ok, a bit premature, but the yearly spirit of catharsis is in the air, whatever you want to call it. btw, santa, just in case you are passing by this way, here’s top of my wishlist (sorry, i appear to have slumped into gadget-geek mode).

so, moving on swiftly, let me follow the herd and offer my mix for 007. for me, it’s been a good one music-wise. haven’t been to too many gigs but i’ve dj’ed enough to keep things interesting. morocco was definitely a high-point, and there’s been many a fine night had at smarties, that marvel of old meets new (no, i’m not talking about the owners!).

house music has dominated my heart and mind – for which i can thank vitalic (live) and digitalism (recorded). dubstep is still bubbling under. could 2008 be the year where this musical magpie form once and for all leaves its croyden bedsit? i think i’ve missed out a lot on what’s been going on on the hip hop scene, but i feel there’s a whole world there to look forward to.

enough ramblings, here’s what me and mixmeister have boiled it down to:

nightmare b4 xmas – harry covert
Ves (Feat: Kumar) – Telmary
So Gaye Hain – A R Rahman (Ges-E Remix)
My CD Has A Scratch II feat. Salim – Wendel Patrick
Staring At The Sun (Bryan Hyde REdit) – TV On The Radio VS Bryan Hyde
Irst_te (Claude VonStroke Remix) – Worthy
Archangel (8-Bit Boy remix) – Burial
Long Train Runnin’ (Sure Is Pure 12″ Mix) – The Doobie Brothers
Arcadia (Shitkatapult) Short Version – Apparat
mythree – andrey kiritchenko
Saturn – Sebastian Leger
Your Name My Game – Herman Dune
flying lotus – tea leaf dancers
Hallelujah (Perfecto Mix) – Happy Mondays   
Cha Cha – Balkan Beat Box
Thank You America (Kevorkian Remix) – Cabaret Voltaire
C’est Le Bonheur – M

i feel like there should be a follow-up, showcasing, among other things, some of the delights beatport has brought me. having said that, most of these gems have already found their way onto this site through one mix or another. think nathan fake’s ”the sky was pink” or “the magician” by thomas schumacher. maybe i’ll save that one for early 08.

festive fun to one and all, and remember, chocolate in vast quantities can and will kill.

 

in this case, Mixmeister worked like a dream. there’s an itunes-like interface that helps organise and search through all songs. by the way, the songs are automatically bpm’ed and the key of the music located. as you drop songs onto the playlist, they’re automatically cued up to play on the timeline. the timeline will stretch and compress as you move songs around, so if you shorten the mix-in of a track, you don’t have to adjust all the future tracks to take into account the movement. ah, instantly hours are knocked off the time i’ve spent in the past with Acid trying to get the mix to lineup following an edit.

editing with mixmeister

the bpm counter and default measure markers worked like a charm for standard house music. i’ve yet to try and set these up manually for more complex rhythmic structures, although there are some cool tools to help with this, such as a metronome. there’s twiddly knobs for the volume and the 3 main eq channels, and any changes are reflected in the level indicators on the timeline. very handy for experimenting live, and going back and tidying up later.

saving your mix

once you’re done with your set (or at a suitable juncture to mix down, given that with digital mixing you can go on tweaking forever), you can burn to cd, create a wav or mp3 for web hosting, or save the playlist down so you can return to edit later.

overall, thumbs up!

all in all quite a package. the result here took about an hour to do. and that’s in the instance where i barely knew the music or software. i really was impressed to the degree Mixmeister have taken out the grudge of putting mixes together, allowing you more time to play around with fun stuff like track selection, eq mixing and playing with structures. i’ve also learnt that the fact 2 songs are in key only gives you a mild inclination that they may go together. you can’t do music by numbers. the only downpoint i found was that i couldn’t see an easy way to change the setting so that the master bpm doesn’t keep fluctuating to meet the bpm of the proceeding song.

Mixmeister Fusion sits somewhere between ableton and traktor, two products with a considerable reputation. to its credit, Fusion has managed to highlight shortcomings in both packages and show that there is ample room for the middle way. all this, and i haven’t even touched on the video editing capabilities. time to hit Youtube.