Monday, March 13, 2006

my studio

i just bought myself some boxes of tricks with loads of knobs to twiddle and lots of flashing lights. i'm not quite sure what they are all for yet but i'm getting there... seriously though, now the music "ducks" out of the way when i talk without me having to do anything and i also avoid "clipping" when i record to an unforgiving digital recorder (not like the good old days of cassettes). then finally i've got a "vinyl touch classic" which can timestretch in realtime to compensate for speeding up / slowing down the turntables. mmmm, interesting!! actually, this last piece of kit i picked up a number of years ago. it seems like the company (mix machines) has gone bust. i never understood why this gadget wasn't more popular: it wasn't too expensive and it works like a treat. just like a dj cd without the inconvenience of having to play cds.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ese chacharro que dices para los vinilos, hace time stretching o lo que hace es que te corrige el tono/nota que se pierde al cambiar el pitch? En ambos casos me parece muy interesante el aparato, desde luego, aunque no me encaja que sea timestretch porque no se puede acortar la duración de una señal sonora que entra en tiempo real sin tener que precargar un porcentaje considerable de señal, lo cual hace inservible el aparato a la hora de pinchar.

Anonymous said...

I really like the three podcasts you published so far! very good tracks, much better choice than GP himself, congrats!
Today march 19th I am a bit impacient because there is no new podcast available on iTunes. Why? Did you stop ? hope not!

Rob Smith said...

creo que la respuesta es que hace las dos cosas. es decir que, para que un disco suene con el mismo tono pero a una velocidad mayor, el cacharro tiene que hacer timestretching. por ejemplo, imagínate que queires pinchar un disco un 10% más lento... si lo haces sólo con el technics, el tono baja también, cosa que no quieres que pase. para compensar ese efecto, el cacharro tiene que interpolar el sonido, introduciendo trocitos extras para poder mantener la frequencia mas alta (y, por lo tanto, el tono original). algo parecido pasa cuando pinchas un disco a más 10% pero que está vez, corta trocitos en vez de añadir. lo realmente asombroso de la máquina es que es capaz de detectar cuando cambias la velocidad sea por el control o sea por tocar el vinilo con las manos!! para ello tuve que conectar unos cables a los circuitos de los technics. ya sé, suena como un chiste pero os juro que así funciona... por eso no entiendo porque no tuvo más exito. tal vez porque suena demasiado bueno para ser verdad...

Rob Smith said...

florin,

i try to do at least one podcast a month... i'd love to do it weekly but its hard to find the time. also, i try to keep the shows as fresh as possible without repeating tracks (unless they are really incredible!!). keep tuned - i'm hoping to do another one this week.

thanks for the feedback - it makes it all worthwhile!!!

Anonymous said...

uau!!!

qué ganas de verlo!!!

wooodenelephant said...

I'm an Englishman living in Spain like yourself but I set up camp in Valencia. Love the podcasts. Really fresh sounds.
I was asking for your Futebol De Mar remix in Ladbroke Grove in 2002 (eventually snapped up the original in a 7inch repressing in Rough Trade).
That was back in the days when I had a student loan to blow on records. Now its all about the free tunes. Solid Steel are putting podcasts out there too. And Ropeadope Records. I also recommend Black Market Funk who bill themselves as following in GP's limited edition Japanese trainer footprints.
Keep up the good work.
One of these years I might get my surviving mix tapes (dense!) onto mp3 and out there

Rob Smith said...

hello woodenelephant
me hace ilusión saber que buscabas mi remezcla. (can't think of a way of saying that in english without it sounding cheesey.) by the way, that 7" is not the original version... i'm guessing you're talking about the one on mr bongo? well, the story goes like this... i did the "futebol de bar" re-edit for myself to play out because the original had too much piano and too little percussion to work on the dancefloor. as a bit of a joke i sent it to gilles peterson under the absurd moniker "heavy üsker" and he played it on radio 1 and the name stuck... meanwhile, back in spain, i'd given it to a few friends to spin in clubs and one of them played it out when gavin smith from mr bongo was guesting at a club called kathmandu. my friend gave him the cd-r and soon afterwards mr bongo got in contact with hi top to see how far we had got with the obtaining the license to put the track out. then suddenly their cheeky re-edit appeared (different from mine) and took the wind out of our sails... its not billed as a re-edit because i think they only had the rights to re-issue the original track. we went ahead and put the 12" out as soon as we got the go ahead from bmg (a process which took over a year by the way!). try to find the original... its since been reissued on cd - its a great album (check "fabrica"). the original track is much better than the remix, its just not dancefloor friendly.

wooodenelephant said...

Hey Mr U. Thanks for the feedback. Is the album called Futebol De Mar too?
I don't remember if the record was on Mr Bongo. It may well have been. It had a cool vocal track on the other side.
By the way, I found some more gr8 podcasters today...They're called Paris DJs. Lots of funky prog, Afrobeat etc. Ace! I'm getting that 'here we go again' feeling as my computer fills up with tunes I'll never have the time to listen to!
Any plans to spin in Valencia? There's a cool club here called Radio City that might suit your vibe.

Rob Smith said...

hi again... the album is called "sao paolo" by cesar mariano y cia. look on http://www.dustygroove.com. as for spinning in valencia, i could well be up for that. why don't you drop me an email anyway - you'll find the contact details on my webpage http://www.heavyusker.com

Rob Smith said...

ok, i've had my first taste of spam... this can only be a good sign - that my pages is considered sufficiently interesting to be spammed. i've added a word verification doobri to hopefully deter people like albert haanstra. hopefully it won't deter people with genuinely interesting things to say.