Show me your gear!

[Alojzy Kowalczyk]

Just got me this little fella. Zappy lazers and mean kicks!

[verdroid]

that little thing rocks, most beautiful filter on it (ms-20)
still i don't get it how they manage in such a corporation to put the in and out so close to each other :(

snm, that's what i call porn-pictures. (keyboard now wasted by cum)

[SNM]

snm, that's what i call porn-pictures. (keyboard now wasted by cum)

I got to go and visit most of my old "babies" when I recently stayed a few weeks with my Uncle whom I let "Babysit" for me while I was up round' Cincinnati way looking for work. There all still doing well it was a tearful re-union for me lots nob knob tweeking and fader sliding going on for a few days. But all in all they are happy camper's. My Uncle has been putting them to good use along with my old monster deasktop and sample/DAW/VST library, We may just be hearing from him sometime in the near future...

[Mina]

Let's go for a lil' overview of my stuff. I love my machines so much, all of it has a name =)

Well, here is my gear desk, with a part of my devices. A bit old, but I still have some of these


Here so oh-so-dear Coco, my Archos recording device, RIP now... :'( It was very small and able to encode live in DivX, it was SO usefull. Now I really have problems to record my live mixes...


My Edirol V4, it's a video mix device (you can see I have yellow tapes on my stuff, it's for live configuration, to be sure not to forget anything at the end of the night when I have to take back all my wires and devices to go back home)


This a mini screen to be able to preview my video out without breaking my neck by looking behind. SUPER usefull! (Chinese people, thank you so much for all this super mini stuff you make)


My HP Touchsmart laptop, I control it by hand, wich is not the best point because when I play live, the music bass makes the touching screen not work good (vibrations), the best part is that I can turn the screen and put it down on the keyboard, wich is easier to play with


The Wedge reverb device SNM gave me <3


My oh-so-dear (again) Kaosssilator (another SNM's gift) wich I make live music happenings (especially when I'm drunk, in the garden, the neighbors hate me for sure, but aliens may land there one day, called by the strange sounds I make)


My previous live configuration. My computer and my video mix has changed now


Me and my Behringer <3


Our Alesis Multimix8 USB, this photo I took to remember how to plug the Wedge on it ;)


A lil device I love : my Polaroid Pogo printer, super useful to turn photos into small stickers!!! :3


The "brain waves reading" device I worked on last year to try to plug a video mix into it... Impressive but absolutely impossible to work with, mainly because the brain inputs are not stable at all, and I can't control anything with it,it's just a bunch of various variations that are super hard to interpret into real "command" to my software.



And my private collection of ancient devices


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! >JOKING< OK,I had the amazing chance to see and touch these wonderful objects one time in one of my client's private collection, these are real antique devices, mainly for boat navigation, I guess if you read this topic you like machines as I do, and you can understand how happy I was to be able to see, touch, and take photo of this...

Well... here is my love for my electronic devices ;)

[verdroid]

mackie thump 15 - m audio keyrig 49 - half broke bcf2000- behringer vmx 200 - cheap sennheiser mic

tascam as 144mk2 audio 'thing' - 20$ FAME headphone - bcr2000 - wireless keyboard to play music while cooking or whatever - novation launchpad - 4$ toy keyboard

korg monotron - bsy600 - metalzone2

if someone total new has the question what he needs to buy...mostly i just use my laptop with keyboard mouse + headphones...

[verdroid]

fack they're half pictures :( my uploaded pictures are too big i think.

here (below)!! the V2 Scratch Pad Piano: about 4$ on flee markets available.
little customised so i can switch on/off and put a jack on it (small and big)

[Mina]

@verdroid > I like your customs, the "tribal" stickers and your smiley on the keyboard ;) You say your Behringer is broken did it last long? I have to change mine every 2 or 3 years, that's the only bad point in this device... Are the motorized sliders usefull for you? I take the last one with automatic adjusting sliders, I don't use it at all !

[verdroid]

the sliders i never used, cause i broke it before i learned how to work proparly with the automatisation.
it lasted a year(now just the knobs and some buttons work). the only thing i miss are the sliders (fast volume/fade control for dif channels), but you don't need a bcf2000 for that. a nanokontrol from korg gives you about 8 sliders very cheap and compact. the bcr2000, that's great! control filters, acid bassline's,...+a lot cheaper than the bcf

still didn't make a vid of that scratch piano yet, i'll keep ya'll updated

[Mina]

@verdroid : aww, so I'm not a Behringer serial broker lol... Yes the top of the sliders just go away easily, but this I could fix, the nobs are another problem, because it breaks, and I should fix it with glue or soder-whatever-device, annoying.

I use the nobs for the speeds of my videos (I have 3 tracks playing at the same time), and the sliders for opacity of each track, and scratching the videos (back and forward fast on the music tempo, before showing the end of the video, makes a good effect). So for me so far it's the best, but I didn't try to use another one. The fact that when you press the nobs it resets to the middle is very useful for me, permits so slow it down or accelerate my video, and when the tempo is good, put it back to normal, makes a cool effect on break in the music for example. When the video is fast, you can not really see what's happening, and suddenly I slow it down and you can see the whole action.


Unluckily, effects available on videos aren't very nice, it's hard to handle, I prefer to make very nice videos and adjust myself the way I play with it. One very important thing I just understand now I'm DJing too, is to adjust very tiny things, like the bass or the mediums, for 2 tracks to go perfectly together when you mix it. In video, that would be translated by adjusting the colors, for example make an image a lil bit more red or green to fit the previous one. But the video softwares are not as precise at this. Most of the time, I can't adjust it properly. So I play with complementary colors (like green fits the red, then grey will fit with soft blue), and that's the way I make my raw videos that counts. I try to prepare it very nice and beautiful, and also I have a very good visual memory that permits me to remember exactly the colors and the speed of the video I'm about to choose before I play it. It's fun because now I'm playing for years, I can set the speed of a video on the perfect tempo before displaying it, because I know my software and my sources by heart :)

Plus, there is something I figured out very recently, is that we people are used to music since thousands of years, we have a very accurate ear, means we hear very little details in it, but that's not the case in video (TV is around 60 years old only). I mean, if I change a slight color in a video, you won't "see" it very precisely, it doesn't make a big difference for your eyes, instead of changing the bass in a music, more ppl can hear it's different. I remember playing with VJ's that were "masturbating" (sorry for the nasty image, but that's true), on changing lil' details on their videos while playing. They were very happy and proud of it, but no one in the show could see it. We are use to fast, colorful, extravagant images, that's the way our brain is made actually. So we have to adjust the images to the audience seeing it. This are the rules, not forgetting that we play for people to enjoy (or, at least, understand) it, and not only for ourselves.

Right now, I'm changing my images. First, I use more soft colors. At first, I was playing with very bright colors, because I didn't know that I could change it first, and also because the video-projectors 6 years ago weren't as bright as the ones right now. So less light was displayed, I had to re-enforce the colors for my videos to be properly seen. Now the VPs are better, I can play with soft colors and it's beautiful. Also I include a lot of tiny images inside my big videos, for the same "technical" reasons. Some years agos, the screens were usually pretty small, so if I put a small image you can't see it. The more it goes, the bigger the screens are, so if I put lil' details it makes it more accurate, and makes you eyes go from one side to the other to see it, it's better, you enjoy it more.

DJ'ing now is helping me in VJ'ing. And of course, my 8 years pro-VJ'ing helps me a lot when I'm DJing. For example, I've seen that I make "significant transitions" in my tracks, without noticing it. When I'm displaying videos, one good way to go from one to the other is the subject. For example, if I display images of cars, it will fit good with motorcycle images then next, or roads, or town streets. This is a "significant" transition (mwaha, it's what I learn to my students). So I do the same in DJ'ing. I've noticed that after a track where there is certain words in the chorus, I play a track with the same words next. That's fun and very interesting to go from one type of mix to the other (from VJing to DJing I mean).

So that's all. I KNOW, I always write a lot.
Thank you for reading

[verdroid]

"reset an fx by pressing the knob", must remember that and see if i can translate that to ableton. seems awesome!
cool thing btw, you're dj'ing now. getting better at vj trough dj (and vice versa) was exactly the first tought that hitted me. i hope in the nearly future more 'twisted' vj's come over here. conversations and know how's could be shared. + the more diversity, the better i guess. see how these samplepack contests evolve: every one get the same weapons to create a track, still the results are totaly dif. that i mean with diversity. luckily, this scene is growing.