Archive for the 'Music' Category

New mix! Spring cleaning for your ears

Published on April 20, 2009 in Mix, Music, Vinyl and video. 3 Comments Tags: .

…Remove one type of wax with another for a different type of spring cleaning. :P

(Wish I had been that clever when I originally named this mix.)


Logo by DJF member buddy UK

I have been working on getting this out the door for awhile now. I finally put down the foot and released this properly with a cover and cue file.
You can stream (and download in wav) at soundcloud:
http://soundcloud.com/npc/npcs-house-demo

Or you can download a nicely compressed version (with a cue file!!!) here:
http://www.zshare.net/download/58912372c61018b6/
(well, until that link expires I suppose)

I worked forever on coloring the logo but in the end I settled for just darkening the lines, getting rid of the excess paper-noise (it’s form a scan), and cleaning up the jpeg noise a bit. I then slapped the vinyl look together and voila! I’m still a bit busy so I can’t go on blogging about stuff yet. I just wanted to get this out for ya’ll first.

This reminds me I made a little faderwave promo. Check it:

I won’t be playing until this Friday though, sorry!

Return to the bay

Published on April 13, 2009 in Day trip, Holiday, Holy Crap and Music. 0 Comments Tags: .

(It’s been a few weeks since this event took place. I’ve been slacking… anyway…)

As you may or may not know. Since I’ve lost the majority of my relatives in the bay I have lost what was really my only connection to the bay (well except my uncle but we don’t hear from him much). It seems however the DJForums community may establish itself as my new connection to the bay.

I was wrapping up a night on faderwave.net when member “l0ckdown” (don’t know if he wants his real name here) mentioned he was playing in San Fransisco the very next day (by this time it was the same day) and some other DJForums members would be there as well. After some thought I decided to go for it! Apparently no one told him I was coming though haha. If I had not introduced myself I probably could have just blended in and been all ninja-like.

The car trip wasn’t so bad, traffic was surprisingly light that day and I was cruising at 75M/H most of the time. It was a little windy in Vacaville but I kept the car under control. It was kinda like one big F-ZeroGX adventure! Man I used to love that game… maybe too much.

So here I was making my first return to the bay in about 9 months.

Don’t ask how I took that.

I parked on 15th street, near the entrance of a UCSF parking lot (one of many apparently). It was free and there was a cop parked in the lot 20 feet from my car. It felt pretty safe there, on top of the fact my car has nothing flashy or valuable inside of it.

Walking on my way over to the event I came upon this gem. Awesome stuff. A quick look up on google street view proves this thing actually moves!

Keep on truckin’

l0ckdown on the decks! er… midi controller. No shame in that… wish I had one myself. Though I DJ to get away from the computer in some ways.

In typical bay fashion, the weather got pretty chilly in about an hour. Everyone huddled inside the kitchen with only a brave few coming out on the “dance floor”.

Music was good overall, but it was the people at the party that made it really interesting. Everyone was very positive and outgoing, and not just the dudes from DJforums. Even the VJ (who kinda sucked) was really nice. Supposedly the event was for some fund raiser to help some tribal guys in Northern Tibet(?) who were in a tough situation. (Think: Native Americans in the early 20th century) No one really understood it… and it was kind of questionable, but whatever, if was fun. I can imagine it’s pretty hard to explain things when there’s loud music and beer within proximity of each other. The organizers were super nice — charming, even. You would almost hate to doubt their cause. lol

As I left l0ck made the most flattering statement I’ve ever heard!

You’re the best Deep House DJ on DJforums

Whoa! No way he was serious about that. :P
Coincidentally it had been exactly one year since I bought my first turntable.

On such a positive note, I definitely want to return to the bay again. The dance scene in the valley is almost exclusively Trance while the bay is much more diverse and understanding of house music methinks. Next up on the agenda is to attend the next “love fest” and then maybe getting into some clubs in the bay.

More DJ adventures on the way! I just finished spring break and I have plenty of material to ramble about. Plenty.

Another vinyl haul

Published on March 6, 2009 in Blog, Music, Vinyl and Web. 1 Comment

vinylmailers

Woot!
More Vinyl is here! (well I put away the vinyl in this picture… but I left out the boxes… you get the idea)

I got two of them on the same day, and another one today. I’ve still got one in transit from the UK, and a lot of 5 coming from the bay this weekend. The Ken Ishii CD “Daybreak Reprise -Sunriser Remixed” has started shipping from Japan… I don’t expect that any time soon.

Among these recently purchased records I’ve acquired two from Ibadan records – both of which I consider absolute gems. Deep house can be hard to “Get” for some people though, so I can’t really explain why I like them so much other than the fact I think they’re rich in musical complexity and awesomeness. You will definitely be able to hear me playing these two babies on Faderwave. What can I say, I like my house deep, chilled, and shaken – not stirred.

To my blog roll I’ve added Ben Turner (AKA: NTO) who’s a fellow “guerrilla faderwave DJ” as I like to put it. He mainly mixes drum and bass for all you DNB heads out there – so check out his mixes, bookmark his site, ect.

Now on the subject matter of my demo CD, it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to (bleh). I’ve been slacking on coloring in my logo as well. I’ll probably just post up one of the mixes here in a few days and save the artwork for another occasion.

I’ll probably post it to SoundCloud which is pretty neat BTW.
Check out the demo video at:
http://soundcloud.com/
And my weak little tracks made with the DS-10:
http://soundcloud.com/npc

I’m working on learning reaper… sorta… I’ll get around to it.

Better late than never

Published on March 1, 2009 in Music, My future and randomness. 0 Comments

Better late than never, right?

Here’s a quick update:

…I slacked off last semester and failed half my classes, got some (a lot) more records, I’ve been spinning weekly (at least) on faderwave.net, had a great Halloween/thanksgiving/Xmass/new-year/birthday, and *breath* I’ve been oh-so-happy with my newly elected president.

So what do I do now? Why did I postpone so many updates? Well, for one, every blogger has a realization that they don’t live enough to blog enough – and second of all, I’ve been meaning to move this blog over on mike’s server where I could use word press. Really! I have! I’m going to get on it!… Right after I finish my demo tape. It’s going to be two parts (two mixes) and I’ll release it online with CD cover art and everything. Though the version I plan to have out in… oh… 8 hours, won’t have any cover art. But then again it’s only going to one dude so far.

The next time I update I plan to have this all in wordpress! Hopefully!

I feel like… I feel like…

Published on October 28, 2008 in Music, Vinyl, randomness and video. 1 Comment

Last week I purchased two new (used) records off ebay, one of which has been stuck in my head for quite some time:

  • “M.A.D.A. – Feel Like Jumpin’ / Wet Dreams” (Nervous records) – This is a damn good record, both A and B (“Wet dreams”) sides are great. As previously stated, I’ve had both of these tracks stuck in my head for quite some time.
    The other record is:
  • “Rhythm Factory – Sexy Sax” (Nervous records) – It’s so-so, I think the highlight of this record would be the B side “Crank calls”. It’s samples are such novelty it’s actually quite humorous to listen to: “Hello?” “ring ring” “Hello?” – You get the idea.

…Ok this is the second post in a row I’ve made a list of some sort. I’m kicking this bad habit… to the curb… I’m never saying that again either.

Along with the records I ordered some “Gruv Glide”. It’s a reasonably priced vinyl/record cleaner that’s been getting rave reviews from everybody’s audiophile uncle. I can’t vouch for how well it improves overall sound quality, but I think the records themselves are cleaner so that’s good. The cleaner they are the more plays I’ll get out of them.

No pictures because my camera sucks at taking pictures, and I don’t have any natural light at the time of typing this.

Here’s a mix though – warning – quick time will probably load if you’re using windows, I recommend you right click and “save as”. Well… if you want to listen to it that is. It’s a mediocre mix at best. Battle mixes are typically cranked out and are made “for the fun of it”. I even tried my hand at scratching in this mix… I can assure you I kept it brief though haha. Oh man. Yea, I’m going to need a new cross fader if I’m ever going to really get into scratching. Just the other day I figured out I can open up my mixer and disable my fader(which is acting like a small resistor to my recording output!) .

Ah yes… after years of staring down Nintendo’s proprietary screws, it’s nice to be able to open up something and make it better without a modchip or special screwdriver.

Obligatory video: M.A.D.A. – Feel Like Jumpin’

Life with a harder edge

Published on October 14, 2008 in Music, Vinyl and randomness. 0 Comments

As the weather cools down, everything else seems to heat up. School of course, but with the post I made yesterday it’s evident my passion for DJing is as well. I’ve bought another Technics turntable and some news records to go with it. I was planning to use these for my first house party last Saturday, but things went awry with the host and it ended up not happening at all. I completely understand his situation though. I was so hyped to finally play somewhere but I guess it’ll have to wait for another time.

In the meantime I’m messing around with my records and familiarizing myself with all of them even more. Especially my new techno record, “Dave Angel – Classics”.

Cover:

There’s supposedly a Jazz-influenced sound to all Dave’s tracks but I find it hard to recognize if it’s there at all. Some are a little too much on the acid-house side of things for my liking as well… but there’s a time and mood for all dance music so I’m sure it’ll come in handy.

I did make a techno mix… about a month ago I think. Been quite awhile. My new goal is to transition from house music to techno which is a lot harder than it sounds on paper. Key clashing is a big deal when trying to make a really smooth mix and it’s going to take awhile before I listen to a house track and think “hey this would go good with this techno track”.

I haven’t been feeling very well this week nor tonight so I’m going to have to cut this short… maybe some more posts later in the week if I feel better.

Here’s a good track from “Dave Angel – Classics” this is called “free flow”:

A slice of life, and an update on where I am

Published on October 6, 2008 in Music, Personal, School, games and randomness. 0 Comments

Sometimes I forget the real propose of this blog.

I was seriously contemplating neglecting my blog forever since much of my interest has now drifted from video games to music and DJing. Video games aren’t the real reason I started blogging though. Ever since I was a… well… kindergartner, I’ve always had problems writing things down on paper or being productive in general. When I reached 7th grade school took a turn for the serious and with it I received special help and training on how to overcome my “disability”. Calling it a “disability” is a bit extreme, I don’t want to be one of those idiots who claim they’re retarded in order to coast through life when they’re clearly not. It’s just how the school termed my weakness. Er, where was I? Oh right, my writing “disability”. I turned around in 7th grade and left the program even, only to fall back into it in my second half of 8th grade.
…
Somewhere along the lines of success I had lost my motivation to continue.

If I want to relate this to games again I could go on about how I found self motivation reporting game-news back to the Nsider community (now gone thanks to Nintendo) and eventually DS-X2.com. But lets not get off track here.

The point is I struggled with writing all my life and blogging helped me exercise and sharpen my writing skills. Though that’s an understatement. Think of my writing skills as a fat guy – yes a fat guy – now imagine what that fat guy would look like after sitting on the couch for 6 weeks doing nothing but eating and walking to the fridge occasionally. That’s what my writing skills look like right now. Even if it may not appear that way in this blog entry(riiight), the fact that I’ve done absolutely no English homework since I started school again makes my writing skills appear that way to the teacher, my parents, and even myself through de-motivation. Lack of blog updates really to blame? No… but they do get my brain working. More so than posting on forums or communicating with friends. Especially when the latter is accomplished via IMing.

This is why I need to continue blogging regardless of subject.

Though video games are always going to be a favorite of mine… just don’t expect every post to lean that way. I’m thinking about revamping the page as well. I notice people do subscribe to this blog… if any one’s reading this please let me know what you think I should do with this blog page. For the meantime, here’s an update on me:

My friend Mike submitted an interactive fiction game to “The 14th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition” and I helped beta test it so I feel some personal attachment to the game. I’m also in the credits, woo! Oh- the game specifically is called “Channel Surfing” (download here) and it’s a bit tedious to navigate for first-time IF players. I know it was for me! But he could only do so much programming in the three weeks he had left to develop it. Mike is -unlike me- a brilliant writer and the writing is really the “meat” of the game, so don’t feel bad to use hints in order to progress.

This poped up on inanity one day and at first we were all thinking “WTF”. But I approached it cautiously and it seems to be solidifying into a legit party for us all. To complete it I’ve bought a second turntable and I’m in the process of buying some new records they might want to hear. If all goes well the party should take place later this week.
…
With the new turntable I had to buy an LCD monitor in order to make space on my desk… good bye CRT… we’ll see if I can find a use for it though. I would hate to throw it away.

Bank account is feeling it this week with all these purchases. I need to start looking for a job again despite this shitty economy… uhg.

Last but not least, Sin and punishment 2! Woo!

First week of college

Published on August 29, 2008 in Music, School, Vinyl and Web. 0 Comments

It’s finally happened, I started college.
Well… Junior college… but for the most part it’s got all the same freedom and options as a typical college. The one I’m attending is called Sierra college and depending on how much you visit/read into my posts, you may have heard me mention it before. I’m actually more comfortable at Sierra College then I ever was at Rocklin high school. I’m taking interesting classes, all my teachers are very nice, and it’s not run like a prison!

On the subject of high school, I briefly met some ex-Roseville high students and they had an amusing play-on-words for their high school. They called it: “hoesville” for apparently it was filled with girls that were very hoe-tastic. I don’t care if I made that word up, I like it.

This week I haven’t played any video games thanks to school, but I have been playing records whenever I can. Yep, that’s right, the records I talked about last week finally came in! You can read the thread I made on the DJforums here for some details and pictures(lower post). It was worth every penny. One of my best impulse buys! I feel obligated to actually email Primal Records and thank them for giving me so many quality records for so cheap. As probably one of the first to respond to the ad I feel I received numerous records from the co-owner’s personal collection (“DJ Olivier Desmet”) – as the ad had stated some of the “grab bags” would contain.


One of the first Techno tracks: Derrick may’s classic “nude photo”. This release was touched up a bit and called “Nude Photo ‘88″.

There’s just sooo~ much quality here. So much to work with! I can’t wait to mix with these as soon as I become acquainted with all of them. Here’s a sample of a record I just played earlier tonight. It has this awesome break. I’ll let the sample do the talking(click).
-That sample is from “Brothers’ Vibe – Dub Plates 5″ track B1, called: “smooth ride” http://www.discogs.com/release/1306533

Discogs is a great site by the way. Now that I’ve been buying vinyl it’s helped me keep track of my collection, and helped me find the names of records that don’t have any labels. There’s at least 4 or 5 records with absolutely nothing written on them other than a catalog number which is (as always) etched into the vinyl itself. Here’s what my collection is looking like so far.

I’m thinking next week I might bring my DS to school as there is an hour wait between one of my classes(which I have been passing in various ways… like doing homework – whoa I know, that’s gotta change!:P )

Reboot

Published on August 20, 2008 in Music, School, Vinyl, Web and games. 0 Comments

Behold!

Though it may not look impressive to some, I’m quite proud of my new gaming “rig” (please excuse the lousy picture). I’ve got a 20″ Sony Trinitron with three game systems elaborately set up to it all at once. Which means if I get bored of playing Sonic 2, I can start play Super Smash bros. online with the push of a few buttons. Pretty sweet stuff though I must admit I haven’t played much of the Wii as I have Dreamcast and Sega Genesis. Playing Soul Calibur 4 at a friend’s house rekindled my love for the series so I’ve been playing the original on Dreamcast on occasion. Also, I tried beating Sonic 2 as I have always tried as a kid… but failed. You would think after all these years and extensive experience in action games I would have a better handle on… well… mainly the last boss, the rest of the game is easy as pie. Though there was this one pit in mystic caves… the one with the spikes and high walls… yea. Fun fun fun.

On this note I should… note. :|
-that despite my lack of updates (which I’m sure you are all used to by now and have stopped checking the site… all 3 of you) I have been quite active. Well, by my definition at least. Before making a blog update I set a few goals for myself which were: publish interview with GAMEINVEST, make an inanetalk.com podcast, and make the best mix I possibly could with the vinyl I have. It was the last one that I got hung up on. With a limited selection of vinyl I figured the mix I release has to be perfect otherwise I end up using the same tracks over for other mixes to show my progress and that takes away the “freshness” of my music. Yesterday however I made a bold move and ordered 50 records for a very cheap price. Primal records is abandoning it’s vinyl business and was practically throwing vinyl at me. How could I say no? Yes I suppose it was yet another impulse buy for me… Either was expect a mix here next week. DEMAND IT if it’s not here. :P

Oh but what about the other two goals?
-The GAMEINVEST interview can be read here at the ever awesome DS-X2 site. ;)
-While the first ever inanetalk.com podcast can be found here on this page. (we’re also on itunes… somewhere)

Korg DS-10 is mentioned in the podcast now that think of it, and I made a track using it and a sample from Ken Ishii’s new remixed album. Korg DS-10 is lots of fun to tweak and play around with and it’s of such high quality that one could use it in a professional production environment. I’m kinda lost when it comes to arranging melodies, (I will be learning some of that this year at Sierra college hopefully) so most of my creativity comes in the form of the drum machine. You can download this “remix” right here (right click->save as).

Here’s the promo video for Ken Ishii’s new album (where I took the sample from). I totally want this… sooo bad.

so bad

post graduation

Published on June 16, 2008 in Earthbound, Music, School and randomness. 0 Comments

I have soooo much to blog about. A few times I tried to blog last week, but I either got distracted or was pulled away from my computer while writing. So I’m starting fresh today to write about what’s been happening lately and holy shit has a lot happened.

Beginning with the days before graduation, I went on an all-out blitz to complete Earthbound before graduation. For about 2 and a half days I did nothing but play Earthbound… well, I also ate and slept. Point is I played a shit load of earthbound to where I was going a bit crazy. In fact I’ve been having some crazy dreams that I can’t seem to elaborate on. Trust me though, they’re crazy. Sadly I didn’t finish Earthbound before graduation, the last part of the game was hanging me up. More specifically those f^cking Nuclear Reactor Robots spawning everywhere.

After the graduation ceremony I went to Lucille’s which is one of those generic BBQ places with lots of random crap on the walls. However not only is their food better than the average – generic BBQ place with lots of random crap on the walls – but they had a badass blues cover band playing live with a band member whose middle name was actually “guitar”. I kid you not.

When I got home I received a call from my friend Tyler who said I should come over and “party” with him and his friend. I use quotes on “party” because our ideal party is one with lots of video games, soda, and various chips(likely Doritos). It was here that whilst (ironically) not paying attention and stuffing my face with Doritos that I got around to the last part of Earthbound up to the final boss. Then I beat the insane last boss and finished the game in complete awe. Tyler then remembered he had to work early that very morning so I ended up walking home at 5AM. I kinda felt like a zombie… who needed to brush his teeth.

The next day I went to a few other “parties” which was sort of surreal. I was really tired so that probably had something to do with it.

Couple days later I got everything sorted out with Sierra College… I’ll spare you the details, but it was really complicated. I’m just glad I’ve got classes to take coming this fall.

Bought a microphone(more on that here), stand, and some Midi cables. What do I need midi cables for? For my… wait for it… keyboard! Yes that “surprise” item I bought during the mega-garage sale event a couple weeks ago was a 48-key keyboard. A complete steal for 22 bucks though it required dragging home a mile and a half or so. Heck, that wouldn’t have been so bad if I didn’t have my bike to drag along as well. That was awkward – but so worth it. With midi I can make it sound like any synthesizer I can emulate on my computer. Now I have to teach myself Piano… I have some books on it somewhere.

Last Saturday I got a car. Yep a car. I’ll make a post about it later or something it’s too ugly to take pictures of now(getting detailed soon). My uncle really trashed it.

aaaand so that’s basically what I’ve been up to.

Just for the hell of it, here’s this: