Archive for March, 2008

Another beautiful day in Miami, and the Remix Hotel attendees are slowly stirring and beginning their recovery from day 2.

Friday brought out A-Trak to the Apple theater, Hi-Tek to the Stanton cabana, DJ Enferno doing live remixing with Scratch Live and Ableton Live in the Rane & Serato cabana, Richard Devine at Access Music and demos from Akai, Numark, Euphonix, Korg, Native Instruments, Pioneer, Roland and more.

It was a hot one, and while the fire marshall came to shut down the line when Remix Hotel spilled over capacity, hundreds of people splashed around in the pool and danced for hours at the Beatport stage during DJ sets by M.A.N.D.Y., Tiefschwarz, Dubfire & Davide Squillace, Heidi, Anja Schneider, Gui Boratto and Jamie Jones.

After day 2 at the National wrapped up, many walked next door to the Delano to watch Remix March cover artist Erykah Badu sing songs from New Amerykah over a less-than-perfect sound system. Wearing her signature giant fro, Badu entertained with her eccentric charm and salt-and-honey voice and then finally jumped in the pool to cool off at the end of the night.

If you’re seeing this on Saturday, March 29 and preparing to come to Remix Hotel Day 3, better get in line early!

Beatport.com launched its new hip-hop store, Beatsource.com last month, and it’s celebrating by tossing out some fabulous prizes to a few lucky winners. Personally, I hope I win, but you should enter anyway, just on the highly unlikely chance that I don’t.

All you have to do is register for a Beatsource account by giving them an email address and choosing a user name/password. There is no cost or credit card info required.

The contest ends March 15, so don’t sleep on it! Check out the loot you could win:

10 Great Prizes:

$10 Beatport / Beatsource gift card

Beatsource t-shirt

2 Greater Prizes:

Pioneer EFX-500 Professional DJ Effector

Pioneer headphones

Traktor Scratch

$100 Beatport / Beatsource gift card

Beatsource apparel and merchandise

1 Greatest Prize:

2 Pioneer CDJ-1000MK3s

Pioneer DJM-909 Professional DJ Scratch Mixer

Pioneer EFX-1000 Professional DJ Effector

Pioneer headphones

Traktor Scratch

Apple MacBook Pro Laptop

Digital Music Doctor, a creator of pro audio video tutorials released the results of its quarterly survey, the Music Software Internet Popularity Index. Image Line FL Studio has placed second and Cakewalk Sonar has placed fourth now for two quarters in a row. Apple Logic moved up to seventh place and Cakewalk Project 5 knocked Sony Acid Pro out of the top 10. The results are based on recent search engine activity.

I’m surprised that Ableton Live and Propellerhead Reason aren’t on the list; if you want to see where those two stand and more details on how DMD does this research, click here.

‘Free,” the magic words. HipHopMakers.com, a music production blog from 25-year-old Californian Mark V., has just released a collection of 100 downloadable drum sounds. Although it’s only 9 MB of 16-bit/44.1 kHz WAV files, the collection contains enough hot drum and percussion sounds to put beats together fast, including snares, kicks, toms, shakers, cymbals, hats, claps and more. Big ups to Mark for sharing.

Also check out the rest of the site, which is building up its content of production-oriented tips and advice, interviews, reviews and videos.