I just wanted to give everyone a little heads up on what’s going on at BeginnerDJ.
I figure it I owe it to everyone to keep them in the loop.
First off, thank you so much for reading BDJ. It’s great to see so many people visiting the site and commenting on the posts. I really appreciate it, it keeps me going
So, I’m sure you’ve noticed a few things that have popped up on BDJ but if not, I figure they’re worth mentioning.
The BeginnerDJ Shop
After getting asked a bunch of times for recommendations for gear, books, music and more, I figure it would be great to include a shop for BeginnerDJ.
This store is a simple Amazon store built into the site.
It does mean that anything you buy will earn me some affiliate cash, I don’t want to keep you in the dark about that.
The additional money that comes in through Amazon will ultimately come back to you in the form of gear reviews, being able to attend parties and write about them and so much more.
I recently found a great plugin called PS Auto Sitemap which allows me to place a single line of code to generate a sitemap on the site.
Up until now I’ve been using Google XML sitemaps for the search engines but I wanted you to be able to read back through the archives without having to click from page to page.
I created a Facebook page for BeginnerDJ a while back but never got around to placing it on the site.
As you can see, it is up on the site currently.
I did this because RSS and Email subscriptions just don’t really cut it anymore. A lot of people may have no idea how to use RSS or don’t want to read posts through their Email. I figure a Facebook page would be great because everyone already has an account.
I’ve been a bit hesitant about placing more Google Adsense ads on the blog because I don’t want them to distract you from the content.
In the end, I wanted to have a nice block on the sidebar and toward the bottom of the post.
Again, much like the BDJ Shop, this is mostly just to pay the bills and so I can pick up new gear to review for you guys.
Also, if it gets to the point where it pulls in any additional money, I’d love to hold contests for everyone. I’d love to eventually hold a contest where someone can win a full set of decks!
I want everyone to voice their opinion about the ads, if you don’t like them, speak up and I’ll remove them. Remember, the blog is for your benefit, not some advertiser.
BDJ Input and Suggestion
Over the last few months I’ve been able to talk to a lot of great people.
Some of these people have been DJs, avid readers and people really interested in the music – big ups for them!
If you ever have any post suggestion, guest post, things you want to share or comments, please fire away – I’m always open to new ideas and helping others get promoted.
Thanks again
Just wanted to thank everyone again for a great reception of this blog. I’ll continue to do my best to provide some really great content.
Keep checking it out in the future for more posts, reviews, interviews and more. As it builds up, I hope to be able to give more back to everyone so keep up the support!
If there’s one thing that I can’t get enough of are the comments on Dubstep tunes on YouTube. These comments generally try to 1 up each other in terms of filth, it’s utterly hilarious.
No surprise that there has been quite a few funny “How to dance to dubstep” videos popping up. Sure we could watch people that could actually dance but who cares, right? That’s why you wanna take the most ironic video and add in a filthy tune – pure comedy gold.
I know what you’re thinking: “Who the hell is Bruce Haack?“.
Many consider Bruce Haack as one of the pioneers of Electronic Music. Haack’s experimentation with synthesisers gave us a unique sound unheard of at its time. Haack invented his own synthesisers, produced many albums and was a genius.
I have no shortage of crazy friends that are obsessive about electronic music but the one that takes the cake is my good bruv Dez.
Dez is one of those guys that just eats, sleeps and breathes for the music. I get messages at 4am linking me to a YouTube vid, some buried web page and DJ sets from the darkest parts of the internet.
This is the guy that would become an electronic music historian if he ever stopped listening and started talking about it.
Recently he messages me frantically about how he had the urge to visit a local vinyl shop because an Italo Disco track was in, what he found was beyond his expectations.
Digging through the Hawtin section, he came across 3 colossal finds:
F.U.S.E. – Dimension Intrusion
Plastikman – Krakpot
M&G – When I Let You Down
Rushing home he threw down the tracks and while listening, out popped the linear notes.
The dark and twisted world of Detroit clashed with his mind as he read through them. Fuck the metal city mayhem, it was the Techno pioneers which gave rise to what Detroit was really all about.
Worlds of the machine poured out of the words compelling him to share with us what the notes said:
Detroit 1990
From a dark self-destructive city comes a haunting futuristic soundtrack. Collages of inter-active grooves spewed forth by machines and men, cyber-active, abstract dance rhythms, spoken by samplers with a human touch.
Even in it’s North American spiritual home, Techno has never been readily accepted, never acknowledged as the important musical advance that the rest of the world appreciated it as and when Detroit’s original legion of techno messengers headed overseas to spin their gospel to Europe, enticed by more receptive audiences, the Seventh City was left without a monarchy to bear it’s crown.
Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva, two friends from across the river in Canada had been regularly crossing the short distance to Detroit to visit the clubs that these techno legends – namely Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Sauderson – had been playing at.
Richie realised this gaping hole could not be allowed to exist and thus set about installing himself as one of the city’s resident Techno DJ’s at a club called The Shelter.
In 1990, armed with this combination of DJ’ing experience, the inspiration derived from the previous Detroit musicians and armfuls of bedroom demo tapes, the pair, also realising the back-seat that the distinquished Detroit record labels like Transmat, Metroplex, and KMS were taking, decided to set up their own label as further means of keeping the Detroit faith intact.
Thus, +8 Records was born. It’s aim; to release pure, earnest Techno music. But the Canadian pair needed an identity, after all how many technospotters could familiarise with Windsor? The message on the records made it clear, this was ‘The Future Sound of Detroit’.
Throughout 1990/91 when piano anthems, quickly disappearing white labels and throwaway rave-pop began to make an impressionable appearance, the meaning of Techno became distored and abused.
The release material that may get lost in the mountains of hype, or became trapped in the fast-buck-beats, losing grasp of the ideals that had launched them in the first place. Just like in the days of Transmat, Nu Groove, and Metroplex, +8 gave techno enthusiasts a label in which they could purchase without even breaking into tit’s shrink-wrapping.
With each +8 release devotees knew that quality came without question, and here was a label that truly represented Detroit in the ninties, a label with minimal sampling but maximum inventiveness.
Tracks like Cybersonik’s ‘Technarchy’ (Hawtin/Acquaviva and friend Daniel Bell), a record which subsequently gave Belgium it’s cue to unleash a thousand records emblazoned with thick synth signals, came pressed up alongside thermionic blazes like ‘Melody 928.V2’ and spacey sub-stations like Speedy J’s ‘Evolution’. In techno speak, they say it’s the spaces inbetween that count.
It was the 1991 compilation ‘From Our Minds To Yours’, that gave away man clues to previously untapped ears. Thirteen tracks which opened doors and thoughts that relayed messages through their common denominator Roland communicators. It also began to bring to attention the F.U.S.E. pseudonym that Richie Hawtin had begun to use for his solo projects.
Richie had already released one F.U.S.E. single, the electromagnetic ‘Approach & Identify’ EP, four tracks of experimental illusions aimed at loading information into the cerebal brainwaves and transferring them into complex body beats.
Now stamped with a new sloganeering acronym, ‘Futuristic Underground Subsonic Experiments’, ‘From Our Mind To Yours’ included two further F.U.S.E out of mind and body experiences.
The influence of acid has never left Hawtin and if anybody is remotely responsible for the resurgances of the Roland TB303 and the surreal sounds it releases then surely +8 and Hawtin along with fellow Detroiters, the often fear-inducing Underground Resistance, must share much of the blame.
Richie has often taken the 303 to a new dimension, either creating liquid scopes, slowed down into a sea to electro bubbles, as demonstrated on ‘Slac’, or “substance Abuse’, a technofloor dominator in 1991, or ‘Circuit Breaker’ another of his other outlets for ruthless ideas, released on +8’s harder dance subsidiary Probe, set up to deal in well weighted chunks of industrial slanted Techno.
Misuse machines? Richie manages to make them maon, groan and explode in your head.
‘Dimension Intrusion’ is an impressive array of sub-world disturbances and discreet musical mechanics. But these are no jejune rave tunes, these are timeless pieces of abstract dance that can be placed on file, called up in years to come still bearing the same effect as on their initial impact.
As Richie will tell you himself, ‘Techno is from the gut and is full of emotion’. In reality Techno has no regionally identifiable factors, Techno is a gospel shared globally, hence Warp’s interacting here with +8, a musical communication beamed across continents, shared with similar minds.
Considering their output, the majestic quality of the music, Hawtin’s and +8’s profile has been strictly contained to the techno underworld and in reality this is where they truly belong.
Their releases will never chart, they are aimed at appreciative, receptive ears and mightly sales sheets do not count for imagination and true musical emotion.
Perhaps they are best left that way, to be discovered slowly through connections like this one.
If you’ve only just discovered the names of Richie Hawtin, John Acquaviva and +8 Records, then retrace their steps. Research through their back catalogue reveals a forcefield of intrigue, of singular sonic detonations linked through a common law. From then on retrace the steps of the musicians that they too have discovered and given vital vinyl space to, people like Daniel Bell & Jochem Paap aka Speedy J.
In the meantime plug in ‘Dimension Intrusion’ and blow a few fuses.
Sherman, NME, April 1993
“Neuromancer,” the boy said, slitting long gray eyes against the rising sun.
Detroit may be nothing more than a shell of an expirement gone wrong but the people that have circuit in their veins feed on the dark and dank energy.
Don’t ever forget that, perhaps, the worlds most important musical movement came from the rubbles of a forgotten city.
Every year DJ Mag puts on another contest to determine the top 100 DJs and every year it’s nothing but bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong, I do agree with some of the ranks of the DJs that made the cut but for year after year, but we see the same DJs that don’t really deserve to be up there.
Many of these DJs just rehash their sets over and over again, some of them put on some of the lamest shows you’ll ever see, at a certain point it became about the name and not the music.
It’s all a popularity contest. If you’ve got 1 million fans on Facebook, you can bet your ass you’re going to make it on the list.
What people should be doing, in my opinion, is using this list as a base. From there, people should be exploring deeper into the genres of the DJs that make the list. There are thousands of DJs and producers out there that will blow your mind.
Here is the list for the 2009 Top 100 DJ List:
Edit: I removed the comments because I’m tired of getting pissy comments – it’s just a list guys, chillllll.
1. Armin van Buuren
2. Tiesto
3. David Guetta
4. Above & Beyond
5. Paul van Dyk
6. Deadmau5
7. Ferry Corsten
8. Markus Schulz
9. Gareth Emery
10. Sander van Doorn
11. ATB
12. Infected Mushroom
13. Sasha
14. Axwell
15. Andy Moor
16. Bobina
17. John Digweed
18. Carl Cox
19. Cosmic Gate
20. Steve Angello
21. Roger Shah
22. Aly & Fila
23. Paul Oakenfold
24. John O’Callaghan
25. Sebastian Ingrosso
26. Benny Benassi
27. Laidback Luke
28. Richie Hawtin
29. Fedde Le Grand
30. DJ Feel
31. Lange
32. Hernan Cattaneo
33. Daft Punk
34. Eric Prydz
35. Bob Sinclar
36. Joachim Garraud
37. Kyau & Albert
38. James Zabiela
39. Umek
40. Christopher Lawrence
41. Eddie Halliwell
42. Simon Patterson
43. Offer Nissim
44. Judge Jules
45. Sean Tyas
46. Dubfire
47. Martin Solveig
48. Sven Vath
49. Richard Durand
50. Marco V
51. Kaskade
52. Tydi
53. Erick Morillo
54. Matt Darey
55. Astrix
56. Menno de Jong
57. The Thillseekers
58. Nick Warren
59. Dirty South
60. Roger Sanchez
61. Mark Knight
62. Wally Lopez
63. Leon Bolier
64. Blank & Jones
65. Justice – get out of here
66. Laurent Wolf
67. Astral Projection
68. Boys Noize
69. Ronski Speed
70. Sander Kleinenberg
71. Ricardo Villalobos
72. Chuckie
73. Sharam
74. Marcel Woods
75. Lisa Lashes
76. Moonbeam
77. Rank 1
78. Sebastien Leger
79. Marcus Schossow
80. Steve Lawler
81. Skazi – Skazi blows
82. Super8 & Tab
83. Pete Tong
84. Tocadisco
85. Sied van Riel
86. Tiga
87. Daniel Kandi
88. Mike Koglin
89. Luciano
90. Yahel – Yahel blows
91. Myon & Shane 54
92. John B
93. Simon Posford
94. Fatboy Slim
95. Robbie Rivera
96. Antoine Clamaran
97. Nic Fanciulli
98. Gui Boratto
99. Alex M.O.R.P.H.
100. Andy C
The real problem with this list is there is so much lack of genre.
It’s all the mainstream genres that always make the top 100 list over and over again.
As the list matures, I’m sure we’ll begin to see a wider range of genres and DJs that you’ve never seen on the list. Until then, it’s all one big wank.
Anyway, someone stop me from ranting. Just enjoy the music and don’t worry about the persona of the DJ. Put your back towards him as he plays and let the music take you, not the gimmicks the play on stage.
About 2 years ago I set off on an online journey to find a decent pair of headphones, little did I know that by the end of my journey I’d almost get fired in the process.
It was 2008 and I was getting weary of the basic headphones I found at the local retail stores and the ones that came packaged with MP3 players.
My roommate was increasingly getting annoyed by the loudness of my music so I decided I better invest in a decent pair of headphones instead of getting kicked out.
Previously I had my computer hooked up to some basic computer speakers and a sub woofer, it provided enough high end and bass to keep me satisfied with my music but I always noticed the clarity of the audio just wasn’t all that cracked up to be.
After spending long hours online reading forums about bit rates, frequency and general audiophile tips I convinced myself that I’d spend at least $150 for a new pair of headphones.
You may be saying: “150 bucks for a pair of headphones? What are you, stupid?” but these types of comments generally come from people that don’t really care about music.
Many people are contempt with listening to 192 kbps rips of their favorite music, which is perfectly fine but I wanted to hear everything as the artist intended.
There’s nothing quite like listening to a Vinyl rip of Dark Side Of The Moon and hearing minute breathing and the hum of the guitars in between the notes.
I started ripping my music collection in FLAC. I wasn’t going to settle for low bit rate music. This movement was spurred by old audiophile forums and a few tracker forums (rest in peace Oink).
The problem I had with ripping my music in FLAC was that I didn’t have the appropriate gear to listen to them correctly.
After scouring forums for hours, lurking in topics about best headphones and comparison posts I decided I was going to buy a pair of Sennheiser HD555s.
At the time I was torn between a pair of Grados (I can’t remember which pair) but what appealed to me was the closed eared form. I needed to make sure that the majority of the sound coming out wasn’t going to be escaping for my roommate to hear.
I jumped online and began to comparison shop for a pair. I checked MusiciansFriend and other major online music gear retailors but I finally ended up choosing Amazon for the list price and the free shipping at the time.
Anxiously I waited for a week. When the brown box finally arrived in the mail, I quickly ripped it open like some sort of banshee.
I ran over to my computer but then I completely froze.
I didn’t know what I wanted to listen to first.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever had this type of musical paralysis but for those of you that have experienced it, you know how nerve wracking it can be.
I didn’t want to just throw on any music, I wanted to make sure I broke my new pair in on something that I would be able to distinguish the quality while enjoying it.
I finally settled on listening to my copy of Hallucinogen – Twisted. I knew I made the right choice.
I laid down on my bed with the chord stretching across the room (it’s about 6ft long!). It was a perfect day, the clouds were blocking out the sun so the room was nice and dark – very loungy.
What I heard and thought I really can’t describe. I was so happy that I could hear all these small bits of music I never really noticed before. The songs I thought I knew completely changed with new context and depth.
This is where the story gets a little weird and funny. I was so wrapped up in going through my music collection that before I knew it, it was nearly 5 a.m. and I had to be up for work in an hour.
Going off of no sleep, I said screw it and continued to listen to my albums. The clock hit 6 and so I rushed out the door, no shower, no breakfast, only with a really great buzz of listening to music all night long.
I got to work just in time but I still got chewed out, oh well. That afternoon getting home, I did the same thing.
In all, the Sennheiser HD555’s are one of my most favorite purchases ever. They completely opened up a whole new world of music.
I highly suggest you invest in a proper pair of headphones. You’ll be able to hear your music like you never imagined.
I still have my pair today I’ve moved back into using speakers as my main way of listening to music – partly because I can blast my music.
Every once in a while I’ll throw on the old pair and give a few of my favorite albums a listen or two.
I know this may have sounded like a silly affair with my headphones but I can bet you’ve had a similar experience.
We got the new year/decade coming up so lets use this time to reflect on the last 10. DJing has come a long ways in the last decade so who knows where it will be in 10 more.
We all have that one point in our lives where something amazing happens – this moment was when I first heard Electronic Music.
I wish I could remember the first song I heard but one that I remember clearly was The Prodigy – Breathe. I think I remember this one so well because the first time I saw it come on MTV my grandma yelled at me for listening to that “devil music”.
I wanted to share a video I found yesterday while rummaging through the net.
If you don’t know who The Flashbulb is, I highly suggest checking out his songs. The albums are pure bliss, perfectly crafted and a perfect blend of electronic/jazz/ambient and so many other genres.
Go check out his Discogs right now. Really, do it. Go on
