Author: DJ GodsOwn

So it’s no secret that Pioneer DJ overcharges for their products. They aren’t as bad as Technics, but they can still be a bit outrageous. The DJM-S11, which for all intents and purposes is pretty similar to the Rane 72 Mk2, costs $200 more than the Rane does. Its not built with an all metal construction like the Rane is, and the Rane has more sturdy effects levers as well. Pioneer uses plastic in their mixer builds for the most part so there really is no justifiable reason for the price hike, other than the fact that the product has the Pioneer name on it.

They are coming out with a new DJ turntable which looks very nice. It’s an analog digital hybrid turntable that doesn’t require control vinyl or Phase or anything like that to use Serato DJ pro or Rekordbox DJ in a DVS type orientation. It has cue pads on it that have a lot of the modes you’d want access to on it, including stems separation. It’s a very cool turntable, but at $1400 it costs way too much. Sure 2 of those turntables still cost as much as one Pioneer CDJ-3000, but the CDJs Pioneer sells are vastly overpriced as well. You can get a Denon “motorized” player for much less than a Pioneer “static” CDJ and it has way more features on it, including the motorized platter which gives the feel of using vinyl.

Pioneer makes amazing gear I will say that, but I don’t know why they choose to eliminate so many people from being able to purchase their products. If they lowered the price of that new turntable by $600, it would be accessible and reasonable for a LOT more people. Sure there will be those that buy it, but for the most part, the average DJ can’t justify spending that much on a turntable when something like the Reloop 8000 mk2 exists for only $799. It doesn’t have timecode built into it, but it does have pads and lets you do different pad modes in Serato DJ Pro among other cool features.

I would really like to see Pioneer stop gouging the DJ market with their insane pricing on their products. They could make so much more money if they priced things at the borderline of what most DJs would be tempted to buy their gear at. In a world where people are opting for Spotify or Tidal playlists over hiring a DJ, its harder for a lot of DJs to get “gigs” these days that pay a reasonable price. Also, the DJ market is oversaturated with DJs who learned how to DJ very quickly on a controller and are quite competent at it. There’s so much competition, that it can be hard for a DJ to land a gig at the rate they want to charge for it. Some of the newer DJs will undercut so much that you can’t compete. How do you expect DJs in a market like that to be able to afford such high priced gear?

Personally, I can’t see them making much of a profit off only clubs or events buying the gear. DJ equipment is a niche market as it is, and to price things so highly only makes your product even more niche. Hopefully, the poor sales of this product will prompt them to bring the price down and reconsider how they price their products moving forward. DJs love new innovative gear, but not if you have to sell a kidney on the dark web to afford it. Get it together Pioneer….

So I’m doing a new series on my Youtube channel called “Serato Sessions”. Its where I use my DVS turntable setup to play a curation of select songs in Serato DJ Pro. I just record the session and then upload it later. I’ve only done one so far, and I’ve already made a playlist for number two which I’ll do later today once the neighbors wake up (don’t want to disturb them..).

The reason I’m doing it is because I tend to get caught up with practicing beat juggling or scratching without really playing all the music I have access to. I play music here and there just to listen to it, but a true DJ plays a set of songs at a time and mixes, blends, and scratches to make it a unique experience. I want to start practicing the full craft so this is a good way to get that done. I’ll do them pretty often so I can stay up on it.

I’m looking forward to building up a good video playlist of the different Serato Sessions, so I can look back in the future and see how I’ve improved. I want to play obscure songs as well as some hits, so I use Tidal streaming and find music on there to add to a playlist which appears on my laptop in Serato DJ pro and I can just load the songs from the Tidal playlist and mix them. The first session went well, and I’m looking forward to doing the second one later today. Here is the link to the playlist if you’re interested in checking them out as time goes on: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOR6C2Ja9uaFtOPUy8KMvdn-6PDdMxrSb

Take care of yourself and enjoy your life. L8r!

So I’ve had some Gemini PT 2000 II decks that my brother gave me as a birthday gift one year for a while now. At least 4 -5 years. They didn’t come with turntable feet on them, which made them hard to get level in the DJ coffin they’ve been in. It also effects the “isolation” of the sound from the decks when playing analog vinyl. Turntable feet can be very expensive online, especially when you need 8 total for two turntables. I finally found some used feet online at an amazing price and they came in last week. They fit perfect and my decks are now in full effect. I’m pretty stoked about it. I was able to take the wooden boards I had cut at Home Depot out of he DJ coffin, and use the feet to get each deck level. I have vinyl record weights that also double as bubble levels to get the deck level.

With the feet I got, I am able to turn them to a certain length and use the bubble level to get each deck as flat as possible. I just posted a video on my Youtube channel doing a mini-review of the PT 2000 IIs again just to let people know how dope they are as DJ decks. They are better than the Technics 1200 mk2 in terms of feature set and they are just as bullet proof. They have higher torque as well. If I get a chance to play out anywhere, I’ll probably take these decks out with me instead of my super OEM decks. The super OEMs are better than the PT 2000 IIs across the board, and they costed me about $1k for the both of them about 4 years ago. The Gemini decks are classic, but I’d feel more comfortable bringing them in front of people if I played out somewhere.

I haven’t enabled comments yet, but when I talk about something where I really want to hear other peoples’ opinions on the matter, I will. Take care, be blessed, and enjoy your life! BTW I just completed my final infusion treatment this past Friday, and now I’ll just take medication at home until next year. Prayers up I’m fine and I’ll be moving forward with life. Peace to you and stay up!

So I’ve been trying to get back into gaming a bit as another side hobby. I was playing Street Fighter 5 pretty tough for a while there some few years back, but I dropped it because it was so frustrating, and I still hadn’t developed many coping mechanisms to deal with stress and frustration that would arise from it not working properly, the lag, and the way people behaved online. I have those coping mechanisms now, mainly meditation and also this new game has fixed a lot of the nagging issues that were present in SF5. For one it runs great online. You can literally be on the West Coast of the USA and play someone in Europe without much noticeable lag. I’m not sure if it’s the Resident Evil Engine they are using (as opposed to the Unreal Engine) or if they just had better programming from the jump, but the game runs great. People still do lame stuff like spam attacks or win-quit you, but I’ve decided not to let it bother me.

Music and DJing are still my main hobbies, but I will jump into training mode in SF6 from time to time to practice moves and also play online as well. I had been mainly playing as Dhalsim, the Yoga character that spits fire and has rubberman like limbs, but I don’t like how he plays in this version of the game. I prefer Ryu, the traveling warrior who seeks the challenge of battle and finds his self worth and understanding of others in combat. I’m pretty good with him so far, as I got to play him in the demo and beta versions of the game more than any other character. Capcom has sold A TON of copies of this game, I believe it’s already over 1 million+, so they have made the top prize for the winner of Capcom Cup next year a cool 1 million dollars! That’s crazy and whoever wins that money will be very fortunate and blessed. It’s not going to be easy, as people who weren’t playing Street Fighter are now playing solely with the mission of winning that money at the end of the season. There’s going to be a lot of competition and its going to hard fought for sure.

If I can get good enough, fast enough, I wouldn’t be opposed to entering that tournament to try my hand at that dough! My djing and music production will always come first, but if I get as good as I had gotten in SF5 at one point, I’ll make a run at it! I was thinking of opening up a comment section for these different blog posts to see if anyone is reading and if they are interested in the site at all. I plan on posting some more reviews soon, and as I had previously promised, I need to beef up the spirituality section with more information and thoughts. Hopefully I can do all that as the site goes on. Take care and be blessed!

What’s up readers! I’m just chilling over here. I’m enjoying DJing on my DJ setups and although I haven’t been on my MPC One or SP 404 mk2 too hard, I’m making slow but sure progress on my beat tape. I’m going to record my latest song to a wav file by the end of this weekend and start on a new track by this Monday afternoon coming up. I have tried to start streaming a bit more on my Twitch channel and Mixcloud channel. It’s hard to get viewers in though. I looked at the Music category on Twitch one day and there’s like 100 streams with 1 viewer in it, lol. That 1 viewer is usually the streamer watching their own stream to make sure it’s broadcasting properly and to be in the chat to interact with people and respond to messages. I remember there was this one dude I used to follow, he never had any viewers and I discovered his channel one day by looking for the channel at the very end of the channel list. I was his only viewer really for quite a long while. He stopped streaming and I wonder what happened to that cat. He had a lot of emotional issues and was fighting depression.

He wouldn’t get a job and his girlfriend had dumped him and kicked him out. Then his mom kicked him out because he wouldn’t get a job and would only sit up playing video games all day. Finally he got a job, but something happened with the people there where he got into an altercation with someone and got let go. Sometimes we have down seasons in life, but I always think about that dude and hope he bounces back. Maybe one-day I’ll see his stream live again and he’ll tell me all about the bad times he went through and how he pushed through it and is working, has a family now, or something like that. Prayers up to the forgotten knight.

Anyway, I’m still looking for work and trying to be healthy for the most part. GOD is still on his throne, and although it appears satan is running this world, the Lord will move in on his own time. As I always say, GOD is never early, never late, but always right on time! Peace and blessing unto you reader and stay up. L8r….

In spite of my health issues I’m feeling pretty happy right now. Music helps a lot with any depression that I could possibly be feeling. DJing and making beats takes me out of my head and gives me something to strive for and focus on. I’d like to get a new 100% remote/work-from-home gig at some point, so I can do more of the things I need to do on my own without the help of family or any other sources. There are times where I feel like I’m being setup by certain people, but at this point I don’t care anymore. I see in the Gangstalking Reddit that a lot of people feel this way, and I don’t deny there’s something going on, but it’s a lot bigger than an individual so why stress about it?

People who target others and deny them a way to earn a living or try to judge them for things are going to face an extreme karma at some point in their life. That’s why I’m trying to live a non-judgmental life. Meaning, I don’t hold any judgements towards other people. We all make mistakes especially when we are young and dumb, and the way this society is, it breeds and programs people to do a lot of the things they do. Young men of all races listen to rap songs where the rapper glorifies not being faithful in a relationship, or abusing drugs, etc. It’s no wonder the youth of today are so troubled.

I have some methods of finding ways to relax and contemplate on our society and I feel they have been very beneficial as of late. We aren’t told a lot of things about how our reality works. People don’t understand that “the word” or “the tongue” is very powerful. You can speak things into existence. We saw it happen with Tupac and Notorious BIG right before our eyes. They both talked about death and dying violently and sure enough, they met that fate. You have to speak positivity into your world. Speak favor from GOD and speak towards a better version of yourself. Say it 3 times, 3 times a day for 30 days and see if you don’t see a change. Nikola Tesla said if you want to understand the secrets of the universe, look into the power of the numbers 3, 6, and 9. That exercise I just mentioned keys in on that.

If anyone reads this website, I hope to start adding more information about meditation and self improvement, as I do it myself. We all want peace and to coexist with our neighbors. Keep pushing for that, and speak it into reality. Take care of yourselves….

So Akai has released the Akai MPC X SE and the MPC One+. The SE gives the current MPC X a retro skin makeover, and adds 2GB of RAM for a total of 4GB. For what most music makers are doing, the additional 2GB of RAM was not needed. People are still buying it, but only because they have the money and nothing else to do with it. It’s not a necessary upgrade if you already have a MPC X. I’ve seen producers who only make basic boom bap hip hop beats buying the SE when they already have a vanilla X. The main users that would benefit from the SE version would be people doing live sets with theirs and who need to load a lot of the instrument plugins into memory to be able to use them without much slowdown or load time. It’s a great device. If I had the money, I’d buy one, however, I think if you already own a MPC X there’s no reason to drop $2.5k on the “upgrade” when you’re not getting much different from what you already own. To each their own and far be it from me to tell someone how to spend their money. If it makes them happy, by all means, go for it!

For the MPC One+, they have it priced at the same price as the MPC One vanilla. It has a red colorway and adds wifi and bluetooth and removes the ethernet port from the back. It’s cool that they added wifi and bluetooth, but I don’t understand why they removed the ethernet port. Some people, like myself, prefer to have all their devices connected with a hard wire. My Playstation is hooked up that way, my PC, as well as my MPC One. I guess it was a way to keep production costs down when modifying the current MPC template with wifi and bluetooth cards. I wish they had also given the One+ 4GB of RAM. For a current MPC One user, it’s not worth it to me to spend another $699 when all I’m getting is a red skin which I could technically get myself from a company like styleflip or the like. The wifi and bluetooth are great additions, but I don’t think they justify another purchase. The One+ still doesn’t have a lithium battery, so it’s not really meant to be portable. You need a power outlet or a power-bank to plug it into. It’s not tailor-made for portability like the Live 2 is per say. For new MPC users, the One+ is a great upgrade, but I’d say if you already own a MPC One, keep your money and spend it on records to sample, expansions, or upcoming instrument plugins!

A lot of people like to complain about Akai, but I like their products and how they are constantly innovating with new plugins and expansion packs for the MPC universe. These most recent “upgrades” seem to be fool-hearted though. I’d like to see them improve the software for the current MPCs that are already out. Serato Studio has had stems features for a bit. I’d like to see that added to the current MPC software with an upgrade of some type. Even if it was a paid upgrade, I’m sure a lot of music makers would love to be able to access stems separation tools natively on their MPCs. There’s other features like disk streaming that MPC users have been wanting for a while now. Akai needs to stop trying to hock hardware to people and update the software side of things to compete with the growing competition. Serato, Ableton, Reason, and a ton of other standalone or DAW makers have added features that are leaving the MPC 2.0 software system in the dust. Hopefully Akai’s R&D team realizes this and they are cooking up something that we’ll all find amazing and much needed very soon!

Hey what’s up? I hope life is treating you well. I am unemployed right now, but it’s probably for the best with my health condition I have. Corporate America doesn’t care about you as an individual, and its hard to find a company that will show compassion towards you when you have a hardship. That’s why I don’t believe in loyalty to any company. Yes I will do my absolute best when working for you, but I don’t fool myself into the notion that this company in any way shape or form cares about me as a person. I’m a social security number doing work for them and if it benefits the companies bottom line to let me go they will. Almost every company I’ve worked for has done exactly that to people in some capacity. Anyway, I’ve been Dj scratching like crazy and I’m getting better slowly but surely. I also picked up a better computer chair, as mine was done for. It was making it so I couldn’t sit down and get comfortable to work on my music. Hopefully with this new chair, I’ll be more motivated to sit in front of my MPC and SP 404mk2 and get busy with em’. I’m practicing daily affirmations now and reading Bible passages more often. I feel like I want to switch my mind to one that focuses on positive thoughts more-so than negative. Negativity is everywhere around us and it gets into your mind and takes over. You have to feed your mind positivity in order for it to switch to that pole and stay there. Bible passages are ripe with positivity, so I’m hoping reading them more often will get me to the place I want to be.

I’ll try to remember to post on here more often, and let anyone who MAY be viewing this page know what’s going on with me. Til next time!

Soooo, I got laid off from my job in March of this year. It sucks but its whatever. I had kind of gotten tired of working their anyway. They hired too many people to do a job that couldn’t have been easier if you knew what you were doing. It was very slow at times, and I didn’t like when they started making us come into the office on a “Hybrid” schedule. When will companies realize that if a department or team can do their job effectively remotely/working from home, you should allow them to do so. The employee will be happier, their kids if they have any will be happier, their pets if they have any will be happier and just in general their life will be a lot less difficult by just giving that little leeway. Its going to take the “old breed” to leave the workplace and for the younger generations to get into positions of power to make that become the norm. The people who are managers and directors are people who worked in the workplace probably before there was even email or the internet. They are accustomed to certain things and as is usual of people, they resist change, even if it’s for the better. When some people in my generation and the entirety of the generation after mine get into those positions, things will change for the better and the workplace will take full advantage of the technologies available. They’ll realize we don’t NEED to sit up looking in each others face in person, and that a Teams meeting is perfectly sufficient. That’s why the tech was designed. All an in person meeting adds is the ability to catch the flu or a cold from each other, which in turns adds to missing days of work, etc. Also I remember people working sick at a couple of my jobs because they were at home and able to get setup in a comfortable way where they still were able to get their work done. Coming into the office they would have had to call out. Anyway, the world is bass ackwards and the people in charge make it so. I hope the younger generation can get it right in the future and change the narrative. Maybe they’ll realize that if someone can’t afford a high car note, you don’t charge them more money, but you charge them less, etc. Maybe they’ll realize that people should be paid a wage where they can live comfortably and enjoy some things in life as well, regardless of where they work or what career path they chose. Maybe they’ll realize that a college degree doesn’t equal intelligence, and that there’s a lot of idiots with them, as well as a lot of smart people without them. I hope the future is better than this current state of the world. People who want to change the world need to invest in the children. Til next time.

So I recently picked up JDilla’s “Donuts” album on cassette tape. I play it on my cassette player I got off Turntable lab at one point. It sounds very good, and I love the sound well recorded cassette tapes can have. I noticed that places like Fatbeats.com and GetonDown.com are now selling golden era hip hop and other albums on cassette tape. I think it’s pretty cool, as listening to music on cassette really takes me back to my teenage years. I remember getting Tupac All Eyes on Me on cassette from a guy at school. It turned out to be a bootleg, but it had the album art and everything and sounded fine to me. I remember there was a record store near my house that sold a lot of hip hop albums on tape, and it turns out THEY were selling tapes bootleg and just printing the artwork inserts. They ended up getting shut down and I was really disappointed. They were within walking distance from my house and I was getting to know the owner and he would give me cool deals on multiple tapes or CDs. I got a few more cassette’s incoming like WuTang Forever, Petestrumentals 3, and De La Soul is Dead. I’m looking forward to listening to something besides Donuts. Donuts is a great album, but I’ve listened to it over and over and over this past week since getting it. I think it’s really cool that both vinyl and cassettes are making a comeback. I’m sure it’s mainly millenials like myself fueling the comeback, but regardless, its enough people that sites like the ones I mentioned are releasing official albums on both mediums. I hope it’s not just a fad that will die in a year or two, and I hope us old heads keep it alive and keep buying our favorite boom bap, golden era music from the 90s on cassettes and vinyl. It’s the best way to listen to the music as you get that warmth and analog sound that really does the genre well. I’ll post a review in my reviews section soon about the tape player I have, and maybe some of the cassette’s I pick up as I go along. With all that being said, keep enjoying your tunes and keep living life. You only get one in this body so make the best of it! L8r!