Author: DJ GodsOwn

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!

So it’s official, I have COVID 19. I started feeling symptoms on Black Friday and took at test in the early afternoon. It came out positive, so I took another test that I think I did wrong and it came out inconclusive. I felt like crap, so I waited until Sunday and took another test that AM which was also positive. My wife has it too! We are not feeling well at all and it sucks.

I missed hanging out with my mom as she made a special trip driving from the midwest with her husband to come visit me and my brother here out West. It really sucks because I wanted to spend some time with all of them. My wife was going to hang with us a bit too which is pretty rare. That was a huge bummer, as my mom is like one of my best friends. Hopefully I will be able to go back to work this coming Thursday, but I have to not have a fever 24 hours before starting and my symptoms have to be subsiding.

I feel like I caught it from this chick that I think did it on purpose in the grocery store the day before Thanksgiving. That Wednesday night when I got off work I went to pick up a few things my wife wanted me to get, and I didn’t wear a mask when I went in like I usually do. The chick came up behind me and let out this huge cough that I took note of, but didn’t think was a big deal. Later when I was checking out, I looked up and she had this demented look on her face and was looking right at me.

My wife thinks I’m crazy, but I know people are wicked as all get out and do stuff like that. She can be very naive and likes to think the best of everyone. There’s people out there who will contract HIV and go to the club every week and sleep with as many people as they can trying to spread it. That’s how dirty and evil mugs can be. They will intentionally get others sick just to be evil. For all they know I live at home with an elderly mother who if she catches COVID is going to die, but they don’t care about that. It really is a shame. People need GOD in their life because if only the fear of GOD will keep some people from behaving like a savage then so be it. Anyways, I’m going to go rest a bit more and chill out. Be breezy…

So my dog Maggie is not well. She has an abscess in her mouth which will require surgery. She was under the bed last night whining and she had a big cyst under her right eye for like a week now. I took time off work and took her to the animal clinic today. I tried to get into our regular vet, but they didn’t have an opening, so I had to go to the local animal clinic. It costs me a lot of money and they sent us home with some medication and the news that she will require a procedure that will cost 2 bands. It’s crazy man. I get that everyone is in the business of making money in this capitalist country, but what happened to being a vet because you love animals and want to help them? Why does every vet quote you some outrageous arse price for something that doesn’t seem that crazy. They don’t have to do a heart transplant on her, its pulling a tooth out and checking her other teeth for the love of GOD.

I really don’t get this world. Everything is bass ackwards in it. You move into an apartment and you’re a good tenant that pays your rent and doesn’t cause trouble… so they raise your rent on you. You should raise rent if a tenant is a constant problem or others complain about them. I watch a guy on Youtube that lives out of his truck now, and he says before he did he went through a cycle of moving into an apartment, then after his first lease expired, they’d raise the rent to an amount he couldn’t afford anymore, so he’d have to move to another apartment and repeat the cycle.

I don’t know about you reader, but I’m getting very tired of this. I just spent $182 at the grocery store and barely got much to eat and drink. Something has to give. They are gouging us at every angle and overcharging us for everything. The people on top and who own or are top management of these companies get richer and fatter while we toil at the bottom and struggle until our dying day some of us. It’s not right and something needs to change. Revolution doesn’t happen overnight unless its violent and I have a feeling that this is what the people are going to have to resort to in order to see a change. It’s only going to get worse and for the children now and to come, we have to change the course of how things are going in this world…..

So I’m going into my 3rd week at my new job. I like it a lot. It’s a lot of stuff to learn, but it will take the usual 3-4 months to start really getting the lay of the land and the hang of how things work there. My co-worker in the office and the supervisor seem like really cool guys. The tech that works with me in our office is a funny guy and I like his attitude towards IT work and things in general. He doesn’t seem to outwardly stress the small stuff and he’s kind of just a chill dude. The supervisor comes off very stoic and serious, but when you talk to him, he’s a cool dude too. He’s been a gamer in the past but has a kid now so “adulting” tends to monopolize his life.

The work itself is typical IT stuff, its jut a matter of learning their processes and systems of how they get things done. They do a lot of SCCM stuff, where I worked with that at a previous Desktop Support type role, but the managers there were really stingy with giving us too much access. They wouldn’t even let us order equipment, and this company I’m at now is giving me a Dell Premier account to order from, and a CDW account to order from. There’s an approval process to it, but they are giving us more responsibility than my previous job did and I like that.

I’ve been Djing and making beats when I can after work and on the weekends. Last weekend I really went in and made a couple of songs. I feel like not having a lot of time forces me to focus more and get it done because I know when Monday comes I won’t be at home to mess around with it until the evening. I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but work life balance is very important to me. I don’t function well with nothing but free time, nor do I function well with being over-worked. There has to be a decent balance there for me to be “happy”.

Anyway, there’s a record show coming up that I want to go to, but my wife isn’t feeling well. If she’s not up to going, I’ll just go by myself and mask up. It sucks that she doesn’t really like to go out much. She works from home mostly, but she needs to know that she needs to get out and get sunlight and move around to feel optimal. Even when I was working from home and not leaving the house a lot, I didn’t feel my best. I go for walks at work while I’m waiting on systems to image or just when it comes time for lunch or a break. As a black person, its very important to get sunlight. Our skin doesn’t retain vitamin D from the sun like a caucasian or asian persons might, so we need to get those rays. I’m also taking a vitamin D supplement which immediately helped me with not feeling so fatigued all the time.

I’ll try to post more often, so until next time, enjoy your life, be easy and stay blessed. L8r!

So I recently have been using a Numark controller just to check it out and try out jog wheels again. I started on my Numark Mixtrack Pro 1 back in 2018 and I had a lot of fun using it at the time, but I was new and green as all get out. I quickly upgraded controllers and eventually landed on a DDJ-SX2. I got some turntables as a gift from my brother and I loved using the moving platters. I’ve been a two turntables and a mixer type DJ for the longest time now. Trying the jog wheels recently, its a lot easier to do different scratches on them than it was previously. The crossfader on the Numark controller isn’t very good, but it’s serviceable.

I’ve noticed that when coming back to moving platters after scratching on the jog wheels, that my scratching on that is a lot better. It’s almost like being hampered by the poor crossfader and static jog wheels, helped my ability with a proper crossfader and moving platters. I’m going to record some scratching I’ve done recently and put it up on my Youtube page, just to show viewers how much further I’ve come in my ability. There’s still a TON of scratches I need to learn, but the ones I know I’ve gotten pretty nice with.

I think any DJ that has been DJing on turntables for a while, that likes to scratch, could benefit from picking up a cheapo jog wheel controller with an average crossfader on it. Play around on it from time to time, and I bet they’ll notice that their scratching is better when using their normal setup. Also, its very important to do exercises that help with scratching. I have a wrist/forearm machine that works pretty well and is helping me get stronger in those areas. When I use it, it’s a lot easier to scratch I’ve noticed. Some DJs don’t believe it helps to exercise, but DJ Rob Swift from the Executioners told me on Twitter (X) when I messaged him about it that it does help.

That’s about all I wanted to say on that, I’ve updated the scenes and transitions on my Twitch stream, so make sure you check me out at www.twitch.tv/3rdEyeViZi0n . I plan on streaming on there a bit more often, even after I start my new job. Me and my bro Aaron are planning on doing a podcast on Youtube as well, so I’ll post that on here as well when it jumps off. Stay blessed, stay focused, and don’t sweat the small stuff. L8r!

Hey what’s up readers.. I just wanted to post an update. My birthday was last week and I had a nice time. I just hung out at home with my wife, but we went to the record shoppe and she let me get some records without scolding me about it. I didn’t spend that much, but I got some cool vinyl that I’m happy with. I also got a book from my brother about making beats. I haven’t started reading it yet, as I am still reading another book he bought me called “Dilla Time” which is about the life and rising of the legendary producer J-Dilla.

That book has been an amazing read so far, as it delves not only into how he got on, but it talks about some music theory stuff as well. There’s a lot I didn’t realize about J-Dilla, and how he really changed the game when it comes to the way producers look at music. Did you know that that Janet Jackson song, “Got til it’s gone” was ripped off from J-Dilla’s style of beat-making by Jimmy Jam? Jam heard a song from Slum Village Fan-Tas-Tic Vol 2 and went into the studio to try and reproduce it for a song he was doing for Janet. You can really hear it when you go back and listen to the song… it’s in J-Dilla’s signature time signature.

I uploaded a beat I had on my SP 404 mk2 for a while to my Bandcamp page. It was a decent track, but I may need to re-record it and arrange it a bit better. I’m still working on my beat tape and I only have one more song I need to record then I’ll get it up on my DistroKid account. I got a new job that I start on October 2nd which is pretty cool. It’s in IT again and I’m going to approach it as professionally and methodically as I can. I’m learning to code Python right now, and it’s very interesting. Hopefully this job is a good place to work and I can get my work life balance back in order.

Other than that I have just been chilling and looking for work up until finding this new job. I feel healthy and I’m doing the things I need to do to stay that way. I’m going to start walking again and once I start my new job, I’ll have more money to buy healthier foods like fruits and vegetables more regularly. I want to start rhyming on some of my tracks, so stay tuned for that. I have a better mic on the way that I found on a great deal online. Once I get it hooked up, I’ll write a few verses to one of my beats and see how it goes. To you reader, stay blessed and keep marching on. L8r!