Category: Uncategorized

Fang2004 posed a legit question on the rave victoria music board:

My answer:
It’s a really tricky genre to play because it’s easy to take the dancefloor down the wrong path. As was mentioned before, sometimes the breakdowns can get too long, or the tracks selected don’t do anything. I think that’s a thing that some of the trance DJ’s were more guilty of a couple years ago but it sticks with people. “Oh I went to see DJ Trance and fuckin’ nothing happened for an hour.” Of course, for people who genuinely like to dance to a beat, this is not a problem. That being said, programming a trance set is difficult at best ..
After 7 years I am still picking up techniques and methods to read the dance floor faster, more honestly .. quite often I don’t play my own favorite track (or even my own just-produced-that-night track) if it doesn’t closely fit the mood of the dance floor. Sure I will do a bit of steering, but you need to balance between education and entertainment. Some DJ’s, no matter the genre, forget people are there for a good time..
A comment about “having to be high on E to appreciate trance” is pure rubbish. People enjoyed chord progressions long before drugs. Think about how your favorite movie would be effected without its soundtrack, almost all of which are reliant on the same musical theory a lot of trance is.
At the end of the day, I can honestly say playing trance is a tight-rope act. You’re expected to mix really well — a sloppy 2 minute mix can really mess the whole thing up. Don’t play too cheesy, don’t play too intelligent. Make it go somewhere, but not too fast. Give the crowd an exciting key change between two tracks, but make sure they do not clash. Phrase your mixing perfectly. Oh yeah, and ocassionally look up. This is powerful music; it needs to be presented in the right way.
Enjoy!
Listening to: John Creamer & Stephane K – I Wish You Were Here (Lexicon Avenue Vocal mix)

i want to be turned into this!
i got my humidifier to work. it did make a huge difference, i am not feeling so groggy this morning (also thanks to a healthy chunk of sleep) and that is A Good Thingâ„¢.
unfortunately plans to go here:

for this weekend have not worked out, so now i have this weekend open. i did all my house work yesterday evening, so i am free to do whatever. i still feel like going on some sort of adventure. suggestions?

clicky on that last one for a larger version. i am packing tonight for a secret adventure on the weekend! wait, did i tell you about it already? drat. not a secret. wait a minute, yes it is, everything on this site is a secret! don’t tell shhhhhhhhhh!

sometimes i like to sketch. sometimes i have an idea in my head, and other times i just want to sit in front of the blank canvas and see what will come out. this is something that actually started off as a landscape, turned into a UFO, and then came in to land as a foot, or is it a shoe? or the earth?
since my camera is being an oaf these days, i have decided to start doing more illustrations again since it used to be one of my favorite things to do. i’d like to start doing it more again.
i am going to Union Bay this weekend (on Vancouver Island) and i am looking forward to seeing some new sights and capturing them in my mind. i am a ways off from feeling like spending enough time to do a full landscape illustration, but i can feel the urge coming as i start to consider honing my illustration skills again. my doodles have returned to me and with them a desire to create visually from the head. not instead of photography or anything, cause i really think the two go together.
gotta go, more work to do ..

today i am dating the interweb. i love you, interweb, you are always there for me, and i know you always will be, because of your redundant networking schema.

actually i just lifted a load of pressure off of me on a couple different fronts. the one i will talk about here is this: i was thinking, oh what a great website update am i going to have to do now. the last update was the sum effort of over a years worth of preparation by many people all over the world. yeah that is a tough one to follow up. if you haven’t downloaded the mix yet, what on earth are you waiting for? if you like it, what i ask is that you *please* tell your friends about it. this is the only way that we’re going to win at what we love doing. music for sharing.
my camera battery is still on the fritz — or is it the charger. i don’t know — sometimes i get a few hours out of it, other times i get 5 minutes. not that super.
the emerald green track is coming together really smoothly and so is justin’s remix of dreamcache. i heard a preview of dreamcache tonight and it’s very encouraging. i am resequencing the vocals for the Emerald Green project in Ableton’s awesome Live 4.03. jaime and i did another session and it’s really coming together now.
well i met some people last night that i used to talk to online a bunch of years ago, try 5 .. and we met so randomly last night, it’s so weird. funkaru and daisy. rad! #loungex lives. well maybe not, haha. but still, that is neat. yep.
good weekend. time to sleep :)!

ps: i am going to lotus tonight .. if you wanna come with me, let me know 🙂

You are a big mean
You made me very little
Why did you do that?
– live haiku (impressive and improvised) spoken by The Devon to me, April 2000
Vous etes un gros mechant
Vous m’avais fait(e) si petit(e)
Pourquoi avez-vous fait ca?
Tu es un gros mechant
Tu m’as fait(e) si petit(e)
Pourquoi as-tu fait ca?
– translated by The Amalia, Feburary 2005
by the way you can clicky on the image up there for a bigger one. i shot this yesterday whilst lost on a walk at lunch time on a washed-out trail that goes up the capilano river.

as you can see, the duck on the right is taller than the duck on the left. i do not know if either of these ducks have names. i like ducks!!* i must The Sleep. good night.

an amazing weekend in victoria. it is nice to go with someone who likes to travel. it turns the normally mundane parts of the trip into the one of the highlights..
friday = dinner + drinks with the gang from work @ hugos. muchly good fun.
saturday = a wee bit o work stuff, some photography, coffee, shopping, dinner, and then hush.
wow. hush rules.
thank you to braeden and all @ hush for having me over for what will be remembered as a legendary weekend. i had a great time playing and everyone was up for the mad tunes. i’d been stoked to DJ with Braeden for a good while now since it always rocks when we’re DJing together and Saturday night was no exception.
thanks to those who stayed ’til the end — mind you the night went in a flash and was over before we knew it!
i apologize for the last track being cut off; it is the new Emerald Green tune and i would’ve liked to play the whole thing for you because it really is marvellous. unfortunately the management had to cut it off the sound system pretty early into it in order to clear out the bar. (it was well past 2 AM). next time!
it was particularly pleasing to see people go bonkers for the upcoming Pacific Front Recordings release – Formulate – Voice of Qi [Seed remix] .. talk about encouraging .. 10/10 crowd response.
i will post some of the pictures soon..
* * *
i got u2 tickets.
booyah.
* * *
sunday was appropriately lazy and consisted of watching a movie, eating and travelling back to vancouver on the shortest ever ferry ride ..