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Saturday, February 07, 2004
New Fun
Sammy and I recently purchased (I still owe him my half) a pair of Stanton STR8-60 turntables and a mixer and, whee, are they fun! Since starting to mess with them last night I've already spent at least 4 hours on them, setting out on a quest to be an amateur DJ. Right now, we don't have that much to work with as far as vinyl goes. Sammy bought a few 99 cent records at Half Price Books, including the theme from "A Fistful of Dollars", a Jane Fonda workout record, and the Doors' "Morrison Hotel". I bought a breaks record called "Ape Breaks Vol. 4" at Alien Records so that we'd have some solid beats to scratch and mix over. This type of album is just a collection of different rhythm tracks. The one I got is just drums playing various hiphop beats.
The first thing I've set out to do is to try beat matching, matching the tempos of two songs playing at the same time. This task is quite a feat when you're working with stuff like the Doors or a Beck acoustic song, because the tempo tends to drift a little during the song, whereas the rhythm tracks on the breaks record I bought are very solid. I downloaded a little program that allows you to tap the space bar to the rhythm of a song, and it computes the beats-per-minute that you're tapping at. From using that I've noticed that most of the songs I've tried it with tend to speed up by at least a few bpm by the end of the song. So, it seems nearly impossible to get a good beat match. But, I know there are ways to compensate for this speed variation, so maybe with time it will be possible. Thinking about this also gave me an idea to write some new software, but I'll go into that another time.
Scratching is a lot of fun. It seems easier to me than beat matching. You just pick a little section of a song you like and then go to town, scratching it back and forth, etc. I especially like making Jane Fonda repeat things like "buttocks tight" and "do it with your whole arm" over a hip hop beat.
If anyone out there knows where to get some good party records on the cheap, let me know! The expenses of having enough vinyl to adequately DJ a party seem nigh-prohibitive. But I'd really like to do some DJ'ing for parties. I think I'll look around on eBay for some deals.
By tomorrow night I need to record some samples of kitchen / food sounds for an upcoming music project I'm participating in with some Austin electronic people. I just thought I'd type that so that I don't forget.
The first thing I've set out to do is to try beat matching, matching the tempos of two songs playing at the same time. This task is quite a feat when you're working with stuff like the Doors or a Beck acoustic song, because the tempo tends to drift a little during the song, whereas the rhythm tracks on the breaks record I bought are very solid. I downloaded a little program that allows you to tap the space bar to the rhythm of a song, and it computes the beats-per-minute that you're tapping at. From using that I've noticed that most of the songs I've tried it with tend to speed up by at least a few bpm by the end of the song. So, it seems nearly impossible to get a good beat match. But, I know there are ways to compensate for this speed variation, so maybe with time it will be possible. Thinking about this also gave me an idea to write some new software, but I'll go into that another time.
Scratching is a lot of fun. It seems easier to me than beat matching. You just pick a little section of a song you like and then go to town, scratching it back and forth, etc. I especially like making Jane Fonda repeat things like "buttocks tight" and "do it with your whole arm" over a hip hop beat.
If anyone out there knows where to get some good party records on the cheap, let me know! The expenses of having enough vinyl to adequately DJ a party seem nigh-prohibitive. But I'd really like to do some DJ'ing for parties. I think I'll look around on eBay for some deals.
By tomorrow night I need to record some samples of kitchen / food sounds for an upcoming music project I'm participating in with some Austin electronic people. I just thought I'd type that so that I don't forget.
