some sounds we like

I’ve been staring at the iDJ2, and noticed there’s no nudge controls… you know, the thing that lets you simulate a spindle-twist or a finger on the platter to momentarily speed up or slow down a track that you’re beatmatching to another track… these are absolutely critical tools to beat matching… in fact, this is a deal-killer for me. So shocked was I to discover this painfully obvious omission, I emailed numark… here’s the reply I got:

Hi Steve,
I do not believe there will be a nudge feature on these though these are still in the early stages of development. I can put this in as a feature request to the engineers to see if this can be implemented.

Sincerely,
Someone at Numark

Oof. To come within 99% of solving all of the criticisms of the original iDJ, and then fall on your face for the last 1%… that’s a shame. I hope someone there has enough political clout to push for one more version of this deck… without nudge, you can have scratch and pitch control, it’s pointless… ok, maybe not completely pointless, but it’s just not going to be taken seriously by people who do know how to beatmatch, and the extra features will probably go unused by people who don’t know how to beatmatch.

For me it comes down to this: No nudge? No sale.

update 2006-09-21

Rob V says:

As one of the designers of IDJ2 I’d like to point out, as others have mentioned, that the nudge (momentary pitch shift) feature is implemented on the jog wheels. This is the same as many Numark (and other) CD decks and, for my money, is more useful than a button implementation. The wheels can also be switched into search (fast seek through track) and scratch modes (four variants).

My coworker Jason sent this to me:

http://www.jasonfreeman.net/itsm/

it’s a java applet that goes through your itunes library and makes an audio signature from your 30 or so most played songs… way cool

Olivier says:

Hi!

I am on my way learning Mac OS X programming. Here is my first project (it is still probably full of bugs)…

Download MidiBt

This application can be used to receive MIDI data through a Bluetooth connection, and to create a virtual MIDI-in device to route this data to any music software. What’s the use? Well… Your Palm has bluetooth too, so you can use it as a MIDI controller with a custom client application (hacked in a few hours on a borrowed laptop )

How to use it…
1/ Make sure that Bt is enabled on your Mac and that you are “discoverable”.
2/ Launch MidiBt.
3/ Click on “Start server”.
4/ Launch the MidiBtTinyController app on your Palm and tap on “connect”.
5/ Select your Mac in the list.
6/ Once the connection is established you can use your Palm as a MIDI controller.

There are 4 kind of controllers :
- 4 XY Pads (which can be set to individual channels / controllers settings).
- 1 4×4 buttons matrix (useful to trigger drum sounds or loops).
- [In 320x480 mode] 1 1×6 buttons matrix
- [In 320x480 mode] 5 knobs.

Modern music software should be able to “learn” from all these controllers, so there is no need for a lot of configuration…

If doing the same thing on a PC is easy (and I doubt it is…), and if you find it usable Bhajis Loops will be MIDIfied using this approach.

Technorati Tags: bluetooth, midi, music, palm, treo

Oh dear…  once I got past the first 6 screens of telling iTunes that it’s WAY off on it’s “Just for you” suggestions, it started to give me painfully good suggestions. Good bye freedom.. hello “spending allowance”.

Paradroid, (a)pendics.shuffle

Woot!

New iPods record in stereo!:

Wow, this BIG! The new iPods record in stereo! Voice recording settings: Low (22.05 KHz, mono) High (44.1 KHz, stereo). At least that’s what the spec page says. This is _great_ news for anyone who has wanted to use their iPod as a recorder, but didn’t like the idea of installing Podzilla, or recording at the crippled rate the older iPods are set at. Link.

I downloaded about 40 tracks from the de:bug podcast in itunes, and dutifully put them into a playlist so I could listen to them back to back without having to go back to itunes and play each file like you have to with podcast files. (problem 1) Then I wanted to delete them from the podcast list because holy crap, that podcast is super active, and if I didn’t, I’d have a mile long list of files, quickly (problem 2). “Do you want me to throw these files in the trash, or keep them in the library?” Oh, well, keep them in the library, I added them to a playlist. That should be ok, right? I go back to the playlist, there’s no songs in the playlist now…(problem 3) nice. so, I have a couple hundred megs of files that I can’t locate easily, because they’re in the gordian knot that is my music library. You can’t search by origination point (problem 4) (podcasts.. ok, which podcast did this come from?), you can’t search by music label like “Show all ninjatune songs” (problem 5), you can’t search by “added on” date if they’re not in a playlist (problem 6). Man, I know we have to love itunes, but.. dang. Lots of room to improve here.

Technorati Tags: music, musik

impossibly small, indeed.  Anyone want to buy a slightly dinged 3G iPod?

My coworker Joanna pointed me to Coverflow… holy shmoly, this is so cool. It’s a 3d visual album artwork music selector. Right click on a missing piece of art, and it will give you a head start on a google image search or amazon search. If you find a good picture of the album art, just drag and drop it directly from the webpage onto the missing artwork icon in coverflow. Lots to like in this tech demo!

Technorati Tags: apple, ideas, music, cool

Before we recorded the first podcast, I wanted to avoid some of the annoyingness that I’ve heard in some other podcasts that are out there. These are the rules I’m going to try to follow… if you’re a podcast author, maybe you should too.

Steve’s Podcast rules of engagement!!!

1. NO Apologizing for “my long absence”, it’s cliche and it wastes bandwidth and time. Record when you can, but seriously, be realistic about the size of your audience… they’re probably not hanging on your every word, waiting for your next podcast.
2. NO long introductions, that’s what your _text_ blog is about. Get on with it.
3. Technical glitches are annoying, but edit all that ish out of your dialog. Get over your problems getting set up. You’re blazing a trail, not filing paperwork. Yes, it’s hard, don’t waste airtime complaining about it.
4. Stay on topic.
5. Have a point.
6. Come prepared.
7. Take the time to prepare a synopsis before you release the show. Post live working links.
8. extra credit: transcript the show in it’s entirety and post it.
9. Be ruthless about editing long pauses and time wasting activities in your recording… you ARE going to edit your audio before you post it, right? Right?
10. learning from others’ mistakes: do we really need to know you’re currently on the way to the gym while you’re recording your podcast? Not really.

Hey, these are just rules for myself. Feel free to raise the quality of your own podcast. I think we all need to do that. I’m going to try reeeally hard to follow my own rules.