency at the Brooklyn club Output.

 

When the D.J. duo Nervo, the Australian twins Olivia and Miriam Nervo, first began spinning three years ago, they used to shock people just by showing up.  

 “We would arrive at the airport, and someone would pick us up, and they would be like, ‘You’re Nervo?’ “ said Olivia, who goes by Liv.

The promoters couldn’t believe that the D.J.’s weren’t men but young, attractive women.

Nervo now perform regularly at major festivals and clubs, but the sisters are still the rare female breakout in electronic dance music. In a new reader-generated poll in DJ Magazine of the top 100 D.J.’s, Nervo is No. 16, one of only three female-led acts on the list. Last year, it was the only one.

About five years after the latest wave of electronic dance music, or E.D.M., became big business in the United States, and 26 years after Anita Sarko was called “the Queen of the Discotheque Deejays“ by The New York Times, the D.J. booth is still very much a male realm. Male headliners dominate superclubs like Hakkasan in Las Vegas and Pacha in New York. Only a handful of women appear at megafestivals like New York’s recent Electric Zoo, which has booked about a dozen acts with women over its five-year history. There has yet to be a woman on Forbes magazine’s list of the highest-paid D.J.’s. “Commercial E.D.M. is overwhelmingly bro-dominated,” said the longtime dance music journalist and D.J. Philip Sherburne.

Cassy Britton, better known as Cassy, a D.J. and producer from Vienna who played Oct. 26 at the Brooklyn club Output as part of her quarterly residency there, called the scene “a boy’s club, in a sense.”

“No woman is in that top level,” she said. “So, there is not one woman that makes a lot of money in D.J.-ing. Not one.”

The male and female D.J.’s, promoters and label executives interviewed cited a number of possible reasons for why there are no female Tiestos, including an industry predominantly run by men, a lack of female role models and mentors of either gender, and a grueling lifestyle that is disruptive to having a family. And, many said, even though readily available software has made making music easier to learn, women still aren’t as prone to knob twiddling as their male counterparts.

But in spite of the odds, the Nervo sisters and Ms. Britton are enjoying a rising profile, along with female D.J.’s like the London techno artist Nicole Moudaber, the British dark-house purveyor Maya Jane Coles, the German techno jock Tini and the Russian techno D.J. Nina Kraviz.

In August, Ms. Britton, 39, put out a mix CD for a long-running series from Fabric, the respected London club. She is only the fourth woman with a Fabric mix, out of 72 editions in all. She studied classical guitar for seven years, has been spinning and producing since the late 1990s, and like top male D.J.’s, writes and produces her own records, sometimes collaborating with prominent techno artists like Steve Bug, the duo Swayzak and Ricardo Villalobos. Electric Indigo, another female D.J., was her mentor, even as Ms. Britton said she herself faced resistance from male peers.

“Most of the boys I was hanging out with, they were just getting stoned and being experts in all labels and releases, and they weren’t really putting themselves out there,” she said. “I was putting myself out there. I think that’s what they hated — that I would get somewhere and they would know so much more about everything.”

She moved to Berlin in 2003 and became a resident at the Panorama Bar inside Berghain, the famed Berlin club. Her sound, a gritty, funk-infused hybrid of deep house and techno, plays well in big clubs as well as in more intimate venues. Ms. Britton is also currently a resident at Rex Club in Paris, and Trouw in Amsterdam, and has been playing at Fabric since 2005.

“She is an exceptional D.J., not just an exceptional ‘female D.J.,’ ” Leo Belchetz, the label manager at Fabric Records, wrote in an email. “We have actually been trying to get Cassy onto the series for a couple of years. But each time there has been something that has got in the way — either an alternative release commitment or she was moving home. (She is infamously nomadic!)”

Ms. Britton plays three or four gigs in different cities, sometimes in different countries, every week; in the weeks leading up to her October Output date, she was scheduled to spin in Paris, Boston, Munich and Amsterdam. This summer, she couldn’t answer a basic query: Where is home?

“Very good question,” she said by phone from a hotel room in Florence, Italy. “I don’t live anywhere anymore.”

“This job is an extremely bizarre job,” she added. “I was married, I got a divorce, and I’m sure it all has to do with my job.” 

In dance music, taking a break longer than a few months can stall a career, as subgenres fall out of favor in an instant. The veteran trance and progressive house D.J. Sandra Collins, 43, who took time off to have a child five years ago, said that when she returned to spinning, she found the landscape of dance music had shifted. “They want confetti house,” Ms. Collins said of the poppy, crescendo-filled hits that dominate mainstream dance floors. “And I can’t, I will never be able to do that.” 

The Australian twins Olivia, left, and Miriam Nervo. 

Nina Kraviz, from Russia. 

On the commercial dance music circuit, Nervo is infiltrating the all-male lineups. “They are in the Top 20 list of D.J.’s being booked,” said Paul Oakenfold, 50, the influential D.J. and producer, who has been a supporter of Nervo’s career, taking the pair on tour with him in 2010. There are more female D.J.’s entering the field now compared with the ’90s, he said, “but look at it this way: You’ve got to be really, really good now, it’s so competitive.”

The Nervo sisters had been professional songwriters for nearly a decade, helping to pen hits for the Pussycat Dolls and Kesha. They co-wrote “When Love Takes Over,” the Grammy-winning hit for David Guetta, featuring Kelly Rowland, before stepping in front of the decks.

“We were working with more and more electronic artists, and had some success, and that really gave us the confidence to step out and be artists ourselves,” said Liv Nervo, who gave her age as 29. Nervo’s poppy single “Hold On” hit No. 1 on the Billboard dance/club play chart in June.

Mr. Oakenfold said: “You’ve got to be really playing the music that’s in vogue, especially because the kids just want the commercial music, and there ain’t a lot of women who are doing that.”

It doesn’t hurt that the photogenic sisters also have a modeling background and are sponsored by Cover Girl. On the E.D.M. circuit, which has become increasingly image-based, seemingly full of square-jawed men from Sweden, the Nervo sisters are well poised to be stars.

Still, Liv Nervo said they didn’t want to overemphasize their image. “We make sure we’re not too scantily dressed,” she said. “We do make sure that we don’t tart it up too much.”

Playing up sex appeal can be risky for a female D.J. Nina Kraviz, a Russian-born, Berlin-based D.J., found herself embroiled in controversy earlier this year when she gave part of a video interview for Resident Advisor, the techno website, while taking a bubble bath. She was accused by techno fans of exploiting her looks to gain attention. (She was ranked No. 47 on Resident Advisor’s 2012 top 100 D.J. list.) “It was a person in the bubbles, come on, come on,” said Ms. Kraviz, who was a dentist in Russia before becoming a D.J. “I was thinking that it was so hilarious. And I just did it just for fun, honestly. I was just being myself in the bath, so that it would be more real.”

Like Nervo, Ms. Moudaber, the Nigerian-born D.J., who gave her age as 36, got a boost from an influential male star. She promoted parties in Beirut before moving to London and becoming a D.J. and producer. Then the longtime techno artist Carl Cox listed Ms. Moudaber as the most underrated D.J. of 2009, telling DJ Magazine: “I’ve been following her career for the last three years. She’s amazing.”

Ms. Moudaber said, “Since that moment my whole career opened, basically.”

She is prolific, releasing singles on Intec, Mr. Cox’s label, as well as her own techno label, Mood. This year she also put out her first full-length album, “Believe” (Drumcode). “To be honest, it’s all down to the women,” Ms. Moudaber said. “If you want to do it, you do it. Nobody’s forcing them not to do it. That’s how I see it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a girl or a boy. It’s just a case of wanting to do something.”

Still, Ms. Moudaber said that girls could be more strongly encouraged to embrace technology. “I’d like to see more girls being conditioned from their early youth by their parents and stop putting dolls in their hands. If they want to play with machines, let them play with the machines, because I never played with a doll.”

Shawn Schwartz, the owner of the Brooklyn record store Halcyon, said he started a night showcasing female talent there in 2010 but had to stop when, he said, the store ran out of new women to book. “I don’t see that there’s any kind of institutional blockade from the industry side,” he said. “If you are booking D.J.’s, it’s not like there are equal numbers of men and women available, and just the guys get booked.”

It’s a vicious cycle: In Las Vegas, where a top D.J. can earn a million dollars per night for the club, it’s a risk to book an untested D.J., female or not. And though the major clubs are packed with women, and many dance hits have female vocals, women are often sexualized by the industry; in Las Vegas, topless pool parties abound.

But a female D.J. can provide an “aha” moment. “I’m seeing a lot of girls on my floor,” Ms. Moudaber said. “They come probably because they can identify with me. Whereas in the past, maybe, they never used to bother to go to a techno night.”

Unlike in other male-dominated fields like science or technology, there aren’t many institutions that train female D.J.’s.

Dubspot, an electronic music production and D.J. school in New York, hosts a bimonthly program, Inspiring Women in Music Technology. “Things are definitely on the upswing, and I am seeing more females enrolled than when I first started,” said Kelly Webb, the director of student affairs, who came to the school six years ago. Still, she said, only 10 percent of the school’s 250 D.J. students are women.

While Ms. Britton, Ms. Moudaber and Nervo are making inroads, they aren’t yet on the professional level of megastars like Skrillex. “I find it fairly surprising it hasn’t happened already,” said Ryan Keeling, the editor of Resident Advisor, of the lack of female star D.J.’s. “I feel like the way that things are going, it just is a matter of time.” 

Credit : NY Times

EDM : Amnesia Resigns Paris Hilton for 2014 Residency (Really??)

It pains me to post this...

According to a recent report from TMZ, Paris Hilton has already been signed by Amnesia nightclub to a 2014 residency in Ibiza. Much to the dismay of the vast majority of the EDM community, the notorious socialite made big headlines this summer when her first “professional” DJ stint was announced, receiving strong criticism from ex-boyfriend Afrojack and the always-outspoken Deadmau5, to name a few.
The club’s owner, however, has said his initial concerns about the performer have since been alleviated by her ability to continuously bring fans in. From a business perspective, he may have a point – their aim is simply to keep the club full. However, it does raise some questions about those attending her show and what they’re really looking for, as there is better talent to be found at practically every other club on the island.
While it’s unclear how much compensation Hilton will be receiving for the next residency, the initial report claims she has stated it’s less about the money and more about proving herself among the major industry players. However, pair the pop-up shops set up at Amnesia events to hawk her handbags and accessories, with the fact that it doesn’t appear she’s planning to hone her “skills” with additional gigs in the meantime, and her motives appear to become a bit more clear.
Upon return to the states, the hotel heiress tweeted a link to the TMZ article, stating that she had “killed it in Ibiza”.   Unfortunately for us, it’s not her DJ career that she killed.

Credit : EDM Tunes

DJ Tech (Video) : Are You Kidding Me?

This is why Good Djs are rare these days. Promoters endorse and book this clown who calls himself a DJ. His scratching skills alone tells and shows you the caliber of DJ he is. One thing for sure, he's smart. For a Dj who lacks skills, he's making a ton of money off you jerk-off promoters. Sad but true. The title DJ. Has to be earned. Not self proclaimed. Sure technology makes it easy for anyone to become a DJ. Please before you spend your money on these programs, DJ kits, etc...do your research, do your homework. Learn the basics. There's going to be a time when technology won't be as cooperative as you expect it to be. Practice your skills. Show the promoter, night club manager and club goers why you call yourself a "DJ". This video is an absolute embarrassment to DJs of all genres, worldwide. Please don't support any promoters or venues that support, promote or endorses this crap! He's a FRAUD not a DJ.

All comments, good bad or indifferent are welcome.

Avicii: "EDM has so much more to offer"

Future Music Festival knew what it was doing in adding Avicii to the bill last week. Sure, the festival already had its dance contingent comprehensively covered. From the untouchable headliners The Prodigy to cult hero Boys Noize and turntable whiz A-Trak with his new live show, plenty of the genre’s biggest names were already locked in across its three mainstages, not to mention the mighty Cocoon Heroes techno tent led by Sven Vath and Cosmic Gate’s own arena.
When it comes to pulling a huge crowd, though, Avicii has fast become the go-to guy. While Levels was his watershed moment, Tim Bergling’s repertoire is ever-growing. Capping off 2012 with the release of his Nicky Romero collaboration I Could Be The One on the LE7ELS label, he’s now stationed in L.A. to make more music. Given how much his DJ sets lean on his own productions – “60- to 70-percent my own unreleased solo music,” he told inthemix – you can expect to hear those next Avicii anthems this March. On the eve on the Future’s big announcement, we got the festival’s newest headliner on the phone for an all-too-brief catch-up.

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Just to kick off, I wanted to ask about the Aviici x You project where you’re getting fans to collaborate with you on a track. Where did the idea for that came from?
That was…oh, I don’t even know. I think my manager got presented with the idea and we just kind of evolved it from there to the point where it is now. I got involved when my manager brought it up with me and asked if it was something I wanted to be a part of. It sounded like so much fun, so I definitely didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity.
It’s a very 21st century way of making music, getting your fans involved on the internet.
I would have loved that shit three, four years ago when I was just dying to get someone to notice the DJ stuff, to have something like this. I used to love these sorts of competitions.
When we spoke late last year, you said you were going to set aside the first part of this year for making music. How’s that going so far?
So far so good, actually. I’m in L.A. now. I haven’t got really settled down, I’m still in a hotel. But for the past two weeks, I’ve pretty much been in the studio every day and I have a lot of new material. I had more on my computer, but it got stolen.
Oh yeah, I heard about that.
That stuff sucks. The first week it was kind of slow until I got my set-up back to where it was, but now I’m really getting back into it.
Are you ever able to make music while you’re on tour or do you need to be fully immersed in the studio?
Well, I’m not really recording; I use a lot of virtual instruments. I’ll have my meta keyboard with me and I’ll come up with small hooks, but then I’ll kind of paint the notes in the program, if that makes sense. I’ve gotten a lot better at doing that on the road as well.

Credit : InTheMix

EDM : Tommie Sunshine Says He Was Kicked Off the Decks at W.i.P.

Many know W.i.P. nightclub in New York’s Soho as the place where Drake and Chris Brown famously duked it out over Rihanna. New York DJ/producer Tommie Sunshine, who was booked to play the club on Saturday night, says that he was kicked off the decks for not playing commercial enough music. “I was taken off the decks at W.i.P. in Manhattan tonight 40 minutes early,” Sunshine told us on Sunday morning. “I was advised 15 minutes into the start my set that I needed to play ‘more commercial music with softer drops and more vocals.’”

Sunshine issued the following statement exclusively to Big Shot:

It was a record release party for my remix of Faustix & Imanos “Ambulance” on Strictly Rhythm. Date was moved twice before because club didn’t promote it properly. I got stuck on the Brooklyn Bridge for (no kidding) two hours on the way to dinner in the city before heading to my gig. I dropped my [girlfriend] Daniela at Mister H where she dances. Then had to walk from Mister H to W.i.P. in the rain because of no cabs. I arrived and started to play. I played as commercial as I ever play. The “owner” started in at my second record asking for “more commercial music with softer drops and more vocals.” Mind you the track the release party was for has NO VOCALS. Then I was informed that they were “hearing from clients they weren’t digging it and thought it was too hard.” Swedish House Mafia, a Ke$ha remix, the Pitbull track in the new Bud Light commercial, Avicii, some fun bootlegs…a bit past halfway into my set I was informed that I was being taken off the decks while standing with Askay from MTV and my booking agent Cody from AM Only.
We all had a good laugh about it because everyone is now an expert of this music, especially the ones who pay BIG $ to consume it. Not to mention the clowns who supposedly “run” clubs.
W.i.P. also gave the five people I put on the guest list a huge hassle for not coming with girls and tried to sell them bottles for entrance to the club. They also wouldn’t take care of drink tickets for my agent at AM Only, the promotional director of Strictly Rhythm, Nick from The Disco Fries and Kevin who runs my label, Brooklyn Fire.
Basically their #1 priority is their “clients” who spend money in bottle service & what they say dictates the music direction. The DJs who have to play to people who act this way don’t deserve this kind of abuse.
Not only will I never play there again but they have a huge mountain to climb for pissing off AM Only who sent them both Skrillex and Wolfgang Gartner for shows there and now they pretty much spit in my and my agent’s faces.
I wish them luck and I feel sorry for anyone who has to play there. This is not what this music is about. This is not what I am about. That’s is my story and I’m sticking to it.

Please Respect The DJ! This is happening way too often!

Credit : Big Shot Mag

EDM : Sia on being bumped in Vegas: "I don't know dance music"

Suffering the same fate Mark Farina, Calvin Harris and Cassian have before her, over the weekend Sia was forced to cut her DJ set short following a disagreement with the club’s management. The now US-based star was booked to play at Vegas venue The Bank, but when her song choices were met with a frosty reception from the club’s owner, the budding DJ called it quits early. But with the details all a little murky, we went to Sia herself for clarification earlier this week. Last night, she filled inthemix in on the details (through Twitter, naturally) and the explanation certainly makes for an entertaining read.
“The general manager called Kanye, Jay-Z, Big Sean and Snoop Dogg ‘elevator music’, asked me to play something up-tempo so I played the ever crowd pleasing Toxic, by Britney Spears,” Sia told inthemix via Twitter. ”’Britney hasn’t had a fucking hit record in 3 years! Current Top 40!,’ [the manager said], so I played Carly Rae Jepsen which wasn’t house enough for him. I am not a fan of doof doof music. It sounds like an alarm system to me. They had approved my playlist earlier so it was a shock to be told to play dance music of which I am not a fan. I don’t have or know anything about that kind of music, so he got more and more juicehead vein throbbingly irate to the extent of chest bumping my 122 pound manager, a quarter of the size of him. I felt scared and uncomfortable so we left.”
While she’s worked with David Guetta and been remixed by everyone from Mylo to Sander van Doorn, the Adelaide native’s never claimed to be a dance music diehard. “I’m so clueless about dance music,” she told ITM back in 2009. “I actually employ someone to choose remixes for me and we pay them money and they have taste. They commission someone to do a remix then they send it back to me. I listen to 15 seconds and I go ‘yeah, of course’.”

Credit : InTheMix

EDM - Vote For Craig Mills To Spin On The 2013 Groove Cruise

There's still time to vote (voting ends on 11/14)!  Cast your vote for my mix!! Click on this link Craig Mills Eargasm Sessions Groove Cruise Deck 10 Mix, below this mix you will see the 5 star rating option. Please give my mix a 5 star rating. This will secure my spot on the Groove Cruise!! Thank you. You can vote daily for the mix. Also if you have twitter, please feel free to show your support. In your tweets please use #groovecruisedeck10 @CraigMills1. Thank you!!!!

Ableton Push: Integrated, Touch-Sensitive Hardware Control for Live

Now, Ableton is doing its own hardware. Sure, Ableton’s logo was on the Akai APC40 and Novation Launchpad, and yes, “engineering by Akai” is stamped on the Push. But make no mistake: this is really the first Ableton hardware, and it shows.
Push is a grid controller with extra keys and encoders for navigating features. It shows the influence of devices like the monome (and divides up that grid like the Pages and 7up patches from the community). But it also includes controller features that are specifically integrated with Live, recalling custom controllers used by Monolake.
Ableton pitches this as a hardware “instrument,” but it’s both instrument and controller. And Ableton says it solves the problem of “how to make a song from scratch,” but it also solves the problem of how to perform with Live. In fact, it solves the problem of how to make a song from scratch while performing, coupled with some new Live 9 clip recording enhancements that work with other controllers, too. In typical Ableton fashion, then, it doesn’t really matter whether “live” means “live onstage” or just “working faster in the studio.”
As with Live 9, I got to spend some time playing Push and talking to the developers who worked on it last week at an event with other press, partners, and artists at Ableton’s offices. The hardware is near-final, but software is still in development, so some features are subject to change.
You can read the specs anywhere, so let’s list the biggest surprises (for me, anyway):

• The pads sense velocity and pressure – no more grids limited to on/off only.
• A ribbon controller along the side adds additional control and expression.
• All this light and color runs on bus power. (Awesome feature: plug in external power, and everything gets brighter.)
• It’s hacker-friendly: USB class-compliant (hello, Linux, iOS), and fully controllable via MIDI. (You can evidently even use the displays via SysEx.)
• You do get some footswitch inputs, too. (someone asked about this in comments, so it must be a surprise)

You get 64 velocity-and pressure-sensitive multi-colored pads, plus eleven touch-sensitive endless encoders.
As an “instrument,” Push maps to an isomorphic pitch layout. It’s I think the first time we’ve seen such a layout in mainstream, non-niche hardware (unless you count iPad apps). That makes the grid map usefully to different keys and harmonic structures, and it’s there by default – no extra work needed. In a feature I hope survives from the prototype to the final version, there’s even feedback on equivalent pitches as you play.
The advantage of isomorphic layouts is, once you learn a pattern, transposition is easy, and chords and harmonies are generally easier to find. (A guitar, for instance, is actually isomorphic; a piano is not. I like pianos, and you can learn to transpose on them, but for learning a new instrument, this is an ideal choice.) At the Ableton demo last week, we got to see “Giant Steps” played in all keys.
And, of course, you get all of this with pressure, mapped to aftertouch. If you can accommodate the grid layout, that could make Push a really expressive instrumental controller, particularly with the ribbon controller. The challenge may be fatigue playing pads; some velocity sensitivity adjustment will be necessary. But the pads felt good even on a prototype unit. Yes, they’re Akai-built pads.

A look at the isomorphic pitch layout, with blue lights indicating equivalent pitches.

As a “controller,” Push does all the business with clips you’d expect. What seemed impressive in early demos was how tightly it could integrate with the production workflow. You can quickly drop into recording a clip or overdub settings, adding to a track as you go.
There are various clever features. For instance, since the color scheme could be potentially confusing, lights pulse to show active clips for playback and recording. A display shows you the remaining time in clips. And crucially, you can navigate Live, and select clips without launching them. The APC and Launchpad for me never quite got to the stage where I could hide the computer and still use Live; it looks like Push just might.

We’ll look closer soon at how these mappings work, but there were already impressive examples in which Push was running step sequencers, triggering and recording clips, and playing instrumental solos, all right out of the box – no fancy Max for Live patching required.
If fancy Max for Live patching is what you want, you can do that, too. You can “hijack” everything Push does as far as Live control and customize it, with complete control over the hardware and the way the software responds. There’s also a “user” mode, as with Launchpad, which you can assign to your own tools (like a plug-in, for instance), then switch between them. Right now, you can’t use more than one Push in controller mode, though you could presumably set the second to “user” mode and map it separately.
Ableton showed off the Push at a private demo event last week, demoing it by pulling it out of a small backpack to illustrate how portable it is. The hardware really looks beautiful and feels luxurious, more so than any of this class of controller we’ve seen previously, on first impression. On pads, it will have to live up to the fantastically-responsive pads on the new Native Instruments Maschine, but of course you get 64 instead of 16, and the Push appears to be more versatile as a Live controller. (One Push, one Maschine may be popular among those who can afford both.)
Weight: 2990g / 6.59 pounds.
Cost: USD 599 / EUR 499, including Ableton Live 9 Intro.
As with Live 9, Push is promised for first quarter of 2013. And you’ll need some version of Live 9 to use it – at least with its native control features, which are kind of the point. (Well, though I do expect some hacker to do something ridiculous with this and Renoise. Let’s get on that.)
(You’ll still need separate hardware for audio, but I’d choose compactness and bus power over that, anyway; I’ve got an audio interface.)
No one controller can suit everyone, but I have to say, Push looks like it makes a reasonable set of compromises. Fortuantely, there’s nothing stopping hackers from doing their own, similar controls in Live 9 if they desire. But for those who do want something off the shelf, Push is a big leap forward. We’ll be testing it as it becomes available, and then can look more closely at how mappings work.

As with Launchpad and APC, there’s a logical mapping of Session View to the controller. (Arrange View is actually not really a focus.) Unlike the past hardware efforts, though, you have enough controls on the device that you should be able to hide your laptop away and still make music or perform.

Credit : Create Digital Music

EDM : Video - A Year with Armin van Buuren - #1 DJ

 

Why are we so captivated by the superhero? Because in some degree he isn’t a superhero at all. Every hero has a weakness– what the Greeks defined as the tragic flaw– that makes us fear for his life every time he takes to the sky in our defense. We know he could fall, and for that reason he mesmerizes us. We exalt the superhero because he is still human like us; we cherish him because he is real.
In the EDM world, Armin van Buuren is our superhero– our Superman. And what, if anything, “A Year with Armin van Buuren” shows us is that he is also real, also human, just like all of us. Behind all of the music and lights is a man, emotional and vulnerable, whose passion burns bright inside. And this passion, above all else, has been his driving force in becoming the world’s most accomplished DJ.
What we learn about Armin in this short hour is that he is quite an emotional character. We see him, in one scene from his home in Leiden, go from joking around with his parents about a Blu-Ray player to sinking into a moment of great nostalgia as he stands in the small childhood bedroom that served as his first studio. It is these moments, not the ones of his famous shoulder-shrugging on stage in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans, where we feel like we get to know Armin on a personal, profound level. We see his self-awareness as he talks about how he can be grumpy around those he loves; we come to know his humility as he congratulates David Guetta backstage on surpassing him for the #1 spot in the DJ Mag Top 100 in 2011.  Most of all, we see the intense determination he has in his art as we watch him build “Brute” in-studio with Ferry Corsten. In just fifty minutes, we see a kaleidoscope of emotions, good and bad, from Armin van Buuren.

 The awkward tension between the top 2 DJs

Towards the end of the documentary, we witness Armin with his wife, Erika, as he takes a phone call from DJ Mag informing him that his streak of #1 rankings was at an end, being voted #2 in the world behind David Guetta for 2011. Invincibility forgone, Armin still remains gracious and jovial as he concludes the phone call. It isn’t bitterness or anger or disbelief that veils him, just a somber sense of dissatisfaction.  You can see in his demeanor that he’s disappointed in himself, even though it is no small thing to have won four years straight and then slip only one spot to #2 worldwide. He’s still honored and thankful, just not as honored and thankful. He admits that it’s just an award, that it isn’t why he works, but he also acknowledges the emotional vilification that comes with worldwide praise. He’s conflicted. Here we see a glimpse of that passion, of that fire, that burns so bright in him. We see a man still driven, even after such immeasurable success, by his deeply personal love for the music.

 Armin with his wife and his daughter Fenna

But alas, we end our time with Armin with reflections far removed from late-night-into-early-morning raves, photo shoots and interviews or crowds of people chanting his name. We’ve seen enough of the superhero scaling walls and soaring between skyscrapers in the name of justice and harmony. Now we see Armin van Buuren, the man, in the final moments of the film. He talks about how coming short in the Top 100 DJ #1 award means nothing compared to spending a day with his then-newborn daughter, Fenna. The joy he feels with her surpasses all else to Armin, almost brought to tears as he expresses this to the camera.



There is a depth to Armin van Buuren that we will never know, even with all of the broadcasts, festivals, stages and cameras capturing elements of his brilliance. And, in so many ways, this masterful documentary teaches us that. The film ends not with affirmations of success, proclamations of grandeur or promises of eternal fame, but with the touching realization that there is much more to this man than his incredible contributions to music. This isn’t Armin van Buuren standing atop the world, looking down from above and shouting his name from the heavens; this is Armin van Buuren tearing away his super-suit and showing us his heart.

Credit : EDM Tunes