247 is a good friend of mine here in town, but more importantly he’s the hidden force behind a lot of great things happening in Nashville! 247 has done a lot of production for other artists around town, including my friend Spoken Nerd. I’ve told you about him before because he’s one-third of The Billy Goats. Also, he appeared on the Machismo EP.

One of my favorite things he’s done was his project with BlackatSylvesta & Ugly Lovely called Out of Place. 247 is the main lyricist in the project. You can get their entire Genetic Defects album for free by going to the Out Of Place Bandcamp page. Or just play it here.

He’s been doing a lot of video production as well. Recently, he began an online interview series highlighting some of his favorite artists around Nashville. You can catch interviews he’s done with James Fate, Bobby Exodus & Spoken Nerd on his youtube channel. Finally, I was able to “take my talents” to 247’s place and shoot an interview video plus a live performance featuring Jed Smith on drums. Take a look!

I have a lot of shows coming up in the Middle TN area. I love to play live. It’s one of the more cathartic things I do in life as an artist. I recently found out that I will be a part of Mashville in August. Mashville is the monthly DJ party here in Nashville where the best DJs play hip-hop, electronic, dubstep, and whatever other music they want. It’s always an honor to play. Here are some pictures from the last time I played Mashville.

Something odd happened at the last Mashville show. I had some fans come out to see me. After my set, they were all disappointed. One of them had brought her friends. She said, “Well I told them how awesome you were and that you had such a crazy energetic live show. But when we saw you, you were just playing records.” I was kind of taken aback. Did she not know that I was killing it? But then, I realized the problem. Normally, I don’t just DJ with records. My live show has developed into a unique blend of music, crowd engagement and performance art.

I recently learned of a term and genre for this called Live PA. The PA part stands for “Performing Artist.” This Live PA term is used to describe producers who recreate their studio environment while performing their tracks live. Usually, this is different from a typical DJ set where a DJ will play mix tracks that he might not have created himself. I do think that you can be both. Perhaps, the best DJs and Live PA artists are both. The Live PA forum states, “The “real” Live P.A.s take it further by recreating their studio sound live and have the expressive capability to improvise and change the music on the fly, because all of their instruments are right there with them on-stage.” Later, they go on to say, “…many of us grew up going to and playing in rock, jazz, and classical bands and concerts, where musicians play instruments live and put on a show for the audience. Some Live P.A.s also DJ, and some DJs also do a Live P.A., so the two performance methods go hand-in-hand for some musicians, while other more traditional musicians wouldn’t want to be caught dead behind turntables – it all depends on the person. ”
Check out Divinci of Solillaquists Of Sound

My goal as an artist and as a performer is to grow in the DJ world and the Live PA world. My favorite DJ, DJ Shadow, seems to move effortlessly between these two distinctions. For instance if you have his In Tune and On Time DVD/CD, you can see that he has lots of turntables, samplers, midi controllers; plus, he’s remixing it all live to create something completely different from the studio creation. Somehow I think this is what DJs can and should do anyway. However if you then listen to a Shadow mix such as this next one, you’ll note that he performs tracks of his own plus some other ones.
DJ Shadow In Los Angeles 10.31.09- Snippet by djshadow

Anyway! To avoid future disappointments, I will try and communicate what kind of set I will be doing. Either a Live set or a DJ set. If you see my name on a flyer with no distinction, it’s probably a live set. For instance here:

But if you see it and it says DJ set, well then obviously:

Eventually, I hope to grow to the point where this type of distinction isn’t necessary. At the same time, it’s kind of a fun problem to have. Would you rather watch a DJ set? or a Live PA set? You have any stories or comparisons? Let me know in the comments.

We are in the 6th month of a 12 month year and I wonder what I have to show for it. My dreams of doing music full time have been hanging on for dear life. Why? I could blame poor time management, insufficient hustle, cluttered workspace, etc. But I’m going to blame all of the above. Yet, these are silent killers. I wouldn’t have noticed it until the finale of LOST a couple of weekends ago. In fact, a bunch of my favorite shows ended for good this year: LOST, 24, Heroes, & FlashForward. I’ve been obsessed with watching these shows instead of getting Quiet Entertainer off the ground.

Here’s how it happens. I don’t watch TV on actual TV. I use Hulu and Yidio to watch pretty much everything I’m going to watch. I think if I watched on the regular timetable, I’d at least be able to say “oh I’ll work on music until 24 comes on.” But as it is; I can watch at anytime; and I’ve been lazy and finding an urgency to get things done. I love Hulu and Yidio, but in this case it’s been sucking all my time! I blame myself. But who could resist watching every clip and web exclusive of LOST leading up to the finale? And Jack Bauer’s finale season: How far will he go?? And a Hulu bonus! the entire series of the A-Team is on Hulu right now! Should I watch the entire series before I go see the movie in theaters?

I wouldn’t have noticed the slow death of my music career if not for a few artists. Let’s look at The Hood Internet. They recently came through Nashville on their tour. I had never heard of them before but they were booked to play Mashville, Nashville’s monthly DJ party. So, I went online to check them out and they had released 9 free mixtapes over the past 3 years! How did I miss this? So I downloaded just 4 mixtapes (for free) and I instantly had 4 hours of music to listen to. Well these guys aren’t lazy. This exact thing happened when Pretty Lights came through half a year ago. I had never heard of him, but he was coming to Nashville so I looked him up. He had four free records on his site too! I don’t know when he started but I think it’s also been 3 or 4 years his current setup. I downloaded it all and had about 4 or 5 hours of music with which to get acquainted. I’m a big fan of both now.

This discussion made me remember a blog post I read a while back from Justin over at AudibleHype.com asking Is Touring Really Necessary? I encourage artists of any genre looking to do this for a living to go read that. Long story short though, He says the five core ingredients to success without touring are:
1. Great Music
2. Easily Accessible
3. Prolific Output
4. Evangelist Fans
5. Low Overhead

I had to look around; is anyone doing this in my town? DJ Wick-It is pretty close. I think he’s got at least 4 of those 5 goin for him if not all 5. He’s got all of his (very dope hip-hop & dubstep) music available on his soundcloud page. Also, Spoken Nerd is super prolific. Since I’ve known him, he’s always put out a lot of music and is always thinking two records ahead. Check his latest from his bandcamp.

So, I am looking to these artists for inspiration. With some of my favorite shows out of the way, I have no excuse. I have to get to work and make actual music. I know my e-mail list will keep me accountable. Maybe you will too. So thankfully, I don’t have to worry about Jack Shepard OR Jack Bauer. At least not until the 24 movie comes out.

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That’s a video taken about 2 miles up the road from where I live. The large store there is Kroger where I actually used to work. The flood seemingly hit our area of Nashville (Belle Meade / Bellevue) the hardest before taking over the rest of Nashville including downtown, Opry Mills area, & Antioch along with neighboring Franklin. A lot of the water in my immediate neighborhood has gone down finally, but there is still a lot of damage and devastation. Needless to say, my thoughts have been kind of scatterbrained as I try to make sense of all of this. The updates I was going to give you throughout the week and weekend has been neglected. I’ll try and give you a quick run-through of some things I’ve been doing lately and also how this flood affects all things QE.

not a Nashville pic but you get the idea

On the night of the first rainfall, I actually got a chance to see Pretty Lights along with Gift of Gab as they both came to Nashville. Despite the flood, this show was packed. It worked out well because had I been home that night, I would have been trapped by the flood-waters. Instead, I just couldn’t go home. Pretty Lights’ show isn’t groundbreaking DJ-ing or turntablism or anything. However, you can’t argue with 2,000 screaming people. Gift of Gab was awesome. Daedulus (who I didn’t know would be there) was really great and gave me a lot of ideas. However, a true highlight for me was seeing This Is Art (Check them out on bandcamp!) perform. I just opened a show with them a couple of weeks ago. They did great in front of a large crowd and their continued success inspires me to connect with even more people.

Anyway, so the next day I foolishly tried to get a bunch of my gear and stuff to safety after the flood. As it turns out, the safest place for the gear was in the home and not in my truck. So although everything is mostly dry, I do think some moisture got inside the mixer. I will be letting it dry out. It should be good before the house show I’m playing with Details Details this Saturday. This Nashville stuff is crazy. Check out this video that a friend made. I leave you with that for now.

First, you need to know: What kind of DJ are you? What techniques and skills are most important for you? What kind of control do you need? These simple questions will guide you in your decision making. Most mixers will allow you to do all the essentials, but let’s customize a little further.

Scratching is important to me, so I want a mixer with an adjustable cross-fader curve. Here’s a quote from hiphop-directory.com:

A crossfader curve adjustment on a mixer allow you to gradually alter the way how fast a crossfader will cut in the second sound. The settings of the curve range gradually from an X-curve into an inverted U-curve. The X-curve means that when you move the crossfader from one end to the other, the sound that is playing will fade out gradually, and at the same time the sound playing on the other turntable will become louder gradually. With an inverted U-curve, as soon as you move the fader even a little off the other end, the new sound will be audible at full volume, but you will also hear the original sound in the background. Thinking of the settings visually might help in understanding it – with X-curve, both sounds increase and decrease very linearly. With an inverted U-curve, sounds cut of very abruptly at both ends of the fader, making this setting very essential for any type of scratching.

So there you have it. This was my first hard lesson in mixers. My first mixer came as part of a DJ-in-a-box kit. My friend had bought it for himself but then decided that he didn’t want to learn to DJ. I was so eager at the time AND I was getting a discount on it, so I bought the whole set from him. I didn’t realize why I wasn’t sounding like my favorite DJs. You can still learn technique with any kind of mixer, but you’ll be at a handicap if you get a DJ-in-a-box kit. I am grateful for that kit, since before then I had NOTHING and would not have ever gotten started. If you can wait, and you can get a little more money; I recommend saving up for a better quality mixer.

What else? Do you need EQ control? Effects Send & Return or even built in? How many channels do you need based on your situation? For mine, I can get by with the basic 2 channel mixer. Although for a typical show, I max out that mixer (2 sources per channel). One feature that I like to see in a mixer is a transform switch. My most recent mixer has the switch but I’ve worn it out and since the mixer is discontinued; I can’t get replacement or compatible repair parts. Long story short, each channel on a mixer can go phono or line. You can switch between the two, but you can also have a transform switch allowing you to switch quicker and you can actually “scratch” within the two sources from the same channel. Anyway, look at MixMaster Mike as he does this (at 2:00, 2:35, & 6:04):

Okay, so you know what kind of DJ you are; you know what you need your mixer to do and what features it needs to have. Now, you have to look at cost. Do you want to get buy and then try to upgrade later? Or do you save up for the best possible mixer and get it first? You might spend more money in the long run doing the buy-low/ upgrade strategy. But you make up for it because you have a mixer actually with you. Depends on how fast you can make money. While, I don’t think all mixers are created equally, I do think that if you know what you’re doing and what you need the mixer to do; you can have a great experience.

Here’s some other links I found that might help you on your search:
Tips for Choosing Your DJ Mixer
Where Can I Buy a DJ Mixer?

And here are my favorite mixers:
1. Rane TTM 57SL with Serato Scratch Live – The Crown Jewel of Mixers. Complete with Serato!
2. Vestax PMC-08Pro – This one does just about everything.
3. Vestax PMC-05ProIII VCA – Has all you REALLY need.
4. Stanton SA.3 – Stanton has pretty good mixers; usually at a lower price. I’ve used Stanton for a long time.
5.KAOSS Dynamic DJ Mixer – What’s cool about this one is the KAOSS pad built directly into it!

Okay, to recap:
1. Determine what type of DJ you are.
2. Determine what you need your mixer to do.
3. Decide what mixer features you need.
4. Look at the cost.

What do you think is important when trying to find your mixer?

Well I never got to see them until about a year later. I was doing synth and samples for a band; we ended up opening for them. Immediately, I noticed that they had a really energetic live show. The girl I was dating at the time said that the drummer scared her by how he was playing. Well, that’s a good sign. Knapsackheroes was dangerous.

We did a couple of shows together over the years. I’ve gotten to know them a little bit and they’re a great group of guys. They are actually deep students of pop culture as a whole; and between the 5 of them, they have a wide variety of musical taste. Well, we like a lot of the same bands. So I’ve been excited to get to do another show with them on March 17th at Mercy Lounge along with Details Details (a Postal Service meets Owl City electro-pop artist) and Eyes Around (rock band from Alabama).

On Monday, Vinyl Jones, the rapper in Knapsackheroes, had a stroke. He’s been in the hospital for the past couple of days. I don’t know all the specifics. I’m getting updated with the rest of the world on the Knapsackheroes facebook page. I don’t know if he’ll be okay for the upcoming show. I don’t care about a show. I just hope he’ll be alright and can recover. He’s got a loving family (complete with 8 kids) so I know he has some support. But please pray for him. Pray for his family. Pray for his band.

EDIT: He’s home from the hospital; doing physical therapy and the show will go on! Keep praying. But wow!

And check out the Knapsackheroes! EP

Machismo EP

I’m really excited and please about the Machismo EP. It’s a collection of some tracks I’ve done with some of my friends & favorite emcees. Let me tell you a bit about it, track by track:

I definitely want you to have this music. Now that you know all about it, please go ahead and click here and put your email address in there and I will send it to you!

Click here to download the “Machismo EP”

Quiet Entertainer at The Rutledge

I finally got to do a show at The Rutledge! It was a lot of fun. Robert, Frank, & Andy were very nice to me and all of my friends who came out. Thanks to them; and thanks to Tyrone Carreker, Rebecca Moreland, and Xilehom for allowing me to be on the show with them. Great people.

Click the picture above to get more pics from that night; courtesy of raywen.org

This was a cool show since I finally had J. Prodigal there. It was the first time in a while I’ve gotten to perform the tracks with J. Prodigal since Machismo starting playing on Pandora. So far, it seems like only Wildfire, I Am…, and Machismo from the Machismo EP have been getting Pandora plays. So that was cool to have him there along with James Fate.

If you haven’t heard those tracks from the Machismo EP, you can download it for free.