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I mentioned briefly in my last post that I had ordered a new PA system. Well, it arrived yesterday. In a huge great big package, on a palette! (A palette, for those of you who don’t know, is basically a wooden base which big packages can be strapped to so they can be more easily lifted by forklifts and the like). I should have taken a picture actually, but still.

I managed to get it inside (the sub came in a huge box which I wasn’t capable of lifting – I basically had to walk it all the way inside!), and then unpack everything. The system is basically an HK Audio package from Thomann (based in Germany). I bought an amp from them before and it was pretty decent, so I didn’t have any issues with buying from them again.

The last time I had a PA system, I had an amp with a couple of speakers. This time round I wanted to get an active (powered) system so I didn’t have to lug an amp round as well – basically it’s a bit more hassle-free. The package consists of one active 300W subwoofer – which contains all the electronics (and is why it’s so heavy!) – two 150W satellite speakers. Also included are speaker stands, cables and carry bags (a pretty good deal for the price). I also bought a Shure SM58 microphone for live work, and some cables to connect up my mixer.

I tested it out yesterday – at pretty low volume – and it all sounded good. Nice balanced sound, not too overpowering, and generally quite well rounded. Essentially what I’m saying is, I’d make a terrible audio engineer but it sounded good to my ears at least!

So I’m really happy with it. The first proper usage of it will come at my sister-in-law’s wedding in June, and I think it’s easily up to the job! The idea is that after that, I might be able to do the odd wedding gig here and there, I don’t want to loads of them but it might be a useful money earner from time to time.

Anyway, in other news, Phil and I went to see the Assistant DDO (Diocesan Director of Ordinands) on Tuesday evening. He was very nice and we had a good chat about my application and how the process was going to work. It’s quite exciting stuff actually, I have a few things to do. He even recommended that I started looking for colleges – which hadn’t really even crossed my mind! So I’ll definitely have to start doing some research. So, watch this space for developments on that front!

Well, this has been a rather eventful weekend! On Friday night, Laura and AJ (the youth leaders at Fordham) were both away so we had 21 to run ourselves. It went pretty well considering! The kids seemed to enjoy it. The only problem was, the burglar alarm went off half way through our game [I should hasten to add at this point that there were, predictably, no burglars. Still don't know why it went off]. We had to leave the building and have the talk outside… fortunately it was such a nice evening, this was possible!

Anyway. On Saturday afternoon we headed out to a wedding. Unusually, it wasn’t of people we actually knew… at Ian and Lucy’s wedding last year we met a couple called Tim and Sue. They liked my DJing at the wedding, and got in touch earlier this year to ask whether I’d be up for DJing at their wedding. I said yes, and so on Saturday we went along to the wedding and then I DJ’d at the reception (note: it’s not usual practice for wedding DJs to go to the wedding service – but in this case, as Ian and Lucy were going and we were invited along, we thought it would be nice to go). Anyway, it seemed to go really well. I played most of the cheesy classics and at the end of the night there were still plenty of people dancing. In fact, I think people were a bit disappointed when it was all over – although I hasten to add I think that wasn’t just up to the disco. It was a lovely day in general – the first wedding I’ve been to where the wedding breakfast was a picnic outside!

On Sunday morning we went to church as per usual. Then in the afternoon we spent some much-needed time in the garden, relaxing and doing a lot of general tidying up which we’ve not had much time for recently. Then, we headed out to Sunday@6 which was a communion service – done in the early church style over a meal! It was really good actually – having communion in a meal style setting, as they would have done in the first 100 years or so of the church. I’d quite like to try it again.

Afterwards we had a quick music practice for next week’s youth service, and then we came back home to watch Top Gear. I thought it was really good this week – I can’t believe how much the insurance premiums are for 17 year old drivers! I thought it was bad for me, but some of the quotes they received were absurd – £8,000 was one! Come to think of it, I was first insured permanently when I was 20/21, so perhaps it was slightly cheaper for me – only around £1000 for my first year… I’m so glad I’m now over 25 and have a few years of no claims bonus!

I mentioned a month or so ago that I’d bought some new CD Decks. This is my first mix using those decks. I’ve had fun digging through my old CD collection, and this is a result of that. Almost all of the tunes are back from when I was buying CDs (2001 and before), a few of them are newer but not many.

The link is here (MP3, about 1h 10m, 100MB or so)

Here’s the tracklist:

1. Hybrid – The Formula of Fear (Original)
2. Mike Monday – Can U Play Bass
3. LeAnn Rimes – Suddenly (Riva Remix)
4. Delerium – Underwater (Rank 1 Remix)
5. Lange – Drifting Away (Lange Sunset Dub)
6. Push – The Legacy
7. The Thrillseekers – Synaesthesia (En-Motion Remix)
8. Jan Johnston – Flesh (DJ Tiesto Remix)
9. Delerium – Heaven’s Earth (Matt Darey Remix)
10. Three Drives (On a Vinyl) – Sunset on Ibiza (Above & Beyond Remix)
11. Rob Dougan – Clubbed to Death (Hybrid Remix)

It’s probably not the smoothest mix I’ve ever done, but it’ll have to do for now ;)

Hope you enjoy, leave a comment here if you like it :)

On Tuesday, I ordered two Pioneer CDJ-200 DJ decks. I decided that, as I’d been invited to DJ at a few weddings recently, having my own pair of CD decks would be very useful. (At some point I will need to get a PA rig as well).

Anyway, they arrived yesterday, so I gave them a try out. It’s great fun! DJing with CDs is a bit different to DJing with vinyl, and I still hadn’t quite got used to it by the end, but I’m definitely getting there. The tempo slider has a good degree of accurace (0.02%) – obviously not as good as my old analog Technics but probably not enough to make a huge difference.

It was quite strange actually, yesterday – when I was doing my A-Levels I bought a whole load of trance and dance CD singles which I hoped to one day DJ with. Then I went away to university and started buying vinyl and that’s what I cut my DJing teeth on. But yesterday I got all my old CDs out, and it was a bit weird – DJing using CDs I’d bought ages ago before I’d actually started DJing! It made me feel all nostalgic actually. I do miss DJing but at least I’ve got the piano / guitar to play with, which gives me a musical creative outlet. (Not that I’m very creative…)

Still, now that I’ve got the CD decks I will hopefully be able to do a bit more DJing and perhaps get back into it! One of the ‘problems’ with vinyl is that it’s so expensive – these days you can download MP3s of tunes you want and burn them to CD (the CDJ200s even play MP3s!), which makes the whole experience much cheaper.

Anyway, I’ll stop rambling on now!

Those of you with excellent memories will remember that I DJ’d at Ian and Lucy’s wedding in May. It wasn’t a long set, but a couple of the people there are getting married this year and have got in touch asking me if I would like to DJ at their wedding. The only drawback with asking me is that I don’t have my own PA system (given that I’m not really a mobile DJ).

Anyway, apparently one of their friends is a sound engineer and can provide a PA, so it looks like I will be able to DJ there after all. I will also probably get a few bits of new equipment – CDs and MP3s are all the rage these days (vinyl seems to be on the way out, unfortunately) so I think I will try and get some CD decks – I’ll post up when I have some more info about that.

I actually have been flirting with the idea of getting more of my own equipment and advertising myself as a wedding DJ, still not sure whether that would be a good idea or not though. Still, you do see so many … well, crap wedding DJs – I’m sure I would do a better job than some of them (trust me, it wouldn’t be hard – one friend of ours saw a wedding DJ basically put on a playlist and then spend half the time stuffing his face at the BBQ there)! At the same time, if you have to play the same old cheesy stuff week in week out I’m sure you would get bored of it, hence why some wedding DJs seem rubbish – they’ve just got bored of the same old crap which people actually like and want to try something different which people don’t like!

Ah well, decisions decisions…

Just a bit of site news: I have removed the “DJ Stuff” section of this website, because it was basically useless and hadn’t been updated in ages. I don’t really do DJing any more, so it was a bit useless to have the section up on the website.

In other news, I’ve been having a few problems since upgrading to Ubuntu 8. I think it might be to do with the Flash plugin, but I don’t seem to be able to view YouTube videos anymore. Not only that, but I seem to be having problems accessing certain pages on Facebook (i.e., the Inbox and Compose Message). This might be a problem with Firefox Beta 4 – I had more success with Opera, but it wasn’t 100%.

Still, the Flash plugin on Linux has always been the source of problems – I’ll look into it soon and I’m sure it will be a matter of installing the “official” Adobe Flash plugin for Linux.

I’ve done a new mix! It’s dnb:

1. Black Sun Empire – ?
2. Kinetic – Mystery
3. Blame – Spartacus
4. Trevelyan & Icarus – Fruit X
5. DJ Flatliner – Moody Horizons
6. DJ Evol – Praise Jah
7. Jamal – Real DJs
8. Zero Tolerance – Conquest
9. FX909 – Desperate Angel
10. Black Sun Empire – ?
11. Roni Size – Sorry For You

You can download it here!

Quick post… I know I’ve been fairly quiet on the DJing front the past couple of months. Well, fear not. The past couple of weeks I’ve bought a bunch of DnB records. The world hasn’t seen the last of DJ Phill S yet… ;-)

I’ve done a new breaks mix :-) It starts off kind of funky and then gets all Nu-Skool towards the end. It’s even got an old-skool sounding kind of garagey track in there (see if you can spot it…)

You can download the MP3 from here (about 55MB, 128kbps, 60:34 minutes long).

Tracklist is here:

01. Locust – Plague
02. DJ Icey – Form & Function
03. DJ Isy vs DJ Rasco – Bad Beats (Future Funk Squad Remix)
04. Cut & Run – Loneliness
05. Baobinga vs Pablo Beatz – Together
06. Far too Loud vs Specimen A – Soldiers At War
07. DJ Icey – One Foot Skank (Autobots Remix)
08. Magnet Men – Square Hole
09. D-Ranged – Ambitions of a Ghost
10. Ctrl Z vs Screwface – Kung Fu Riddim
11. CNM – Outta Control
12. Autobots vs Screwface – Burn
13. Stormtrooperz – Coming Back (D-Ranged Remix)

Enjoy! Any feedback is appreciated, please feel free to leave a comment if you’ve downloaded the mix :)

I’ve done a new mix! It’s breaks (as per usual), bit more on the funky side this time though!

TRACKLIST

01. Specimen A – Blow Ya Head
02. Drummatic Twins – Pumped Up Funk
03. Shifty – Turn it Up
04. Deep Impact – Out of Control
05. Smithmonger – Straight out of Burnie
06. Offkey – Red Alert
07. Autobots – This World
08. Phrenetic – Flatline
09. Unknown – Wind it Up
10. Cut & Run – Pink
11. D-Ranged – Hell Hats

DOWNLOAD

MP3, approx 50 MB (right click, save target as)