PLUS: n ZEDS DEAD n KRISTINA SKY n NATIVE INSTRUMENTS TRAKTOR KONTROL F1 n COLD BLANK n KRK’S STUDIO GEAR n MOBILE MARKETING
AMERICA’S FIRST MAGAZINE FOR PROFESSIONAL DJs ESTABLISHED 1988
NOVEMBER 2012
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Summer Fests:
A LOOK BACK
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America’s Best DJ 2012: Markus Schulz 1 inch
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The Lessons of
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INDUSTRY EVENTS…NOTABLES…MILESTONES
America’s Best DJ: Schulz with the spoils.
NEWS
AMERICA’S BEST DJ: MARKUS SCHULZ GETS THE GOLDEN MIXER
Al Powers
The Closer: Schulz in the mix in Vegas.
2012 Top 10
Marquee Man: A-Trak opened the party.
1 Markus Schulz 2 Steve Aoki 3 Skrillex 4 BT 5 Z-Trip
Al Powers
Al Powers
Las Vegas—The glitz and glitter of Sin City was in full effect this past Oct. 7, when Markus Schulz was officially honored as America’s Best DJ 2012. After 20 events on America’s Best DJ Summer Tour Presented by Pioneer DJ & DJ Times, the fans spoke with their ballots in-person and online at americasbestdj.net—and Markus was this year’s choice. So, early on that Sunday evening, a press event was held outside the historic El Cortez Hotel in downtown Las Vegas. Print and online press converged on the proceedings, as Schulz was presented with The Golden Mixer (for the first time that night) by Davey Dave Arevalo, Pioneer’s Sr. Manager, Marketing/Artist Relations. “I’m very proud and honored to present this award to Markus Schulz,” said Arevalo. “He represents what a true DJ is—he’s a true performer and a terrific producer, who makes great music. He’s also a great role model for up-and-coming DJs.” Later, fans lined up outside Marquee Nightclub at The Cosmopolitan for the America’s Best DJ Official Closing Party/Award Ceremony with A-Trak (who finished #8 in the voting) and Markus Schulz soon to hit the decks—and they didn’t disappoint. After Fools Gold co-founder A-Trak buzzed the packed room with hits from his catalog like Duck Sauce’s “Big Bad Wolf” and his remix of Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Heads Will Roll,” Schulz was honored again, this time in front of the fans. “I want to thank Pioneer and DJ
Times for this award,” said Schulz, after being presented again with the 24k-Gold Pioneer DJM-900nexus mixer, symbolic of the America’s Best DJ title. “And I want to thank all of you out there, too. It’s always the fans’ voice that makes things like this happen—the fans are always No. 1. So I hope that you guys are ready to do some slaying tonight!” Then Schulz commenced to slaying. With an energetic set that went
deep into the night, he entertained an enthusiastic crowd that included his parents (visiting from Arizona) and staffers from DJ Times, Pioneer DJ and Armada Music. Additionally, America’s Best DJ grand-prize winner Joi Motley of Chicago was there, enjoying the all-expense-paid weekend with her fiancé, Sasa Matijevic.
DJ Izoh: DMC Champ
London—With a blazing routine, Japan’s Izoh won the 2012 DMC World DJ Championship this past Sept. 28. Presented by Rane and Serato, the event at London’s HMV Forum saw Izoh rip through a title-taking set of hip-hop, EDM and Caribbean flavors.
6 Porter Robinson 7 Wolfgang Gartner 8 A-Trak 9 Diplo 10 Bassnectar
During the duration of the promotion—Memorial Day to Labor Day—America’s Best DJ fans won a slew of prizes, including Pioneer HDJ-500, HDJ-1500 and HDJ-2000K headphones, Pioneer Black DJM-250 mixers, and DJ Times subscriptions. On behalf of everyone at DJ Times, we’d like to thank the voters, Pioneer DJ, Marquee Nightclub/Tao Group (especially Sol Shafer and Morgan Deane) and rephlektor ink’s Justin Kleinfeld for making America’s Best DJ 2012 another huge success. And once again—Congrats, Markus!
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VOLUME 25 NUMBER 11
DEPARTMENTS 6 Feedback
12 Bigger Bass!
Pushing Punishing Sounds & Dazzling Visuals, DatsiK’s Firepower Tour Takes Dubstep to a New Level BY JUSTIN HAMPTON
28 Mobile Profile
18 All Over the Map
32 Gear
24 Making Tracks
Cali DJ Bleeds Dodger Blue
Effective Marketing for Wedding DJs New Products from Hercules, Pioneer & More
38 Grooves
Phat Tracks from Loco Dice, Guy Gerber & More
40 DJ Times Marketplace
20 It’s a Wrap—DJ Expo 2012
Shop Here for All Your DJ-Related Supplies
41 Club Play Chart
The Hottest Records, As Reported by Our Top U.S. Record Pools
Record-Breaking Attendance Was Not the Only Thing That Made This Year’s Show Exceptional BY JEFF STILES
SAMPLINGS
22 Sky’s the Limit
Kristina Sky’s Journey Has Taken Her from Flyering Fan to Festival DJ BY DEANNA RILLING
8 Zeds Dead
Dynamic Duo
10 In the Studio With… Cold Blank
Cover & Contents Photos By Teaghan McGinnis
NOVEMBER 2012
Native Instruments Traktor Kontrol F1
30 Business Line
DJ TIMES
KRK’s Rockit 10-3 & ERGO
26 Sounding Off
DJ Times Attended Three Very Different Summer Fests on Two Continents. Here’s What They Looked Like. BY DJ TIMES PHOTOGRAPHERS
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As Always, the Answers to All Your DJ-Related Questions
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FROM THE EDITOR
Go Big or Go Home Not unlike our recent October issue, this month’s cover story further illustrates how performing DJs are taking full advantage EDM’s rising popularity—and giving the fans a little extra in the process. Last month, we discussed Ferry Corsten’s expansive “Full On” show; this month, it’s DatsiK and his immersive Firepower Tour. Go big or go home, right? Well, DatsiK has taken dubstep to the big room because, on this nationwide jaunt, he’s employing crunching audio from PK Sound and dazzling visuals from V-Squared Labs. In Justin Hampton’s sitdown with the B.C.-based DJ/producer, we discover how DatsiK’s larger vision for the genre has been realized. New hire Chris Davis enjoyed a scintillating summer, as he ventured to Europe to experience some of the continent’s best-known EDM venues—Spain’s Ibiza club scene and Belgium’s massive Tomorrowland festival. While at Tomorrowland, he connected with Canadian DJ/production team Zeds Dead. In this issue, ZD’s Hooks offers the straight dope on the duo’s production techniques. Not to be outdone in the Sampling section, L.A.’s Cold Blank takes us into their studio and offers up some of their tricks. Also, Vegas scribe Deanna Rilling takes us to the desert and tells the story of how trance jock Kristina Sky went from a fan passing out festival flyers to one of the DJs actually playing the events. Speaking of Tomorrowland, we gathered a slew of awesome pics from the popular Euro fest and mixed them with images from two very different U.S.-based Summer gatherings—New York’s Electric Zoo and Chicago’s Lollapalooza (the EDM side of it, anyway). DJ culture remains a global phenomenon—and here’s more visual proof. In our Making Tracks column, Wesley Bryant-King cranks the KRK Rockit 10-3 monitors and tests out ERGO, KRK’s room-correction system. For Sounding Off, our pro-audio column, our Paul Dailey checks out Native Instruments’ unique Traktor Kontrol F1 controller. And, as always, our Gear section breaks out the latest and greatest from the DJ market. In the mobile world, our Business Line column doles out more effective marketing tips for wedding jocks. Additionally, in our Mobile Profile, we connect with DJ Severe, a DJ whose career lifeline has been saved by bleeding Dodger blue. Also, our Iowa-based scribe Jeff Stiles takes a look back at our recent DJ Expo and finds out what lessons were learned by show attendees. Of course, this issue also celebrates the victory of Markus Schulz, who was voted America’s Best DJ 2012. Along with promotion sponsor Pioneer DJ, we honored the Miami-based jock in Las Vegas this past October 7 with a press event and a spectacular party at Marquee, Sin City’s hottest nightclub. After Pioneer presented Schulz with The Golden Mixer—a working 24k-Gold DJM-900nexus unit—the popular trance jock got down to business, as he rocked the room late into the evening. Again, thanks to Pioneer DJ, Marquee/Tao Group, rephlektor ink’s Justin Kleinfeld and all the fans who voted during America’s Best DJ Summer Tour Presented by Pioneer DJ & DJ Times. As Markus himself said during his acceptance speech, “The fans are always No. 1.” That’s right and we’ll see you during next year’s tour.
editor-in-chief Jim Tremayne jtremayne@testa.com
graphic designer/artist Janice Pupelis jpupelis@testa.com
editor-at-large Brian O’Connor boconnor@testa.com
production manager Steve Thorakos sthorakos@testa.com
chart coordinator Dan Miller dmiller@testa.com contributors Jody Amos Joe Bermudez Angela Bray Wesley Bryant-King Shawn Christopher Paul Dailey Chris Davis Justin Hampton Josh Harris Russ Harris Robert LaFrance Polly Lavin Michelle Loeb Lily Moayeri Phil Moffa Natalie Raben Scott Rubin Jennifer Shapiro Nate Sherwood Jeff Stiles Emily Tan Phil Turnipseed Curtis Zack President/Publisher Vincent P. Testa
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DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
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Jim Tremayne Editor, DJ Times
DJ Times Sound & Communications The Music & Sound Retailer Sound & Communications Blue Book America’s Best DJ The DJ Expo IT/AV Report Convention TV News VTTV Studios
promotions/web designer Fred Gumm fgumm@testa.com digital media manager Chris Davis cdavis@testa.com advertising manager Jon Rayvid jrayvid@testa.com art/production assistant Douglas Yelin dyelin@testa.com Circulation circulation@testa.com Classifieds classifiedsales@testa.com operations manager Robin Hazan rhazan@testa.com Editorial and Sales Office: DJ Times, 25 Willowdale Avenue, Port Washington, New York, USA 11050-3779. (516) 767-2500 • FAX (Editorial): (516) 944-8372 • FAX (Sales/all other business): (516) 767-9335 • DJTIMES@TESTA. COM Editorial contributions should be addressed to The Editor, DJ Times, 25 Willowdale Avenue, Port Washington, NY, USA, 110503779. Unsolicited manuscripts will be treated with care an d should be accompanied by return postage. DJ Times (ISSN 1045-9693) (USPS 0004-153) is published monthly for $19.40 (US), $39.99 (Canada), and $59.99 (all other countries), by DJ Publishing, Inc., 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 110503779. Periodicals postage paid at Port Washington, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to DJ Times, PO BOX 1767, LOWELL MA 01853-1767 Design and contents are copyright © 2012 by DJ Publishing, Inc., and must not be reproduced in any manner except by permission of the publisher. Websites: www. djtimes.com and www.testa.com November 2012
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This is Feedback, a monthly feature that fields questions from you, our readers, and funnels them out to in‑ dustry professionals. If you have any questions about DJing – marketing, mixing, equipment or insurance, any at all – drop us a letter at DJ Times, 25 Willowdale Ave, Port Washington, NY 11050, fax us at (516) 944‑8372 or e‑mail us at djtimes@testa.com. If we do use your question, you’ll receive a free DJ Times T‑shirt. And remember, the only dumb question is the ques‑ tion that is not asked. The following are emails we received from exhibitors and attendees of DJ Expo, which ran this past Aug. 13-16 at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, N.J. Stay tuned for announcements about DJ Expo 2013. For the very lat‑ est, please visit www.thedjexpo.com. The show was fantastic! Show man‑ agement did an excellent job in or‑ ganizing the event and turnout was great. I would like to thank the DJ community for its support and for making the 2012 show a success! The Expo more than a “show”... it's an interactive experience! – Chris Wooten, Peavey Electronics, Meridian, Miss.
DJ Expo—it just gets bigger and bet‑ ter. Looking forward to next year. – David "Davey Dave" Arevalo, Pioneer DJ, Long Beach, Calif.
Each year, I don’t think DJ Expo can get any better or any bigger—and every year I’m proven wrong! As al‑ ways, it’s a perfect blend of new gear,
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The 2012 DJ Expo provided the per‑ fect balance of equipment information and education. The energy, design and execution of this event continue to move forward the industry and the
individuals involved in it. – Joe Molineaux, Small Business Development Center at the Richard Stockton College, NJ
It's exciting to see that attendance was up so much this year at the DJ Expo. It speaks volumes about how healthy and vibrant our industry is. All you had to do was walk the Expo floor and see the myriad of manufacturers who
were there to meet the thousands of DJs in attendance, or sit in on any of the 20-plus seminars and roundtables, or dance the night away at the evening events to get a true feel for why so many people love this industry: It's fun, it's profitable and it's an industry that continues to thrive through any and all economic times. – Mike Walter, Elite Entertainment, Tinton Falls, N.J.
DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
SAMPLINGS
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ZEDS DEAD: DYNAMIC DUO The Living Dead: (from left) Hooks & DC.
In 2004, the guys from Zeds Dead began as a hip-hop production team known as Mass Productions. But over time, the duo’s style evolved into a winning amalgam of dubstep, glitch, breaks and electro-house. Now, with several releases on Mad Decent, Dim Mak, Ultra, and Hypnotic Records, music placement in a GQ video shoot, a No. 1 hit on Beatport’s breakbeat chart, and more unofficial remixes and bootlegs than you can shake a stick at, the Toronto-based duo of Hooks and DC have become established as a DJ/studio crew to keep an eye on. Touring heavily since 2010, Zeds Dead completed its largest tour yet this past May and continued to hit the festival circuit through the summer. As Zeds Dead prepared to close out Steve Aoki’s “Dim Mak Fight Club” stage at Belgium’s Tomorrowland festival this past July, we caught up with Hooks to discuss its latest EP “The Living Dead,” and more. DJ Times: How has your sound evolved from hip-hop beats to what it is today? Hooks: The evolution was a change of mentality. In the early days, most of our productions were made to suit a rapper, so the beat would, in a sense, not need to be as intricate and able to act on its own. We still sample old songs, but now it's much more about crafting a completely new piece of music out of it, rather than just looping the sample and making a more minimal section to rap over. DJ Times: Why is EDM so big now? Hooks: Musical trends seem to be cyclical. Now a generation of kids is looking at [EDM] as something new and exciting. Also, the affordability of musicmaking software has led to a lot more people dabbling in it and, as a result, there's just a lot more of it. DJ Times: What gear do you use live? Hooks: An [Akai] APC40 controller and a [Native Instruments] Maschine on two laptops.
DJ Times: Studio hardware and software? Hooks: At the moment, just our laptops, MIDI keyboards and studio monitors. We use Ableton and FL Studio. As for the synths and effects, I feel like it takes a bit of the mystique out of music when people get into exactly how it's made and what programs make what sounds, so I'll just leave it at that for now. DJ Times: You’ve had success self-releasing tracks like "1975." What do you think of the trend of producers selfreleasing music (via Bandcamp, etc.)? Hooks: The most important thing is getting your music heard—that's what will get you fans. Especially when you're unknown, you really need to make sure there's nothing getting in the way of somebody discovering you, and money could deter some people. DJ Times: When do you think signing with a label becomes a necessary step? Hooks: It depends what you're trying to do. Labels can help with a lot of things, like getting big features and collaborations. I'm not sure that in this day and age a producer necessarily needs a label if they have good management. We've been releasing on our own and on different labels, so we haven't signed ourselves anywhere permanently like we may have if it was 20 years ago. DJ Times: Any tips for aspiring producers/DJs? Hooks: If you're truly passionate about it, you don't need much advice on how to hone your craft—it will happen over time. Eventually, you'll develop a style of your own; it may take a long time, though. Once you feel confident that you're making something worth getting out there, get it out there! Try and meet DJs that come through your city and give them a flash drive with your songs on it— CDs work, but flash drives are better. Send your stuff to blogs and radio DJs. Make connections and utilize the internet. – Chris Davis
IN THE STUDIO WITH
COLD BLANK: ON “THE AGENDA”
DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
Cold Blank: (from left) Gaspar & Luquin.
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Take one part electro-house sizzle and several handfuls of raw ambition, and you’ve got Cold Blank, the LA-based studio team that’s lit up the Beatport charts the past couple years. The duo, comprised of DJ/producers Chris Gaspar and Manuel Luquin, built its career from a local club night (Smash Disco) to a much-anticipated podcast. Their ascent also included the foundation of a hot music label (Burn The Fire) that has thrust a series of party anthems—from “Los Angeles” to “Raver Booty”—onto the flash drives of global jocks like Chuckie, Moby and David Guetta. Their self-released debut LP, The Agenda, collects some of these early hits and mixes them with forays into dubstep and Daft Punk-inspired French house, including bumpin’ leadoff track, “Onslaught” featuring Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor. And while the technology to make these tracks has evolved significantly since the group formed in 2008, the defining elements of the sound have stayed the same. “Cold Blank has always been about heavy basslines—that’s what we agreed on when we first started working together,” says Gaspar. “We’ve gone through a basic process
where we have a square wave and it’s just distorted a little bit and compressed. It’s just like a square wave with no filter. Now, we’re just focusing on distortions and layering multiple signals of a bassline. Say what you want about Complextro, but sometimes simpler is better. It can still be complex in the way that you’re writing the bassline and the way it’s processed.” The group has gained a lot of studio chops from working with peers like Neon Stereo and Electric Soulside, two EDM acts also featured on the album. In particular, Gaspar has learned how to develop a “3D” quality to his mixes by applying a slapback delay to the tracks. For this purpose, the duo uses Camel Audio’s CamelSpace, thanks to its modest CPU/memory requirements. “Whether it’s a lead or a bassline or a snare or a clap,” says Gaspar, “whatever it is, [CamelSpace] makes it pop out of the mix and it gives it a presence that’s hard to accomplish without turning up the volume and automating that.” Both Luquin and Gaspar use Ableton Live 8 for their live sets, podcasts, recording and DJ sets. In live settings, they also use Akai MPD32 controllers. “We don’t synch our DJ sets,” says Gaspar, “because just over the years, we’ve seen different DJs on Ableton—I don’t really wanna say who—where, even though they’re synched and they have a pre-warped track sometimes, there’s always a snare that might be off by a millisecond or bi-millisecond. So, we just trade off from track to track, and use pitch control and nudge control.” – Justin Hampton
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DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
PUSHING PUNISHING
VISUALS, DATSIK’S FIREPOWER TOUR TAKES DUBSTEP TO A NEW LEVEL
BY JUSTIN HAMPTON Thousands of dubstep producers there may be, but practically every North American basshead, if asked, can name a handful of DJ/producers that define what’s big, bold and blown-all-the-wayout-to-hell in the scene: Kill The Noise, Excision, Downlink, 12th Planet and Canada’s Troy Beetles (aka DatsiK) being chief among them. Alongside the aforementioned talents, DatsiK, took the initial South London template of dark, brooding basslines and slow, grinding tempos and transformed it into the rough, in-your-face sound of a generation. Initially starting out as a hip-hop producer in his hometown of Kelowna, B.C., the 24-year-old DatsiK got turned onto bass music in 2008 through a trip to the Shambhala music festival— a long-running countercultural pilgrimage DatsiK refers to as “Burning Man in the forest.” He encountered Excision, another Kelowna resident, at the festival and afterwards began recording for his label, Rottun Recordings.
Photos By Teaghan McGinnis
Slowly building a rep for nasty, tearing tracks as a solo producer and an increasingly in-demand collaborator, DatsiK helped to pioneer a sound which brought dystopian video game/Hollywood sci-fi sound-production values into the mix, helping to expand dubstep’s reach beyond the underground and towards a roughneck audience often shunned by EDM’s old guard. Whether one considers the development good or bad, it definitely changed the game. And it also has brought him notoriety beyond the usual suspects in dubstep. Metallic-rock pioneers Korn, in particular, tapped Beetles as an opening act after he co-produced “Tension” off of the group’s dubstep-heavy comeback LP, The Path of Totality, and lead vocalist Jonathan Davis returned the favor by singing on the DatsiK/Infected Mushroom collab “Evilution” on DatsiK’s debut LP, Vitamin D [Dim Mak]. Beetles has also worked with Diplo on “Barely Standing,” and executed remixes for the likes of Dada
Life, Linkin Park and Zedd. And at the tail end of 2012, DatsiK launched his own label, Firepower, with initial releases by the 18-year-old producer Barron and the Boston-based duo Terravita leading the way. Accordingly, he’s introducing the full vision with the Firepower Tour. Running through mid-November and featuring support acts Delta Heavy, Terravita, Bare Noize, xKore, Getter and AFK, the shows offer a full-scale A/V experience built around the concept of a visual vortex shooting out of the stage, with DatsiK at the center. Combined with 50,000 watts of PK Sound augmenting the in-house systems of each venue, it makes for a pulverizing experience that should alert the vets of heavy metal and extreme music that a new night is rising in North America. And even then, DatsiK will throw the industry another curveball, as he finally intends to make good on his promise to shift his sound back towards its minimal roots. As a relative oldschooler, DatsiK sees the latest excitement within the current spate of Dirty South-themed “trap” tracks, and in a rare moment of peace and quiet in Kelowna tells us it’s what he plans to bring into his sets. “I feel like it’s kind of bringing dubstep in a full circle,” he says, “because people are getting sick of just the super-insanely noisy stuff and they’re starting to appreciate really simple but really well-produced [tracks] – the heavy, big ideas.” And as our talk with him showed, DatsiK has no shortage of them. We’ll leave it up to him to provide the details. DJ Times: Tell me a bit about what you’ve planned to thrust in these kids’ faces when you bring the Firepower Tour to them. DatsiK: I call it the Vortex. It’s basically this massive, picturelike a funnel, except we tilt the funnel towards the crowd and have me standing in the middle of it. This funnel’s about 12-feet wide and 12-feet tall and I’m standing right in the middle of it. It’s inward projection mapping from the front and whatever the front projector casts on me, if there’s any light being cast on me, there’s a rear projector behind me as well, picking it up behind me—so it looks like I’m completely immersed in crazy visuals. DJ Times: Sounds wild. Who designed it? DatsiK: V-Squared Labs are the ones designing it. And then
NOVEMBER 2012
DAZZLING
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NOVEMBER 2012
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on top of that, we’ve got some extra lights and we’ve got lasers that we’re touring with and we’ve also got a big PK Sound system that we’re bringing, in addition to whatever they have in the clubs—so it’s gonna be loud. DJ Times: Is there anything new you’re planning to do with the Firepower Tour in your set, in terms of what you’re gonna be playing around with on that stage? DatsiK: I’m using Ableton onstage and Ableton is as crazy as you wanna make it. It just comes down to how much time you wanna spend making edits in Ableton, so that you can perform them live. But as far as what I use onstage, I use a [Pioneer] DJM900nexus mixer and I use a laptop, like a Macbook Pro, and I have a Novation Launchpad and I’ve remapped the DJM-900. I’ve remapped the effects on the 900 to effects in Ableton, so that I can basically use the knobs for other things that are controlling stuff in the computer, as opposed to controlling stuff in the actual mixer, so I can bring my own effects onto the knobs on the mixer. DJ Times: Did you make all these yourself? DatsiK: I’ve definitely made my own beat-repeat effects, that kind of effect where you can have the beat repeat with a pitch. I also have my own transitional effect, which I
use for pretty much every single mix. It’s basically a delay mixed with a reverb. It sounds way better than any other mixer or any mixer could provide, so I use that a lot as well. DJ Times: Have you ever considered selling those effects yourself, or to another DJ-software company? DatsiK: I think it kind of goes hand-in-hand with making a sample pack. For example, Loopmasters asked me to do a sample pack for them, and I actually declined because I feel like I spend all this time in the studio—when I have time in the studio—making all of these tracks sound like me. If I sell that, then I’m basically selling my sound and I don’t really wanna do that. If I’m gonna spend the only time I have in the studio to work on my own stuff, I don’t wanna just sell it, so that everyone else has it, right? I’d rather sound individual, so that I guess that goes with the plug-ins, too. I’m not greedy or anything, but at the same time if I’m spending all my time doing that, I might as well reap the benefits, too. DJ Times: Listening to some of your early tracks like “Nuke ’Em” and “Gizmo,” they’re very aggressive, but very minimal. So what do you use now that you used back in those days? DatsiK: I honestly still use the same software. I think it’s just my mixdowns and ideas have changed. This year at Shambhala, I was hearing all the aggressive, super-noisy dubstep and I was also hearing the really minimal stuff on a big system, and I’ve decided that I want to start moving backwards and start doing more minimal, but really well-produced stuff. For all the people that know about minimal dubstep, especially in North America, they’re going to classify it with trap. As a DJ, you can get away with playing it because they think it’s, like, trap. DJ Times: But it’s not… DatsiK: You’re actually playing the dubstep from 2008 that just got missed because everybody was so busy dealing with the other styles. So it’s really exciting for me because now, coming on this Firepower Tour, I’m going to start playing all of the old stuff that I really used to, but mixed with the new stuff. And I bet you people won’t even know any of it is old because they’ve never heard it before. DJ Times: Collaboration seems to be the name of the game with you, as so much of your early work was done alongside DJ/artists that define heavy dubstep amongst the current audience—people like Excision, Kill The Noise, Downlink, Chaosphere. What do those people bring that you were able to put into your own tracks? DatsiK: With Excision, the biggest thing I learned is definitely mixdown. It has been crucial to the way I’ve developed into what I am now. He was, like, a Nazi about mixdowns. I pride myself most in my mixdowns now, moreso than the song itself, moreso than the musical content, moreso than the bassline— just how well the track is mixed down, how hard it hits on a big system. Downlink—he’s a master with [Native Instruments] Massive—so whenever we sit down with Massive, which is a plug-in most bass producers use to make their crazy basses, we just geek out. He always shows me new, cool things that I might not have known before and vice versa. Downlink is very good
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with sound design. DJ Times: How about Kill The Noise and the others? DatsiK: He used to be a drum-n-bass producer named Ewun. I always was a huge fan of his, and what I learned from Kill The Noise was clarity. All of his music is so clear and so well-produced and his levels are awesome. Working with Bassnectar, he’s all about the triplet-y kind of drums and reggae vibe, so it’s really cool taking that from him. DJ Times: Chaosphere? Diplo? DatsiK: He’s my roommate, so… [laughs] We geek out a lot and we work on tracks a lot. He’s coming along pretty well, still producing. Diplo’s always on top of what’s cool, so when I work on
and sci-fi effects in your music. DatsiK: Well, I used to play a lot of Halo [laughs]. Halo is my favorite game ever, but since I started DJing as much as I do now, I rarely have time for video games anymore. And when I do, I’m usually playing them on a bus just kind of screwing around. So I really like Halo. I like Battlefield and Call of Duty. Those are the three games I’ll sit down and play online or whatever, screw around. But other than that, that’s pretty much all I play. DJ Times: So, how do you get those sounds and use them? DatsiK: I do sample a lot of movies, but I won’t use a full scene out of a movie. I’ll take, like, six different parts from a bunch of different movies and
a track with him, I don’t bring the idea to him—he always brings the idea to me, so it just makes it easy. I flip it in whatever way I can and send it back—he just rearranges, gets a vocal and it just works. So we work really well together, actually. DJ Times: Tell me about your workflow. How do you sketch out your ideas, and how do you use the tools at your disposal to do it? DatsiK: My workflow definitely has always remained the same, but I get lazier and lazier as I go on, because computers get better and better. So, instead of doing a whole bunch of lanes of automation, I just take the lazy way and I duplicate the track with the exact settings, except I tweak a couple of things. It just makes the workflow way quicker. So instead of spending all that time automating something, I can just make a new track and change this parameter and—boom—it’s done. It took me five seconds, as opposed to two-and-a-half minutes. I was at a point where I was always coloring all my tracks according to what they were. Like, I’d take all my drums and color them blue, take all my basslines, color them black, different sweeps, color them red, whatever. And even that, I’ve just like gotten so lazy, I just don’t spend time worrying about that kind of thing. I just spend way more time getting my ideas down on paper, while I have them, and it’s really easy to get stale when you sit in the studio for too long. DJ Times: So what are you using as far as computers are concerned? DatsiK: I have an iMac, a quad-core. It’s got 12 gigs of RAM, and I have two 23-inch screens and then I also have an Akai MPK49 [controller-keyboard] that I use for doing all my stuff to do with keyboards, writing melodies, whatever else. And then I also have a pair of ADAM Audio A8X monitors, and I really like those. They’ve got insanely clear high end because they’ve got the ribbon tweeters, and the stereo imaging on them is incredible. I’m just blown away, so they definitely help with mixdowns. DJ Times: You use a lot of video-game sounds
splice them up to make them sound like there’s a robot walking or something like that. So that’s usually how I get my robotic sounds. Stuff like that is perfect for me to use in Ableton, so I’ll bounce out this loop of a robot walking and then I have it forever and I can bring it over every single track that I play in Ableton. That’s where it gets really fun because now I’m going into my old projects and I’m finding all these cool things that I did that I never ended up using and now I’m just bouncing them out and I’m using them in Ableton. DJ Times: Tell me about your role in your new label, Firepower. What do you intend for the label? DatsiK: Firepower, what I’m doing is releasing my playlist of unreleased tracks to the rest of the world—basically, these tracks I’ve been playing in my sets for a while. They’re from these producers that people may or may not have heard before, but I’ve been playing them and they’ve been going off in the club. So the whole purpose of Firepower is kind of releasing that music and trying to help out the kids who are releasing those beats. What I’m releasing on Firepower is just my taste in music at the time, so who knows where it will be? Maybe in a few months, it’ll be releasing more minimal stuff on Firepower. DJ Times: How do you see the deadmau5 argument about everyone “just hitting play”? Is it possible to prove him wrong in the live arena? DatsiK: My homie Z-Trip said on Twitter that I don’t care if you push buttons. You just better be pushing 7,000 of them instead of seven—you know what I mean? If you wanna push buttons, just take it to the next level. It’s just like DJing.You can sit there and you can DJ to the very minimal amount or you can be like Z-Trip and you can cut and scratch every single track that you’re playing and do something completely original. It’s all about how much effort you wanna put in, and I think for deadmau5 to say that is, maybe that’s his opinion, but it’s definitely (continued on page 42)
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By DJ Times Staff
Three summer festivals, two continents—three very different audiences. But DJ Times was there for it all. First up, at Tomorrowland in Boom, Belgium, this past July 27-29, our correspondent Chris Davis said that the event’s massive, fantasy-themed staging was “like stepping inside Alice in Wonderland.” Citing top performances from Paul van Dyk, Seth Troxler, and Green Velvet, he said, “Still, nothing topped the massive book in the center of main stage that would shut each night following a fairytale told by the 3-D animated pages.” Covering Lollapalooza at Chicago’s Grant Park this past Aug. 3-5, Caarn Heir braved mud one day, blazing heat the next to report that Zedd, Skream & Benga, Bassnectar, and Zeds Dead left the best impressions. At Electric Zoo on New York’s Randall’s Island Labor Day weekend, our correspondents reacted rather differently. Lina Abascal was most taken by the Fool’s Gold tent, where Gestaffelstein rocked the electro-house and Dillon Francis pushed the Moombahton and trap sounds. Meanwhile, Natalie Raben pointed to the Sunday School Grove where Sasha’s funky vibes and Marco Carola’s taut techno held sway. And here’s what it all looked like:
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DJ TIMES ATTENDED THREE VERY DIFFERENT SUMMER FESTS ON TWO CONTINENTS. HERE’S WHAT THEY LOOKED LIKE.
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12 1 Dirty Dutch: Chuckie at Tomorrowland. 2 Face Up: Gabriel & Dresden at Tomorrowland. 3 Big in Belgium: Nervo at Tomorrowland. 4 Tomorrowland: Mainstage massive. 5 Let’s Go: Calvin Harris at Lollapalooza. 6 Dubsteppers: Benga & Skream in Chicago. 7 E-Zoo: Gesaffelstein in NYC. Scott Kowalchyk for ElectricZooFestival.com 8 Fool’s Gold: Dillon Francis & A-Trak. Bennett Sell-Kline for ElectricZooFestival.com 9 Hands Up: Zeds Dead at Lollapalooza. 10 Cut & Scratch: Z-Trip at Electric Zoo Scott Kowalchyk for ElectricZooFestival.com 11 Lollapalooza: Zedd in Chicago. 12 Ka-Boom: Tomorrowland’s main stage.
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13 Boom: Bassnectar at Lollapalooza. 14 Techno Titan: Marco Carola at Electric Zoo. Doug Van Sant for ElectricZooFestival.com 15 Big Head: Avicii at Lollapalooza. 16 In the Mix: Paul van Dyk at Tomorrowland.
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DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
BY JEFF STILES
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Mike Fernino from Music in Motion Entertainment is a perennial DJ Expo attendee who has nothing but praise for our latest show. Held this past August 13-16 in Atlantic City, DJ Expo 2012 drew 6,200 attendees and nearly 100 exhibitors to the Trump Taj Mahal. “The annual DJ Expo continues to lead with the best showfloor you'll find at any convention,” says the Seymour, Conn.-based Fernino. “This year's floor was the biggest I can remember in quite some time, while the products, goods and services were diverse and plentiful. It's always worth my trip down to Atlantic City.” We asked mobile DJs from around the country what they thought of this year's DJ Expo. Did our event meet or exceed their expectations? Did anyone make some new friends or business connections? How did the exhibit hall and seminars compare to years past? What are some takeaways they were able to bring home to their own locales? And what can we do better in the future? John Horne of Jam Machine Productions in Huntingdon, Pa., has been attending the Atlantic City show for the past 12 years, and agrees with Fernino that the latest show was the best he's seen in many years. “It was wonderful to see all the vendors that set up—although I did miss having X-Mix there,” says Horne. “It's always great to reconnect with the regular vendors—American DJ/I DJ Now, Chauvet/Music Trends, Promo Only and DigiGames. “The exhibit floor was filled with excitement, and that's what makes the Expo worthwhile. As always, my trunk was filled with equipment when I left. Seeing that many DJs in one place makes me hopeful that our business will continue in these trying economic times, and the future of our business looks bright with all the technology and enthusiasm I witnessed this year. “If I was asked to sum this year's Expo up in one word, it would be… bravo!” Horne is proud that he returned home with two new Inno Scan LED lights and a Micro 3D laser from American DJ, plus new Buzzers from DigiGames. Plus, Horne says he was able to glean lots of information on products he had purchased prior to the Expo—like the American Audio VMS4.1 media controller—and answers to products he's have been following online. “I always love the hands-on experiences at the Expo,” he says, “plus the visuals that are always superior to the YouTube presentations of products.” A 25-year industry veteran who has been faithfully attending the DJ Expo since 1994, JR Silva of Silva Entertainment in Orlando, Fla., says this year's show definitely met his expectations. In fact, Silva says the Taj Mahal is the perfect home for the event. “In the past, I always enjoyed the days when we were at the Convention Center and the Sheraton,” he says, “but there's nothing like being a just couple steps off the Boardwalk to really appreciate being in Atlantic City with industry peers.” As far as Expo takeaways, Silva thought a couple seminars really stood out in his mind. “Karl Detken of Chauvet is a man who knows how to communicate with DJs, and he and his staff did a wonderful job promoting their products and educating attendees [at the company’s sponsored seminars],” says Silva. “Mike Walter’s seminar [Ideas for Growth: Making a Multi-Op Work] was a standout, and his preparation and showmanship were stellar. In fact, I purchased BrideLive immediately after his talk, and see it as a powerful tool for communicating with my corporate and social clients.” The icing on the cake, according to Silva, was an exhibit hall that he says seemed to be three-deep in everything. “You want DJ facades? Take a look at three great options and providers,” he says. “Need uplighting, novelties, photo booths? There was a depth to popular categories, which made it a real pleasure to see and shop.” Of course, every event has room for improvement, and celebrity DJ Carl Williams
DJ TIMES
Photos By Metro23 mixMedia, Jeff Heart & Ronald Mungo
from New York City says that—while Expo 2012 went well— he has some suggestions for future shows. “I love the Promo Only party [at House of Blues],” he says, “but they have to consider playing some of their better and more popular artists earlier in the showcase and keeping their show to four hours to maximize the artist's marketing potential. I think it stinks when the more popular artists play to less DJs in the room because they don't come on until 1:30 a.m. I would also have the name of artists up on a screen while they're performing, in case attendees are not familiar with their artistry.” Today's DJ business owners operate in a fast-paced and ever-changing world, and Gregg Hollmann of Ambient DJ Service in East Windsor, N.J., claims that one of the best ways a mobile can stay razor-sharp is by attending DJ Times’ Expo seminars every August. To that end, Hollmann says he attended as many seminars as possible at the show this year, not only collecting nuggets of information, but also searching for a break-through idea capable of catapulting his business to the next level. “The 2012 show offered a wide range of high-quality content across the business and performance spectrum,” Hollmann says. “The most thought-provoking seminar was Go Social, Go Mobile by Sonny Ganguly, the chief marketing officer at WeddingWire. I believe that DJs who mobilize their websites ahead of the crowd may enjoy a competitive advantage. “Sponsored by the New Jersey Disc Jockey Network, Sonny's terrific presentation estimated that by 2013 the most prevalent method to access the Internet will be via mobile device. Half of the Internet searches for local businesses are currently done on mobile devices, yet only 1-percent of websites are optimized to be mobile-friendly.” According to Hollmann, Ganguly says that 80-percent of web surfers will abandon a website that doesn’t look right or work correctly on a mobile device. “To get started,” says Hollmann, “those DJs who advertise on WeddingWire can produce—for no additional charge—a mobile version of their WeddingWire storefront that can be implemented in just a day, and will be detected automatically by mobile devices. Ganguly recommends delivering mobile-friendly email marketing to prospective clients on Saturdays and Sundays, when they are free and most likely to be checking email on mobile devices. “To maximize response rates, give a prospect one simple thing to do [e.g., 'click here to receive a price quote']. Ganguly spoke about the past five years as being the Social Revolution, with the next five years being the Mobile Revolution. Regarding social media, it is not a 'field of dreams.' Rather, to gain the benefits from social media, one must invest time and effort.” Overall, Hollmann says the past year's seminars confirmed that we are in a technologically-advanced world that's moving faster than ever. “Numerous presenters spoke about DJs needing to be where their customers are,” he says, “and for wedding DJs that means Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, wedding portals and review sites. “One of the biggest benefits of attending the seminars each year is being inspired by real-life successes from the likes of Grandmaster Flash, DJ Skribble, Jellybean Benitez, Steve Moody, Marz Lawhorn and Big Daddy. As DJs, we can all learn a lesson or two from these masters!”
NOVEMBER 2012
RECORD-BREAKING ATTENDANCE WAS NOT THE ONLY THING THAT MADE THIS YEAR’S SHOW EXCEPTIONAL
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Photos By Mikey McNulty
KRISTINA SKY’S JOURNEY HAS TAKEN HER FROM FLYERING FAN TO FESTIVAL BOOTH
DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
BY DEANNA RILLING
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A 90-year-old man channeling Moses in a toga handed out dried cranberries inside a strip club. The light of the Ugly Duckling used car lot sign glowed across the street. On that night in the mid-1990s somewhere in Van Nuys, Calif., mini Adidas backpacks and furry things abounded, while a volleyball-playing skater chick that usually felt more at home with bands on the Sunset Strip surveyed the scene. And then she began to dance. “I remember thinking, ‘This is weird—but it’s really, really cool and I like this music!’” says DJ/producer Kristina Sky, only a teen at the time. “I had no clue about the music at that point, so I can’t even tell you what I was hearing. All I knew is that it was dance music and I immediately started going to more events after that.” Sky was initially doing her friend a favor by tagging along to the aforementioned rave. “I didn’t even want
to go to,” Sky says. “She has no idea she changed the entire course of my life by taking me to that party.” But that doesn’t mean Sky immediately jumped into the DJ booth—far from it. Instead, her initial interest in EDM led her to throwing her own events, complete with Sky’s supportive mother helping out on ticketbooth duties. “She’s the only one that I trusted to take money!” laughs Sky. But promoting parties was a risky investment, as Sky found out. “I had a partner who didn’t speak the best English,” she recalls, “and, unfortunately, he did the info line and nobody understood what the hell he was saying!” By the time Sky found out there were ravers with the wrong directions wandering downtown L.A., it was too late to save the party and she was in five-figure debt to a friend that now had a gaping hole in his trust fund. Says Sky: “I kind of separat-
ed myself from the promoter side of things because I was so upset about what had happened. I just needed a break and I need to pay back my friend.” In the downtime from pushing parties, Sky further cultivated her love for EDM. Collecting vinyl and compilation CDs, she wished she could work her favorite tracks together instead of simply listening. At first, she was discouraged when a hip-hop DJ friend attempted to share his skills. “I was thinking, ‘I really love music, but this mixing thing is not my thing because I clearly can’t do it!’ I was getting really frustrated with it.” Thankfully, another friend had experience spinning her preferred genre of trance, and then it clicked. “From there, it was obsession,” she affirms. “But I never got in it to do this for a job—that was never my intention at all.” Fast-forward to 2012 with Sky
holding down residencies for Giant at Avalon and Insomniac Event’s Awakening at Exchange LA. Throughout Sky’s 10-year career, she’s been on the Tranceaddict poll of top 250 DJs for five years in a row, coming in at No. 77 in 2011, was handpicked by Armin van Buuren to play ASOT 550 in The Netherlands and her Trancelate radio show is heard ’round the world by the dedicated #TranceFamily. Sky has become a seasoned pro on the nightclub circuit and, though gigs at massives such as Electric Daisy Carnival 2012 in Las Vegas (where DJ Times caught up with Sky) have been few, the journey has been memorable in a major way. Take , for example , Coachella 2006—or, as it’s known, the year Madonna took too long during soundcheck in the dance tent. For Sky’s first festival behind the decks, it wasn’t looking good when her opening set was cut short thanks to the ultra-
Calvin Harris ft. Florence Welch: “Sweet Nothing” (Tiesto Remix) [Sony] Menno de Jong ft. Kristina Sky: “Signals” [White] Orjan Nilsen: “PhireWorX” (Original Mix) [Armind] Kristina Sky & Randy Boyer ft. ShyBoy: “Welcome to the Future” (Jason Mill Sunset Mix) [EnMass] School Of Seven Bells: “Reappear” (Thomas Datt Remix) [White]
NOVEMBER 2012
amazing.” Fast-forward to June 10, 2012: At EDC in Vegas, Sky was on stage at the Circuit Grounds (also known as the A State of Trace or Anjunabeats stage) working her recent collaboration with Menno de Jong, “Signals,” and “Welcome to the Future” with Randy Boyer featuring ShyBoy into the set—quite a long way from when she’d attend EDC as a fan. And that experience includes flyering at EDC 2000 where, ironically, BT was a headliner—at the 2012 event, she was opening for him. So, looking back, how does Sky explain her success and the respect she’s earned from colleagues, amidst today’s EDM boys club, not to mention the socialite wannabe-spinners? “I just do me and hopefully people like it,” Sky says. "I think that talent and passion is what matters. DJs should just be true to themselves, do what they want to do, not worry about gender and just play music.” n
Kristina Sky’s Top 5
DJ TIMES
particular Madge. “I went on,” she recalls, “and Gabriel & Dresden showed up for their set, heard I had been cut short by the soundcheck and said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna give you 20 or 30 minutes of our set.’ I was so flattered that they would do that for me; it was their first time playing Coachella and they actually unselfishly gave up some of their slot for me.” Coincidentally—and unbeknownst to Gabriel & Dresden—their booking was a result of Coachella organizer Goldenvoice President Paul Tollett asking Sky for suggestions on whom to book. There must have been good EDM karma working because from there, Sky’s luck got even better, being asked to do an impromptu second set later that night at the Oasis Dome… at the same time as Madonna’s set. “I’m thinking, ‘Oh God, OK. Well, screw it, because they said nobody has ever really been asked to play two sets!’ I was just lucky—it’s not because I was important, but they really liked what I was doing,” Sky says. “It ended up being rammed to the brims, people couldn’t even fit in the Dome, people were trying to get in and it was amazing. Of course, Madonna was packed all the way back, but there was still people that didn’t really care, wandered in and it was
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MAKING TRACKS STUDIO…HARDWARE…SOFTWARE…
KRK’S DOUBLE DOSE
Arguably, nothing is more essential to creating a competent electronic production than a decent monitoring environment. While good quality studio monitors—an essential component—have been within reach of most home studio users for awhile now, not everyone has the space or the luxury to build out a proper studio with well-thought-out, properly engineered acoustics. I’m one of those producers. My so-called “studio” is a garden-level basement room, which serves multiple functions as the usual location for eating dinner and casual TV watching, not to mention housing my computer workstation for my non-music-related day job, and a few other things. A casual poll of producer/remixer friends reveals that pretty much only the bigger, more established names enjoy a proper studio environment. Some don’t even have a proper set of studio monitors.
By Wesley Bryant-King
DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
ERGO: A must-have room-correction
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So what are people like us supposed to do? So here, I take a look at a couple of offerings from KRK: the Rockit 10-3 powered studio monitor and the ERGO room correction system. The former deliver the goods for monitoring, while the latter makes-up for the shortcomings most of us struggle with. Both are priced at $500. Hands-On: When it comes to monitors, most home-studio applications will warrant the use of nearfield or mid-field studio monitors. There are no hard-and-fast rules, but the choice depends on the physical proximity between the engineer (you) and the monitors themselves, and how much space you have to arrange everything. Broadly speaking, mid-field monitors like the KRK Rockit 10-3s have higher power handling capacity, larger drivers, and frequently offer three-way configurations vs. the two-way of most nearfield monitors. That does, in fact, describe the 10-3s. They have beefy 10-inch main drivers, a 3-way driver configuration (including a 4-inch midrange driver and a 1-inch tweeter), and 140 watts’ worth of kick. The 10-inch drivers deliver a nice thump on the lowend; specs cite a frequency response down to 31 Hz—which actually exceeds the specs of the dedicated subwoofer I normally use in my own home studio, potentially eliminating the need for one. They are big. With a footprint of roughly 13- by-14-inches and a height
of over 21-inches, you’ll need to have the room to accommodate them. They’re also designed to sit between 3 and 13 feet from the listening position for optimal performance. On the other hand, if you’ve got the room, the Rockit 10-3s really deliver. Loading a few of my projects into my DAW to sample their performance, it felt like my mixes had a bit more life to them, and unquestionably had more punch than my usual 2-way short-field monitors when I drop out my sub. Admittedly, I don’t have the tools for spectral analysis or other means of objective evaluation, but going purely by ear against known material, it didn’t take long before I became really enamored of the Rockit 10-3s. The back panel of the Rockit 10-3 may not get seen very often, but there, you’ll find its adjustments and connections. And while most monitors are going to get plugged in and stay in, I still appreciated the connection flexibility. They accept XLR, ¼-inch���������������������������� , and RCA. There are adjustment knobs for overall gain, as well as low-frequency and high-frequency tuning, providing the ability to boost slightly or cut slightly the signals in those bands to tune the monitor to the listening environment. Speaking of tuning, along with the Rockit 10-3 pair, KRK provided an ERGO room correction system for this review. As I mentioned in the introduction, many (perhaps most) of
Rockit 10-3: Stunningsounding active monitor.
us do our studio work in less-thanideal circumstances, and the ERGO is a one of a new breed of technology solutions designed to help us all make the most of our situations. The general approach of the ERGO is this: A sensor (microphone) is placed in the listening position (where your head normally is when you’re working in the studio). A test is run, and during the test, signals are generated and monitored by the sensor. The unit can then compare the audio it generated to what it hears coming through the monitors, and then set itself up to make appropriate phase and frequency adjustments in the signal path in real-time, before the audio even reaches the monitors. (The ERGO device itself remains inline both during and after analysis.) As someone who has struggled in particular with frequency balance in his mixes, I’ve long known that a lessthan-stellar monitoring environment was to blame. But without the tools or the knowledge to really “tune” my environment, I was left to trial-anderror. Until ERGO, anyway. The device sits in-line between your master outs, and the monitors. Connecting to your studio computer via FireWire (Windows users take note: there is no USB here), ERGO’s analysis software runs on your computer. Once the analysis is done, settings are stored within the
ERGO hardware, so you don’t have to keep it running on your computer long-term. The analysis process is simple and relatively fast. When it’s done, disconnect and stow the mic. Unless the environment changes in some material way (new workstation layout, new monitors, new acoustic damping, etc.), you won’t need to perform the exercise again. So, how did it work? Again, I’m left to subjective analysis here, but an A/B comparison using known material did, in fact, reveal some fairly substantive differences in the perceived color and texture of the sound, leading me to the conclusion that the ERGO did in fact identify and rectify some issues in the room. KRK says that the unit applies over 1,000 dynamic filters as a result of its “3D” room analysis algorithms. Is it a cure-all to bad studios? Obviously, a properly designed studio with appropriate acoustic properties (including sound damping, and no doubt the expertise of a real audio engineer when it comes to design and layout) is the best overall approach. But for the rest of us—those who have no options or no budget for such niceties—it’s comforting to know that technology can, in fact, make a genuine difference and help us get closer to the sound the big boys get with their big studios and big budgets.
A New Class of Mixer. Digital Heart. Analog Soul.
Combining 40 years of professional analog expertise with 25 years of digital innovation, Yamaha marks the birth of a new class of compact consoles. With sonic superiority from preamp to output, MGP-Series delivers a game-changing level of audio performance and functionality.
MGP12X
MGP16X
Digital Connectivity for your iPod /iPhone ®
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A single connection offers flexible DSP control and high-quality digital playback. Download the free MGP Editor app by scanning the QR code.
Studio-grade discrete Class-A preamps set your sound standard from the outset. All the character of your input signal is faithfully translated with fat, natural bass and smooth, soaring highs.
Inspired by the EQ curves of soughtafter vintage modules, Yamaha’s X-pressive EQ is a powerful sound shaping tool that redefines the role EQ plays in sound reinforcement.
Learn more now at http://4wrd.it/mgpdj
Two stereo hybrid channels facilitate automatic ducking for voice over background music, auto leveling of program material and stereo sound field control.
Yamaha’s world-renowned REV-X reverbs and SPX multi FX for the first time in a compact analog mixer. Editable from the front panel or go deepdiving with the free iOS application.
©2012 Yamaha Corporation of America. All rights reserved.
*Apple, iPhone and iPod are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.
SOUNDING OFF PLAYBACK…PRO AUDIO…PROCESSING
TRAKTOR KONTROL F1: NI’S GAME-CHANGER
DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
By Paul Dailey
26
Each step in my life’s progression as a DJ has been spurred by two factors – creativity and convenience. When I first converted from vinyl to CDs, it was to both save my back from lugging hundreds of pounds of vinyl, as well as take advantage of the CDJ’s skipless playback and looping/hot cue capabilities. Plus, I liked the ability to play my own recently-made edits and remixes. As I transitioned to DVS, the impetus was a desire to eliminate the arduous administrative factors that made CDs tiresome—burning multiple copies of multiple CDs, rearranging CD folders, typing up cards with BPM, Key, Intro and Outro information over and over—and take advantage of the advanced features that a program like Traktor had to offer. Over the past two years, I have dug deeper into the world of Traktor and developed an appreciation for a truly infinite feature set. Through the use of my MIDI Fighter Classic, Faderfox and Traktor X1 controllers, I found a new level of creativity, which was previously impossible. My sets have gotten better and more imaginative and my enjoyment in the booth has increased exponentially. What has also changed is my perception of the dreaded “sync” button. For years, I was also in the “sync = cheating” camp, but as I delve further into the software I find that I am using the time I once used for beat-matching to further add creative elements and take my sets in new and exciting directions. The true challenge of multisource, digital DJing, I’ve found, occurs when you take advantage of these new tools, by finding their best places in a set. The newest controller from Native Instruments, the Kontrol F1 ($279 list), takes this concept to an even deeper level, giving you the ability to control 64 samples/loops/percussive bits, further blurring the line between DJing and live performance. The F1 ships with a USB cable, some quickstart tips, and information to download the necessary drivers. You will also be prompted to
upgrade to Traktor Pro 2.5, which not only includes the functionality for using your F1 and their related remix decks, but also addresses a great number of long-standing bugs. The new version of Traktor is rock-solid and, in more than 100 hours of live performances since my upgrade, has had nary a hiccup. The F1 unit features 16 soft rubber, RGB pads, four volume-control faders, four filter knobs, and a convenient scroll/browse knob for quickly finding and loading new samples. There are buttons for sync and quantize and ways to edit samples, increase their volume, play them as loops or one shots, play them in reverse, route them through your Traktor effects. You are in complete control, all in a form factor that is the same size as the X1, fitting easily into even the most crowded DJ booth. Remix Decks & Sets: The work flow and use of the F1 is based around a new concept called “Remix Decks”—and their related content called “Remix Sets.” In essence, there are 16 pads available on the F1, but with the use of four pages per set, you are given control over 64 available sample slots, which you can save into a Remix Set. There are some limitations, including a max of 48 seconds per slot, and the inability to play multiple samples in a row simultaneously (more on this later), but in general the concept was executed to near perfection. NI also gets you started with 1.4 GB of premium-grade loops and one-shot samples – completely free. These starter “remix sets” are from industry-leading performers like Stuart Walker (techno drums and keys), Moldover (guitar loops and samples), and Shiftee (dubstep basslines and beats) to name a few. This content helps you get up and running straight away with your F1, and NI will be making additional content available for sale in the future. You can also load loops on the fly (as with your sample decks in the past), use your own prearranged loops, samples, and one-shots, as well as anything you previously used from your ever-growing “all samples” folder, to build your own customized remix sets. First Impressions: Set up of the F1 was dead simple and the upgraded version of Traktor
recognized the controller right out of the box. I have not had to make anything, but minor tweaks to the parameters, as the default mapping has everything you could want and need– already pre-programmed. I spent the first few hours loading samples, playing with the functionality, and working out a logical scheme for deciding what colors to use. Once I had a set I liked, I started playing around, adding each element to a greater mix. Using my S4, I had three tracks decks on A, B and C—I used D as a Remix Deck. As I experimented, I found a deep level of customization at my disposal—from ways to quickly adjust the volume of a sample, to changing a bank from one which restarts on the “1” each time a pad was hit to one where the sample switched, but the orientation in the measure stayed the same. This is very cool for swapping vocals, keys, etc., without restarting and disrupting the overall vibe and flow. Within two hours, I have to honestly say, I was falling hard for my F1. More Than Pretty Lights: If we are being honest, the first thing that caught my eye (and probably yours) about the F1 is the grid of great-looking lights. Like an MPC or Maschine with RGB colors, the F1 is one damn sexy-looking controller. In practice, those colors, which are fully customizable, really help you to understand the content you have loaded. For example, I use Blue for full 4/4 drum loops, Red for percussion loops without a kick drop (suitable for working in build ups), Yellow for synth and piano bits, Green for crashes, rides and other cymbal samples, and Pink for baselines, Purple is for percussive bits like congas, claps, etc., and Orange for vocal samples. In this way, my work flow all makes sense and, when you look at my F1, you can roughly discern what you are about to play, even without having to glance at the screen to verify the name of the sample. This really helps to keep a DJ focused on the dancefloor, and a quick glance at the F1 gives you the data you need without having to stare at your computer. Native Instruments is once again leading the way, showing why Traktor is, in my opinion, a better choice for creative DJs than other production-based solutions. There are a few omissions, which I hope NI will address in future updates. Top of the list is the inability to play more than one sample in a given row at a time. For example, if you are playing something on the top left pad on Page 1, you cannot play something also in that same column on any other page, without reverting to that sample. So while you do have
access to 64 samples, you can, in essence, only play four at a time. At the end of the day, the F1 is a really well-executed piece of hardware/ software that the NI team has nailed. In order to get the most of the F1 experience, you will need to put in a fair bit of time at home, fine-tuning sample loops and getting your custom-made Remix Decks up to par. But in the hands of truly dedicated, artistic DJs, the newly updated Traktor software and the F1 are true game-changers that permanently blur the line between DJing and live performance.
2000W TruSource™ Technology DL2 Integrated Digital Mixer
DLM12
DLM12S DLM8
When you’re louder than everybody else, people will listen. When you sound good doing it, you’ll be heard. Mackie DLM is packed with bleedingedge technology delivering 2000 watts of chestpounding power in the most compact design ever. It also features the first-ever integrated digital mixer and groundbreaking system processing. After all, you’re the one who has something to say. Better make sure you sound good. The New Shape of Sound – Mackie DLM
How can something so small be so powerful? Watch the video and find out how Mackie packed in all that sound!
MACKIE.COM/DLM © 2012 LOUD Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved. “Mackie” and the “running man” are registered trademarks of LOUD Technologies. Refrain from standing on the DLM after 12 or more drinks. And by “drinks” we mean grape juice.
MOBILE PROFILE CAREERS…INNOVATIONS…SUCCESS STORIES
CALI DJ BLEEDS DODGER BLUE
DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
By Sam Harrington
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L o s A n g e l e s — N o t t o o m a ny DJs outside of, say, Tiësto, Guetta, and Fatboy Slim can truthfully claim they’ve played to as many as 55,000 people in a night. But L.A.-based DJ Severe can. In fact, he sometimes plays to that many people several times a week, and more than three million people annually. “It’s a blessing,” says Severe, “and it’s hard to believe a gig like this even exists.” A gig “like this” means the DJ-inresidence job at Dodger Stadium, which in 2012 saw more than three million fans walk through its gates. It’s been a long haul for Severe, who was born Lanier Stewart in Pasadena to a father who turned him on to Earth Wind & Fire and encouraged him to play the drums. But when hip hop hit in the 1980s, Severe—then a sixth grader—was hooked. “Sugar Hill Gang,” he says. “I fell in love with that because of the ‘Good Times’ sample. That’s when you had real DJs on the radio, and they would break music. You’d hear about a new song some DJ on the radio was playing, and it wasn’t out in the record store yet—back then they didn’t play songs every 15 minutes. So you had to sit around and wait for them to play it again, so you could catch it on tape and hope the DJ didn’t talk over the song, so you could tape the length of the song. Back then, you didn’t know release dates, so you had to get it yourself.” The first time Severe realized that DJing could be a serious pursuit was at a Run-DMC show in Pasadena. By his senior year in high school, he had a pair of Technics, a Stanton mixer, and was shopping for vinyl—which he still does. “Whenever I meet people and I hear their parents are moving out of their house or something,” he says, “I ask if I can go through their vinyl they’re leaving behind. I like to see what’s there.” But it wasn’t until years later, when his life took a bad turn, that he decided he needed to pursue DJing in a real way. “I was actually experienc-
ing a down time,” he says. “There had been a death in the family, I was going through a divorce, and I was living in Arizona and came back to California, and the previous job I had in the aerospace industr y wasn’t available to me anymore. So, I wanted to put my energy towards positive things, and I thought it might be a good time to pour it into the DJ business. “My Technics had been long gone, and my uncle lent me the money to get my stuff back. I got my equipment, printed up some cards, and really started promoting myself to do weddings. Slowly and surely I built it up. I call it a blessing. If I hadn’t gone through what I went through, I never would have pursued the DJing to the next level.” The “next level” arrived a few years ago, when a friend of his, a manager at Dodger Stadium, asked Severe if he’d like to DJ at one of the playoff games. “When the Dodgers make the playoffs, there’s a big party—at every level in the stadium,” he says. “So I started spinning during playoff time, people started hearing me, and slowly the Dodgers heard about me. I did a couple of special events for them, an employee holiday party next. When I was there, my boss met me there and asked me if I could send him a sound effect—a horn. I gave him my card, and six months later, when I was on vacation in New Jersey, he hit me on email, and he wanted that sound effect. “I sent him every sound effect I had, and I asked him if there were any openings at Dodger Stadium, that I’d really like to get involved. He said, ‘As a matter of fact, there is an opening for a DJ at the stadium for all 81 home games—are you interested?’ I immediately shut down my vacation, and got on board with my web producer and I prepped for this interview, which was a DJ set, really, so I could smash this interview.”
DJ Severe plays an 81-game residency.
It was the first time the Dodgers were going with a DJ, so it was uncharted territory for them. But Severe, having played clubs as well as weddings, was uniquely qualified. “The difference in sports DJing is you have to be very versatile,” he says. “Luckily, I had gone to Dodger Stadium as a kid, all my life. So I knew what it meant to play music there— and with me DJing at a club, I knew what every level liked—from the luxury suites to the bleachers, I knew what they liked.” He got the gig—81 home games, enough to make DJing a full-time gig. “Every inning is different,” he says. “You have to keep the fans pumped up, but it also has to be a familyfriendly environment, from ages eight to 80. So it’s totally clean, and everyone has to relate to what you’re doing at some point in time. I play a lot of classic rock, old-school hip hop. It’s always safe and it gets people moving—A Tribe Called Quest, Van Halen ‘Jump,’ ‘Enter Sandman.’ I play The Beasties’ ‘Intergalactic’ a lot. And when you can mix that all together it
makes for a nice marriage.” Severe also has to please the players, and program their walk-on music (to accompany their trips to the plate), which he receives through email via the PR department. “Sometimes they’re superstitious,” he says, “so if they’re in a slump they’ll switch the song up. Some have four songs, some have just one. This past spring training, I was talking to outfielder Andre Ethier, and the first song he picked was ‘Who Am I’ by Snoop Dogg, and he let me pick his other song. He wanted a kind of WestCoast thing, so I chose ‘Check Yo Self’ by Ice Cube, and that makes the stadium go crazy.” Not a bad living for a DJ—or for anyone. He gets tons of referrals from his work, and DJs at games for the National Hockey League’s L.A. Kings and Major League Soccer’s L.A. Galaxy, too. “I never thought I could make money doing this,” he says. “Looking back, I wish I had started a little bit earlier, but things happen when you’re ready for them to happen.”
DJ Times ad - Trusst TUV Logo.indd 1
8/7/2012 10:02:26 AM
BUSINESS LINE SALES…MARKETING…SOLUTIONS…
EFFECTIVE MARKETING FOR WEDDING DJS Email, social media campaigns, or even direct mail can be helpful ways to incentivize a bride to call you rather than your competition.
DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
By Laura Cave
30
Identifying and attracting bridal customers can be a real challenge. Unlike corporate customers or entertainment venues, your potential bridal clients change every year. They’re busy and distracted by a marketplace full of messages. And most of them don’t know the first thing about hiring a DJ! The key to an effective marketing program is making sure your advertisements target this elusive group and deliver relevant and compelling messaging. Here’s how: How to Target Brides Sure, a billboard on a busy stretch of highway will get your brand message in front of thousands of people, but are they people who are in the market to hire a DJ? Maybe—maybe not. Many forms of traditional marketing aren’t very efficient at identifying the bridal customer. When you spend money on an advertisement, you want to make sure every marketing dollar is harnessed to deliver qualified leads. To reach today’s brides, consider marketing your business on bridal websites or in bridal magazines, as the majority of people reading those publications are planning weddings. These media entities have done the hard work of attracting brides with inspirational and useful content, so they have her full attention. Tip! Some wedding directories are free and some are paid. Just remember, you’re buying an audience, not just an ad. Make sure you ask them how many brides they have in your market when you’re evaluating the cost. Make Sure Your Ad Works for You, Not Against You You’re on the right track if you’ve placed ads in magazines and on websites that brides use. Now it’s up to you to stand out from the competition. Here are a few tips for creating eye-catching bridal ads: 1. Choose photographs that tell a story. Brides will not be as excited about a picture of your equipment as they will be to see a packed dancefloor or a romantic first dance. A bride should be able to see herself in your ads. 2. Size matters. If your directory listing includes a thumbnail image,
choose one that stands out at a small size. Conversely, if you are choosing a photo for a full-page magazine ad, make sure it’s a high-resolution image with lots of detail that really conveys the experience your service provides. 3. Give her an idea of pricing. Nothing is more frustrating than getting inquiries from brides who can’t afford you or have unrealistic expectations. Our profiles on TheKnot.com allow you to choose how many dollar signs to put on your profile to differentiate between budget and luxury options. You might also mention the range of packages or a starting price point on your website. 4. Include your contact info. Now that you have her attention, include a clear call to action with relevant contact information. Your website and a phone number may be all she needs to reach out and start a conversation. Consider Additional Ways to Stand Out A listing in a wedding directory or an ad in a bridal magazine is a great place to start. But you may want to consider other tactics to stand out from the competition. Email, social-media campaigns, or even direct mail can be helpful ways to incentivize a bride to call you rather than your competition. Back It Up With Great Service The best advertising in the world can’t make up for poor customer service. So make sure when brides start responding to your ads that your staff is ready to promptly respond. Be patient with brides and use your website and sales staff to educate them about your services and policies. The more information you provide upfront, the less likely it will be to have issues down the road. Happy customers write great reviews, which can add legitimacy to future marketing campaigns. Laura Cave is the Director of Education for The Knot Wedding Network. She provides education and market research to wedding professionals, helping them with everything from how to improve their marketing materials to social media best practices and more. For more education and ideas, visit her blog at www.theknot.com/b2b. You can also follow Laura on Twitter @theknotb2b or @LauraCave.
JOHN LYONS AND CROWN: PARTNERS IN EXCLUSIVE CLUBS.
Night after night, Crown’s Macro-Tech i Series excels at setting the standard for pure sound quality, detail and clarity.
MACRO-TECH® I SERIES
A LEGACY OF UNPARALLELED SONIC ACCURACY With over 30 years of experience in the highly competitive club business, John Lyons is an international success. And, from hot spots in Hollywood to Las Vegas, from Atlantic City to Dubai, he’s turned to the unparalleled sonic accuracy and superb reliability of Crown’s Macro-Tech i Series amplifiers to power the sound in his popular clubs.
“The robust construction of the Macro-Tech i Series amps make them a good choice for a club where failure during the show is not an option.” - JOHN LYONS
GEAR AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF
Ruby Royal Slippers
Bedroom Eyes
American DJ 6122 S. Eastern Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90040 (800) 322-6337 www.americandj.com
Guillemot Corporation BP 2 56204 La Gacilly Cedex France +33 (0) 2 99 08 08 80 www.hercules.com
DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
American DJ’s Ruby Royal Laser Effect combines 150mW laser diodes in red and violet blue to create patterns in three colors—red, blue and magenta. The unit comes with 20 built-in laser patterns and can be operated with a DMX controller to create a custom-programmed light show. Features include 1.8-degree stepper motors and a ¼-inch input. The Ruby Royal comes with its own hanging bracket and a safety hook on the rear panel.
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The Hercules XPS 2.0 60 DJ SET features two wooden, compact satellites that come with a tweeter, a three-inch woofer with a Kevlar membrane, and dual ports for gauging bass frequencies. Designed for “bedroom studios,” the XPS 2.0 60 DJ SET has controls for volume, bass and treble on the front right speaker. It also includes an RCA input, a 3.5-mm line input, and a stereo headphones output.
Ask Me Wi-Fi
Polysix Want a Cracker
Pioneer Electronics 1925 E. Dominguez Street Long Beach, CA 90810 (310) 952-2000 www.pioneerdjusa.com
Korg 316 South Service Road Melville, NY 11747 (631) 390-6500 www.korg.com
The XDJ-AERO from Pioneer is the industry’s first Wi-Fi DJ system, according to the company. It can identify up to four devices—including smartphones, tablets and laptop computers—and wirelessly play music tracks from them. In addition, the unit can create its own wireless access point when Wi-Fi isn’t available or not in range. The XDJ-AERO can be used as a standalone two-channel mixer or connect to other sources via audio ports. It comes with Pioneer rekordbox music management software for accessing audio tracks on a PC.
Korg’s Polysix for Reason is a software version of the original Polysix programmable six-voice polyphonic analog synthesizer from 1981. Available for download at Propellerhead’s web-shop, it’s designed specifically for Propellerhead’s new Rack Extension Plugin format for Reason. It features 32-voice polyphony, up to 16-voice unison, flexible external modulation settings, MIDI clock synchronization, and a spread function that adjusts the spaciousness of the effects.
GEAR AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF
Electrix Slide
What’s Your Sign?
Trix Are for Kids Chauvet 5200 NW 108th Ave. Sunrise, FL 33351 (800) 762-1084 www.chauvetlighting.com Mega Trix is an LED-powered effect from Chauvet equipped with three independent pods housing 192 RGBW LEDs. The unit—which creates mid-air aerial effects, beams of light and animations—has an internal mounting option so that it can be mounted on most tripods and speaker stands “without interfering with speakers or other fixtures,” according to the company. In addition, Mega Trix has three channels of DMX control for custom light shows.
GCI Technologies 1 Mayfield Ave. Edison, NJ 08837 (732) 346-0061 www.gci-technologies. com Gemini's CDJ-650 is a tabletop unit that plays music from CDs, USB sticks or a computer. It features a 3.2-inch full-color TFT display with contrast a d j u s t m e n t a n d a c o m p re hensive waveform display. The MIDI-compatible unit comes equipped with a five-inch touchsensitive jog wheel and features both programmable hot cues and variable pitch control.
Ableton 36 W. Colorado Blvd. Suite 300 Pasadena, CA 91105 (646) 723-4550 www.ableton.com Ableton and Sample Logic came together to create Electrix, a collection of unique newly-created instruments derived from real-world acoustic sample material, synthesis and physical modeling. Electrix is sorted into five sections with 75 audio loops and 311 instruments that each use Ableton Live’s Rack format. Macro controls are mapped to “useful filter, envelope and effects parameters,” according to the company, in order to allow for “easy customization and spontaneous tweaking during performance.”
DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
Noah’s ARC2
34
IK Multimedia 1153 Sawgrass Corporate Parkway Sunrise FL, 33323 (954) 846-9101 www.ikmultimedia.com IK Multimedia released a new version of its Advanced Room Correction System. Designed for Mac and PC digital workstations, ARC2 helps to improve the acoustics and sonic reliability of a studio by combining a measurement microphone, measurement software and a correction plug-in. ARC 2 features four times greater resolution in the lower frequencies “where room distortions typically occur.” It also includes the MultEQ XT32 algorithm for higher-resolution EQ adjustment and a new monitor control panel interface that streamlines workflow.
T-shirts FOR SALE $20.00
t-shirts small - XXL Email us at djexpo@testa.com or look at our NEW STORE online at djtimes.com/store
Pantone 3025c Pantone 032c Pantone 102c K90
Pantone 3025c
K60
Pantone 032c
K70
Pantone 102c K90 K60 K70
Black Available
Grey Available
GEAR AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF
Apogee Whiz Apogee Electronics 1715 Berkeley St Santa Monica, CA 90404 (310) 584-9394 www.apogeedigital.com
Quartet is a desktop audio interface and control center for Mac from Apogee Electronics. It’s built with four inputs for microphone, instrument and line with a gain range of up to 75 dB, as well as eight digital inputs and six balanced outputs. Quartet also includes a USB MIDI connection for connecting a keyboard, synth or DJ controller. Additional features include a signature single controller knob, QuickTouch pads, and Apogee’s conversion technology.
Shout It Out Loudspeakers Peavey Electronics 5022 Hartley Peavey Dr. Meridian, MS 39305 (601) 483-5365 www.peavey.com Peavey PVX 12 and PVX 15 passive loudspeakers are the latest models in the company’s PVX Series. Both two-way speakers are designed with an RX14 1.4-inch titanium diaphragm compression driver, a constant directivity horn, and a 12- or 15-inch woofer with a 2.3-inch voice coil. They can handle 400 watts program and 800 watts peak power. Both models are housed in rugged polypropylene molded enclosures with molded-in cabinet handles and multiple cabinet fly points.
GROOVES TRACKS…MIXES…COMPILATIONS
I Killed Kenny
JP Chronic
“THE FEELING” (MODERN MACHINES REMIX) u The Knocks u RebelLION This electronic, dance-pop duo gets a huge remix from Modern Machines—an energetic, peak-hour floor pleaser with a touch of Daft Punk, some dynamic climaxes, a catchy hook and an overall posi-vibe.
– Shawn Christopher
Eddie Niguel
Modern Machines
more trance weaponry for your DJ arsenal. The pounding, techy sixteenth notes and big-room bass of “Five Finger Death Punch” are sure to keep the crowd bouncing, with “DeVas” furrowing an even harder groove.
This ’90s house-vibed, floor-crushing, monster track has a trippy vocal snippet reminiscent of Nightcrawlers’ “Push the Feeling On.” With its devastating bassline and key riffs, this should obliterate any floor—an epic peak-hour track. Enjoy!
– Shawn Christopher
– Chris Davis
“FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH” B/W “DEVAS”
RHYTHM DISTRIKT 02
u Norin & Rad u Anjunabeats Following their previous release of "Pistol Whip" and "Zion" earlier in the year, Norin & Rad (aka Bruce Karlsson and Nick Sember) return with
u Various Artists u Toolroom Records Techno at its finest, this unmixed compilation starts strong with Razor's "Spartaque"—a primetime
Download NOVEMBER 2012
DJ TIMES
– Natalie Raben CLARITY u Zedd u Universal Music
“NEON” EP u H.O.S.H. u Diynamic Music
Corner
38
track for any dark dancefloor. Marco Bailey & Tom Hades bring the downtempo flavor with "Bonistia" and then Spektre & Tom Laws get dark and dirty with "Whores & Hangovers"—imagine that!
– Chris Davis
The feel-good, infectious vibe of this EP is hard to ignore. Opening track “No One” featuring Malonda is a laid-back, low-end, deep-house groover. Our favorite of the pair, “Wahoo” featuring Ost & Kjex on vocals, made us want to hop in a convertible for a cross-country road trip, top down and music blaring. Dub versions of each track round out the formidable package.
“HORIZON EP” u Ejeka u Needwant
H.O.S.H.
On his debut, Zedd chose several excellent vocalists to feature here. “Hourglass” (feat. LIZ) and “Follow You Down” (feat. Bright Lights) are both very striking, radio-friendly progressivehouse tracks. The title track, featuring Foxes, is a pretty one—one can already hear thousands of festivalgoers chanting it.
– Chris Davis “STEADY” EP u Guy Gerber feat. Jaw u Supplement Facts This slightly melancholy, but emotive and ethereal tune offers whimsical, mystical vocals, a stretched bassline, pleasing pads and an overwhelming groove. Also check "The Golden Sun and the Silver Moon" feat. Clarian North—same vibe, different day, equally dope.
– Shawn Christopher
Each month in this space, DJ Times digs through the virtual crates to give you a quick sample of the plethora of extraordinary tracks available exclusively on legal download—care of our favorite nextgeneration “record” stores (e.g. Beatport, iTunes, etc.). “Let’s Go” by (Shorterz Bare Bass Mix) by I Killed Kenny [Four40 Records]: Let your funk flag fly! If this doesn’t get your head bobbing with its round, funky bassline, various quirky vocal samples (in the tradition of MARRS), and effortless chord progression, you might wanna see a doctor, pronto. Found at beatport.com. “Picture of You” (Andre Butano & Philippe Liard Remix) by JP Chronic feat. Yorgo [Chronovision]: The intro is hypnotic, weighty and full of sub-bass, but when the beat comes back at twoand-a-half minutes, the energy peaks. The intricate drum percussion and thoughtful fills throughout push this minimalist goodie over the top. Found at beatport.com. “Absolute” (Original Mix) by Eddie Niguel [Midnight Shift]: My favorite track of the month is the label debut from this Singaporean artist. Niguel uses a subtle four-to-the-floor drum track and lets the synth line take the limelight, adeptly modulating its release and filter—and building this into a genre-defying monster comfortable in either big rooms or afterhours back rooms. Found at beatport.com. – Robert LaFrance
GROOVES TRACKS…MIXES…COMPILATIONS
Norin & Rad
Zedd
“TIM BURTON ABDUCTION” u Enki u RebelLION This aptly named, spooky little floor-thumper has plenty going for it. A pumping bassline, playful percussion, dazzling effects and a quirky, yet bewitching vibe make this one as kinky as it is groovy.
– Shawn Christopher “ISLANDS IN THE SKY” u One Seven Six u Crosstown Rebels Check the tripped-out flow on this disco/funk infused, slick, mid-tempo party jam with stellar mixes from Brennan Green. Cosmic bass line,
Loco Dice
Guy Gerber
insane vocals and intergalactic effects on this get down and boogie-woogie track from the future, make it one not to miss.
– Shawn Christopher “YEAH” u Steve Angello u Size Records So, does Angello deliver another progressive Swedish house missile with this homegrown label release? “Yeah!” chants the faceless crowd in the track. Prepare to hear these driving kicks and rolling snare crescendos of “Yeah” at festivals in the near future.
– Chris Davis
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“TOXIC” EP u Loco Dice u Desolat “Autotox” starts off with Loco Dice’s re-use of a sample from his remix of Tripmastaz’s “Roll Dat”—call it a fresh, tech-house intoxicant. Our favorite track, “Detox,” is a slammin’ tech teaser that climaxes at its soulful-vocal release. Keep it rolling with the ever-funky bassline of “Neurotox,” and take a tense journey to faraway Latin beaches with the vocal-effect-laden “Retox.”
– Chris Davis
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1. Publication Title: DJ Times 2. Publication Number: 1045-9693 1/3/2012 3. Filing Date: September 25, 2012 4. Issue frequency: Monthly 5. Number of Issues Published Annually: 12 6. Annual Subscription Price: $19.40 Contact Person: Vincent P. Testa (516-767-2500) 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of the Publisher: 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779 Publisher: Vincent P. Testa, 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779 Editor: Jim Tremayne, 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779 Managing Editor: Jim Tremayne, 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779 10. Owner: DJ Publishing, Inc., 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779 13. Publication Title: DJ Times 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: September 2012 15. Extent and Nature Of Circulation Average No. Copies Each Issue No. Copies of Single Issue Published During Preceding 12 Months Nearest to the Filing Date
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A. Total Number of Copies (Net press run) B1. Paid/Requested Mail Subscriptions B3. Sales Through Dealers and Carriers C. Total Paid and /or Requested Circulation D4. Nonrequested Copies Distributed Through the USPS by Other Classes of Mail E. Total Free Distribution F. Total Distribution G. Copies not Distributed H. TOTAL I. Percent Paid and /or Requested Circulation
21,285 1,849 13,754 15,603
22,698 1,533 14,955 16,488
5,204 5,204 20,807 478 21,285 75%
5,809 5,809 22,297 401 22,698 72.6%
16. Publication of Statement of Ownership: Will be printed in the November 2012 issue of this publication. 17. Publisher: Vincent P. Testa, President Date: September 27, 2012
5:22:46 PM
Compiled As Of October 9, 2012
National Crossover Pool Chart 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Nicki Minaj Pound The Alarm Madonna Turn Up The Radio Emeli Sande Daddy Kelly Clarkson Dark Side Swedish House Mafia F/ John Martin Don’t You Worry Child Florence And The Machine Spectrum(Say My Name) Rita Ora R.I.P. Nire AllDai Hella Bad David Guetta F/ C Brown & Lil Wayne I Can Only Imagine Kimberley Locke Finally Free Kylie Timebomb Rita Ora How We Do (Party) Pink Blow Me (One Last Kiss) Adam Lambert Never Close Our Eyes Pet Shop Boys Winner Mariah Carey F/Rick Ross Triumphant (Get ‘Em) Caroline Lund Come With Me Bimbo Jones F/ Ida Corr See You Later Alex Clare Too Close Connor Maynard Vegas Girl France Joli Hallelujah Jenna Drey Summer Night In Seattle Krewella Alive Gloria Gaynor All The Man That I Need Sir Ivan La La Land Nervo You’re Gonna To Love Again Katy Perry Wide Awake Georgie Porgie Beautiful Norka Miracle Diamond Rings I’m Just Me Carly Rae Jepsen Call Me Maybe David Guetta F/ Sia She Wolf (Falling To Pieces) Suzanne Palmer Keep On Keepin On Gravitonas Call Your Name Jessica Williams Sunset People 5KiTzZ0 Breaking Up With Molly Taryn Manning F/ Sultan + Ned Shepard Send Me Your Love Lalah Hathaway My Everything Spirit Kings F/ JeSante Life Bohannon Bohannon’s Barefoot Party
National Urban Pool Chart
Universal Republic Interscope Capitol RCA Capitol Universal Republic Columbia Capitol Astralwerks I Am Astralwerks Columbia Universal RCA Astralwerks Island/Def Jam Lund Robbins Universal Capitol France Joli Music Audio 1 Columbia/Sony Promark Peaceman Capitol Capitol Music Plant Angel Eyes Astralwerks Interscope Capitol Live-MPG SoFo RGP Music Illuma Citrusonic Concord Amathus Phase 3
1 Brandy F/ Chris Brown Put It Down RCA 2 Trey Songz Dive In Atlantic 3 French Montana F/R. Ross,Lil’Wayne Pop That Interscope 4 Kanye West F/ Big Sean&Pusha T&2Cha Mercy Def Jam 5 Beyonce Dance For You Columbia 6 Juicy J F/Lil Wayne & 2 Chainz Bandz A Make Her Dance Columbia 7 2 Chainz F/ Kanye West Birthday Song Island/Def Jam 8 Justin Bieber F/2 Chainz F/Mac Mill Boyfriend Island/Def Jam 9 Usher Dive RCA 10 Chief Keef F/ Lil’ Reese I Don’t Like Interscope 11 Usher F/ Rick Ross Lemme See RCA 12 Kendrick Lamar Swimming Pools Interscope 13 Rick Ross F/ Drake & Wale Diced Pineapples Island/Def Jam 14 2 Chainz F/ Drake No Lie Def Jam 15 Young Jeezy Way To Gone Island/Def Jam 16 Chris Brown Don’t Judge Me RCA 17 Lupe Fiasco Around My Way Atlantic 18 Ne-Yo Lazy Love Island/Def Jam 19 Marcus Canty F/ Wale In & Out Epic 20 Kendrick Lamar F/ Dr. Dre The Recipe Interscope 21 Kelly Rowland F/ Lil’ Wayne Ice Universal Republic 22 Future Turn On The Lights Epic 23 Akon F/ French Montana Hurt Somebody Universal Republic 24 Mariah Carey F/Rick Ross & Meek Mil Triumphant (Get ‘Em) Island/Def Jam 25 T.I. Go Get It Atlantic 26 Birdman F/ Rick Ross Born Stunna Universal Republic 27 Dj Khaled F/Kanye West & Rick Ross I Wish You Would Cash Money 28 Ca$h Out Big Booty Epic 29 Leah LaBelle Sexify Epic 30 Elle Varner I Don’t Care RCA 31 R. Kelly Feelin’ Single RCA 32 Kanye West, Jay-Z, Big Sean Clique Island/Def Jam 33 Frank Ocean Thinkn Bout You Island/Def Jam 34 Ludacris Jingalin Island/Def Jam 35 50 Cent F/ Dr. Dre & Alicia Keys New Day Interscope 36 Rick Ross F/ Usher Raymond Touch’N You Island/Def Jam 37 Trey Songz F/ TI 2 Reasons Atlantic 38 Daley F/ Marsha Ambrosius Alone Together Universal Republic 39 K’La F/ Nas Blame Island/Def Jam 40 Miguel Adorn RCA
Most Added Tracks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
David Guetta F/ Sia September Noah Connor Maynard Robbie Rivera F/ Wynter Gordon Steve Aoki vs Duran Duran 30 Seconds To Mars Stacey Jackson LaRalphael Gloria Gaynor
She Wolf (Falling To Pieces) Hands Up New York Is Dead Vegas Girl In The Morning Hungry Like The Wolf Night Of The Hunter I Am A Woman Take Me Away All The Man That I Need
Most Added Tracks Capitol Robbins Noah Capitol Black Hole 469 Trident Gum Capitol 3B1G Megablast Promark
1 Miguel 2 50 Cent F/ Dr. Dre 3 Marcus Canty F/ Wale 4 Juicy J F/Lil Wayne 5 Usher 6 Kanye West, Jay-Z 7 Future 8 Rick Ross F/ Drake 9 Alicia Keys 10 Trey Songz
Adorn New Day In & Out Bandz A Make Her Dance Dive Clique Turn On The Lights Diced Pineapples Girl On Fire Dive In
RCA Interscope Epic Columbia RCA Island/Def Jam Epic Island/Def Jam RCA Atlantic
Reporting Pools ✦ Dixie Dance Kings - Alpharetta, GA; Dan Miller ✦ Flamingo R - Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Guilio ✦ Next Music Pool - Los Angeles, CA; Bob Ketchter ✦ NW Dance Music - Shoreline, WA; John England✦ Pittsburgh DJ - Pittsburgh, PA; Jim Kolich ✦ Soundworks - San Francisco, CA; Sam Labelle ✦ Rickett’s Record Pool - Saddle Brook, NJ; Bill Rickett ✦ Pacific Coast - Long Beach, CA; Steve Tsepelis
Looking for these titles? You can hear them and buy them at www.dancekings.com. Just click on the links in the chart. DDK has limited memberships available for qualified DJs in the US. We service CDs and MP3s in dance and urban formats. Feedback and membership dues required. 770-740-0356
45791
DatsiK
(continued from page 16) unfair to the people that actually work really hard onstage. DJ Times: Tell me how you use the Sugar Bytes Effectrix plug-in. DatsiK: I use Effectrix for resampling like crazy. For example, remember how I told you about how sometimes I’ll sample movies and splice them together? Effectrix usually ends up being a very good tool to help with that. Say someone in a movie is shooting a pulse cannon or a laser gun or something: I’ll take that laser gun and I’ll run it through Effectrix and just throw the loop on it. So instead of it being, like, “peew!” it’ll be, like, “p-p-pp-p-pew!” You bounce that to audio and you can just re-run it through Effectrix, try throwing a scrap loop over the top or just doing vinyl stomps on it to see what you come up with, or you splice that with another movie sample. It’s all about how creative you wanna get with it. DJ Times: You also use Camel Audio’s CamelPhat. DatsiK: CamelPhat is great. I think it works best in doses, though. You don’t want to use too much of it. Whenever I’m using it, I’ll just use minimal amounts. It adds warmth and it kind of acts as like a limiter in a sense, and basically kills your headroom. But it’s only killing your headroom that you’re not really using, if you use CamelPhat right. So it allows you to turn the sound way up if you need to and you get way more volume out of it without actually having it sound distorted. DJ Times: I know you talk a lot about Wu-Tang, and we’ve also talked about trap. But what do you think about some of the newer production in the field, like Odd Future? DatsiK: Odd Future’s awesome. One person I really respect, though,
is Pretty Lights. I’ve become good friends with him. Instead of taking samples from a record, he has this whole process. Say you want to acquire a choir sample; he won’t go find a choir record and try to sample that record. What he’ll do is get a choir in the studio and record a choir. He’ll get it pressed to vinyl. He’ll sample the vinyl itself and run it through a tape machine and cut the tape in order to give it that 100-percent authentic sound, instead of just finding the sample that works. That kind of ingenuity is crazy when it’s applied to dance music. It’s really cool to see a hip-hop producer’s take on it and I think a lesson can be learned there moving forward—it’s not always the best, cleanest sound that works. Sometimes it’s the most natural vinyl sound that has the best feel. DJ Times: What do you mean? DatsiK: For example, you don’t hear much sample-based dubstep. All the dubstep you’re hearing these days is pretty much completely synthesized, so I think it would be really cool to sample some record and apply that over a dubstep track—just take a really cool piano sample from a vinyl and throw that into a dubstep track. You mentioned “Gizmo” earlier. When I was younger, I was so into hip hop, I used to go to all the pawn shops and thrift stores and I’d go buy as many records as I could. It was 25-cents a record, and after school I’d go home and sample them with the one turntable I had. And the horn sample I did on “Gizmo” was a sample I did when I was 14—it just ended up working perfectly. And that’s the only real sampling of a record that I’ve done that has actually worked over a dubstep track. So I think it would be really cool to start doing some more
of that, hopefully. DJ Times: You’ve worked recently with Korn’s Jonathan Davis on the track “Evilution” with Infected Mushroom. So tell me about working with an act from the psytrance world and another from the metal genre. DatsiK: The track started as a collab between me and Infected Mushroom. Infected basically sent me over some music, so I just started crushing on it. Two days later, I sent it back and they were blown away. Then on the bus, on the Korn tour, I said to [Jonathan Davis], “Jon, you would sound really dope singing over this,” and he’s like, “Let’s do it.” As weird as it is that we’re all coming from completely different angles, it somehow still worked, which is pretty cool. DJ Times: How has it worked out for you as a DJ? DatsiK: I played it maybe twice on the dancefloor. Right now, I’m really trying to just make stuff that gets people excited. That’s sometimes a curse because, a lot of the time, I wanna just write something that’s completely deep and different and melodic. But then, I’ll have three days off during the week and when I’m at home, I wanna make something that I can play this weekend. I guarantee that’s the way a lot of other producers think as well. They wanna come home and just write something completely different, but with the time off, you have to make something that’s gonna get people stoked. So that’s kind of where it’s at right now. But that’s why I’m stoked on this whole minimal thing, too, because with the minimal, it meets both in the middle. DJ Times: Are there any new toys that you’ve found a place for in your performance or production? DatsiK: The MIDI Fighter 3D. DJ
Techtools gave it to me when I was at one of their festivals in San Francisco. You’re supposed to use it on the dancefloor. It’s a performance MIDI controller. It’s completely MIDI-mapped and, whatever direction you’re pointing the controller, you can control a different parameter in Ableton. For example, you can move it up and down and it will control volume. It can control whatever you want. It can be LFO speed, from down, from front to back. DJ Times: You mentioned in a video that one of the things that motivated you to make a go of a career in dubstep was the “2012 Apocalypse Prophecy.” Do you still approach your career with that sense of urgency— get it done now, because the end may be near? DatsiK: I would say it’s definitely still kind of there, but if I died tomorrow, I would be totally happy. I wouldn’t even care because, honestly, I’ve been so blessed to do what I love for a living for as long as I have already. And you know, I’ve been supertight with all my friends. Everything’s good. Life’s good. I got a really wicked girlfriend. Everything’s perfect. I can’t really ask for much more. So if the end of the world was tomorrow, I could honestly say I did everything that I set out to do and I’m happy. So there’s nothing even really more I can do. I’m honestly so busy every single day. I’m doing everything I can to the max. If I got a week off, I’ll take on another remix, and I’ll try to get it done that week before I gotta go tour again. So it’s constantly go-go-go-go-go and doing what I wanna do every step of the way. There’s nothing more to really ask for. So I don’t know, whatever. If 2012 happens, at least I’m stoked when I go, so whatever… n
Zedd’s Young Man Blues
DJ TIMES
NOVEMBER 2012
But I make the kind of EDM…
42
At 23, I look like a nice young man.
That’ll rip your &^@%!g head off. Zedd, Next Month in DJ Times
KEITH SHOCKLEE As a founding member of Public Enemy Keith Shocklee has been defining and defying musical genres for over 30 years. “The future is the past! We’re taking new music to the streets in New York… it’s how we did it before Public Enemy and it’s happening again today - very organic and powerful.” Keith and his mobile DJ’s, Power5, trust their PRX600 speakers to deliver devastating grooves night after night. “PRX’s bang hard! We record on JBL LSR4300 monitors and when we perform live our PRX’s sound identical, just ten times louder. And, at 3:00 am after the smoke clears, their lightweight is heaven. JBL is the bomb!”
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