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VEMF was awesome last weekend. Davin and the crew did a great job organizing everything this year. I hope that next year I'll be able to officially volunteer to help out more.
I went to a few informative DJ and music workshops this year, danced a bunch, enjoyed the beer gardens, and of course listened to a lot of great music. There's nothing like an electronic music festival to inspire me to get back on the decks and spin some more music. I've got an itch to make some music now too, or at least remix various songs I've been thinking about fooling around with.
One of the workshops I went to was about Serato Scratch Live and Stanton Final Scratch. These are two very similar products that let you spin digital music from your laptop onto special vinyl records on your turntables. So essentially you only need these two special records and their sound card box that plugs into your turntables, and then you can mix any digital songs from your computer as if they were on those records. This bridges the gap between wanting to keep the tactile feel of mixing vinyl records, but combining it with the ease of using digital songs and software to enhance it. I've been looking into Serato Scratch Live for a couple years actually, and I saw it used live for the first time earlier this year and was very impressed by it. It's definitely a cool product and it will make DJing cheaper since I won't have to buy records anymore - I can just buy the much cheaper digital songs online. Not to mention I can use the thousands of digital songs I already have on my PC.
The workshop and the musical inspiration from the festival has given me the drive to go out and finally purchase Serato Scratch Live, and I'm looking around at places to do that now. The few hundred dollar initial purchase will easily pay itself off by letting me continue to purchase new songs continuously for much cheaper. I don't think I've bought more than 3 records in the last 2.5 years, and that has kept me from spinning frequently (without new material, it's hard to stay motivated with spinning new DJ sets). But all that should start to change once I get this. I've already got a lot of new ideas in store.
I'm on day two of my small vacation from work. So far I've been relaxing, staying up late, sleeping in late, and getting a few chores done. It's been a nice extended long weekend so far. One of the chores I did today was taking my broken TV in to get fixed. Man, what a hassle that was. I had to borrow my mom's truck (since the giant 36" CRT won't fit in my car), then I picked up a dolly from the TV repair place so I could get the thing into the truck. And of course I needed the help of two others to actually lift the thing. So getting the thing to the repair shop took a couple hours. I'm hoping the cost to fix it is not ridiculous, because I miss my movies, TV and XBoxing. I hope I can get it delivered back when it's fixed too.
My landlord is coming to fix our stove top tomorrow morning. The stove top is a big piece of special glass. We noticed a chip and crack in the side of it last week while cleaning it (somehow we must have cracked it, we're not sure how exactly, but we must have dropped something on it I guess). Anyways, a crack is forming, so the whole thing needs replacing. Hopefully our landlord can manage to do that without too much problem or time because tomorrow is my last day of vacation. On Friday I'm back to work, but only for a half day since the afternoon is the company golf event!
Then I've got this weekend for catching up on my contract work before I'm back to regular work hours again on Monday. Next Friday I've got another vacation day for a trip to Richmond and the PNE. I haven't been to that fair since they "re-vamped" it a few years ago. I hear it's quite nice now. It should be a fun trip.
I went to a few informative DJ and music workshops this year, danced a bunch, enjoyed the beer gardens, and of course listened to a lot of great music. There's nothing like an electronic music festival to inspire me to get back on the decks and spin some more music. I've got an itch to make some music now too, or at least remix various songs I've been thinking about fooling around with.
One of the workshops I went to was about Serato Scratch Live and Stanton Final Scratch. These are two very similar products that let you spin digital music from your laptop onto special vinyl records on your turntables. So essentially you only need these two special records and their sound card box that plugs into your turntables, and then you can mix any digital songs from your computer as if they were on those records. This bridges the gap between wanting to keep the tactile feel of mixing vinyl records, but combining it with the ease of using digital songs and software to enhance it. I've been looking into Serato Scratch Live for a couple years actually, and I saw it used live for the first time earlier this year and was very impressed by it. It's definitely a cool product and it will make DJing cheaper since I won't have to buy records anymore - I can just buy the much cheaper digital songs online. Not to mention I can use the thousands of digital songs I already have on my PC.
The workshop and the musical inspiration from the festival has given me the drive to go out and finally purchase Serato Scratch Live, and I'm looking around at places to do that now. The few hundred dollar initial purchase will easily pay itself off by letting me continue to purchase new songs continuously for much cheaper. I don't think I've bought more than 3 records in the last 2.5 years, and that has kept me from spinning frequently (without new material, it's hard to stay motivated with spinning new DJ sets). But all that should start to change once I get this. I've already got a lot of new ideas in store.
I'm on day two of my small vacation from work. So far I've been relaxing, staying up late, sleeping in late, and getting a few chores done. It's been a nice extended long weekend so far. One of the chores I did today was taking my broken TV in to get fixed. Man, what a hassle that was. I had to borrow my mom's truck (since the giant 36" CRT won't fit in my car), then I picked up a dolly from the TV repair place so I could get the thing into the truck. And of course I needed the help of two others to actually lift the thing. So getting the thing to the repair shop took a couple hours. I'm hoping the cost to fix it is not ridiculous, because I miss my movies, TV and XBoxing. I hope I can get it delivered back when it's fixed too.
My landlord is coming to fix our stove top tomorrow morning. The stove top is a big piece of special glass. We noticed a chip and crack in the side of it last week while cleaning it (somehow we must have cracked it, we're not sure how exactly, but we must have dropped something on it I guess). Anyways, a crack is forming, so the whole thing needs replacing. Hopefully our landlord can manage to do that without too much problem or time because tomorrow is my last day of vacation. On Friday I'm back to work, but only for a half day since the afternoon is the company golf event!
Then I've got this weekend for catching up on my contract work before I'm back to regular work hours again on Monday. Next Friday I've got another vacation day for a trip to Richmond and the PNE. I haven't been to that fair since they "re-vamped" it a few years ago. I hear it's quite nice now. It should be a fun trip.
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