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I have recently been in hospital and been diagnosed with a condition that might mean I need to return quite a bit, at least in the short term. When I was in hospital I was struck by the fact that there were very long periods of waiting and it was easy to get very bored and quite dejected just sitting in a hospital bed. Also there is not a lot of room for laptops, tablets and other things – you really don’t get a lot of space by your bed usually to store large items and they are not practical most of the time. Therefore I thought I would hack together some kind of portable entertainment system that I could use to pass the time and to block out some of the hospital negativity if I need to be in hospital again. My DJ headphones Seinhausser HD 2-IIs are actually very useful in a hospital because they are very good at sound isolation and you can remove one of the ear cups so you can lie on your side in a hospital bed and just listen to one earcup without it being uncomfortable, so they were very good to use with the PSP. ...

Sometimes as a DJ you may want to reconstruct the Twitch stream you have streamed into a video format to send to other people, for promotional purposes, or just to have a record of what you’ve done. Twitch makes this difficult though, as it mutes copyrighted music in the video it records for your Twitch stream. Also, when you download this video, it does not include the chat log, so any attempts at reconstruction are without the chat, so it looks like the DJ is just talking to him/herself. Not good. However you can get past this. This is how I reconstruct a video set to create a promo DJ video mix for my stream. You will need: ...

As a DJ it is important to listen to the music in your collection so you get an idea of what would work in particular sets, and you have a memory of how the tracks progress. So I decided to host a Spotify like service in my house so I could listen to my 500GB+ DJ music library. Navidrome (free open source software from https://navidrome.org ) is running on the Raspberry Pi 3 which is under my desk via a wired connection with it’s own http://navidrome.local custom domain name. This is what it looks like: ...

Setup your new Turntable Follow this and only this guide. This is the best vinyl setup video on the internet as of 2021: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM-aIDwfrhc&w=560&h=315 ] A lot of DJ turntables are based on Technics OEM clones, and so you will need to set the tonearm height, which is the only thing not covered by the above video: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYScinvkrrM ] The Basics Once you’ve setup your turntable: Should go without saying that I always use a velvet dust brush on my records just before I play them. Only takes a couple of seconds when you’re used to doing it. ...

Light Sources: Phillips Hue Colour Lamp (top right) Phillips Hue Colour Lamp (Middle) Phillips Hue Colour Lamp (Bottom) Phillips Hue Lightstrip “DJ David Craddock” white illuminated sign “Live on Air” blue sign Laser (green or red laser wash) Revolving disco balls Dark Music Lighting Settings For Phillips Hue sources I use Hue Sync on my broadcast PC which syncs the lights in time with the music. I will use different palletes depending on the event. For darkwave/dark music style events I will use this pallette: ...

Updated: 25-11-22 My music library is around 24k files, mostly FLAC and some 320kbps MP3s. I use the following tools to organise my music library: Acquisition: dbPoweramp CD Ripper - https://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm Bandcamp Collection Downloader - https://github.com/Ezwen/bandcamp-collection-downloader Soulseek - http://www.slsknet.org Tagging and Metadata: Beets - https://beets.io Mixed In Key - https://mixedinkey.com Lexicon https://www.lexicondj.com/ Backup and sync: Robocopy - comes free with Windows 10. Documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy Google Drive Rsync Searching: Everything Search - https://voidtools.com/ Playing: Winamp Serato DJ Pro - https://serato.com/dj/pro Plex Media Server - https://www.plex.tv/ dbPoweramp CD Ripper ...

I have retired the Novation SL Zero Mk1 MIDI controller that was causing me a lot of grief when I was running Resolume and Ableton Live at the same time, as its Automap functionality was locking on to the Ableton Live mixer in session view now and then, and so, sometimes, when I thought I was controlling Resolumes visual FX, I was actually changing the volume faders in my DJ mix. Which was bad. ...

I recently found a good price on a Vestax VCM-600 controller. It is a specially made MIDI controller for Ableton Live, with the same build quality as a DJ mixer. It allows for control over 6 channels in the Ableton Live ‘session’ view, which is arranged similarly to a mixing console. It also adds dozens of MIDI mappable DJ controls such as the traditional Hi, Mid and Lo EQs, a crossfader, a filter control, control over a lot of Ableton FX, and more. It has 6 channel faders + 2 send faders for FX. More info in this video: ...

I think, for obvious reasons, 2020 has been a year that no-one could really have expected. With COVID-19 and lockdown, a lot of things have changed, both in my life, in everyone’s lives, and in the workplace. My online DJing setup Things that went well I changed medication around March 2020 which has resulted in significant weight loss, as expected. The previous medication was making me put on and retain weight even when I was eating very very little. In March 2020 my weight was nearly 136KG and now it has gone down to 125KG in March 2021. I have not been doing more exercise, indeed quite a bit less, as I have been staying indoors most of the time. The weight loss has had a very good effect on my general health and my sleep. I am much happier than this time last year. Working corporate jobs I found very very stressful and apart from being financially rewarding, I wasn’t getting much else out of it. My mental and physical health was suffering. My relationship with my wife and friends are much better now because I am less miserable all the time. I have taken up DJing over the internet and have turned this into a part-time income. It is so much fun. I used to DJ in clubs in my 20s regularly and I didn’t realise how much I had missed it. It is great to have a way to connect socially with people in lockdown and people really appreciate my DJ sets, which is great. Working from home has been a great change for me. Before the pandemic I wanted to work from home 100% anyway, because I was ending up spending at least 2 hours commuting to and from work, it was costing a lot (because I can’t drive) and it was taking up a lot of time and energy. My work from home setup ...

After the last post I have added Ableton Live and my Eurorack modular to my DJ setup, with a master clock being sent via MIDI cables from my Roland TR8 drum machine that syncs with Ableton. The drum machine also can be used creatively for drum fills etc. I hope these two diagrams explain my setup adequately - sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words! The ‘actor’ is me - I just couldn’t find a way to change that on http://draw.io :) ...