amtraxsvblog asked: do you know of any places online to to find videos for how to use the maschine?
Dubspot has great tutorials for everything related to production. they have a few Maschine ones. Winksound is also really good for very concise tutorials. Check out Maschineproducers.com as well. DJ Tech Tools also has great tutorials, primarily for digital DJing, but they recently had one pertaining to Maschine
All of my latest posts have been more silly or gear-related than actually related to my creative process… Despite this, I have been working on music, believe it or not! I have been collaborating on a couple tracks with Draft34, and we have two completed tracks, though the push to the next one has not quite come. I have also been tinkering a lot with Ableton live sets to design the ultimate performance template and as of friday night/saturday morning, I believe I have created it! Perhaps one day I will share it, but it is the ultimate weapon for APC40 DJing. Lastly, I have begun some music in a rather different vein than my usual techno/house atmospheric stuff. So stay tuned, I’m sure I will have a breakthrough and an update eventually.
Lately I have been listening to and coming across a lot more trap music, and I thought I would dedicate a post to it because the genre is rapidly growing and because I have a curious perception of this genre that I want to share. In a thread I found elsewhere, trap was called the new brostep, derogatorily described essentially as “something brostep DJ’s through into a set to feel less white,” and generally referred to as just a new trendy genre to rage to.
I really disagree. It is of course not worth disputing that trap is great music to party hard to, but I think a lot of trap production is not geared toward partying hard, but produced with a very specific musical purpose in mind in a very specific genre context. I see trap producers treating it as one big musical joke. The production process of trap is not particularly complex and everyone is well aware of the simplicity of the patterns and the basic formula of arpeggiating snares or hats and pitch-shifting them for dramatic effect - and it sounds good of course, but it’s painfully obvious how much of a trope that is. Another glaring element of trap is the overuse of the Zaytoven type chant, and the really generic drum samples.
All of these things are great to rock out to, and using them naturally adds some sort of slightly ironic feel to whatever you add it to, because it is so derivative. I think trap producers are well aware of the derivative nature of the genre, as such use it often to ironic effect or as cross-genre allusions. Think of Burial using the deplorable airhorn sample specifically as an allusion to jungle and oldschool breakbeat. In this, I find trap to be flavor-wise, to be closely related to witch house. the genres are about the deconstruction of genre tropes and rearranging them in different ways to both ironic and referential effect. Of course witch house, which I absolutely love, and trap are very different mood wise, but production and intent wise, they are more closely related than they are at first glance.
I do not think the rise of brostep had the same vibe that the rise of trap has. Nowadays it can be - the addition of wobble bass is frequently used in totally different genres for ironic/referential effect. But I see this happening right now during the rise of trap music because producers are very well aware of what is happening: they are producing in a very ironic context and have intimate knowledge of genres and their tropes. I feel like this is in contrast to the rise of brostep, where this was mostly uncharted territory and it was a race to the top. we saw the development of a lot of completely new sounds and vibes. It was rise filled with a lot of exploration and development, as opposed to the rise of trap, which is about artistic re-arrangement, not necessarily the development of something completely new.
maybe I’m giving trap producers too much credit and just drank too much coffee myself.
It’s me doing my thing as live sound engineer at KSPC. The band Cab 20 put on a great performance, and had great sounding equipment. It really makes it this job so satisfying and “worth it” when a band rocks out so hard in the studio that everyone in the production control room and in the OTA room rocks out with them.
PS, I’m wearing the sunglasses indoors because they have corrective lenses, and I had forgotten my normal glasses at home… oops.
welp. Just sent in a job application to DJ Tech Tools.
let’s see how this goes…
It was really exciting being on air yesterday, and I had pretty much every challenge a noob can encounter actually thrown at me on the first day. Someone had mislabeled an album and not noted that a track was “After 10,” ie, lyrics with swearing and masturbation. the FCC can fine a radio state between $7,000 and $325,000 (!!!) per instance of swearing, etc. So this was a pretty hilarious screwup on someone’s part that happened on my first show. Also, I had to give away a ticket to see Rustie perform at Dim Mak studios. We contacted Terrorbird and tried to get an interview with Rustie but it didn’t work out. I understand though, touring internationally and being super busy probably makes you a bit reluctant to visit a non-mainstream radio station.
So I had to deal with a lot of phone calls and the like. It was enormously fun though, and I am very happy to be a radio DJ.
I’m not exactly good at keeping things tip-top up to date, but I just wanted to mention that I will be going on air at KSPC Claremont from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. today, and following Wednesdays! This will be my first time live on the air.
You can tune in at 88.7 fm here in Southern California, or you can listen to the live stream here.
