EDC 2008 was a blast! We live in San Diego, and the event was in LA, so we had a couple hours of traffic on the way there. I just started using some new VST plugins, so it was the perfect opportunity to check out how they sound in a thumpin M3 car stereo. [download MP3]

Discovered a powerful heuristic for track selection which helps you to find track combinations that “work” very well together. “Mixing in key” is a fairly popular method for track selection. Basically you want to find tracks that are “compatible” in a musical way. I’ve found that following the circle of fifths either clockwise or counterclockwise, always skipping 3, leads to some really astonishing results.

Here’s an experiment, using counter-clockwise circle of fifths traversal on the song keys. Note that some tracks end in a different key than they start, so you always have to take that into account.

Just stumbled upon a simple but really useful cygwin command –

“cygstart .”

Typing this command will do something simple, but really nice. It will open an explorer window at the your current directory. Seems so simple and dumb, but when you tend to juggle a lot of explorer windows, and tend to use cygwin frequently, this is a nice way to help speed things up!

When you see this line of code in your source window, how does your brain read it?

My brain says “There’s a hex number, with a couple of 1’s in it.”

Guess what? WRONG. It has one ‘1′. The end character is a secret hidden lowercase “L”. Thanks, Microsoft. Lucida console has literally a one pixel difference between it’s ‘1′ and ‘l’, which is fairly typical. These things are speckled all over mmsystem.h. Personally I never use ‘L’ at the end of a hex digit, and if I was feeling clinically insane enough to do it, I’d at least use a capital ‘L’.

What happens if you take a loop, pitch bend it down to half tempo, while mixing in a new loop at full speed? How about if you combine that with some Ableton pitch-sustaining tempo manipulation? Listen for yourself!

I’m sure some other digital DJ has thought to use this technique. I’ll see if I can work it into the next APU mix.

[ mp3 | cue ]

DW - Pillow feat Hannah (Discosynthetique & Miller Remix)
Tasadi, Mike Mikhjian - Zeus (Vadim Zukhov Remix)
DJ Polyakov PPK - Resurrection (VZ Remix)
Alex Young, Artech - Minimalesk (Original Mix)
Long Range - Just One More (Hybrid Mix)
V-Sag - Shakespearean Love feat Ukumori (Original Mix)

This mix starts out with a deep dark-ish DW track remixed by Discosynthetique & Miller, drops into the phenomenal and energetic “Zeus” track, followed by “Resurrection” which is one of my recent favorites.

After this, the mix crawls back down into the very dark and delicious “Just One More” Hybrid Mix, by way of “Minimalesk” — and tempo bends back out of the darkness into a nice V-Sag track “Shakespearean Love”.

The new technique of the week, which I used in every transition, is side chain compression between transitioning tracks. This, especially combined with EQ dodging, creates a back-and-forth rhythm between two tracks. Makes for some really interesting rhythm combination possibilities.

Interesting note — my intro into Pillow is taken from the scene in spaceballs where the huge space ship is slowly panning across the screen. Ran it through some reverb, resonance, and chorus FX and pitch altered.

The whole mix is mastered (the “easy” way) using iZotope Ozone 3, which is a phenomenal tool for mastering for those of us who haven’t spent 20 years learning how to do it the old fashioned ways.

The idea is to filter out frequency ranges with an EQ, applying only at particular moments in time defined by the rhythm of the incoming track. This eases transitions, and creates a nice ‘chopping’ effect.

Anyway, click the above Play button, or download from the link below.

Caustik - NYE 2008 : Download MP3

Here’s the tracklist for anybody interested:

Roland Klinkenberg - On My Mind (Mashtronic Remix)
Moonbeam - Cocoon (Sunset Mix)
Roland Klinkenberg - Stir It Up (Original Mix)
Pryda - Europa (Original Mix)
Eluna - Severance (Markus Schulz vs Elevation Remix)
Silent Breed - Sync In (Popof Remix)
Quest, Luke Chable - Skyline Road (DJ Remy Remix)
Steve T. - There Where Lights (Moonbeam Remix)
Spex - Hypnotique (Junk Science Remix)
JES - Ghost (Phynn Remix)
Hybrid - Last Man Standing (Original Mix)
C.O.U. Muzik - The 9:30 Express (Sean McClellan Remix)
Mischa Daniels - Off My Rocker (Original Mix)
Sweeney & Stowasser - Cognition Intermission (Original Mix)

That’s it for now, enjoy !

I noticed one of the limiting factors in producing my own original electronic music tracks was my lack of the ability to generate a real melody.

So, I did an experiment where I took an existing Mozart Sonata, ripped out a simple progression, and created a simple track around that progression. The result is pretty interesting: Download MP3.

In addition to this, I read up a bit on chord progressions, and came up with a simple note progression and then build on top of that in a fractal fashion, and came up with this result: Download MP3.

It is interesting how fractal in nature music really is. From synthesizing sounds, to creating a melody, to creating a song with transpositions on that melody, to generating a mix of various songs — the principles remain very similar.

* Update: I was pretty hooked on this fractal concept, so I went ahead and created another track: Download MP3.

MP3 Download [Part 1, Part 2]

Moonbeam - Uaret (Ambient Mix)
Elektrochemie - Get Yourself (Original Mix)
Dousk - The Simplest Thing (Original Mix)
Far East Band - The Call Up feat Suzie (Klee) (Martin Buttrich Rework)
The Flying Doctors - We Make Contact (Oliver Lieb Remix)
Dubfire - I Feel Speed (Original Club Mix)
Sasha - Park It In The Shade (Original Mix)
Deadmau5 - Everything Before (Original Mix)
Federico Epis - Brasilia (AMB Remix)
Nick Muir - G Platz (Dan Remix)
Soulwax - Accidents And Compliments (Original Mix)
AMB - Seka Federico (Epis Remix)
AMB - Seka Federico (Original Remix)
Itamar Sagi, Gel Abril - Sparta (Original Mix)

Caustik - Intro x1
Markus Schulz - Fly To Colors (Genix Remix)
Find feat El (Andy Moor Remix)
Andrew W.K. - Closure (Inkfish & Tronso Remix)
Adam K - I Can Feel (Original Mix)
Bastards Of Funk, Sonic Union - You’re To Blame feat. Matt Wasley (Subsky Mix)
Chuck Luis - Collision (Original Mix)
Cicada - The Things You Say (Dirty South Remix)
Shawn Mitiska, Joey Medina - After Hours (David West Remix)
Bedrock - Heaven Scent (Greg Downey Remix)
Jelo, Deadmau5 - The Reward Is Cheese (Original Mix)
Meck feat. Dino - Feels Like Home (Dirty South Remix)
Mass Effect - Alphascan (Original Mix)
Perry Oneil and Ozgur Can - Wave Force (Ozgur Vs Yilmaz Remix)

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