Author: DJ GodsOwn

What’s up people.. I just wanted to put up a quick post. So Pioneer recently released a firmware update for the DDJ-REV7, which is a two channel, motorized jog DJ controller for Serato DJ Pro and now Rekordbox with the update. One of the coolest features they added in the update is called Stems EQ.
Basically what this allows you do to is use the EQ knobs on the controller to control the different parameters of their Stems functionality. So if you want to remove the drums from a song, you just turn down the low or bass EQ knob. Same for instruments and vocals with the Mid and Treble EQ knobs. It’s a very cool feature, but I’d like to see it release for the DJM-S11.

The S11 is a very expensive Serato DVS battle mixer. It costs even more than the Rane 72mk2, which is pretty comparable in terms of feature set. They both have a screen, paddle FX, etc. The S11 is their top of the line Serato battle mixer, over the S7 and now discontinued S9. With that said, I feel that any “top of the line” tech that they come out with should definitely be released for the S11. I don’t see anything that would prevent them from releasing Stems EQ for this mixer. It is essentially very similar in function to the Rev 7 mixer.

The major update in the last firmware update for the S11 was the ability to use Split Cue on your headphones from a button/toggle on the screen in the settings. That’s cool and all, but a lot of people don’t need Split Cue, hell, a lot of DJs don’t even use headphones when mixing. The ability to see the waveforms on your laptop screen, and in the case of the S11, on the mixer screen, eliminates a lot of the need to mix in your headphones. Particularly if you’re mixing a genre where you know what to expect with the music, like House or something like that.

The firmware updates for the S11 have been few and far between. The last one was pretty lackluster, but I really hope Pioneer is cooking up a banger of an update for the next drop. The S11 is an amazing mixer and deserves the best tech they have to offer. People, like myself, spent a lot of money to get a hold of that bad boy and we want it to be top tier as it was marketed as. Releasing Stems EQ, and hopefully some other killer app type features, will make us feel like our money was well spent and like we indeed made the right decision in going with the S11 as our mixer of choice for our DJ setups. Stay up, stay blessed, and keep moving forward. L8r!

So I didn’t really go into detail, but I was diagnosed with CLL, which is Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in January of 2023. I went through infusion treatments where they pump pretty powerful chemicals into your veins via IV for a few months. After that I had to take some medication every day. I did a second bone marrow biopsy last two Fridays ago and then talked to my doctor to get the results this past Friday. I am in complete remission from the illness. Praise GOD. I had a pretty bad day on Friday with my car breaking down, and life has just been tough in general. That was a bit of good news that I really needed to hear.

Even though remission doesn’t mean cured, and it could come back in the future, I feel blessed right now that I have more time on this Earth to do the things I enjoy and spend time with people I love. I pray that the Lord continues to give me more time to accomplish things I want to like being an amazing DJ, being an amazing music producer, possibly getting back into martial arts, getting in great physical shape ,and getting physically stronger. I have to work at a job or do something to earn money, so that’s a given, but when I get time away from that, I want to pursue the things I am passionate about and enjoy.

My family has been pretty supportive, and even though I suspect them a lot of undermining me, it may just be that I’m being paranoid. They have been there for me in a lot of tough times seemingly, so I don’t let my thoughts run away with me and I speak to them and show them love. I want to move forward in this life and be more positive about life. GOD brought some people into my life that have shown me that being happy and positive about life is the ticket to blessings. Thinking negatively or being worrisome about things brings bad luck and bad karma I believe.

As believers in GOD, we shouldn’t worry to much about the things that happen in life. Deal with them as they come and have faith that GOD will bring you through it. You also need to use some of the divine gifts that GOD has given to you as a human being, and I think those are things people are starting to wake up to and realize right now. Prayerfully a lot of us as human beings find out who we are and what we are capable of and move forward into a great future as the human race. With that said, I’m happy about my remission status, and I’m going to keep growing and living as long as I can. L8z!

So it’s Monday morning and I’m about to start getting ready for work. The weekend flew by, as usual, and I felt like I barely had any time to really get into what I wanted to get into. It kinda sucks that a large part of your weekend is spent preparing for the next work week. Doing laundry, buying groceries so you have food for the week etc. I wish I could find an IT job that gave me 3 days off a the end of the week. Maybe work 4 10 hour shifts or something like that. Even with that, people who work that type of shift say their weekend usually goes too fast.

The work week seems to take forever to get to the end, but your weekend goes by like a mouse fart in the wind. It’s really crazy how that works. I think the only time a person truly breaks free of that grind/rat race/hustle is when they reach the age where they can retire. Honestly though, by then, you’re at an age where you probably can’t do or enjoy the things you would have if you could have retired at a younger age. That’s why it’s important to stay in shape and take care of your body so that when you do get older, you’re not housebound or limited with what you can do.

I am still looking for a remote/work from home job as I work my current job. When I had the opportunity to work from home, I had more time to take care of the things I needed to. I could go to the grocery store on my lunch breaks, or do laundry while I worked, take my dog for 3 walks a day. It was pretty cool, but the way our society is setup, these companies are trying to get back to the “old way” of doing things. I know I’ve said this before on this blog, but with the high speed internet we ALL have in our homes, programs like Microsoft Teams and Zoom. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be largely able to work from our homes as we move into the future.

They’ve got the majority of people “coming back” into the office, but as soon as another crazy pandemic jumps off, it’s going to kick everybody in the arse again just like COVID did, and they’ll be scrambling to get everyone working from home again. Sometimes I feel like the people who makes decisions are so stupid and illogical it’s ridiculous. After what happened with COVID, why would you EVER try to go back to the old way of doing things???? Because it’s 9-5 wage slavery and you having the “freedom” to work from home is giving you too much.

Look at what happened with 9-11. After 9-11, they completely changed the way we do air travel. There’s TSA much more involved, you have to get rigorously checked before you can get on a plane. No more hanging out at the airport if you don’t have a flight, etc. How come with that we made sweeping changes in the way we do things, but after COVID, which was longer lasting and much more significant, we haven’t? Because to make changes in the way people work would be “too much like right” if you understand what I mean. They want you stressing out in traffic every day, they want you sleep deprived, they want you to have very little time for your personal enjoyment or hobbies, they want you hustling to get things done after work and all that.

Anyway, I’m getting more and more pissed off as I write this, so I’m going to end it here. Have a good work week, and push as best you can to get through it. Enjoy what time you can catch and be blessed. L8r!

Hey what’s up reader! It’s SuperBowl Sunday and I’m looking forward to the big game. Really I’m looking forward to the good food me and the wife got to eat while we watch. We’re going to be watching on Paramount+ since we don’t have cable TV or a real streaming TV service. I’m glad they are showing the game and the price for the service is super cheap per month.

Life has been the same, just working, living life and enjoying music. I’ve been working on my MPC a lot. I’m actually thinking to go sell my Roland SP 404 mk2 today. I don’t use it since I can take my MPC to work with me and its just sitting there not being used. I was all about the 404 mk2 for a while, but it is just a bastard version of what the MPC can offer. Also, Akai is going to be releasing stems for the standalone MPC pretty soon, so the 404 mk2 is left behind in the dust.

Once Akai releases stems for the standalone modern MPCs, its going to be a game changer. I’ll be able to take parts of a song I download to sample from off Tracklib and manipulate that part how I want to. I can get rid of drums I don’t want in the sample, or vocals, or isolate vocals. It’s going to be amazing. I can’t wait to try it out and even if they charged 9.99 per month for it, I would be willing to pay. I hear it’s going to be a one time charge of $10 which is a steal.

I went to the record shoppe the other day and grabbed some records out of the bargain bin to sample from. Even those records you’ll be able to stem parts out which will be really cool and open up creative possibilities. I’m looking forward to it seriously and I can’t wait until they release it!

Work has been… well… work. A lot of demands are placed on you as an IT tech and people can be very impatient. They want what they want NOW. I’ve never been that type of person to put demands on other people like that. I ask my wife to make me a cup of coffee when I come home from work, but only because when I’m at home in the AM when she is, I’ll make her coffee every time. It’s a give and take you know? But I’ve never been impatient with people or demanded a lot from people working in a “service” position.

I have my biopsy coming up in March and I’m 100% positive it will be negative. I am a strong, healthy, athletically built guy and I have been strong since this diagnosis. I am going to get in really good shape pretty soon and I’ll start playing basketball again. I was able to dunk back in like 2009 when I was working at the cable company and in really good shape. I want to be one of those older guys that people marvel at how fit they are. I’ll get there for sure. It’s hard to get up super early and go to the gym, but I have to figure something out. Maybe I can do body weight exercises in the AM at home.

I’m still working on my beat tape. Getting a job has kind of taken a lot of precedence over doing that right now. By the end of the work week I’m tired and Saturday is my day to decompress, then Sunday I have to prepare for the upcoming work week by doing laundry and going grocery shopping with my wife. It’s a grind and it feels like we barely get a lot of time to ourselves. No complaints though, just keep hustling and keep pushing forward. I have faith that one day things will get better and I’ll be able to get more enjoyment out of life, not that I don’t get some already, I just wish I could get more.

That’s it for this blog entry, have a great Superbowl Sunday and enjoy your incoming work week. Be cool, be patient, don’t let them stress you out, and find some time for you hobbies. L8r!

So I’ve had the thought that I want to start writing lyrics to my beats. I love re-listening to my songs, but something is missing from them, and I feel like it’s vocals. When I was in college, I was a very good creative writer. I’ve always been my entire life. I’m thinking to re-hone that skill and start writing lyrics every day to whatever beat I’m working on at the moment. I know writing “rap” lyrics isn’t the same as writing a term paper or essay, but I think some of the skills do convert.

I want to spend at least 45 minutes a day after work and more time on the weekends just writing lyrics. I want to see how creative I can get with rhyming, using wordplay, and things like that. I have a notebook I am going to start writing in and hopefully I can get decent at it. Maybe I can do it when I go into work on my lunch break with my MPC as well.

I’ll report back here how this little “project” is going and I’ll share any full songs I make on Distrokid or my Bandcamp page. I’m not looking to blow up as an emcee, but I would like for people to enjoy my music. I think I have a lot of interesting things to say and it will be fun trying to weave those things into the verses of a song. We’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned! Peace!

So I’ve been getting a lot of videos in my Youtube feed of people complaining about working. I never searched for it, it just started appearing and I made the mistake of watching one and now they get regularly recommended to me. Anyway, the recurring theme in this is that a lot of people feel like they are a slave to their job and that they have no free time. I agree with that. It’s very hard to get into anything before or after a normal 8 hour workday, and the weekends fly by so fast they aren’t even worth mentioning as free time. You spend most of your weekend shopping for groceries for the coming week, doing laundry, and trying to straighten up your home a bit.

I am a firm believer in the well known phrase that, “GOD loves a working man”. If GOD didn’t want us to work, I don’t think we would be doing it. Working is very good for human beings. It helps us to feel productive and it keeps our minds from being idle. A lot of the crimes that occur happen from someone having a wicked idea pop into their head when they are idle, just sitting at home doing a whole lot of nothing and they get this bright idea to go rob someone or some place. “The idle mind is the devils workshop” is the common saying and I believe that to be very true. That’s why I’m a huge proponent of having hobbies and things you do that fil your time besides the things you MUST do to keep going forward every day.

The problem in my opinion comes in the way that you can have a person that is not lazy, that is willing to work 40 hours per week, but they can’t afford their own place or have any disposable income to get any enjoyment out of life. An Amazon warehouse worker shouldn’t have to eat beans and cornbread every day when Jeff Bezos is eating steak every day. Sure, maybe that warehouse worker can’t eat good every day like Jeff, but they should be able to enjoy the occasional steak or a trip some place nice with their family from time to time.

The fact that people can’t even afford a decent apartment rental or don’t have enough money to buy “some” nice things is not fair. I would consider myself middle class and it’s a struggle to do things and get things. I buy a lot of DJ and music equipment, and thus I can’t afford to travel nor do I own a lot of nice clothes. There has to be a trade-off somewhere. I work in Information Technology and have been providing computer and tech support for different companies for a few years. There’s no reason with what I do for a living that I shouldn’t earn enough money to do all that and then some. The fact is though, in IT, companies tend to force you to join their team as a temporary employee, with low wages and bad benefits from the recruiter, like expensive health insurance and very little time off compared to what a full time employee would get. Add onto that that I live on the West Coast where the cost of living is high and you start to see the picture.

For myself and even someone working in a job that doesn’t require a particular skillset, if you are willing to get up off your butt and work every day, you should have enough money to enjoy your life to a reasonable extent. I’m not asking to own a yacht or a mansion, but can I be able to travel, buy cool stuff for my hobby, buy decent quality clothes, and eat decent food with my willingness to get up and work every day? It’s not like it’s un-doable either. American Corporations are greedy and all they care about is their profit margin for the most part. They cut costs, overwork people, among other things all in an effort to achieve the best bottom line. There used to be a time in this country where no matter where you worked, you could count on getting a bonus around Christmas time so you could buy your family nice gifts and dinner which lead to an enjoyable holiday. Those days are gone, and most companies don’t even give bonuses anymore.

It’s a sad situation, and until the people revolt against Corporate America, its only going to get worse and worse. Greed is the word of the day and you see it in all avenues of your life. Everyone wants your money and doesn’t want to give you enough to do what you want to do. It sucks and it has to change. The videos I mentioned at the start of this post are evidence that people are getting fed up and are tired of this monotonous struggle they keep enduring. It’s going to hit the fan soon and I will be alive to see it….

So I’ve upgraded from a MPC One to a MPC Live 2. The Live 2 is a lot better to use than the MPC One. It doesn’t have quite as many shortcut keys on the face of it, but the drum pads on it are the same size as the ones on the MPC X. They are the full size Akai MPC pads and I find them much better to use than the smaller pads on the MPC One.

The MPC Live also has more inputs and outputs than the MPC One. I’m able to plug both my MPK Mini PLUS and Roland GAIA 1 into the MPC Live 2 with no issues. Also, it has a RCA phono level input because it has a phono preamp inside the device. Right now I have my turntable plugged directly into the unit with the ground cable attached and it works great. Before I had to use my Tascam Model 12 and have the turntable connected to my DJ mixer, then from the mixer to the Tascam and work with it like that.

The MPC Live 2 can truly be the center of your studio and it has the inputs and outputs to do so. It has 3 stereo or 6 mono outputs onboard the unit which is pretty sick! The screen is the same size as the MPC One, but because it’s to the right of the pads and sits on an elongated device, it gives the optical illusion of being bigger. It also is closer to you than it was on the MPC One when working on the unit. I’m very happy with it and I would recommend to anyone to get this over the MPC One.

The MPC One is a cool unit, but I’m able to put my Live 2 into a carrying case and take it to work to use on my breaks. I’ve worked on songs during lunch and that’s a lot of fun and really gives me a slice of home when I’m at work. The battery inside it lasts a good long while and you’re able to get busy with it with no problem and no need for extra equipment. I have a Decksaver coming for it soon, and I’ll be able to protect it and keep dust off it better.

Lastly, the unit has a slot in the bottom internally where you can put a 2.5inch sata drive to use with the unit. I have a 512GB SSD inside it now and it works out great. I copied all my music and sound data onto the drive from my 512GB SD card and it loads the information a lot faster than it did from the SD Card on the MPC One. The sata drive is secure and has a screwed in cover over it to protect the drive. There’s no chance of it falling open, and it’s just a great way to have your music data with the device.

I got the black version, but I wish I could have gotten the MPC Live 2 Retro. Not a lot of places carry that anymore, so it’s harder to come by. I love the look of the retro unit and the gray topped pads on it. Maybe if I can find it somewhere, I can return this unit to where I bought it and get the Retro joint.

I’m hoping the fact that I love to use this unit so much will help me in creating more music on it. I’ve already made like 3 or 4 basic beats on it that sound good and I feel like I could flesh out when recording them and maybe add some lyrics to go along with them. I need to focus more if I’m going to write lyrics and not spend so much time watching people on Youtube and Twitch. It’s just a distraction and keeps me from doing my own thing and the things I love…

Hopefully, this year I’ll go live on Twitch more often and share my beatmaking process with the followers I have so far and I can start to build a community of people who are like-minded as I am. We can learn from each other and help each other get better with this music thing. A lot of us are only in it for the love of the process and the craft, and we’re not necessarily trying to get rich or famous from it. I wouldn’t want to be famous ever, because there’s a lot of nonsense that comes along with that. I could use some extra money though, so if some of my music garnered me more ends I’d be cool with that.

Have a great rest of the month and I’ll come back with some more posts soon. Peace, love, light, and blessings to you reader!

What’s up readers! So it’s 2024 and a brand new year. I’m looking forward to what the new year will bring. I’m hoping for peace, love, good health, and prosperity for myself and my loved ones. I’m looking forward to paying off some debts and being able to breathe easier financially. I’m looking forward to getting in better shape and using my gym membership on a regular basis. I’m also looking forward to making dope music and getting to know other music lovers, producers, and DJs.

I hope this new year is amazing, but I know that in order for it to be that, I have to make moves myself. Nothing is going to come and knock on your door, so you have to make the effort to make things happen. I am gung-ho and ready to do that, and I’m excited. My job is “ok” for the time being, but I would like to get a job where I can work from home. We want to move to the east coast if we can toward the end of the year, so having a remote job would be a huge benefit in that.

I’m tired of sitting in traffic as well, and working from home was such a huge relief first financially because of the cost of gas, and then also on my stress level. I was able to be home and receive packages incoming, or go to the grocery store and pick up items to help make dinner on my lunch break. I can’t believe in this age, where we have these amazingly powerful computers, always on internet connections, and tech like Zoom and Teams, that a company would still push their employees to come into a building to work. That’s how COVID spread so fast and a lot of people died from it. I want to work for a progressive company with younger people who are not stuck in old ways of doing things.

Today is 1/1/24, and I have a tight beat going on my TE EP-133 KO II. I want to record some lyrics for it and complete it out today. From there I’ll upload it to Distrokid and advertise it in different forums and things like that. The most important thing to me is I don’t want the lyrics to sound corny or lame. I want to speak on a subject that people can relate to and will “feel” . Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to my excellent writing skills I once had, and really come up with something creative and inventive.

Have a great start to the new year, get in shape, find a hobby you enjoy, love your friends and family, and live at peace with the rest of the world. Change is coming and it can’t be stopped. Goodness and righteousness will prevail over the evil in this world as it has been written. Take care of yourself and I’ll check in soon. L8r!!!

So I recently got a hold of a KO II from Teenage Engineering. Shout outs to my boy Skeeter Woo for the hookup. So a lot of people who have received this device have gotten units with bad faders, speakers, or the batteries don’t work with the power switch and things like that. I was fortunate and my KO II is in perfect working order. It’s a dope device and I like using it a lot. It’s very easy and quick to get into making a beat and once you understand the workflow its very intuitive.

The device itself seems very well put together. It has a very basic screen, but there are icons that notate certain functions you’re using on the device. It has a plain LED screen that shows your beat count and other parameters, but the icons on the sides and underneath the LED light up to let you know you’re doing a certain function. It’s very cool and it conveys a lot of information to the user. I had no problems understand what each thing does, and rarely had to go to the online guide/manual to figure out how to do something. If you do need help, there are a TON of videos on Youtube where people show how to make a beat from scratch, how to sample and things like that.

The sound of the device is great. It almost reminds me of my 404 mk2, in the way of what you put into it is what you get out. There’s really no mixing/mastering features on the unit, so sample in good sounding samples and your song/beat will sound good. Speaking of sampling, the unit only has 64MB (yes MB!!!) of storage space on it, and a lot of that is initially taken up by the stock sounds that come on the device. What I’ve done is used the browser based “Sample Tool” that TE provides to backup the stock sounds, then delete them off the unit.

You might ask, “Well how can you store anything with only 64MB of space!?”. When you sample a sound into the KO II it takes the audio file and compresses it in some way, so it takes up very little space. The file size of the sample ends up being a lot smaller, like a few kb, so you can fit a lot of sounds on the unit no problem. It’s very cool how they did it and if it weren’t for the quality control issues so many people are facing, I would say the KO II was a shoe-in for device of the year! TE really dropped the ball with the quality control, and this device should have been the crowning achievement of 2023, coming in right at the end of the year.

I still love my unit though, and I think if you can get your hands on a fully functional device, you’ll love it too. It’s very portable, and I’ve taken it to work with me every day this week to hammer out some beats on my lunch breaks. I even picked up a portable speaker to go with it that has AUX inputs, because the default speaker is really only meant for checking your sound when “field recording”. The unit has a mic on it that pretty faithfully picks up your voice or whatever sound you record with it, and the onboard speaker is useful for confirming those recordings. It doesn’t convey bass sounds very well, so kick drums and bass notes aren’t relayed very well with the onboard speaker.

Overall, I would recommend this device to a new beat maker. It’s a ton of fun to use and has a lot of features. I think that once you learn the workflow, you’ll be banging out beats in no time. The mechanical keyboard feel of the keys is really satisfying to use, and I love the clickity clack sounds they make when in use. Hopefully the unit holds up through heavy usage and this time next year I’ll still be producing great music on it. I would suggest you pick up a KO II from Guitar Center, as people seem to be getting good quality units from that source, rather than getting it directly from Teenage Engineering, who seems to be shipping out a lot of duds.

Thanks for reading my little mini-review of the KO II. Have a wonderful holiday! I’m off work the entire week next week, with pay, so I’ll be hanging around the house Djing and cooking up beats on my production devices. I’m hoping I can finish my beat tape and upload it to Distrokid for distribution. Take care of yourself and be blessed. L8r!

So I’m still at home sick with COVID-19. I’m getting better, but I still have a mean cough where I cough up flemgh and I’m tired a lot. I also am still testing positive for COVID. It sucks because this was not a good time for me at work to go out like this. I have some issues I was trying to work out for users, and I kind of had to leave it in limbo since I’ve been out.

Hopefully when I get back, I can pick up where I left off and get back into the swing of things quickly. The doctor prescribed me Paxlovid, which I’ve been taking after having reservations about it at first. I’m not sure if it’s helping, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting me, so I’ll keep taking it. My wife says our doctors prescribed us that so we don’t “die” from COVID. That seems a bit extreme to me, but what do I know. I had actually convinced myself that I was immune to getting sick anymore because I had a strong body. Sure I’m probably doing better than my wife and another person might because of my physiology, but this COVID has definitely kicked my butt.

I know one thing is for sure, I am never taking my mask off around people again. I don’t want to experience this again, and I think my wife feels the same way. Her job is always making them go to quarterly meetings, and she wouldn’t wear her mask… I bet she will now. I’ll be wearing my mask to work every. day. I don’t trust people to not come to work sick or without checking themselves out for COVID if they feel bad at all. If I hadn’t tested myself for COVID when I did, my mom, her husband, and my brother and his wife would have all gotten sick.

You have to be responsible when it comes to stuff like that, and it pains me that I started slacking off when it comes to wearing my mask everywhere I go. They won’t catch me slipping again though. I am going to protect myself and my family, and I hope my wife will do the same. Prayerfully we’ll both get better soon and we can get back to our usual routines. Being sick is no fun and it takes you out of being able to do what your normally do. My dog isn’t getting walked as well, the dishes aren’t being done on the regular, we’re not eating as well because my wife isn’t up to cooking, etc.

I cook a bit, but I’m no where near the skill level my wife is when it comes to preparing meals. Anyway, hopefully soon we can get back on it. Peace and take care of yourself reader. L8r!