Happy July to y'all! [and some behind the scenes talk]

It's been quite rainy July.

So there hasn't been much to do outside, but inside there's some stuff going on. First of all I released 3 new drum'n'bass EP's. You can find them at the store or in my Soundcloud.

Being forced to stay inside I've been mostly reading marketing related books. I also did a DIY synthesizer from scrap parts.

Here's a picture of it. I call it the Arpeg4 and it's a 4 step sequencer/subtractive synthesizer with tempo control. It's got a pitch range of 2 octaves. Among the other things I built was a 3-band DJ crossover and a 4ch studio/live mixing console.

But this is not the whole story. I dug up an old thread on DJForums.com from 2018 where I explained my latest invention, a DJ style karaoke I now call TurnMix.

Basically, set up using a TV/projector, a timecode DJ setup/MIDI controller running Traktor Pro and a smart device such as a phone or tablet running TouchOSC the user chooses a song from a list and tells his/her name and the track to the host DJ. Once the previous user has his/her song about 1 min near the finish he/she passes the "controller" to the next user. As a sign a red dot will light up in the controller.

Now the new user must beatmatch his/her song selection to the playing track using the "controller" running TouchOSC. The host DJ's laptop screen (running Traktor) is visible on the TV screen much like in karaoke, giving visual cues to the user.

Here's what the TouchOSC interface looks like on my old Honor 6A. It's pretty straightforward if you know your way around a pair of track decks in Traktor with play, pause, cue, hotcues, tempo control and FX etc.

The reason I'm sharing this here is because I see no real commercial value in my idea (and I don't own a tablet which is 100x nicer than a smartphone, or a TV/projector as for that matter).

Another thing I was thinking was an FTP server where the users could upload their own tracks.

Anyway, have a nice summer everyone,

-ef