A few weeks ago I created the new DJ concept called; Orange Deejays; You all know of DJ’s starting and/or joining groups to perform and DJ using a group name instead of their own, for example Above & Beyond, Housequake and many, many more….

Step by step the concept is build further, but meanwhile it’s pillars must rise as well; the DJ’s and the Producers! As the starter of the concept I ‘joined’ the collective as from today, and will continue to further specify the concept and search for more (relevant;)) people to join the collective!

If you’re interested just check out OrangeDeejays.com and contact us, become a friend of us on Facebook or just simple follow us on Twitter, in either way you’ll hear from us, soon

You might have noticed the new feature on the right of this website, called ‘Music in the mix!’ (send me your sounds). It’s a cool function of SoundCloud making it possible to send me tracks via my own account. So you don’t need to login, you don’t need to pay (it’s free to upload a track!) and it’s easy to send me your tracks (your own, or just any track you like!).

So if you have any suggestions about a new cool track (house, trance, club, jazz, whatever), feel free to throw in the track title in the comments, or if you have the track, upload it into my dropbox!

Don’t forget to post your name if you want to have any credits. I’ll try to use as many tracks in the suggestions I’ll receive as possible (so tracks in my email, tracks in my dropbox, or tracks suggested in here or via my Facebook), and if some of them won’t feed neatly, I’ll try to find a great remix version (or even create my own;)).

So let’s go, send in your favorite tracks now!

Send me
your sounds

Just joking . Click on the image for a bigger one. Credits to the owner of this pic

Some of you already noticed that the APC controller mappings I’ve provided somehow don’t 100% correctly work on your APC40 with Traktor Pro. Most errors appear on the red/blue/green button sections, but also some people seem to have strange behaviour on the track selection buttons.

While I was checking out what could be the reason, I found a possible reason for all these strange behaviours; the APC40 notes-overviews are different per country and/or production batch and/or ?. Until now I’ve seen various notes-overviews, in total I’ve already noticed 3 different ones so far. I’ve no idea whether this can be set manually but nobody on any forum, nor on the Ableton or AKAI website, has any information about this. Some of you might not even care , but this makes sharing TSI and controller mappings for i.e. Ableton quite hard.

Like said before, I’ve noticed 3 different notes-overviews so far. Please let me know if you have another one than these 3 below? Feel free to share that image in the comments, I will add it to this list and give you a big ‘hooray!’

This is the notes-overview that matches my APC40, bought in The Netherlands:

Another mapping that pops up quite often, is this one which seems to come from the USA, but I’m not 100% sure of that:

The last one that I’ve noticed in a post on DJTT by just one guy is this one, from which I’ve also no clue where the original APC40 is coming from (UK?)

So already 3 versions which of course make it impossible to create a worldwide TSI. But of course what I can do is share my TSI’s including a screenshot of the APC with all functions on it, to help you a bit with how to program the TSI, how to use the modifiers, what kind of functions, fx and faders to use, etc. So regularly check out the controller mappings section for some new stuff in there!

Let me know your thoughts on this and if possible share some image/pdf on how your controllers’ notes are setup, maybe there are even more versions. Hopefully suddenly AKAI pop’s up with some intel on this, for now we are just one in music, not in sharing TSI’s…

Recently I was reading about stuff for the iPad (probably somewhere on DJTechTools) and I noticed the great touchscreen midi app (and other music stuff) which already is available for the iPad. My first thought were; I want this on my HTC desire as well!!!

So I hopped into Google and search for ‘midi Android’ and within seconds the beauty revealed itself; Fingerplay Midi! This simple program allows you to use pads, faders and xy-pads on your Android based mobile, via a wifi connection it connects to your PC in your network and enables you to use it just like any midi controller, only this time it’s wireless!

This video shows a bit of how Fingerplay Midi works. It seems like this is not the most updated version of the software as I have more xy-pads and more faders. But I believe you can also setup the layouts yourself.

You can read more about Fingerplay Midi for Android on the website of the Sundance kid, the software itself can easily be found in the Android Market (just search for Midi)

There is also another program called Android Midipad which connects via bluetooth, but I didn’t have the chance to test this yet, but of course you can give it a try yourself and be one of the first using wireless midi controller with a touchscreen, how nice!

Check out this short movie to get an impression of what you can do with this TSI already:

Most important is that you turn on 4 FX units and set 1 and 2 to chained, and the other units 3 and 4 to advanced. The rest will be selected automatically. Also set your APC40 to dumb mode or else it won’t work well! This TSI is still not a final version as many buttons and knobs still needs to be mapped, but a lot of fun can already be archieved by playing with this TSI. Note that I have a Reloop Digital Jockey II on the side so I didn’t map EQ buttons for example, but there is still room enough to map this yourself!

Have fun with this TSI which you can download via the link below:
HouseQ APC 40 Mapping – Midi Fighter Style v2.14 (APC40 MF Style).rar

Update: also check out this image, which describes the functions of the buttons

(click on the image to view the big version)

Drums please…………….

Notice the nice fader/knobs in the H and of course the funky Q which will be my avatar!

I checked his website which contains a big pile of information about using Ableton, DJing with Ableton, creating sounds with Ableton Live and much more.

Next to those movies, you can also download great Ableton Livesets, which not only include the set but also the examples. You really need to check out his DJ Megaset (version 1.0) which is also downloadable for free, and contains a lot of cool tricks with Ableton effects, loops and more.

As I have a APC40 I mapped a lot of stuff myself, but those tracks and loops in this set are great and I enjoyed playing with it (the style is a bit underground, techy, maybe even club/techno style. Great and pumping if you ask me). So check out that link and enjoy his stuff!

So I’ll share my experience since I’m a newby in producing music, but not in music itself. After DJ’ing for many years (nothing big though), I now also want to create some stuff. Just for fun and feel free to join me in this ‘musical exploration’ (blah blah).

See ya!