Author: DJ GodsOwn

So it’s Christmas Day today and the New Year is right down the street. I’m looking forward to a New Year and new beginnings. I have a few resolutions for the coming year of 2023. I want to lose some weight AGAIN and get in better shape in general. I lift weights and do pushups, but I’d like to start walking more to lose some more pounds and get a more structured weight lifting routine going. I still have my gym membership I pay $10 a month for, but when COVID hit I didn’t want to go and end up getting sick. I’ll have the opportunity this January to start walking more during my breaks when working, so I’m sure I can get that one done. I’ve done it before.

For my music resolutions, I really want to focus on scratching and beat-juggling for DJing. I want to make huge gains in those areas and I know I’ll have to time manage better, especially if I’m going to be going to the gym among the other things I have to get done in daily life. For production, I want to continue steadily making more and more music. I want to start putting more of my beats on Beat Stars and try to get a bit of a side hustle going and get some income from the music I make. Even if it’s only enough to buy a new vinyl record for my collection here and there, that’s ok with me. I want to be more creative and also buckle down and use my Melodics subscription to learn how to play keyboard. I can play keys here and there, and I’ve done so in my music, but I’d really like to learn to play full melody’s that I make up on my own. If I can accomplish those things by the end of 2023, I’ll be a happy camper.

Lastly, I’d like to get my finances in order. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t gamble every weekend or buy expensive clothes, but I have some debt I need to pay down so I want to stop buying things on an impulse and only buy things I really want when a surplus of money comes in. I feel like with my job and my wife’s job, the Lord gives us what we need to survive, keep a roof over our heads, and food in our stomachs. Sure I can have some wants on occasion, but I’d like to cut back on those so much. Instead of buying $60 worth of records at a given time, maybe chill out and buy two or three 45 records from the 99 cent bin at the record store, and save the binge vinyl buying for tax refunds or bonuses if we get any.

I’ll go over this post again in December of 2023 and look at what I was able to accomplish and what I wasn’t. Time management is really important as I know I waste too much time watching Youtube or Twitch. Sure it’s nice to gel every once in a while, but I need to get the things I want to get done completed each day and get to bed at a decent hour each night so I’m not so exhausted the next day. Take care and have a Happy New Year! Til next time….

Merry Christmas! It’s the Holiday Season and Christmas is literally tomorrow. I just wanted to post an update to the blog and talk about something near and dear to my heart. Since I picked up a MPC One some years ago, I’ve really enjoyed using it. I remember posting about how much I liked it, the first week I got it, on Reddit and mentioning that I find much more motivation than when I was making music/beats in Reason 10 & 11. Of course, a snarky internet anonymous had to come on and say “We’ll see how long that lasts….”. Well I can proudly say it’s been a long time that I’ve been putting in the work on my MPC. I am constantly in front of it creating and I don’t see an end to that anywhere in sight. I love music and I always have. I wish I’d known about MPCs in the 90s when I first got into hip hop music because I would have probably pursued a career in it. For now I just make music and DJ as a hobby, as I work in IT full time. I think that anyone that enjoys listening to music should try making it, particularly using a MPC. The satisfaction that making music from scratch can bring can’t be understated. I love finding something to sample, or playing a melody on my Arturia Keystep and adding the kick, snares, bass, hats, etc. When it all comes together nicely it really is a beautiful thing.

I’m no J-Dilla by any stretch of the imagination, but I definitely see an improvement in my music made on MPC from when I first started until now. I am constantly learning new techniques and finding inspiration from other people’s music that I listen to. The MPC is easy to pick up, but can be difficult for some to master. Some people think the workflow is convoluted and too complex, but to me it makes perfect sense. I get exactly what Roger Linn and Akai were going for in the original MPCs, and the modern ones have just taken that idea to the next level.

I would recommend a MPC One to anyone that has any interest in making music at all. It’s not that expensive in terms of how much music equipment CAN cost, and it has all the things you’ll need to get started making music. Sign up to Splice monthly subscription to get a constant fresh supply of music sounds to work with and pick up the MPC Bible as a newbie and you’ll be making fire music in no time. I’m looking forward to what the next iteration of the MPC will bring, but it brings me pleasure knowing that my MPC One will always perform as it is right now. I feel like I can do anything musically that I could imagine with the MPC and it’s plugins, expansions, and ability to utilize 3rd party sounds.

I hope this post sparks someone’s interest and that you decide to take the plunge and grab a MPC. You won’t be disappointed and you’ll get out of it whatever you put into it. I work 40 hrs a week, but when I have free time I’m either making music on my MPC One or practicing DJing. Those hobbies provide a huge stress relief and keep me feeling as happy as one could in this society with the way things are. Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!

I’m going to start meditating more to see how it affects my abilities with music. Music itself is governed by a lot of universal laws and has a lot of sacred mathematics built into it. It’s been around since the earliest civilized human beings and it’s something that, when done purely, can bring us back to our roots and back to our soul. I want to start doing more kundalini meditation in hopes to see if it helps me understand my music better. I’ve been encountering some interesting videos and articles regarding the chakras and energy centers in the body. I have done meditation before, but I need to make a serious go of practicing it. Just like anything else, you can get “better” at meditating. I know that there are negative forces in the universe that don’t necessarily want me delving in that, which will mean I’ll have to really combat negative thoughts or mind states when I start going hard with the meditation. I’m prepared for it though, and I feel that it’s the only way I can reach the next level with my personal growth and also with my music. There’s nothing new under the sun, and every song sang and beat produced has seen the light of day before. It’s all up in the ether in the Akashic records. I want to be able to tap into a higher frequency to pull that information down. Not for money or fame, but just to do it and share it. I’ll probably write about this in my personal journal daily, but I’ll update this blog as I make progress. Til next time…

Hey what’s going on there. Happy Monday ! I’m realizing that I like to help people with technical things. I work in IT and feel good when I resolve someone’s issue especially if its difficult. Also, while I’m working on my work laptop waiting for tickets or calls, I’m on my personal laptop helping people on internet forums with DJ or music production related issues. As long as you’re cool I don’t mind helping you. When you have a bad attitude, people don’t want to help you. There’s a saying that I’ve modified. “You catch more bees with honey than with hot sauce”. This is why I try to always be nice when I call a customer service or tech support line myself. I start the conversation with Good day, afternoon, night, and I always say please and thank you. Sometimes you still get bad service but a lot of times people will go out of their way to help you when you are not snappy or rude to them. I want to be treated the same way when I’m helping people. Cheers to being a helpful human being!

So I picked up a Tascam Model 12 to go alongside my MPC One and it’s been great. It allows me to produce my beats the way they do it in a real studio for minimal investment. With the type of songs I make, I don’t need a lot of channels to be able to assign samples/tracks to, but I kind of wish I had waited and picked up the Tascam Model 24 because it does have so many more channels you can work with. For right now this is fine, but as my beat making becomes more and more sophisticated, I could see myself having to upgrade to the Model 24 in order to suffice. Making music has really been a blessing to myself and apparently many others. I was reading a guys post in a MPC Facebook group I’m in and he was talking about all the mental health issues he deals with and how he gets manic and things like that, which I can definitely relate to. He was saying that making music on his MPC helps him relax and it occupies his mind when he starts to go off the deep end. I would say it’s the same for me as well. Making beats really helps me get my mind to train in on one thing and not race like it does all the time. It’s not something negative I’m focused on and I’m creating something which gives me a sense of pride. I can’t find anyone to reliably rap over my beats, so I’m considering putting pen to pad and doing it myself. Hopefully I can get the hang of it rather quickly and I can make something decent. I have a beat I’m currently working on now that I want to rhyme over, so we’ll see how it goes. If you’re interested, my beat site on Bandcamp is www.godsowndj.bandcamp.com . There’s some wack beats on there, some ok stuff, and some stuff I put effort into that you can download. 90 percent of my music is free. If it has a charge it’s because I didn’t use any samples or I paid someone to make the art for the “cover”, etc. I would suggest that if you don’t have any hobbies besides watching tv, and you enjoy music, to start making music yourself. I bet you’d find a lot of joy in it and you’ll learn a lot as well. Til next time..

I not too long ago picked up the Sony MDR 7506 headphones. They are touted for use in music production or audio production of any type really. I’ll do a more in depth review of them on my review page eventually, but I wanted to put up a post about them this beautiful 4th of July afternoon. Basically the headphones are industry standard and you can find pictures on the internet of producers like Dr. Dre, Kanye West, and others sporting them. When I got them I wasn’t sure what to expect, but after using them for a bit I see why they are so highly praised. They really do let you hear everything in the audio you are putting together. When I first got them I heard noise artifacts in a couple of tracks on a beat I was making and I was able to apply a noise gate to get rid of it. I’m not a huge fan of Dr. Dre’s beats, but his mixing and mastering is top notch. You’ll never hear a noisy, low volume track coming from that guy, and I’m sure him using these headphones is a big reason for that. You’d think headphones this highly touted would be expensive but they don’t cost that much, and Amazon has them on sale right now. If you’re into audio production of any type I highly recommend them. The word is that if they sound good on the MDR 7506s they will sound good on anything.

A relationship is not easy. When you hear that a couple has been married for 20, 50 plus years you best believe that each of them made a lot of compromises along the way. For example, my wife is a night owl. She likes to stay up until the wee hours and do arts and crafts. She enjoys the silence of the night and she feels most creative then. We live in a 1 bedroom so my DJ equipment, computer, and music production stuff is in the living room and her arts and crafts things are in the bedroom along with her desk she works at. I’ll be trying to sleep and she has her little desk lamp on which sometimes wakes me up in the middle of the night because of the brightness. I can be a light sleeper as is, and the bright light just pulls me right out of REM sleep and I’m awake for 30 mins before falling back asleep. We got into a little tiff about it the other night and I talked to a friend and they suggested I buy a dark eye mask to wear when I go to sleep. Now I could be bullheaded and say “NO!, she needs to go to sleep at a reasonable hour and stop having the light on at night”, but that would take from her one of the joys of her existence. So I got the mask and it’s going to work out just fine. She can stay up and I can get a restful nights sleep. That’s the type of stuff I’m talking about. She lets me do my annoying scratching all the time so it’s the least I can do for her. If you’re going to stay together, you have to compromise. It’s very important to not be overly stubborn with your partner. We’re all just trying to find a piece of happiness between slaving away at work and paying bills, so whatever you can do to help your partner achieve that happiness you should do. That’s it for my rant. I’ll try to post a bit more often as I always find myself saying on this blog. Still practicing my scratching and I’ve incorporated some beat juggling practice more as well. I’ll post again before the end of the week on some thoughts about what’s going on in the world right now. Til next time…..

What’s going on people? It’s been a bit but I am committed to keeping this site updated. I have a few more reviews I need to do. I upgraded from a Reloop Elite mixer to a Pioneer DJM S11 battle mixer recently in celebration of a new job I got in IT and my wife getting a bonus at work. It’s a sick mixer and I asked the Lord if I could get one to help me in my Djing some time back when it first released. I know God isn’t about material things, but I definitely put work in on the DJ equipment I get and Djing gives me something constructive to do with my free time. The idle mind can be the devils workshop so I like to keep busy with my music. I’ve been really looking into manifestation and I have a notebook where I am writing down the things I want to be in fruition. Some are personal but related to this site I want to be an amazing scratcher and turntablist so I put it out there to the universe. The numbers 3,6, and 9 are very important to the universe so I utilize them in my manifestation techniques. Some things have come to pass and I’m still plugging away at others, but it can’t hurt to do it. I definitely believe in the power of those numbers as I’ve seen them at work in a variety of aspects of life. Prayer to the Most High God is also very important so I include that in my work as well. Anyway I’m off to get in some quality practice while I’m off work, but I would definitely suggest to anyone reading to give manifestation a try. I’m going to add some more reviews to the site soon and actually update the spirituality part of the site so I can share some of the things I’ve discovered in my 40 years on this planet. Peace, love, and light to anyone reading and take care of yourself.

Hey what’s up reader? I just wanted to post a blog entry on here to keep the site going. I’m still practicing away at my scratching. I really love turntablism and the whole journey of trying to become a better scratcher and soon beat juggler. I was thinking today as I was making my coffee how lucky new DJs are. Back in the day when DJs were learning to scratch they really had no frame of reference. Think about how you have to grind and repetitively practice scratches in order to get better at them. I do it because I see Youtube videos, Instagram posts, and Facebook posts of people doing the scratches so I know it can be done. I have a goal I’m trying to reach. Back in the day before the internet or in the internet’s infancy, DJs really didn’t have much to compare to. They didn’t know if a particular scratch was possible to perfect but they kept forging forward and trying. It’s a testament to the drive of mankind. I really admire those early DJs who kept practicing and drilling and discovering new scratch patterns and fader techniques. Without them, we wouldn’t have the wealth of information we have today. It’s a great time to get into Djing and turntablism. I’m really looking forward to the day when I consider myself a good scratcher and/or beat juggler. Even better when I become great at it. Until that time comes I’ll be in front of my decks working away at it and putting in the time. Peace, love, and light to you all.

So I decided to take a scratch class with DJ Vekked, whom is a multiple time DMC World DJ champion. I learned a lot from my first session with him. In particular he showed me how important pitch was when scratching. You can ask 5 different DJs to do a chirp scratch repeatedly and if they all use different pitches it will sound different from each one of them. I would try to change up the pitch of my scratching but I’m more focused on it now. I’m drilling doing pitch changes on the scratches I know how to do and I’m already seeing better results in the sounds of my scratches. A lot of DJs don’t scratch right now because they don’t want to put the effort it takes into becoming proficient at it. You have to do the boring monotonous drills as well as the fun freestyling. I would suggest to any Dj that they give scratching a try though. You will never master it and there’s always something new to learn. Have a great rest of the week!