serious side effects

The making of…

djrocket — Mon, 17 May 2010 01:20:48 +0000

A few folks have asked where I got the samples for the remixes I made in the last post, so here’s the scoop:

Track: Little Brother – Whatever You Say (DJ Rocket Remix)

Little Brother – Whatever You Say (DJ Rocket Remix) by DJ Rocket

Original: The Isley Brothers – Voyage To Atlantis

Track: Dilated Peoples – Love & War (DJ Rocket Remix)

Dilated Peoples – Love & War (DJ Rocket Remix) by DJ Rocket

Original: The Sylvers – Cry of a Dreamer

Track: Nas – 2nd Childhood (DJ Rocket Remix)
Nas – 2nd Childhood (DJ Rocket Remix) by DJ Rocket

Original: Chaka Khan – Roll Me Through the Rushes

Chaka Khan – Roll Me Through the Rushes

(The sample was taken near the end, if you’re wondering why nothing sounds familiar.)

Enter the Remix

djrocket — Sun, 02 May 2010 22:28:45 +0000

In my limited spare time, I put some beats together and remixed a few of my favorite tracks. Check out Supernova – EP:

Supernova by DJ Rocket

(If the SoundCloud player doesn’t work, hit up the albums section to get your downloads.)

Official “Tired of Hearing This Song” Post

djrocket — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:11:14 +0000

Sorry, “Empire State of Mind,” I leave you with this, hoping I don’t have to hear you ever again.

Hitting the motherload

djrocket — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:10:14 +0000

Youtube user SilvaGunner has an insane collection of console game background music. Yeah, deny all you want, but you had to have played some of these games as a kid. Nostalgia trip time!

Dirpy makes it easy

djrocket — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:29:33 +0000

Remember that whole sampling YouTube thing? Well Dirpy does all the prep work of sampling a YouTube video. No need for extra software, just enter a URL and it’ll convert it to an MP3 for you.

Hard Drive Crash

djrocket — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:30:31 +0000

FFFFUUUUUUUUU-

I have backups, but the recovery will take some time. It seems I’ll be taking a little vacation from mixing, sampling, or anything else that requires doing something creative on my computer.

Sampling YouTube – if you have to, it works

djrocket — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:22:53 +0000

Sure, if you had the money, equipment, and access to dope record stores around town, you will find some sick sampling material.

This guy. More skills than you.

However, if you’re like me and have none of these things, you have to get creative. The audio for a lot of these YouTube vids have improved considerably. It’s not audiophile quality or anything but, considering that some of these videos are of music from several decades ago, the source isn’t going to be all that great anyway. In the end, ripping the audio track off of YouTube videos can be a pretty good way to find a sample. Here’s how to do it. Did I mention for free?

You will need two things:

A simple video extraction program. For Mac, I use MPEG Streamclip. There’s also a Windows version. Both are free.
A simple audio editing program. You probably already have one, but if you don’t, get Audacity. Again, free.

Finally, you need to save the YouTube video to your computer. This is actually very easy thanks to PwnYouTube. Simply add “pwn” before “youtube” on any video link. Lets say you want to sample the audio off of this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx8Ya2VNk2k

Just add “pwn”:

http://www.pwnyoutube.com/watch?v=Vx8Ya2VNk2k

The site makes a link of the video you can save to your computer. MPEG Streamclip can handle both video formats PwnYouTube outputs.

In MPEG Streamclip, select the section of video you want and go to File -> Export Audio.

That’s it! From there, you can use your audio editing program to convert it to whatever file type suits you. Plug that into your sampling software and you’re good to go.

Badly needed update

djrocket — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:51:52 +0000

First off, to answer a few of the comments on the Auto-Tune post, Ableton Live and Antares Auto-Tune have been updated to newer versions of the ones I wrote about many months ago. The walkthrough is probably old. I intend to write a new one, but haven’t had the time.

The reason I haven’t had time is because 1) work and 2) I’m making an instrumental album! A select few already have a rough cut. It’s going to be really short: 10-12 tracks, and probably not all that good. But, it has been a lot of fun to make and I hope people enjoy it.

My last session recording the album

Keep checking this page. It’ll be out some time in the next month or so.

Well, at least I tried…

djrocket — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:44:56 +0000

Well, RPM is over and I failed miserably – barely got 5 tracks down. The good thing that came out of this was learning a better approach to making music – having never done this before. Either way, I’ll keep trying to make beats and post them up here!

…And another one:

‘Nati Soul

Beats! (sort of)

djrocket — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 02:31:24 +0000

I’m giving the RPM Challenge a shot. The idea is to make an album (at least 10 tracks) in a month. Of course, they picked the shortest month of the year. So far I’m 1/5th of the way there!

“Never Felt This Way”

“Cave Party”