DJ Times NAMM Special 2019, Vol 32 No 1

1988 2018

BPM SUPPLY supply.bpmsupreme.com

1988 2018

AMERICA’S FIRST MAGAZINE FOR PROFESSIONAL DJs ESTABLISHED 1988 NAMM 2019 ISSUE

VOLUME 32 NUMBER 1

BPM SUPREME’S CEO REVEALS A BRAND NEW MOBILE APP The leading DJ record pool has big plans for 2019, beginning with the launch of their innovative mobile app.

Going above and beyond an average record pool, the BPM Supreme mobile app features tools that will change the way DJs discover music.

www.djtimes.com

$4.95 US

$6.95 CANADA

NEWS NOTABLES…MILESTONES

Phase: Wireless control for DVS.

Digitize: Reloop RP-2000 USB MK2.

Digital Recall: Bettermaker Bus Compressor.

Chauvet DJ: DJ EZLink Par Q6 BT.

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By Jim Tremayne Anaheim, Calif. – The Winter NAMM show will run Jan. 24-27 at the Anaheim Convention Center and more than 90,000 retailers, manufacturers, distributors and end-users are expected to be attend. As always, this massive music-products market will produce plenty of gear debuts, including several DJ-related products.

Testa Communications – publisher of DJ Times – will be there with a dedicated exhibition booth. It also will produce Convention TV @ NAMM, which will provide on-thespot show coverage.

Onto the Exhibit Floor: MWM will show Phase, the DJ industry’s first wireless controller for DVS – it lets DJs control tracks playing from a DJ software without needing cartridges or control vinyl.

Germany’s Reloop, exhibiting in the American Music & Sound booth, will show the RP-1000 MK2 belt-drive turntable and the RP-2000 USB MK2 direct-drive turntable, which features a USB audio output for digitizing vinyl.

Both units are capable of plus/minus 10-percent pitch control.

Odyssey Innovative Designs will debut several new accessoryrelated products. They include: two BACKSPIN2 camouflage DJ bags; four Black Label DJ coffins; three Flight Zone DJ coffins; two Flight Zone cases for Leko fixtures and Chauvet lighting gear; and a Steemline EVA carrying bag for Native Instruments Traktor S2 MK3.

Electro-Voice will showcase its range of portable speakers including the EVOLVE 50 column loudspeaker system, along with ZLX, ELX200, EKX and ETX speaker series. Also, E-V will debut the RE420 and RE520 condenser vocal microphones and the RE3 wireless system, which in-

cludes mic options, bodypacks and accessories.

QSC Audio will showcase its new CP Series of active loudspeakers, which includes the CP8 and CP12 models. Suitable for portable or installed apps, both units feature a 1,000-watt, Class-D power module.

RCF will debut the HDL28-A, a 2-way, active, line-array loudspeaker system and a white version of its EVOX J Series of portable loudspeakers.

BASSBOSS will debut its MFLA (Medium Format Powered Line Array), a dual 12-inch plus dual 1.4-inch line array element featuring a 3,000watt amp and comprehensive DSP. Longtime lighting supplier ADJ will debut its Focus Spot 4Z, a 200watt, moving-head unit for mobile or club applications. The light’s fit with a gobo wheel with six rotating/ replaceable gobos, eight colors and two prism wheels.

Chauvet DJ will debut a number of new lighting products, including three battery-powered Bluetooth wireless technology lights – the EZLink Par Q4 BT and EZLink Par Q6 BT quad-color LED par fixtures, plus the EZLink Strip Q6 BT linear wash light – and the EZLink FS BT footswitch. Other Chauvet DJ debuts will include the Intimidator Spot 475Z moving-head light, the EZBar pinspot unit, Scorpion Dual RGB laser, the Vivid Drive 28N video driver for Chauvet’s Vivid video panels.

From the studio world, Audionamix will showcase XTRAX STEMS 2, its automatic stem-creation software. (Please see Making Tracks review on Page 28.) High-end studio-hardware manufacturer Bettermaker will debut its new Bus Compressor. Distributed by TransAudio Group, the digitally controller VCA compressor features like digital re-

call, Dry/Wet and Highpass Sidechain.

PreSonus will introduce its Studio Series USB-C 24-bit, 192 kHZ audio interfaces with five models – the Studio 24c, Studio 26c, Studio 68c, Studio 1810c and Studio 1824c.

IK Multimedia will debut the iLoud MTM, a compact, nearfield reference monitor for professional- and home-studio applications. IK will also show the new iKlip 3 Series of iPadand tablet-mounting products. Blue Microphones will introduce the Ember XLR condenser microphone for home-studio applications.

Shure will launch its MV88+ Video Kit, an all-in-one solution for capturing quality video recordings on the go.

Floyd Rose Audio will show its FR-80BK 3D Bluetooth foldable headphones and FR-620BK Bluetooth earbuds.

In addition to showcasing its updated A2e custom in-ear monitor, 64 Audio will unveil three new IEMs, including the A6t, A4t and A3e units – all of which feature the company’s tubeless technology.

Audinate will show the Dante AVIO, a family of endpoint adapters that includes line-in and line-out analog adapters, an AES3/EBU adapter and a stereo USB adapter. RHC will showcase the RAT FX RAT tail distortion cable, the RapcoHorizon V-Cable and the ProCo Sound Drop Snake Boxes and Wall Plates.

DJ Expo ’19 Set

ArtChick Photography

DJ TIMES

NAMM 2019

WINTER NAMM ’19: NEW GEAR GALORE

Atlantic City, N.J. – DJ Expo 2019 will run Aug. 12-15 at Harrah’s Resort in Atlantic City’s Marina District. The annual trade show/conference, presented by DJ Times, will feature exhibits, seminars and keynotes, sponsored evening events and sets from legendary DJs like Grand Mixer DXT (above). For more on DJ Expo ’19, please see Page 9 or visit www.thedjexpo.com.

VOLUME 32 NUMBER 1

FEATURES

14 Awakened After Years of Gradual Ascension, Illenium Has Taken Melodic Bass to a Lofty Place

BY BRIAN BONAVOGLIA

18 Holiday Report Card Holiday Bookings Were Up for Some, Down for Others. DJs Chime with the Reasons.

BY JEFF STILES

20 Cloud 9 Now that Music Technology Has Embraced The Cloud, Music-Makers Have New Sets of Options

BY WESLEY BRYANT-KING

SAMPLINGS 10 Claptone Clubland Mystery

12 In the Studio With…

René LaVice

DEPARTMENTS 9 Feedback

As Always, the Answers to All Your DJ-Related Questions

28 Making Tracks

Audionamix XTRAX STEMS 2

30 Sounding Off

Denon DJ SC5000M & QSC Audio K212C

32 Mobile Profile

ATL DJ Navigates Unique Market

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33 Business Line

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10 Ways to Better Your DJ Business

34 Gear

New Products from ADJ, Yamaha & More

37 Mainstage

New-Technology Showcase

38 Grooves

Phat Tracks from Josh Wink, Mousse T & More

41 Club Play Chart

The Hottest Records, As Reported

by Our Top U.S. Record Pools

Special Section: ClubWorld 22 Spotlight

www.djtimes.com

Meet Relentless Beats, Arizona’s Desert Party Promoters

25 Gear & Swagg Turntables, Cases & More

26 Hot Shots Electric Paradise Fires Up the D.R.

FROM THE EDITOR

Melodic Bass, Great Gear & Lotsa Sun As our various electronic-music genres continue to grow in popularity and mutate in form, acts like Illenium begin to make their way forward. Born Nicholas Miller, the 28-year old DJ/ producer is one of America’s leading practitioners in the melodic-bass subgenre – i.e., he brings prettier sounds to heavier music. So, yes, with tracks like “Gold (Stupid Love)” – his collab with Excision featuring Shallows – you get the head-banging drops and crunching rhythms that often fuel the festival’s bass tent, but you also hear engaging melodies and more precious soundscapes that add a unique balance. Our Brian Bonavoglia caught up with Illenium, as he played three sold-out nights at Manhattan’s Terminal 5 venue, and the Denver-based talent reveals his process and a little more.

Other DJ/artists… in the Sampling section, our longtime L.A.-based writer Lily Moayeri goes into the studio with drum-n-bass DJ/producer René LaVice. Also, NYC-based staffer Chris Caruso connects with clubland’s mysterious hitmaker, Claptone.

For this issue’s tech-related stories, Denver-based DJ/producer Wesley Bryant-King puts in some overtime. In his feature, he explains some of the Cloud-based options that music-makers now enjoy. In Making Tracks, he reviews Audionamix’s unique XTRAX STEMS2 studio software; then in Sounding Off, he puts Denon DJ’s SC5000M controller through its paces. In an extra Sounding Off review, Boston-based DJ Paul Dailey tests out QSC Audio’s K212C subwoofer.

From the world of the mobile entertainer, our Iowa-based scribe Jeff Stiles surveys jocks across the country and finds out how they did with their annual holiday parties. In Mobile Profile, we connect with Dan “DJ Dano” Blankowski and he explains how he manages to thrive in the remarkably tricky Atlanta market. And in Business Line, we offer 10 ways to better your DJ business right now.

As this is our Winter NAMM ’19 edition, the issue’s News page certainly pays close attention to the products expected to be unveiled at the massive exhibition. Set for Jan. 24-27 in Anaheim, Calif., the annual gearfest should see plenty of debuts that will impact the DJ market – and by that, we don’t just mean specific DJ gear (software, controllers, playback, etc.). We’re also concerned with pro audio, lighting, video, studio and accessory products – anything that a club jock, mobile DJ or studio music-maker would use. So, hopefully, in between our slew of NAMM meetings, we’ll be having some fun in the warm California sun.

Speaking of sun… in our quarterly ClubWorld section, we hit two spots that seem to keep up the heat year-round. Just before Christmas, our Brian Bonavoglia trekked to the Dominican Republic for the 4th annual Electric Paradise festival, which brought top DJs, rappers and popacts to Cap Cana, and he offers highlights alongside an action-packed photo spread. We also visit with Relentless Beats, Arizona’s longtime EDM club/festival promotion company. With over 200 annual events – including some of the region’s biggest festivals – Relentless Beats owns the EDM market in The Valley of the Sun and its immediate surroundings. Enjoy.

Cheers,

editor-in-chief Jim Tremayne jtremayne@testa.com editor-at-large Brian O’Connor boconnor@testa.com assistant editor Brian Bonavoglia bbonavoglia@testa.com chart coordinator Dan Miller dmiller@testa.com contributors Wesley Bryant-King Chris Caruso Amanda Chavez Shawn Christopher Paul Dailey Reed Dailey Chris Davis DJ Deets Tony Fernandez Tommy D Funk Michelle Fetky Mike Gwertzman Jennifer Harmon Josh Harris Ryan Hayes Greg Hollmann Mike Klasco Michelle Loeb Lily Moayeri John Ochoa Jeff Stiles Bruce Tantum Phil Turnipseed Curtis Zack President/Publisher Vincent P. Testa FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE AND TO ORDER SUBSCRIPTIONS, CALL 800-937-7678 VISIT OUR WEBSITE www.djtimes.com

DJ TIMES

NAMM 2019

Jim Tremayne Editor, DJ Times

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DJ Times Sound & Communications The Music & Sound Retailer Sound & Communications ClubWorld Blue Book America’s Best DJ The DJ Expo IT/AV Report Convention TV News VTTV Studios

director of integrated advertising Paul Bozikis pbozikis@testa.com art director Janice Pupelis jpupelis@testa.com production manager Steve Thorakos sthorakos@testa.com digital art director Fred Gumm fgumm@testa.com social media coordinator Amanda Mullen amullen@testa.com

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operations manager Robin Hazan rhazan@testa.com Editorial and Sales Office: DJ Times, 25 Willowdale Avenue, Port Washington, New York, USA 11050-3779. (516) 767-2500 • FAX (Editorial): (516) 944-8372 • FAX (Sales/all other business): (516) 767-9335 • DJTIMES@TESTA. COM Editorial contributions should be addressed to The Editor, DJ Times, 25 Willowdale Avenue, Port Washington, NY, USA, 110503779. Unsolicited manuscripts will be treated with care an d should be accompanied by return postage.

DJ Times (ISSN 1045-9693) is published monthly except for February, July, September and December for $19.40 (US), $39.99 (Canada), and $59.99 (all other countries), by DJ Publishing, Inc., 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779. Periodicals Postage Paid at Port Washington, NY, and additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to DJ Times, PO BOX 1767, LOWELL MA 01853-1767 Design and contents are copyright © 2019 by DJ Publishing, Inc., and must not be reproduced in any manner except by permission of the publisher.

Websites: www.djtimes.com NAMM 2019

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FEEDBACK 1988 -2018

1988 2018

CELEBRATING

30

YEARS OF DJing TECHNOLOGY MUSIC BUSINESS ADVICE

PLUS: Markus Schulz – America’s Best DJ 2018 048DE18_p001-044.indd 3

✛

Amsterdam Dance Event ✛ Anna Lunoe ✛ Axel Boman ✛ Kungs ✛ Pioneer DJ Controllers ✛ Sonarworks 11/30/2018 12:15:46 PM

This is Feedback, a monthly feature that fields questions from you, our readers, and funnels them out to in‑ dustry professionals. If you have any questions about DJing – marketing, mixing, equipment or insurance, any at all – drop us a letter at DJ Times, 25 Willowdale Ave, Port Washington, NY 11050, fax us at (516) 944‑8372 or e‑mail us at djtimes@testa.com. If we do use your question, you’ll receive a free DJ Times T‑shirt. And remember, the only dumb question is the ques‑ tion that is not asked.

DJ Expo ’19: Back to Harrah’s Atlantic City, N.J. – After winning big with its 2018 show, Relentless Beatswill return to AC’s lively Marina District for the 2019 edition.

Set to run August 12-15 at Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City, DJ Expo will present its popular slate of DJ-related exhibitions, educational seminars/story-filled keynotes, and sponsored evening events.

Now in its 30 th year, DJ Expo is produced by DJ Times magazine and its publisher, Testa Communications, and it remains America’s longestrunning and most-successful DJ conference/exhibition. Each year, DJ Expo presents over 100 DJ-related exhibitors and draws more than 5,000 attendees.

As always, DJ Expo caters to DJs of all stripes (club jocks, mobile entertainers, remixer/producers, upstarts, etc.), and each show offers something for everyone – new technologies, professional advice, valuable networking opportunities, mad parties/ DJ showcases like the popular “Entertainer of the Year” competition, plus plenty of opportunities for attendees to win daily prizes, including the annual “Ultimate DJ Giveaway.”

Each year, one lucky DJ Expo attendee has his or her card pulled and rides away with the “Ultimate DJ Giveaway,” which includes an entire mobile-DJ system with gear from the industry’s top manufacturers and distributors. The 2018 prize, won by Susan Staff of Marque III Entertainment of Lumberton, N.J., included products

from ADJ (Pocket Pro Pak lighting system), Bose (S1 Pro loudspeaker), Global Truss America (GLO TOTEM 2.0 truss), Technics (SL-1210GR turntable), and Pioneer DJ (HDJ-X10 headphones, DDJ-1000 mixer and two XPRS10 loudspeakers). At the 2018 Expo, daily showfloor giveaway winners took home prizes from Bose, DJ Expo, Hard Rock Hotel, Odyssey and Peavey. Evening-event prizes were provided by Chauvet DJ and RCF. Over the years, DJ Expo showcases, seminars and keynotes have included

some of the industry’s biggest names, including Jam Master Jay, Lady Gaga, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Frankie Knuckles, Talib Kweli, DJ Scratch, Grandmaster Flash, Skribble, Markus Schulz, RedOne, DJ Premier, Paul van Dyk, Marley Marl, Grand Mixer DXT, Jazzy Jay, QBert, Keith Shocklee,Tommie Sunshine, Josh Wink, Cash Cash, Erik Morillo, Morgan Page, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Rob Swift and Mista Sinista.

Be sure to keep up with DJ Expo’s unique mobile app for the very latest prize and event information.

With its spacious exhibit hall, modern meeting rooms and exciting entertainment venues, Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City will again offer plenty for DJ Expo exhibitors and attendees.

From first-class services to fine dining, ample recreation and top-notch leisure venues, Harrah’s Resort has it all. Also, it’s home to The Pool – a year-round tropical entertainment complex perfect for unique DJ Expo events.

For the very latest on DJ Expo 2019, please visit www.thedjexpo. com.

SAMPLINGS

DJ TIMES

NAMM 2019

CLAPTONE: MYSTERY IN CLUBLAND

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In an age of endless digital channels (and the accompanying digital noise), the concept of iconography in entertainment is seemingly a relic of the past. Visuals as instantly identifiable as a sequin glove or a Union Jack dress are fewer and far between in 2018’s music landscape, with the digital noise inundating music fans, making it impossible for that sort of post-verbal communication. However, that hasn’t stopped the DJs of the world from trying by strapping everything from marshmallows to mice to their heads.

On the more palatable end of this spectrum lies the spectral shimmer of Claptone, whose gold visage and Pinocchio-after-a-couple-lies nose are sure to be recognizable to anyone who’s found themselves at one of his festival sets (or seen “Eyes Wide Shut”). In his case – or “their case,” if you are one who believes there are two of them – Claptone’s maskedmagician illusion is a just a small part of the allure, as the Claptone brand of vocal-focused deep house is simply dripping with magic.

Taking elements of indie-pop (including some notable vocalists of the genre) and synthesizing them with a deep house aesthetic, the Berlin–based DJ/producer act has carved out a unique style. Despite the purposeful attempt to be shrouded with an air of mystery to the public, Claptone’s music is filled with a distinctly human touch. The instrumentation is decidedly organic, often shying away from big synths and drops in favor of dreamy grooves, and bluesy touches. The end result is uniquely enthralling: a timeless nostalgia with an undercurrent of melancholy.

We channeled––er––caught up with Claptone to chat about his latest album Fantast, The Masquerade event series, and the difficulties of mak-

Fantast: “It’s an escapist record,” says Claptone.

ing a personal connection with fans when you don’t have an identity.

DJ Times: When did work on the album officially begin?

Claptone: Work on the album began around three years ago when Charmer, my first album, just dropped.

There were so many ideas that I couldn’t see through in time so I compiled a folder of layouts.

DJ Times: Why a second album?

Claptone: When revisiting early ideas and themes, some concepts reoccurred and seemed to impose themselves on me. I had to follow this lead. To give you an example, there were two early songs/layouts that later did not make it on the album – “Into The Wild” and “Mountain and Lake.” Those set the tone, introduced the nature theme to me when played back to back and gave me a vision for the whole album, which imagery and motifs I would like to have, how it should feel. This arch could be showing me a path to my soul. But it collided so heavily with the harsh political realities that I had my doubts from time to time. Further down the line, I bypassed my doubts.

DJ Times: Go a bit into the title of the album. What made you decide on Fantast?

Claptone: Fantast as an album name is like Charmer just another part of my character, where charmer introduced me as a being flickering between being actually charming and some kind of snake charmer who gets you under his spell, Fantast oscillates between traits of character that you might interpret as a real genius sonic being, an amazing storyteller who’s able to take you to places your mind can’t tell if they’re real or a dream, or just a blatant bragging liar.

DJ Times: How did the creative approach differ from Charmer?

Claptone: Charmer and Fantast are two sides of the same coin: both give you a sneak-peek behind my (continued on page 40)

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IN THE STUDIO

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RENÉ LAVICE: PURSUING PERFECTION

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D&B Show: LaVice reigns on BBC Radio 1.

René LaVice is an extrovert—at least his public persona is. Lucky for him.

The ubiquitous drum-n-bass DJ/producer took his lively personality to the podcast world just under three years ago with “René LaVice Radio.”

The monthly broadcast was something he was doing for himself—his only intention was to create a well-produced, professional program that he would want to listen to. Eventually, BBC Radio 1 got a taste and within two years installed LaVice as Friction’s successor on its specialty “Drum & Bass Show,” debuting in late 2017.

The exposure and reach that the Torontoraised/London-based LaVice has received from the show has been tremendous. But, says LaVice, it is taking a massive toll on his time.

“People tell me, ‘It’s work you would have done anyway,’ but it’s not really true,” he says. “As an artist, I’m more selfish about what I play. I don’t want to be a jukebox of the most popular drumn-bass because the next DJ could walk up and play all the same tracks and, then what’s the point?

In my sets, I mostly feature tracks I’ve produced.

Now, it’s necessary to go through as much as I physically can, be discerning and consider it all.”

All this additional music doesn’t necessarily get heard at LaVice’s DJ gigs, particularly as his latest album, Far From Perfect, is filled with dancefloor smashers. An album made for DJs, Far From Perfect was created on and off while LaVice has been touring, which is pretty much non-stop. Every single track on the album has been road-tested and adjusted according to LaVice’s assessments of its technical and sonic structure as well as the crowd’s reaction.

“When I would hear that roar from the crowd, that’s how I knew a track was done and which ones to put on the album – this album is about high-impact shared experience,” says LaVice, who after a protracted relationship with vinyl and later, Serato, is now DJing on four Pioneer CDJs and CDJ-2000NXS2 mixer, the best set-up for his love of double-dropping.

Not unlike his previous productions, Far From Perfect is wildly eclectic. Kicking off with the anthemic “Woohoo,” it switches to the paced melodies of “Can’t Get Enough” featuring Isaac Evans then to the pretty “Twilight” featuring Faye.

LaVice himself sings over explosive “Detonate” and crunching “Cold Crush” featuring Gydra.

There are so many moods on Far From Perfect, one wonders sometimes whether drum-n-bass is not holding LaVice back.

“That’s a massive compliment and completely controversial,” he chuckles. “Drum-n-bass is a fantastic outlet for people who have diverse interests because it keeps giving with the whatever people will be into. Between a set from Loadstar to the UVB76 crew, it’s like different solar systems. It can be a lot more restricting in other genres, but in drum-n-bass it’s all about bringing in other influences. It helps to have a guiding principle with the music. This album is all about getting to the point, focused on what works on a drum-n-bass dancefloor, but expressing the diversity of interests and influences I have. Creativity thrives on restrictions.”

LaVice is very familiar with restrictions considering his bare-bones, all-in-the-box studio set-up, which is basically his MacBook Pro running Logic, dipping into Ableton Live for its time-stretching and pitch-stretching algorithms. More often than not he uses the Mac earbuds and on “Detonate,” he sings the vocals into the earbuds’ microphone. The earbuds’ open-back style is helpful in determining if the sibilants of the vocals are clashing with the hi-hats. Alternatively, he’ll use an Audio-Technica AT2020 microphone. The SubPac, a wearable, vest-like audio device that converts sounds into vibrations, helps with the mixdowns.

The technology, he says, is “precise to the point of being annoying. When I’m doing mixdowns, I’ll put my finger on the speaker. I can physically feel the transience of the kick and the sub independently, see if there is any kind of clash.

“If I’m on the road and I don’t have speakers or the SubPac, I’ll crank up my headphone ridiculously loud so they start shaking in my hand. You can get some input from that. If you put it right on your temple, you can hear stuff, but it’s mostly for the bottom end.”

On occasion, LaVice will concede to the addition of a second laptop, a MacBook Air, where he sketches out ideas. The Air’s slower processor, he says, stops him from getting too bogged down in choices and decision-making. “Too much processing power and you forget to scale stuff down and get back to working on the audio,” he says.

“You’re so caught up with messing with MIDI and automation, you lose heart of the idea.

“Sometimes I’ll mess around in different DAWs just to rewire my brain a little bit and think differently. And you should always listen to what you’re making on different speakers. Even if you’re using high-quality speakers, you should have a little battery-powered speaker to see how it translates and that can reveal things your big speakers aren’t.”

– Lily Moayeri

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New York City – When it comes to the frenzied world of bass music, there’s no denying that names like Excision, 12th Planet and Snails quickly come to mind. With their sub-flexing barrage of booming sounds, they all fill up festival tents with legions of headbanging kids.

But like other genres, bass has begun to evolve and a whole new realm of sounds has emerged. Melodic bass, which brings prettier sounds to heavier music, has taken hold within the electronic-music community and Nick Miller (aka Illenium) has become a major practitioner.

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Cut from the cloth of festival-ready melodicism – think Adventure Club or Seven Lions – the Denver-based Illenium has managed to separate himself from the pack. His captivating, emotionally charged productions come to life as part of his immersive live performances, which most recently included multiple sold-out shows at San Francisco's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, New York City's Terminal 5 and Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom.

The story of Illenium began with the first electronic event he attended – Bassnectar at Colorado’s iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre in 2011. It was that experience of Bassnectar’s overwhelming production, matched with his uber-passionate fanbase, that pushed Miller into taking a deep-dive into Ableton Live the very next day.

Originally from San Francisco, Miller moved to Denver where he continued to hone his craft, finding his production niche with an overtly melodic style of bass music. Additionally, he soon delivered a bevy of captivating remixes of ODESZA, Galantis, Kaskade, and Niykee Heaton, all of which began to take the EDM blogosphere by storm. Eventually in 2013, Illenium released his eponymous, debut EP. With his refreshing style of production, Miller continued to win fans as one of EDM’s more promising talents, hitting club and festival stages across North America. But it was his 2016 debut album, Ashes, on his newly launched label Kasaya Recordings, that catapulted him fully into the spotlight.

As his popularity spiked and his resources improved, Miller re-evaluated his approach to performance. After years of DJing via the more traditional Pioneer CDJ set-up, Miller stepped up his live experience by incorporating keyboards, drum pads, and cutting-edge lighting and visuals – as well as mixing live.

In 2017, he followed his debut album strongly with Awake, a sophomore effort that solidified his spot as one of electronic music's true elites. Then, in 2018, he released a string of singles, including compelling collabs

DJ TIMES

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“Don’t Give Up On Me” with Kill The Noise and Mako and “Gold (Stupid Love)” with Excision, all of which lead into his sellout Awake 2.0 tour.

In mid-2018, Miller posted an open letter to fans, revealing a battle with substance abuse that included a 2012 heroin overdose. The EDM world would find out that music did indeed save his life, with music production helping his ongoing recovery. As he opened up about his experience, Illenium dropped the emotional single, "Take You Down," which, he says, was inspired by his journey through addiction.

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In what was easily the biggest year of his career, Illenium in 2018 also released another collab single (“God Damnit” with Call Me Karizma) and a remix (of Halsey’s “Without Me”) before hitting the road. When the tour hit NYC, DJ Times made the trip to Manhattan’s Terminal 5 to witness the first night of three dates at the cavernous venue. After delivering a satisfying, bass-booming performance that left the crowd spent, Miller had another reveal – his 2019 return to NYC would be a performance at the one and only Madison Square Garden – details TBA. Big news, indeed.

Here’s our interview with Nick Miller aka Illenium: DJ Times: Unlike most producers, your artistic beginnings served as much more than a creative hobby.You learned to make music while trying to conquer addiction. Tell us about your earliest stages as a producer.

Miller: I wasn't very good when I first got into producing. I learned mostly from YouTube tutorials and a lot of trial-and-error, but I kept at it. Even though I wasn't super-happy with my sound in the beginning, it was a way for me to channel my emotions and to keep busy with something productive. Had I not found that outlet, I think I would have spent my time in a lot less healthy ways.

DJ Times: It was a Bassnectar show at Red Rocks near Denver that really opened your eyes to the world of electronic music, correct? What about that show made its mark on you?

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Miller: Bassnectar dropping “Butterfly” that night was the first time an electronic track really resonated with me. That song has so much vulnerability that I connected and related to it. It's what gave me the push to try producing music of my own.

DJ Times: Who are some of your musical influences?

Miller: In the early days, it was a lot of Bassnectar and Skrillex until I discovered more melodic artists like Porter Robinson, ODESZA, and Adventure Club. Now it's branched out into everything from Blink-182 to Senses Fail to Bon Iver.

DJ Times: What is it that made you fall in love with emotional and melodic bass music?

Miller: Music for me is a way to process emotion and melodic bass fits so well with that. The genre has so much versatility – I've pretty much heard songs from all across the emotional spectrum within the category. There's a freedom and vulnerability that other genres don't always have.

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DJ Times: What advice do you have for upcoming producers looking to establish themselves within the electronic scene?

Miller: The advice I'd give is to be prepared to make terrible music for awhile. There really aren't any shortcuts that won't end up hurting you in the long run. Every producer starts from a place of knowing nothing.

DJ Times: You've come quite a long way since “Drop Our Hearts” and your “Risen” EP. In your mind, how has your sound evolved over the past five years?

Miller: It's changed a lot. In the beginning, I mostly stuck to the dance realm, but recently I've tried incorporating elements that you wouldn't typically hear in electronic music. It’s everything from aspects of old rock songs that I enjoyed growing up to mixing in newer type sounds from artists like Linkin Park and nothing,nowhere.

DJ Times: Fast-forward a bit, and here you are on the road showcasing your sophomore album, Awake. And this tour features live performances, mostly featuring your original music. How has this tour been treating you?

Miller: This was my first tour with a live band and we expanded it even more for the “Awake 2.0” shows by adding a full-kit

drummer and another guitar player. I couldn't be happier with the reception these shows have received.

DJ Times: Was there any pressure creating Awake after your debut album Ashes made its mark? Or was the artistic process just a little clearer this time around?

Miller: A little bit of both. There was definitely pressure to create something just as successful as Ashes, but most of that pressure came internally from me. The first album gave me a lot of confidence that the direction I was taking with my music was the right one, so that helped alleviate some of the stress.

DJ Times: If you had to pick one, what would you say is your favorite track of the album?

Miller: I think at one point in time every track on that album has been my favorite, but my current picks would probably be “Crawl Outta Love,” “Fractures,” and “Leaving.” Those three songs probably represent the general feeling of the album the best.

DJ Times: "Where'd U Go" with Said The Sky [aka Trevor Christensen] has been a fan favorite since its release. Tell us a little about your relationship and what's it like collaborating with him?

Miller: I met Trevor through a mutual friend and we immediately hit it off and ended up living together. He has a much more technical and music-theory background than I do, but our creative processes complement each other really well. He's given a lot of input on a bunch of my songs, and I do the same for him. We're always bouncing ideas off one another and creating together.

DJ Times: Speaking of fans, Illenials have become one of the most passionate fanbases in all of electronic dance music. How does it feel to have a community of such devoted fans?

Miller: I'm absolutely humbled by it. The Illenials community is so positive and welcoming it makes me proud to have them as my fanbase.

They truly are a family and treat each other as such.

DJ Times: These days it seems that your fanbase has nearly reached the same tier as Bassnectar’s – and he’s the artist who inspired you to dive into production in the first place. Pretty wild, right?

Miller: I have some of the most dedicated fans and it's crazy to see how much the base has grown over the past couple years. Music is such an important part of my life and I'm blessed to have the opportunity to share it with so many people.

DJ Times: Walk us through a studio session with Illenium.

Miller: It depends on the song. Usually, I like to start with a melody, guitar riff or vocal that I can listen to on-repeat right off the bat. Then, I'll build off that and keep adding elements to flesh out the whole thing. Most of my studio sessions are looping a track over and over while I work on it and make adjustments.

DJ Times: When you’re in a creative mode, how do you find new ways to make melodies?

Miller: Typically, there are other things happening in a song that lend to the main melody, and it's almost like the melody presents itself. It's kind of a meditative process where eventually what fits will appear as long as I keep working and don't try to force it.

DJ Times: When writer's block strikes, how do you clear your head and move forward artistically?

Miller: I'll listen to other music, especially non-electronic genres. I'll also work on other parts of a song, such as mixing, if I'm having trouble deciding where to go with it. I try to spend time producing every day and having a routine (continued on page 42)

d r a C t r o p e R y a d i l Ho

Holiday Bookings Were Up for Some, Down for Others. DJs Chime with the Reasons.

With 150 party animals packing the floor of the Andorra Banquets and Catering venue, DJ Paul Segal found himself with a perfect setup for the 2018 Crown Counseling holiday party.

The hall staff had set up the room with all the tables on one half of the room, with the food and the DJ’s mirror booth located on the other half. With the bar and dancefloor in the center, it made for an ideal DJ/TV setup.

“It was great to watch the people dance, other people watch the videos, and the mirror booth jam-packed all night long,” recalls Segal, entertainment director for 219 Produc-

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tions in Highland, Ind., a Chicago suburb.

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By Jeff Stiles

“The ladies loved the mixing of newer and older music, the videos, and the online music requests through DJEP. They’re always a dancing bunch – it’s the fourth year in a row they’ve had me as their entertainer – and the owner is always full of energy and games. She does [games like] ‘Heads and Tails’ and ‘Saran Wrap Ball’ with prizes for the employees, and this year they added a ‘Snowman Wrap’ and some quick raffles.”

For Segal, this was actually a typical party for his busy 2018 holiday season. He reports that his December gigs were up 50-percent over last year, between his repeat business bookings and new clients finding his business for the first time – none were hesitant to spend the same amount of money they’d invested in the past.

In fact, Segal says his only challenge this past year was staffing the 10 bookings that he snagged within two weeks of their events.

We polled mobile DJs throughout the nation to find out the status of holiday parties in 2018. Were bookings up or down, compared to last year and years past? Were corporates spending money this year, in what appears to be a good economy?

And we found a huge range of responses, largely depending (but not always) on the region of the nation:

• New Jersey (Artem Lomaz, NinetyThree Entertainment, Roxbury): “Business finally picking up again.”

• Florida (Rick Wilson, Good Guy Productions, Pensacola): “Holiday bookings fading.”

• New York (Carl Williams, DJ Carl Entertainment, New York City): “Less parties than in years past.”

• New Jersey (Gregg Hollman, Ambient DJ Service, East Windsor): “Approximately flat from 2017.”

panies choosing family holiday parties over corporate stuff.”

Young agrees that it’s the drinking/driving aspect of past holiday parties that hurt the holiday party business the most.

“Up here [in Central Minnesota], we don't have any mass transit, cabs or Uber,” he explains. “Companies moved from having an open bar to food-only, and then ending the party at 10 or 11 p.m. Then, over time, I think the investment went into larger bonuses over $50/person dinners.”

Over the many years he’s worked as a part-time DJ, Wes Flint of DJ Wes’ Mobile DJ Service in Olive Branch, Miss., says the most overall parties he’s ever worked over an entire year was 33, but he only did a little over a couple-dozen gigs in 2018.

The Memphis-area jock points his finger on the economy for taking a major toll on the entertainment industry, and that

• Washington (Adam Tiegs, Adams DJ Service,

Seattle): “Definitely a lucrative month this season.”

includes companies splurging on “extras” such as corporate holiday parties.

“When people have a little money to splurge on nice things, then those who offer what some might consider a ‘luxury’ items can thrive,” explains Flint. “Then, when things turn south, the luxury items are the first things to go.

“It’s taken almost 10 years to get anywhere close to where we were in terms of consumer confidence and spending, but now with liability up among those who serve alcohol, I don’t think we’re ever going to never see those pre-2008 numbers again.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Says Rob Peters DiFazio of Rob Peters Entertainment, in Franklin, Mass.: “This season we basically sold out, and with more money to boot.”

Same was true for Blake Eckelbarger of The Music Place in South Bend, Ind. “Bookings were good this year, and up slightly from last year.”

And the most effusive response came from Bobbie McDonald of Boogie Inc. in Pensacola, Fla., who said “We were busier than any year since 2008.” n

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“Holiday-party bookings have been really slow, and I think it’s mostly because of the alcohol.”

— Lou Negal, DJ Lou Productions, Bloomfield, N.J.

DJ TIMES

“Here in New Jersey, holiday parties have been really slow, and I think it’s mostly because of the alcohol [situation] – employees drinking and driving,” says Lou Negal of DJ Lou Productions in Bloomfield, N.J. “We used to do 20 parties during the month of December, but now we’re down to roughly five or six.

“In fact, this year I have no holiday parties at all.

What these companies are doing is having a luncheon for their employees with piped-in music, and then they just give their people an hour to get their food and go back to work.

“I also work for another local DJ business, and they’ve confirmed they only had a couple holiday parties in December.”

Bob Albrecht, the owner of Fantasy Productions DJ Entertainment in nearby Hackettstown, N.J., says he’s noticed a slow drop-off in holiday party work ever since he started in the industry in 1989.

“My first year – I was working for a company called Star DJ’s at the time – I did 20 parties in 22 days that December,” he recalls. “Now, as a company, we might get 10 holiday parties in all of December and then a few more in January.

“I think the main reason is that companies are simply cutting back on the big holiday parties, with companies doing a much smaller luncheon in the middle of the day, instead of the big blowout evening party with employees plus spouses.”

Albrecht also believes the number of DJs in the market today versus 25 years ago could be a contributing factor.

“There are so many more options for clients to choose from these days,” he says. “Thankfully, our wedding market is busy in December, and I’m able to keep my calendar full with weddings instead of corporate holiday events.”

Up in Minnesota, John Young of Sound Force Disc Jockey says holiday parties have definitely become a thing of the past there in the west-central portion of his state.

“The venues have tried to lure companies back with smaller group parties, but they end up sitting quiet in December,” says the Grey Eagle, Minn.-based jock.

“Back in the heyday, we had pretty much each Friday and Saturday of the first three weekends in December, and then spilling over into January with more corporate parties. Today, there are a couple local companies that do a Tuesday lunch.

“Three venues that used to hold a number of holiday parties every season are empty, and the big hotels that used to have 200-plus people parties are doing single rooms – with com-

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CLOUD 9 Now that Music Technology Has Embraced The Cloud, Music-Makers Have New Sets of Options

DJ TIMES

NAMM 2019

By Wesley Bryant-King

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tool that lets you easily find what you’re looking for without having to simply listen to everything one-by-one. Native is contributing to the collection, as are a number of content partners.

One of the advantages of Sounds.com is that there’s no commitment; you can join or cancel at any time. And even better, the licensing terms are consumerfriendly; the content you download, you have a license to use — even after your subscription expires. Given the search engine, and the ever-growing collection, of course, Native hopes you’ll see value in keeping your credit card on-file with the service. While my own use of sample libraries is somewhat limited, I love the model, I love the licensing, and I love that you can start it or stop it at will (in onemonth chunks, anyway).

One of the other big names to get into the cloud space is none other than Roland. I got pretty stoked earlier in 2018 when I received a press release touting the availability, for the first time, of an official Roland virtual, software-based TR-808 — the legendary drum machine that’s been the basis of countless sample libraries (not to mention tattoos and vanity license plates of enthusiasts for years). I was less excited to learn that the TR-808 was (along with a TR-909 software plug-in, and many others) part of a new Roland Cloud offering, with — you guessed it — a subscription model.

On the upside, Roland has delivered the goods in a lot of ways with Roland Cloud. You get a range of classics, like the two mentioned above, plus recreations of the Jupiter 8, the JV-1080, virtual guitars and pianos, and many others — along with a promise of an ever-expanding array of choices. As you’d expect, the quality of the offerings is actually pretty solid, and there’s something to be said for having the Roland name on the front.

The issue I have with Roland Cloud is two-fold: First, the price; $20 a month.

The company provides a not-particularly-generous 10-percent discount for paying a year in advance. Either way, if you do the math, it’s a lot to spend each and every month unless you’re using a decent subset of the offering. Second: no pay, no play — and this is where I have an issue.

If you’ve decided to include instruments in your compositions from your Roland Cloud subscription, you’ll need to keep paying (and paying) to continue with the ability to load and work with your projects. If your subscription lapses, you’d best hope that you’ve rendered-out your tracks to audio — and that you’re happy with them, because you won’t be making any more edits, and you won’t be rendering out any more audio, either.

The fact is, with software obtained through a conventional perpetual license, I can load my archived projects indefinitely — barring changes like the shift from 32-bit to 64-bit plug-ins, DAWs, (continued on page 40)

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didn’t really get there in one step. Splice. com, for example, has been offering music software on a rent-to-own basis for some time now — notably with the popular soft-synth, Serum.

This approach sort of rides the fence between subscription and ownership.

While Serum sets you back $189 to buy outright, with Splice, you can simply “rent” the software for $10 a month.

If you’re too broke to pay on any given month, fine; pause your rental (and lose access to the software, of course), then later, pick-up where you left off. Once you’ve rented it (and paid for it) for a full 19 months — you own your copy, and it remains unlocked. (Remember this point — I’ll be coming back to it later.)

Splice has successfully attracted a number of banner names to its rent-toown platform, including iZotope (with Ozone and Neutron, which I recently reviewed here), and even one of my personal favorite plug-in makers, L.A.-based Output, recently got in on the game with their Movement plug-in.

The benefits of the Splice rent-toown model are intuitively obvious: it’s a simple, understandable, affordable way lower the barrier to entry to musicians who may be big on aspiration, but low on cash. It’s also a way to reduce piracy; if you can pay as you go and not break the bank, why bother with cracks and hacks and compromises when you could be using the real thing?

Then Comes the Nickeling & Diming Rent-to-own is exceptionally consumer-friendly, but from the perspective of the software makers, it suffers from the same problem that conventional, socalled “perpetual licensed” software has: you get a sale once, and then hope (and pray) that your customers upgrade when newer, better, bigger, or faster things come out. It’s been this way since the 1980s, and it’s why we have things named with numbers like “Ozone 8.”

Not to pick on iZotope, Ozone’s maker, but Ozone 8 is better than Ozone 7, which was better than Ozone 6, and Ozone 5 before it, and you really need these new capabilities (or so the company wants you to believe, and sometimes they’re right). So, you write another check, you can have the latest and greatest, while iZotope has the money coming in that enables them to keep the doors open and keep supporting you when you have problems. It was the way of the world — until the cloud came along.

Back at Winter NAMM 2018, DJ Times editor Jim Tremayne and I were briefed

by Native Instruments on their new cloud- and subscription-based offering, Sounds.com. The premise is quite straightforward; pay $10 a month, and you get unlimited access to an evergrowing library of samples, across all genres, coupled with a powerful search

DJ TIMES

Anyone who uses technology a great amount these days is very likely availing themselves of a concept that has become an increasing focus for technology software and service companies: the socalled “cloud.”

The notion is pretty simple. Rather than store something locally (e.g., on the hard disk of your computer), store it somewhere on the internet, and access it when (and where) you need it.

The concept has been applied far and wide, for a range of situations. Among the first exposures I had was Evernote, the cloud-based note management service; enter or retrieve notes on-demand from your computer, tablet, or smartphone — anytime, anywhere — instead of having one single copy sitting someplace.

Then there was Dropbox; want to share a file (such as a music project) with a collaborator? Push it to the cloud, and let the teamwork begin. And we all know what happened with Netflix; who wants to mess with those fingerprint-smeared DVDs, when you can just stream your movies and TV shows from the cloud to any TV (or device) in your home (and not have to wait for the mailman in the process)?

Cloud-based services have, however, carried an interesting trojan horse: the subscription model. Take Evernote; instead of buying a piece of note-management software one time at a retail store (so 1999, really), you just give your credit card info to Evernote, download their software anywhere you need it for “free,” and they’ll happily charge you every month for the service. Once consumers demonstrated a willingness to be nickeled-and-dimed every month for Evernote, Dropbox, and Netflix, well, the big players got on-board.

Microsoft would much rather charge you $10 a month for a copy of Microsoft Office with cloud storage —from now until the end of time — than sell you the software alone, once, for $100. Adobe is finished with boxed software for the most part; instead, creative types like me pay them $80 a month for access to Photoshop, Illustrator and so on, instead of $700 once every few years.You can do the math; this has been a very profitable thing for technology companies.

It was, therefore, perhaps inevitable that the allure of the subscription business model would come to the music software space, and sure enough, I think there’s plenty of basis from which to claim that 2018 was the year subscription models arrived in force within our space — much to the delight of bean counters at the companies offering them.

Is it a good thing? It depends. Let’s take a look.

From Whence It Came While subscription approaches in the music space are clearly patterned after players like Netflix and Adobe, we

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DJ / CLUBWORLD / Relentless Beats

By Jim Tremayne Photos By Jacob Dunn

DJ TIMES

NAMM 2019

Thomas Turner

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Phoenix, Ariz. – Since 1996, Relentless Beats has been a primary producer of electronic-music events in Arizona. But in more recent years, the Phoenix-based outfit essentially has conquered the desert playground, becoming one of the country’s top regional EDM promoter/ producers.

Founded by Thomas Turner, a former raver who found his electronic-musical inspiration in the mid-’90s on a European vacation, Relentless Beats started with club and one-off events and eventually began to produce a series of major festivals. By 2018, Relentless Beats was producing over 200 events a year all over the state – in Phoenix and nearby Chandler (at the Rawhide Western Town and Event Center), but also in energetic college towns like Tempe, Tucson and Flagstaff.

Drawing the globe’s top DJ talent for Arizona fans, Relentless Beats-produced festivals have become major regional events and they cater to all electronic genres – house, trance, techno, bass, etc. Notable festival events include Decadence Arizona, Goldrush Music Festival, Phoenix Lights Music Festival, Crush Arizona, BOO! Arizona, and Wet Electric. Also, under its new RBDeep sub-brand, the company recently kicked off the ORIGINS festival, which (as the moniker implies) offers deeper electronic flavors.

A market with a rich EDM history, Arizona over the years has produced a broad range of DJ talent, including recent DJ Times cover subjects Mija and Ghastly, plus Markus Schulz, who was voted America’s Best DJ for an unprecedented third time in 2018. As Relentless Beats continues its hold over this EDM-crazed region, don’t be surprised to see more talent emerge from the desert.

We recently caught up with Relentless Beats’ founder Thomas Turner.

What’s your background, as it relates to electronic music? How did you come to this music?

I fell in love with electronic music after being exposed to European electronic-music culture in the mid-1990s, which at the time was non-existent in the United States. I quickly became obsessed with progressive-house music and the likes of Sasha and John Digweed, along with acts like Nick Warren, Hernan Cattaneo, Sander Kleinenberg, Paul van Dyk, Judge Jules, Ferry Corsten, Armin van Buuren and many others.

Were you a raver? How did you end up becoming a promoter of electronic-dance music?

Yes, I was at first a raver, then an electronicmusic enthusiast – and because of these two things, finally, a promoter.

How did Relentless Beats begin? What were the early days like?

I started producing small events in whatever space I could get to host me. I remember the first time someone introduced me as a promoter, I didn’t like it, because I thought it was a title with a

DJ / CLUBWORLD / Relentless Beats

bad stigma. I was just doing it for fun, not grossing nearly enough money to cover the overhead – and this went on for many, many years.

What did you learn from your earliest events – the good and the bad?

I learned so much and I still continue to learn.

One of the worst things was that not nearly enough people were interested in my events for the first 10 years that I promoted events. However, the good news is the next 10 years were much different.

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How would you describe the evolution of Relentless Beats?

This came from humble beginnings, for sure.

Relentless Beats was born from my own personal investments and is still self-funded to this day. n

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DJ / CLUBWORLD / Relentless Beats

The Show: Event-Tech Talk with Relentless Beats

With so many outdoor festivals and indoor club events to produce – about 200 each year – the production staff at Relentless Beats has to be uniquely versatile with its gear specs and its overall technical capabilities.We caught up with Joe Musico, Relentless Beats’ Assistant Production Manager, to find out how the Arizona-based crew does it.

Is there a particular sound system that you prefer for Relentless Beats’ mainstages at its various festivals?

We really love d&b audiotechnik, both the J-Series and V-Series boxes for different-sized crowds and stages. A lot of PA systems can be loud, but d&b units also have amazing clarity and subtleness. We often use the B22-SUB subwoofers, and then we pair that with some J-INFRA subwoofers to cover the ultra-low end that EDM concerts always need.

Any particular brands or models that you prefer for your events’ lighting and visuals?

We use a good amount of Absen A6T LED video panels because it is a great panel that we can get a lot of. For lighting, it depends on what vendor we have on the show. Martin, Elation, Chauvet, GLP, and Clay Paky are all great. The most common light on our shows would definitely have to be the classic Martin Lighting Atomic 3000 strobe.

Joe Musico

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How does Relentless Beats draw the balance between visuals and music at its events? Is it up to the traveling DJ to decide how much visual stimuli they want or are the in-house techs making most of those decisions?

That really varies between the events, and even the different sets at an event. Bigger artists will more likely have their own production crews to make sure they are giving the show that best represents themselves.VJs – that’s visual jockeys – and Lighting Directors are pretty common touring crew. But we usually don't see many touring audio engineers, which is the opposite of traditional concerts with bands, singers. We do have our own crew, which runs this when artists do not bring any crew – and they are amazing at what they do. Aaron Olmstead from Gestalt Theory runs 90-percent of the visuals at all Relentless Beats concerts, and he is truly as much of an artist as the people on stage.

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What’s the biggest challenge you have for doing events in Arizona, and how do you deal with them? I would imagine that oppressive heat and/or high winds could be an issue in the desert.

Yes, definitely heat and wind are some big issues we face. We don't do large events in the summer to avoid the Arizona heat, and all of our events have free water. We sometimes do our stage-builds overnight to avoid the heat. Another issue we deal with in Arizona is not having access to the gear we need for the big shows. A lot of equipment comes from Los Angeles, Las Vegas and even the East Coast. The trucking can get very expensive.

What’s the strangest request you got in a DJ’s rider?

We get a good amount of funny “joke requests” on riders, but our favorite rider had a Sudoku puzzle, crossword, and a test at the end to see if you read the rider well. The strangest request was a signed picture of Tiësto. Luckily, Tiësto played the day before, and we were able to deliver on that.

– J.T.

DJ / CLUBWORLD / GEAR & SWAGG

BASSBOSS MFLA Powered Line Array

German supplier Reloop, distributed in the United States by American Music and Sound, has released the RP-4000 MK2 turntable. The unit is housed in a deep black metallic top panel construction that is equipped with metallic buttons for start/stop, platter speed, pitch control, reverse function and tempo reset. The turn‑ table features a statically balanced S-shaped tone arm with hydraulic lift and anti-skating mechanism.

Its precision-engineered die-cast platter features a motor with three speeds of control (33-1/3, 45 and 78 RPM), as well as a high-torque direct drive of more than 1.8 kg/cm.

Additional features include shockabsorbing feet, reverse play, pitch reset and a pitch section with a se‑ lectable range of plus/minus-8-per‑ cent and plus/minus-16-percent.

Decksaver, one of 13 brands dis‑ tributed in the United States by Mixware, has released 14 new DJgear covers, featuring a polycarbon‑ ate shell that shields the units from dust, liquid and accidental impact.

Among the new covers are models designed for a variety of DJ prod‑ ucts. These include covers for the Pioneer DJ XDJ-RR and DDJ-400 (LE cover) controllers; Native In‑ struments KONTROL S4 MK3 and Kontrol S2 MK3 (LE cover) control‑ lers; and Hercules Control Inpulse 200 (LE cover) and Control Inpulse 300 (LE cover) controllers. Covers are also available for Native Instru‑ ments’ Maschine Mikro MK3 drum controller and the Akai Professional MPK Mini MK2 and MPK Mini Play controllers.

BASSBOSS has released the MFLA – the Medium Format Powered Line Array. The system is is a dual 12-inch + dual 1.4-inch linearray element featuring a 3,000watt amplifier and comprehensive DSP. Key features include high output, low distortion, wide cover‑ age, simple setup and long-throw performance. It features wide hori‑ zontal dispersion of 120 degrees combined with 10 degrees of vertical dispersion. The flyware is adjustable in 1 degree increments from 0 to 10 degrees. The MFLA incorporates proprietary technol‑ ogy to create isophasic midrange radiation with coherent vertical coupling between elements for longer throw, while also providing wider horizontal dispersion from the 12-inch woofers, allowing the MFLA to deliver coherent midrange propagation from a symmetrical 2-way design, which, in turn, al‑ lows the high frequency lenses to be utilized for extremely wide horizontal coverage, very often eliminating the need for front-fills.

www.mixware.net www.AmericanMusicAndSound.com

www.bassboss.com

NIGHTSTICK Tactical Flashlights Nightstick has released a pair of re‑ chargeable tactical flashlights – the USB-556XL and USB-558XL units.

Perfect for club and festival uses – in the crowd, on a darkened stage or while backstage – the 750 and 900-lumen models combine power with in-body USB charging conve‑ nience. Both lights are designed with the same rugged aluminum construction and single momentary and constant-on push button tail cap as the original 320-lumen USB-320 EDC rechargeable flashlight. Each light offers four user-selectable modes (high, medium, low, strobe) and includes built-in USB charg‑ ing. Unscrewing and sliding down the O-ring sealed protective collar to reveals the built-in micro USB charging port. A red indicator below the bezel turns green once the light is fully charged. The USB-556XL features a high-efficiency parabolic reflector producing 750 lumens for one hour, 250 lumens for two hours and extending to five hours on the lowest 80-lumen setting. The USB558XL increases lumens output to 900 on high, 350 lumens on medium and 100 lumens on low, with 2, 4.25 and 16 hour run times respec‑ tively. www.nightstick.com

NAMM 2019

DECKSAVER Gear Covers

DJ TIMES

RELOOP RP-4000 MK2

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DJ / CLUBWORLD / Hot Shots

Photos By Basecamp Studios

By Brian Bonavoglia

1

Cap Cana, D.R. – While winter season began to impose itself on America’s Northeast, thousands of sun worshippers hit the Dominican Republic’s East Coast for the 4th annual Electric Paradise festival.

Hosted by PAV Events this past Dec. 22, the festival drew multitudes to Cap Cana’s beautiful beaches for 12 hours of music, featuring top names in the hip-hop, pop and EDM genres playing a trio of environments – the Live, Dance and Rumors stages.

The Caribbean throw-down featured a star-studded lineup, which included Cardi B, J Balvin, and Wiz Khalifa, in addition to electronic-DJ heavyweights Major Lazer, Disclosure, Don Diablo, Krewella, Guy Gerber, Seth Troxler. The three stages kept the crowds rocking until sunrise.

Even though the festival purportedly had a 4-a.m. curfew, Troxler and Lauren Lane went back-to-back until well past 6 a.m. Nobody seemed to mind – and it all looked like this:

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1 Major Lazer: Diplo drops a beat.

2 Classic: The Knocks throw down.

3 Dutch Treat: Don Diablo onstage.

4 Magic: KSHMR rocks the crowd.

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5 Carnival: Festival-goers enjoy the sunshine.

6 Stagecraft: A fan captures the moment.

7 Glowing: Festival fan strikes a pose.

8 Rumors Stage: Squire goes deep.

9 Sister Act: Krewella cranks it out.

10 It Takes 2: Major Lazer gets busy.

11 Late-Night Action: Guy Gerber afterhours.

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12 Hands Up: Festival fans go nuts.

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DJ / CLUBWORLD / Hot Shots

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MAKING TRACKS STUDIO…HARDWARE…SOFTWARE…

XTRAX STEMS 2: CLEANER CONTROL

By Wesley Bryant-King

XTRAX STEMS 2: Creative uses for the vocals & more.

DJ TIMES

NAMM 2019

Back at the Winter NAMM Show in January 2018, I was introduced to a new product from a small outfit by the name of Audionamix, which was showing off a then-new product called XTRAX STEMS. The promise was a great one for DJs and remixers: Take a song file or track of your choice and, through sophisticated artificial intelligence and machine-learning capabilities, extract it into three stems – beats, vocals and “the rest.”

The demo on the show floor was intriguing; I’m not sure I was fully convinced, but the potential was certainly there, and the company quickly provided me with a copy to test. But let me be blunt here: I was pretty unimpressed at my first look.

The separated content was full of digital artifacts — at least after processing a small sampling of test tracks. And I’m not sure I could take the resulting vocal stems, use them in a remix, and be particularly satisfied with the end result.

However, over the course of 2018, Audionamix made some improvements to the software, as well as the behind-the-scenes, cloud-based processing that performs the actual dirty work of separating the stems. Because that work is offloaded to a cloud-based set of algorithms and methods, they can be updated and improved over time without

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Audionamix Software: Stems for studio & DJ apps.

requiring end-users to do software updates. It also provides a sample set to feed the machine-learning beast that’s much broader than any single user’s utilization would provide. But the improvements made in this case did require an upgrade, dubbed XTRAX STEMS 2, the subject of this review.

Let’s start by calibrating expectations here. If you’ve ever produced a music track — regardless of the genre — you’ll likely appreciate just how extraordinary the technical challenge is that Audionamix is trying to solve. In a DAW (Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Pro Tools, etc.), a producer is basically taking individual, discrete tracks of audio — each of which can occupy any range of audio frequencies — and merging them together into a single, cohesive whole. The elements can be panned and effected up one side and down the other in the process. Audionamix is trying to engineer software and algorithms that are capable of basically undoing that to some degree, to provide you with a usable set of source files, from an audio original that could have been produced, mixed and mastered with a virtually infinite array of processing methods and styles.

Said another way, what Audionamix is trying to do with XTRAX STEMS 2 is nothing short of technologically impossible. And yet, bless ’em, they’ve taken a good, solid swing at it.

So how is the product today? And how usable are the results?

I think the best answers to those questions are “pretty good,” and “it depends” — respectively. So, let’s take a deeper look.

The XTRAX STEMS 2 process starts with a single, produced, rendered, mastered and final piece of music in digital form that you provide. The format is up to you; the product supports most formats, but prefers WAV files. (Your source is converted prior to processing if it’s in any other format.) You drag and drop it into the product’s interface, and the processing begins.You have a choice of algorithms: Advanced (which is new in XTRAX STEMS 2), Generic, and Automatic. The file is uploaded to Audionamix’s servers, where it’s processed, and downloaded back in three parts, as mentioned earlier, labeled Vocals, Drums and Music. The process, end-to-end, requires several minutes, depending on the track duration, and the speed of your internet connectivity.

New in XTRAX STEMS 2, you can adjust the separation balance after processing to emphasize different elements. Once you’re happy with it, you can save the parts back out, either as WAV files ready to bring into a DAW, or as a single Stems file (the Native Instruments multitrack audio format), ready to bring into Traktor or other Stems-compatible gear for DJ performance.

While it’s safe to say that the results in XTRAX STEMS 2 are indeed better than what I experienced the first time around, if you’re expecting to get three

stems out of the software that are as crisp and clear as the tracks the original producer used during mixing, you will be disappointed. All three of the resulting separations retain some level of digital artifacting. The effect is hard to describe, but it’s reminiscent of the impact that statistical multiplexing has on audio material; the fidelity is variable and seems to oscillate in strange ways. It’s not unlike how SiriusXM satellite radio often sounds (they use statistical multiplexing to deliver their channels), or how low bitrate MP3 files sound.

The oscillation or variability of that effect is in-sync with the content of the song. When the vocalist on a track is singing, that frequency data is “carved out” of the drums and music, much the way that sidechain compression can be applied between source tracks in a DAW to lower the volume of one part in sync with another. The software can’t simply invent what is, at that point, technically missing, so the resulting frequency data carveouts are simply inherent to the processing.

How extreme that effect happens to be depends on the source material. I have to imagine the effects applied in the original track to the vocal (like reverb and delay), panning, compression, the vocalist’s range, how well the song’s parts are frequency-separated to start with, and myriad other factors all come into play here.

And indeed, some sample material I processed worked pretty well — while others weren’t as usable. That is, however, subjective, and depends on what you’re doing with the separated material.

For example, if you wanted to use the beats as-is, the vocal carve-out effect I mentioned earlier will likely render them unideal, although the impact is mostly on the high-end (hats and cymbals) because that’s where the vocal typically overlaps the frequencies of the beats. So perhaps filtering out the highs and adding back hats from another source will give you what you need.

As another example, if you want to extract the vocals and build a new arrangement around them, here, too, you may not have the sort of clean material you’d ideally want. But depending on how you’re constructing your new arrangement

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“I can envision creative uses for the vocal stem where effecting and frequency manipulation could produce creative results.”

around that vocal, it may very well mask the artifacting that results from processing. I can also envision some creative uses for the vocal stem, where additional effecting and frequency manipulation could easily produce some interesting, and very creative results.

Finally, if you’re looping and effecting the results as part of a DJ performance? Quite frankly, the artifacting and other compromises I’ve mentioned might very well simply not matter — or would actually enhance the effect you’re looking for.

In summary? The results you’re going to get are going to depend on your expectations, the source material, and the application for the results. Do you want a pristine extract of a vocal that’s functionally identical to the original a cappella? You won’t get that from this product (or truly, any other product).

Do you want a reasonable attempt at a workable result that opens up some creative possibilities for remixing in the studio, or on-the-fly track manipulation in a DJ set? XTRAX STEMS 2 might very well deliver exactly what you’re looking for and, on the technology front, Audionamix has done some amazing things in trying to a solve a problem that, as I said earlier, strikes me as essentially impossible to solve.

As a result, they deserve some serious kudos.

The product is available as a digital purchase directly from Audionamix and is available for both Windows and Mac based systems – cost is $99.

2/12/2019 12:31:56 PM

SOUNDING OFF PLAYBACK…PRO AUDIO…PROCESSING

DENON & QSC: SOLID CHOICES

By Wesley Bryant-King & Paul Dailey

This month we take a look at two innovative products from industry leaders. Our Denver-based DJ/scribe Wesley Br yant-King handles the SC5000 Prime media player from Denon DJ, while Boston’s Paul Dailey reviews the K212C powered subwoofer from QSC Audio.

DENON DJ SC5000 PRIME It was way back in the Summer of 2017 when I first put my hands on the latest kit from Denon DJ, the Prime Series — with the SC5000 Prime media player, and the X1800 Prime mixer. Suffice it to say, I was duly impressed with both the media player and the mixer, and believed then, as now, that the Prime Series represents some of the very best that the industry has to offer the serious performing DJ. The series offers solid technology, fast performance, and a terrific interface. And if that were not enough, it offers the DJ an incredibly capable platform for performance that’s just plain fun to use.

Denon DJ, an inMusic brand, has made the Prime Series even better in the months since. The SC5000 itself has been upgraded via firmware to

include a Serato DJ controller mode, support rekordbox database imports, improve pitch-resolution accuracy, enable multi-field track searching, extend the BPM analysis range, support larger libraries, and more — including support for USB thumb drive-based firmware updates (instead of having to connect it to a computer). Engine Prime, Denon DJ’s music management software, has also seen numerous improvements for those that use it.

Recently, Denon DJ rolled out a new version of the SC5000 called, simply, the SC5000M. That “M” might be one little letter, but it stands for motorized, and it gives a great media player a little something extra.

Before I get into the “M” bit, I think it’s worthwhile to recap some of the things I loved about the original SC5000. And since the SC5000 and the SC5000M are otherwise identical, everything about the original applies to the new model as well.

The Basics: One of the SC5000/ SC5000M Prime’s primary features is what Denon DJ calls dual layer support. What that means is that a single SC5000 can act like two separate

decks rolled into one, playing back two sources at the same time on a single unit. When you connect the deck to a mixer, all the outputs are duplicated, corresponding to the A and B “layers” of the deck.

W h e n yo u u s e t h e S C 5 0 0 0 / SC5000M with the Prime Series X1800 mixer, you get a lot of extras, including automatic configuration of the layers when you connect the equipment with an Ethernet cable.

You can share media between multiple decks, and the X1800 colorcode-matches the various decks and layers so you can see visually what’s getting routed where.

Each SC5000/SC5000M provides a lot of connectivity, with a computer USB connection, three USB inputs for mass storage connections (hard drives, thumb drives), as well as an SD card slot. Just drop material on the media — ideally using Engine Prime to prep the tracks (but it’s not required) — and plug it in. Because the deck itself can analyze tracks, it truly is plug-and-play. Even better, it supports all the major music formats you might want to use. You can also eject non-active media at any time,

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SC5000M: Denon DJ’s top-drawer player.

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making DJ changeovers easy.

Both the SC5000 and SC5000M sport beautiful 7-inch color touchscreen displays that are as beautiful to use as to look at — but they are nice to look at, given that Denon DJ has implemented a very polished, visually appealing and intuitive interface.

The New SC5000M: It’s probably worth pointing out that the SC5000 and the new SC5000M are at first glance identical. But when you go to use them, you’ll notice that while all the buttons and knobs and faders and everything else is in the same place and does the same thing, there’s a rather obvious difference right in the middle: The massive platter is no longer plastic with a circular LCD display in the middle. No, it’s a beautifully-crafted turntable base with an actual vinyl record sitting on top.

The net-net appearance is of a vinyl turntable platform with a 45 RPM single sitting on it, and the tonearm mysteriously missing.

In unboxing and assembling the unit, the turntable parts truly do remind me of a vinyl turntable from the cast-metal base to the felt mat to the center pin. You then carefully unwrap the vinyl record, with its metal “45 adapter” permanently affixed, and set it on the turntable platter.

Denon DJ has gone all out on this to provide a control experience that looks and feels like vinyl because it is vinyl. This is the same approach used by sister inMusic company Rane on the Rane TWELVE deck, just in a

FIRST IMPRESSIONS Right out of the box, this unit looks great. It is built like a tank and looks the part as well, with pre-installed, high-quality 3-inch casters, and a matte-black finish that completes the package perfectly. Most subs have casters as an afterthought and, as such, mobile jocks are likely to suffer rattling during the most energetic parts of your set. Not with the KS212C – these are heavy duty, and don’t rattle at all when the unit is playing a very high SPLs. The speaker can be set upright or laid on its side, and I found that each position has its uses. In a smaller room where you are able to center the sub under your table, laying it on the side provides the optimal position and bass on the floor. When you are in a larger room with higher ceilings, keeping the sub in the upright position worked out better for me.

The rear controls were simple and intuitive and will look familiar to users of QSC Audio. Out of the box, the factory mode provided great results for me. But should you wish to dive in deeper, there are plenty of adjustable customizations at your fingertips.

IN THE FIELD For my review, QSC Audio supplied me with a pair of K10.2 fullrange tops to pair with a single KS212C. I was concerned with a single sub and so much power up top, but the results were well beyond expectations. At an event with 175 people, the bass was smooth and focused. There was more than enough power to complement the powerful tops and, best of all, the spillage behind and to the sides was minimal.

If you wanted to dance, you felt the bass. If you stood on the side of the dancefloor, you could have a comfortable conversation. Seemed like the best of both worlds. There were

points in the night when I pushed the speaker a bit and saw the fan come on to cool the dual amps.

But never did I see the clip light or feel they were too hot or struggling in any way. The KS212C was more than ready for the task at hand.

In the end, for larger events (200-plus) or in very large venues like grand ballrooms and gyms – you certainly would need multiple KS212Cs or to even dust off those bigger 18-inch subs in your garage. But for 99-percent of the events I do, this thing rocks.

The unit is light, well-made, with quality sound on the dancefloor and no headache in the DJ booth. QSC Audio has a winner on their hands.

K212C: QSC Audio’s quality sub.

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QSC AUDIO K212C Having been in the DJ game for quite some time, I am repeatedly impressed with the technological advances that continue to debut in the DJ sound-reinforcement market. As manufacturers squeeze more and more SPLs and quality out of increasingly compact and lightweight speaker boxes (particular full range “tops”), the rules have changed, and most DJs will tell you their backs

definitely appreciate it.

Having said that, at the end of the day, bass is a place where DJs are constrained by physics. If you want good-sounding, dancefloor-moving bass, you need to move air – and to move air, you need big speakers and powerful amps. Or do you?

E n t e r t h e e n g i n e e r s o ve r a t QSC Audio to challenge this para d i g m , w i t h t h e i r n ew K S 2 1 2 C powered subwoofer ($1,899 list).

The KS212C is a cardioid sub that utilizes dual 12-inch cone transducers, powered by a pair of Class D amplifiers (each rated at 1,800 watts peak). It’s a 6th-order bandpass design, with ported chambers on either side of the woofers, which enhance efficacy and output abilities.

QSC Audio has designed these with two TFR (Turbulent Flow Reduction) ports that add high velocity air flow and takes away much of the back-loaded nature of common subs.

This provides +15 dB in front of the speaker vs. the rear and takes the DJ booth out of the direct line of fire.

So, you get bass on the dancefloor and not in the booth – exactly as it should be.

The KS212C is rated to produce maximum SPL of 132 dB and miraculously weighs only 88 pounds, making it a sub-speaker that most DJs can lift and load into an SUV (for example) by themselves, while still delivering killer results on the dancefloor.

Super Sub: Bass on the floor, not in the booth.

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smaller form factor (7-inch vs. 12inch).

I honestly simply could not bring myself to place my fingers on the record of my SC5000M review unit, but I can confirm the feel, weight, action, and response of the unit is indistinguishable for me from a high-quality DJ turntable. And I’m quite certain that’s what Denon DJ was going for; they can check that box easily.

The only other difference between the SC5000M and the SC5000 is the torque adjust knob. It’s in the same place — but the nature of it is slightly different, as you’d expect.

The experience of using the SC5000M is, as you may have guessed by now, identical to the original SC5000; it’s just modified by the experience of using a motorized, moving, real vinyl mini-turntable as your interaction point, vs. the SC5000’s conventional jog wheel. It’s worth mentioning that the SC5000’s jog wheel is a joy all by itself — one of the best I’ve ever used. But the SC5000M? Well, it’s gorgeous to look at with its polished metal edges and the bright surrounding LED illumination, but even more fun to use in practice.

Conclusions: At the end of my original review of the SC5000, I stated, “If Denon DJ was trying to create a superbly impressive, incredibly flexible, and intensely fun media player for the DJ market — one with great engineering and an industry-leading feature set — all I can say is that they have been wildly successful.”

I would say the same about the SC5000M, with the addition that Denon DJ has outdone itself with the addition of such an authentic vinyl control experience for DJs who prefer a more classic feel and style of control. The SC5000 remains the DJ media player of my dreams, and the SC5000M only serves to reinforce and extend that feeling.

The SC5000M comes at a street price in the neighborhood of $1,500, so it is an investment intended for serious users. But for the price, you get a top-drawer DJ experience that’s tough (or maybe even impossible) to beat.

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MOBILE PROFILE CAREERS…INNOVATIONS…SUCCESS STORIES

ATL DJ NAVIGATES UNIQUE MARKET

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By Stu Kearns

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Marietta, Ga. — In a huge market with hundreds of DJs, it’s crucial to stand out from the others, and that requires a solid brand.

T h a t ’s w h a t D J “ D a n o ” D a n Blankowski learned at regional DJ conference in Tennessee.

“I learned the most about branding from Jeffrey Gitomer and Gary Vaynerchuk,” says Blankowski, owner of DJ Dano Atlanta Entertainment.

“Gitomer asked: ‘What is your duck?’

By ‘duck,’ he meant the symbol of your company, an image that makes potential clients think of your company. AFLAC and its famous duck mascot was the obvious source of his example.”

But Blankowski learned that even a small company needs a duck. So he challenged several dozen past and current clients to brainstorm and come up with a symbol of “fun,” and “professional.” The overwhelming favorite was the disco ball.

Recalls Blankowski: “One former bride and friend called the disco ball the ‘Universal Symbol of Fun Party,’ and my duck was found!”

As a traffic reporter at WSB Radio, Blankowski already had the nickname of “Disco Dan” while flying over Atlanta traffic, so the disco-ball “duck” was an easy progression. He began to look more seriously about how to incorporate the disco ball into his marketing and branding.

But first, as he’s not just a DJ, his branding needed to reflect his master of ceremonies skills and experience, too. With another round of consultations from clients, he determined that the classic Shure Super 55 microphone was the most recognizable symbol of an entertainer or announcer.

“Two different ‘ducks’ was a challenge,” he said, “and a new logo would be needed to reflect the complementary, but similar skills of an MC and a DJ. I’m a very good DJ, but I’m a much better MC – speaking extemporaneously and being funny when needed, all without a script.”

DJ Dano: His rebranding has helped business.

Of course, rapid-fire traffic reporting was a great way to hone those adlib skills. So… a new logo was born:

Says Blankowski: “I even buy discoball necklaces to give to clients as a ‘thank you,’ which keeps me topof-mind when they hang the balls at their desk or in the car.”

Blankowski’s DJ business journey began rather unceremoniously 30 years ago. Hired away from his Pittsburgh hometown radio station

by WSB in Atlanta to do traffic and news, his experience wasn’t exactly one of Southern Hospitality. After four months at the station, a complete management overhaul sent 15 people to the unemployment line.

“At that point, I realized that I was tired of allowing my destiny and success to be in the hands of other people,” says Dan. “I decided to transition into an entrepreneur and actively marketed ‘Magical Music Machine’ — his mobile set-up he had assembled to do the occasional radio-related MCing gig — to wedding venues and brides in North Georgia.

But the Atlanta market posed unique challenges. “Extreme diversity best describes the Atlanta/North

Georgia market, especially for entertainers and DJs,” says Blankowski.

Blankowski says the City of Atlanta isn’t really a market in itself — it’s a portion of the larger North Georgia (or Atlanta Metro) market, which extends from Macon in the south to the North Georgia mountain cities near the borders with Tennessee and North Carolina.

In political terms, the City of Atlanta has been called “A Blue Island in a Red Ocean,” according to Blankowski.

“There are 30 counties that compose the Atlanta Metro,” he says.

“Two or three are considered ‘urban,’ and the rest are thriving suburban counties, with a few bordering on ‘rural,’ but still growing.

“And there are two distinct lifestyles and markets here in north Georgia – ITP, or Inside the Perimeter, and OTP, or Outside The Perimeter. The Perimeter is I-285, the interstate that circles Atlanta proper.

“ITP is stereotyped as urban, overrun by millennials, extremely liberal and Democratic, and ultra-hip. It’s full of arts centers and new venues being created from warehouses and other old buildings.

“OTP is stereotyped as suburban, overrun by baby boomers, extremely conservative and Republican, with a mindset of traditional family values and faith.”

Blankowski says there are few Walmarts or grass lawns ITP, and

few high-rise condos, bike lanes or man-buns OTP. “Like all stereotypes, there are exceptions, but also a lot of truth to them,” he says, “and the comparisons are more comical than mean-spirited!”

So, Blankowski’s challenge is this: Accommodate the large corporate clients and trendy ITP weddings that

THE GEAR LIST • Virtual DJ 8 • Lenovo and Toshiba PCs • Denon MC6000MKII controller • Samson AirLine 88 Headset Wireless mic • Shure handheld & lavalier mics • Mackie SRM450 speakers • Electro-Voice EKX-12P speakers • Mackie SRS1500 subs

are in downtown Atlanta & trendy Buckhead, and also the growth companies OTP that have hundreds of workers who deserve parties and picnics, and the more casual weddings at barns, country clubs, clubhouses and thousands of new wedding venues in North Georgia. (continued on page 42)

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By Stu Kearns The best DJ is not always the one who mixes the best or has the most gear, but, rather, the one who has the best ideas and a knack for running a business.

Here are 10-plus things you can do today to take your business and your performances to the next level.

Use guilt to pack your dancefloors. One way to quickly pack the dancefloor is to use passive-aggressive guilt-based techniques. For example, invite “all the couples who are happily in love” to enjoy a slow dance. For a Conga Line, entice guests to join by stating that “the longer the line, the longer the marriage.”

Also, remind wedding guests to “get involved” and that their participation is the greatest wedding gift to the bride and groom. Remember, guests want to help, and all you need to do is ask.

Microphone check. When presenting the microphone to a guest about to deliver a toast, serve as a “toast whisperer” and quietly remind the speaker to hold the microphone right up to their mouth.

Pack the dancefloor early. Immediately after the salad course, open up the dancefloor with complete confidence. Entice guests by making a statement like, “There is plenty of time before dinner is served.” Even if the floor doesn’t build, you’ve served notice to guests who realize this is not going to be a dull wedding.

It’s the law. Use legal contracts — one huge benefit is it will increase your professional image. Contracts should contain a provision citing your home state/municipality as the applicable jurisdiction of law. Also, with the increased popularity of music streaming services like Spotify, check the licenses carefully to determine if music may be streamed for commercial purposes. (In the case of Spotify, the answer is “no.”)

At a bridal show. Collect a prospect’s data on tablets using the iCapture app, which can seamlessly integrate data into an Excel spreadsheet or into your favorite CRM. It can even send out automated emails to prospects who visited your booth. When following up with prospects, a systematic and tech-savvy process can move prospects further through the sales funnel, whether that be into a booking, in-person consultation or an invitation to a private showcase. Use the power of the text message: 98-percent of text messages are opened by the end user, as opposed to only 20-percent for emails. Response rates are 45-percent for text messages versus just 6-percent for emails. Invite your preferred vendors to private showcases to further cement these relationships.

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At consultations. For a personal touch, stand at the door to greet couples and address them by name. Repeat this when they leave the office. Put couples at ease by stating that the purpose of the consultation is to talk about their vision and not to force them to sign a contract. After booking a couple, send clients monthly emails with wedding planning tips and other important information — these emails are automated, but provide the feel of attentive, personalized concierge service. At the final consultation and again the day of the wedding, tell couples, “I want your wedding to be the best night of your life. If there’s anything that you want or need, please tell me.” The day of a wedding, send a text message to your couples mentioning how much you’re looking forward to celebrating with them.

Shake it up. Think outside of the box when performing traditional wedding events. For example, encourage your couples to share their first dance surrounded by guests on the dancefloor holding candles (6-inch flickering LED candles are recommended for safety purposes). For the anniversary dance, which typically eliminates couples as the “years married” increment increases, add couples based on years of marriage with the final result being a packed dancefloor. The longest married couple as discovered from the anniversary dance can then cut a second slice of cake after the bride and groom in the cakecutting ceremony.

Navigate the same-sex wedding market. (1) Place images of same-sex couples on your website. Related, get reviews from same-sex couples; (2) Create separate paperwork for same-sex couples. Spend an afternoon revising your wedding planning forms creating one set for female couples and one for male couples; (3) Get educated on the different traditions and announcements at a same-sex wedding, particularly for the ceremony, wedding-party introductions, and Parent Dances.

Discounts should be the exception, not the rule. Pricing for your DJ services should be based upon the annual budget that you’ve created. If you can’t resist the temptation to discount, then expenses should be trimmed by an identical amount in order to maintain the integrity of the estimated net profit.

Remember, an occasional discount will not have a significant impact, but over the long-term, discounting can erode your profits quickly and even result in a negative cash position for your business.

Avoid financing that sounds too good to be true. There is a new popular method of financing being offered to small-business owners which is tied to credit-card receipts. These short-term loans can end up taking 65-percent of your merchant receipts on a weekly basis with an effective interest rate of 25-percent or more. The better financing alternatives are bank loans, and credit cards with competitive interest rates. Keep accurate and timely financial records to facilitate the underwriting process.

If you have any questions for Business Line, please send them to djtimes@testa.com.

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10 WAYS TO BETTER YOUR DJ BUSINESS

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SALES… MARKETING…SOLUTIONS… BUSINESS LINE

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GEAR AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

Exposed to the Elements ADJ Products 6122 S. Eastern Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90040 (323) 582-2650 www.americandj.com ADJ has released its Element Series of four portable LED-powered up-lighters – ideal for wall washing. The Element QA features 6 x 4W RGBA LEDs and the Element HEX features 4 x 10W RGBWA+UV LEDs. Both models have sister versions, the Element QAIP and the Element HEXIP, that utilize the same light source but add an IP65 rating for use in outdoor applications. All models come with an internal rechargeable lithium battery, an extended range WiFLY EXR wireless DMX transceiver and a built-in kickstand that allows the beam to be angled inwards.

Compact & Powered QSC Audio 1675 MacArthur Blvd Costa Mesa, CA 92626 (714) 754-6176 www.qscaudio.com QSC Audio introduced the CP Series of compact, active loudspeakers. Its ultra-compact form factor and light weight combine to offer transport and deployment in both portable and installed applications. The CP Series is comprised of two 2-way models, the CP8 and CP12. Both units feature a 1,000-watt, Class-D power module, onetouch present DSP contours for the most common sound applications, and line, mic/line and 3.5mm stereo inputs. Each can also be pole-mounted, utilized as a floor monitor, or deployed in a fixed or temporary installation. Available accessories include carrying tote, outdoor cover and quick-connect yoke mount.

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Perfect 10

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Yamaha Corporation of America 6600 Orangethorpe Ave Buena Park, CA 90620 (714) 522-9011 www.yamahaproaudio.com Steinberg released the latest version of its music production software, Cubase 10. Three versions are available— Cubase Pro 10, Cubase Artist 10 and Cubase Elements 10—all of which feature a refined audio engine that now supports 32-bit integer and 64-bit floating-point audio for recording, importing/exporting and converting. Cubase 10 comes with 5 GB of additional sounds and loops that cover a variety of genres. Both the Pro and Artist editions include Distroyer, an effects processor that “infuses asymmetric distortion,” according to the company.

White Knight RCF 110 Talmadge Rd. Edison, NJ 08817 (732)902-6100 www.rcf-usa.com The EVOX J Series from RCF Series comes in two models—EVOX J8 and EVOX JMIX8—which are now available in both black and white. The EVOX J8 is powered by onboard 1,400-watt Class D amplification. It features a line source satellite module with eight 2-inch full-range drivers paired with a 12-inch woofer in a bass reflex enclosure. The EVOX JMIX8 adds an 8-input digital mixer and includes an app for iOS and Android that allows for management from any smartphone.

AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

GEAR

Bag ’em Odyssey Innovative Designs 809 W. Santa Anita St. San Gabriel, CA 91776 (626) 588-2528 www.odysseygear.com Odyssey Innovative Designs has released two new BACKSPIN2 digital DJ bags – the BACKSPIN2CAM and the BACKSPIN2GYC gear backpacks. One unit available in green camouflage, the other in grey camouflage, both bags have a host of padded compartments and pockets to easily store items like a laptop, controllers, microphones, interfaces, cables, hard drives, headphones, vinyl and more.

I’m On Fire Pyro Audio (860) 908-1210 www.pyroaudio.com Pyro Audio launched a next-generation sound library service for electronic music production. Each month, the company automatically adds new limited-edition avant-garde samples to the user’s library. Once downloaded, these royalty-free samples allow for unlimited use and each release is archived forever after 30 days of availability. The samples are in the .WAV format for “near-universal use in the most popular groove production software and hardware,” according to the company.

Amped Up Amped Studio www.ampedstudio.com Amped Studio 2.0 is the latest version of the company’s online DAW, which is available for free or with extra content and instruments for a monthly fee. Amped Studio 2.0 now includes two free external virtual instruments that were produced using the WAM (Web Audio Module) technology—OBXD and DEXED. In addition, the program features volume and panning automation, a content editor and new pitch- and beat-detection technology called Hum and Beatz. Amped Studio 2.0 has been developed within the new Web Assembly browser technology and currently runs under Chrome, Vivaldi and Opera.

Put on an App-y Face

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Akai’s iMPC Pro 2 for iPhone is a full-fledged song creation tool that “has been designed to take full advantage of the power of the new iPhone XS and XR while also being efficient and responsive on iPhone 7, 8 and X,” according to the company. The app offers support for four-channel audio recording and features Audio Unit plug-in support. It features a 64-track mixer with EQ and four FX—Reverb, Delay, Chorus/Flange and one IAA effect—as well as a new library of built-in, high-quality sounds.

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Akai Professional 200 Scenic View Drive Suite 201 Cumberland, RI 02864 (401) 658-4032 www.akaipro.com

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GEAR AUDIO…LIGHTING…STUFF

Lend Me an Ear TASCAM 1834 Gage Road Montebello, CA 90640 (323) 726-0303 www.tascam.com The TH-07 from TASCAM is a high-definition headphone that the company says has been tuned for full but natural bass, flat mid-range and clear high end. The headphones come with two detachable cables—one shorter, coiled cable with a 1/8-inch connector and one 8.5-foot straight cable with a multi-connector that accommodates both 1/8-inch and ¼-inch jacks. Sporting a closed back design and rotating earcups, the headphones feature custom-made 50 mm drivers and offer a wide 10 Hz to 30 kHz frequency response and sensitivity of 100 dB ±3 dB.

Making Waves Waves 2800 Merchants Drive Knoxville, TN 37912 (865) 909-9200 www.waves.com

DJ TIMES

NAMM 2019

Waves released the Dave Audé Producer Pack, which includes eight industry-standard instruments and plug-ins that were hand-picked by GRAMMY-winning music producer Dave Audé. The Dave Audé Producer Pack features five premium synth, piano and bass instruments, as well as plugins for automatic kick/bass sidechaining, vocal de-essing and drum shaping. All of the instruments are NKS-ready for NI Komplete Kontrol and Maschine, and they include high-definition and standard sample libraries.

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1. Publication Title: DJ Times 2. Publication Number: 1045-9693 3. Filing Date: October 1, 2018 4. Issue frequency: Monthly 5. Number of Issues Published Annually: 8 6. Annual Subscription Price: $14.95 7. Contact Person: Vincent P. Testa (516-767-2500) 8. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779 9. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of the Publisher: 25 Willowdale Ave.,

Port Washington, NY 11050-3779

Publisher: Vincent P. Testa, 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779

Editor: Jim Tremayne, 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779

Managing Editor: Jim Tremayne, 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779 10. Owner: DJ Publishing, Inc., 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779 13. Publication Title: DJ Times 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: August , 2018 15. Extent and Nature Of Circulation Average No. Copies No. Copies of

Each Issue During Single Issue Published

12 Months Nearest to the Filing Date A. Total Number of Copies (Net press run) 23,133 23,231 B1. Paid/Requested Mail Subscriptions 418 301 B3. Sales Through Dealers and Carriers 15,682 15,826 C. Total Paid and /or Requested Circulation 16,100 16,127 D1. Nonrequested Copies Outside County 573 553 D4. Nonrequested Copies Distributed Through the

USPS by Other Classes of Mail 6,275 6,380 E. Total Free Distribution 6,848 6,933 F. Total Distribution 22,948 23,060 G. Copies not Distributed 170 170 H. TOTAL 23,118 23,230 I. Percent Paid and /or Requested Circulation 70.16% 69.93% 16. Electronic Copy Circulation A. Requested and Paid Electronic Copies 2,136 2,122 B. Total Requested Print /Electronic Paid Copies 18,236 18,249 25,182 C. Total Requested Copy Distribution/Requested/Paid Electronic Copies 25,084 72% D. Percent Paid and /or Requested Circulation Print/Electronic Copies 72% 17. Publication of Statement of Ownership: Will be printed in the November 2018 issue of this publication.

18. Publisher: Vincent P. Testa, President Date: October 1, 2018

Murray the K-Devices K-Devices LD Brunissard 05350 Arvieux France +33 6 16 11 05 16 www.k-devices.com ESQ is a Max For Live MIDI tool from K-Devices. Part of the company’s K-Devices Out of the Grid series, ESQ is a six-track sequencer, with the ability to trigger up to 12 notes. It features two sections— the ESQ main device itself and an external steps window that provides control over velocity, chance and relative delay for each step with immediate visual feedback. According to the company, ESQ offers notes and sequence chance features that allow the unit to “to play for long stretches while never repeating the same beat.”

BPM - The #1 Source for Latin Hits and Exclusives

BPM Latino record pool has the largest selection of Latin music available online. Find high quality audio and video downloads in every essential Latin genre, plus one-of-a-kind edits and DJ-ready versions. www.bpmlatino.com

Audionamix

Powered by brand new artificially intelligent algorithms, XTRAX STEMS 2 offers faster, cleaner stem separations, backing tracks and a cappellas at the same low price. Created for DJs, music producers and remix artists, XTRAX STEMS allows users to separate any song into its vocal, drum, and remaining music components for easy sampling, remixing and unmatched control during live sets. www.audionamix.com/products/xtrax-stems

DAS Audio Introduces the ACTION 500 Series

DAS Audio presents the ACTION-500 series, consisting of 8 active and 8 passive loudspeaker models, which include a 12” monitor, full-range systems consisting of 8", 12", 15", dual 15”, and 3 subwoofers. The complete renovation of one of DAS Audio’s most recognized series is thoroughly upgraded making the systems more compact and lightweight, with an attractive modern design and more user-friendly features. www.dasaudio.com

Bose S1 Pro Multi-position PA

Sound great anywhere with the ultra-portable Bose S1 Pro Multiposition PA. Designed for musicians, DJs and general PA use, the S1 Pro is the ultimate all-in-one PA, floor monitor and practice amplifier that’s ready to be your go-anywhere Bluetooth® music system. www.professional.bose.com

TRACKS…MIXES…COMPILATIONS This acid-tinged techno track punches out a frenetic pace, then rattles, rumbles and bounces with tight grooves, mad effects and, ultimately, ominous vocals.

Bewildering, energetic, solid.

– Jim Tremayne “EXTRA HIGH”

u Ruff Diamond, Taz & Wanja Janeva u Supaearth Here we find premium quality again with the third release from the fledgling label. With Taz providing the rap vocals, this uplifting R&B/dance cut stands out from the pack.

– Curtis Zack EXODUS THE LP

u Quentin Kane & Simon Sheldon u Unquantize The Unquantize imprint has been unleashing a series of excellent long players, and this album stands right up there with the best. Standout cuts include groove-driven title cut, the vocal workout “It’s Over” and the vibe-tastic “Yinhui.”

– Curtis Zack “BABABOP”

u DJ Lora & Ce Ce Rogers u Pitch One Lora and Rogers go back to their roots on this vocal-house monster. Piano-soaked with a groove that won’t let go, this one places Rogers’ soaring vocals front and center. Feels like 1988 all over again.

P-LASK

– Tommy D Funk

“UFO” u Ellen Allien u

UFO Inc The throbbing title track blends taut beats with atmospheric whooshes, demented acid forays and melodic synth leads for dramatic techno effect.

The more relentless, anxiety-inducing flipside, “Korpermaschine,” gets even buzzier. German techno that’ll split your wig.

– Jim Tremayne “MELODIE”

u Mousse T feat. Cleah u Peppermint Jam The Mousse is on a roll at the moment, with his latest offering really hitting the mark. Taking subtle influences from a couple of disco classics, the first-rate production and sublime vocal mix perfectly. If that’s not enough, then the Shapeshifters add some extra sparkle on their stomping, uplifting remix.

“NO PRICE” Slam Dunk’d feat. Chromeo & Al-P Glitterbox A massive disco-house outing from the current kings of the scene, Glitterbox. Based around an insanely catchy string hook, this has all the right elements to make it a future anthem. With four mixes, including Robosonic’s rubbery funk effort, this one certainly should find its audience.

– Curtis Zack “OVERLAP” u Tobtok u Blissful Sounds Groove-laden, yet happily melodic, “Overlap” finds the Swedish DJ/producer deftly working filters and vocal snippets for great dancefloor effect. Simple, clean and working.

– Jim Tremayne

– Curtis Zack “THAT SOUND” EP

“TROOPER” EP

u Joseph Ashworth u Life and Death

WINTER 2018

On this solid four-track tech-house EP, the title track builds from an early-set groove into something slightly menacing. The tune’s Ron Trent rerub takes a techno turn, then goes deep, as he effectively mixes vocals and ambient synths.

Sebra Cruz’s quirkier mix punches harder and sports a tighter groove. Also, the second track, “Laminated,” delivers a percussive journey that Afro-housers should love.

DJ TIMES

– Tommy D Funk

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“ARIES IN MARS”u Josh Wink u Ovum Ovum drops a real bomb with its 300th release.

Mousse T

u Paolo Martini & Simion u Mother Recordings A fantastic two-tracker that really delivers the groovy goods. While the title track kicks a solid groove, “Hustle Jam” is a genius blend of disco sampling and floor-focused rhythms, with its filtered horns and guitar dragging you to the dancefloor.

– Tommy D Funk

“WHIRLING” u P-LASK u Electric Dangerous P-LASK provides a warm, groovy, deep-house winner here. Prominent basslines mix with filtered chords to give a somewhat ethereal vibe. But its groove never relents, so thumbs-up on this one – love it.

– Tommy D Funk

“GOLDEN ERA” EP

u Sean Cormac u Jakdat Records Creating a vibe from a classic time in NYC house music, Cormac delivers a pair of solid tunes – “Same Old H_RT” and “The Boys in the Garage” – each sporting two remixes. On the former, Jason Merced’s “Pacemaker Remix” goes sax crazy, while DJ Dashcam’s effort dives deep. On the thunderous “Boys” track, check Rissa Garcia’s bumpin’ and devoutly soulful effort.

– Jim Tremayne “LET’S GO DANCING”

u Horse Meat Disco feat. Amy Douglas u Glitterbox The Nu-Disco brand teams with Douglas on this funky, strutting, dancefloor winner. Two splendid mixes from Dimitri From Paris should help get your revivalist groove on big-time. Splendid.

Sean Cormac

– Tommy D Funk “GRATEFUL”

u Yam Who? & Jaegerossa feat. Jacqui George u Z Records The Midnight Riot gang takes a trip over to Joey Negro’s Z imprint for a full-frenzied, disco workout. Featuring a nasty, throbbing bassline and hands-in-the-air, gospel vocals, this one should storm plenty of dancefloors well into 2019.

– Curtis Zack Sandy Rivera

“COME TO ME”

Ellen Allien

u Sandy Rivera Feat: DaNii u Deep Vision On this elegant, soothing R&B ballad, Rivera flips the script from his usual bumpin’ productions.

With DaNii out front, “Come to Me” features a haunting, memorable vibe.

– Tommy D Funk

Joseph Ashworth

Tobtok

GUEST REVIEWER: PAUL GOODYEAR

“ROCK IT”

Phil Rose

Paul Goodyear

DJ TIMES

Brown returns with yet another solid disco-house thumper, this time sampling Lipps Inc’s 1979 hit, “Rock It.” Cowbells, congas, a hot, driving bass, lots of strings and enough vocals to keep the energy pumping – the vibe’s on fire. Wicked tune!

NAMM 2019

u Peter Brown u Guesthouse Music

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Cloud 9

(continued from page 21)

and operating systems (which has admittedly put a wrench in that for me, occasionally). As someone who frequently revisits projects weeks, months or even years after the fact, the idea of having to write a check — every, single, month — in perpetuity just to unlock my old projects doesn’t sit very well.

What also doesn’t sit very well is that Roland has gone all-in on the subscription model; their products are not offered through a conventional one-time purchase. Roland’s FAQ justifies that decision with a list of supposed benefits that make it sound like they’re doing you a huge favor by forcing you to pay month after month. For example, “As your musical needs and tastes evolve, you won't waste money on synths you no longer use.” Huh. I’m not sure that’s ever been a particular problem.

In any case, Roland has tried to ward off criticisms like mine with a loyalty program called YOURS. For every 12 months of subscription time paid, you’ll be able to choose one plug-in to convert to perpetual use licensing and continue using regardless of your subscription status. Whether this benefit changes the financial calculus depends, I suppose, on what you pick, and your own perception of value. For me, I’ll have to pass on having my projects effectively held hostage by a subscription payment.

While a Sounds.com subscription gives you access to loops and a Roland

subscription gives you access to some pretty cool synth plug-ins, the previously mentioned Output has decided to blend these two concepts into a single offering they call Arcade.

Output has been known primarily for its Kontakt- and sample-based synths, including the new Analog Brass & Winds. As a brief aside, this new synth, like its sibling Analog Strings, provides a fresh, new take on a staple type of sound. Featuring Output’s infamous four-way macro adjustments that make tailoring the stock sounds a breeze, the results are stunning. I fell as much in love with it as I have with other Output products, like Signal, the incredible Exhale, and many others.

And like them, you can buy Analog Brass & Winds with a standard perpetual license. Output even offers a full bundle of their plug-ins at a whopping 60-percent discount.

But that’s not the approach the company has taken with Arcade. Arcade is a sample-based synth that is essentially “free,” but behind the offering is a subscription-based content library. Output have said that the library will be updated pretty much daily, delivering a fresh supply of new content to entice you into paying $10 a month for the privilege of accessing it.

Arcade uses a three-layer hierarchy of content: product lines, kits and loops. Product lines are groupings of kits and loops with a particular theme. Loops are the individual

samples. And kits are collections of loops within a product line. Each kit pre-maps loops from the corresponding line to keyboard keys and presents them with Output’s typical quad-macro adjustment approach. You can make your own kits from loops on offer, and you can even bring your own loops into Arcade as well — either in factory kits, or your own. Arcade offers a lot of power to modify and adjust the loops, and you can easily set the song key and have the loops adjust automatically.

It’s exceptionally powerful, exceptionally easy to use, and exceptionally fun. And based on the enormous amount of content that was available even before the product formally launched, it’s hard for me not to see the potential value here.

At $10 a month, it isn’t a lot given the breadth and depth, especially with Output’s promise to keep growing the lines, kits and loops within them.

Output has wisely skipped the customer-hostile approach; if you need to suspend your Arcade subscription, you can; existing projects in your DAW will remain openable, and usable — they’ll just be limited to the content you’d configured when your subscription was active, and that strikes me as a fair and reasonable way not to hold your project for ransom when you use Arcade’s content.

Conclusions Certainly, the three services I covered here are not the only ones available to music makers. Waves offers a range of plug-ins for between $10 and a whopping $150 a month. There are combinations of software maintenance/support agreements and services on a subscription basis, as Avid have done with their DAW, Pro Tools. And, of course, there are all the non-music-specific services (like the aforementioned Dropbox) that many musicians might want to consider for use in the course of their work.

With all of these and much more, it would appear that subscriptionbased software and services in the cloud are here to stay; the financial appeal of the business model to the companies offering them are too sweet to ignore.

But whether the monthly spend is worth it is ultimately a personal decision. Ask yourself: Does it provide me enough value for the money? Are the tradeoffs (and benefits) worth it?

And what happens to my work if I stop paying?

For me, all those cloud-based service subscriptions are starting to add up, and it seems clear that my “monthly subscription fatigue” (when I look at my credit-card bill) is likely to continue. There’s an upper limit to my willingness to pay every month — and music companies are doing everything they can to carve out their share before they hit it. n

club tools.

DJ Times: What are the challenges of producing an album while touring?

Claptone: Yes, I had to produce on tour, of course. I travel with my laptop and try to do as much as possible on tour, which is actually quite hard with the amount of traveling. I love having and spending time at home in my studio – a rare treat nowadays.

DJ Times: What about your studio setup?

Claptone: I don’t have an extraordinary studio setup, as I believe in the idea behind the track first. Maybe the fact that I added more of an analog synth sound here and there, and went deeper into sound processing used more space at times is what makes Fantast differ from Charmer sonically.

DJ Times: Does the album format allow you to break out of a format of 4/4, club-ready beats? Tracks like “A Waiting Game” feel like a pretty big stylistic departure.

Claptone: I love albums in a classic sense. There is something undeniably amazing that happens when an artist manages to transport you into

other realms over the course of a complete long-player. On my days off, you can often find me taking care of my garden, arranging the perfect rows of flowers, plants, fruits and vegetables, singing along to whatever and whoever is playing on my turntable at that moment. By now, I must have tens of thousands of records.

That being said, while I am on the road, I constantly listen to music, and have the digital age to thank for that.

Crafting my own playlists and sharing them with close friends is great fun.

How I love the Internet…

DJ Times: You teamed up with Nathan Nicholson and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah again for the album.

What brought you back to these artists?

Claptone: Having already made music together and being very happy with the outcome on Charmer, it felt natural to ask both Nathan Nicholson [from The Boxer Rebellion] and Alec [Ounsworth] from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah to participate in Fantast. Nathan’s voice is one-in-amillion, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

even more so with Alec’s incredible raw energy. I hope to keep our highly creative relationship flowing, for many decades to come. As with all my collaborators, I love that they bring a strong attitude resulting from the fact that they are involved in their bands and very own projects for years, follow their own musical vision for years, and are not just generic hired studio voices.

DJ Times: What are some traits you’re looking for when searching for vocalists?

Claptone: Even before I had the idea to work with the vocalists that you can find on both Charmer and Fantast, I admired the work of these unique voices in music. I want to work with people who have their own strong musical vision and have found their voice. For me, it’s important that the voices of the singers mean something and that I can get an instant vision of what could be achieved when joining forces.

DJ Times: What’s the collaborative process like between you and the vocalists?

DJ TIMES

NAMM 2019

Claptone

40

(continued from page 10) golden visage. To me, Fantast is a second step for sure and therefore goes deeper. And other than Charmer, it takes a different path. It’s an escapist record. It leaves the harsh reality of everyday life to dive into the wild, into romantic visions of nature, and the outcome is music you can lose yourself in and discover new moods and sounds, with each new listen. This album was made across all seven continents and with many artists whose music inspire me tremendously. I am very thankful to each of my collaborators for their hard work, and for trusting me to showcase their stellar voices in the most exciting ways possible.

DJ Times: Is making a second album inherently any more difficult than making a debut full-length?

Claptone: The album was a welcome counterpart to all the touring I do as a DJ. [It was] actually a relief because I could work on music that not necessarily aimed at the dancefloor. I had the freedom to work on a real, multi-layered, musically diverse artist album and not just compile

MP3s in 56

Compiled As January 2, 2019

NATIONAL CROSSOVER POOL CHART

NATIONAL URBAN POOL CHART

1 Silk City & Dua Lipa Electricity 2 Dj Snake F/ Selena Gomez Taki Taki 3 Marshmello & Bastille Happier 4 Ariana Grande Breathin’ 5 Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper Shallow 6 LSD f/Labrinth, Sia & Diplo Thunderclouds 7 Ariana Grande Thank U. Next 8 Fisher Losing It 9 Alessia Cara Trust My Lonely 10 Snow Informer 2018 11 P!nk Secrets 12 Jack Back (It Happens) Sometimes 13 Jennifer Hudson I’ll Fight 14 Joaquin Torres Desnudame 15 Jonas Blue F/ Liam P Polaroid 16 5 Seconds Of Summer Youngblood 17 Martin Garrix F/ Khalid Ocean 18 Cher Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!

19 Kim Cameron Fearless Lovers 20 Calvin Harris Promises 21 Kendra Erika Self Control 22 Ava Max Sweet But Psycho 23 Ellie Goulding Close To Me 24 Felicia Punzo Thrill Ride 25 Mark Ronson F/ Miley Cyrus Nothing Breaks Like A Heart 26 Lovelytheband Broken 27 Ariana Grande God Is A Woman 28 Chainsmokers F/ Kels This Feeling 29 Janet Jackson Made For Now 30 Benny Blanco F/ Halsey Eastside 31 Jraffe California 32 Beth Macari Clone 33 Travis Scott Sicko Mode 34 Khalid & Normani Love Lies 35 David Guetta And Ann Marie Don’t Leave Me Alone 36 Robyn Missing U 37 Jonas Blue F/ Jack & Jack Rise 38 Sir Ivan Get Together 39 Barbara Streisand Don’t Lie To Me 40 Duncan Morley Find You Now

1 Cardi B 2 Lil Duval F. Snoop Dogg 3 Travis Scott 4 Queen Najja 5 Cardi B F/ Kehlani 6 Tory Lanez & Rich The Kid 7 Lil Wayne 8 Drake 9 Quavo 10 Drake 11 Juicy J F Travis Scott 12 Ella Mai 13 French Montana F/ Drake 14 Post Malone 15 Game F/ YG, Ty Dolla $ign 16 Gucci Mane, Bruno Mars 17 Meek Mill F/Jeremih 18 Saweetie X London 19 Lil Baby & Gunna 20 6lack F/ J.Cole

Nothing Breaks Like A Heart Ruin My Life Without Me Girls Missing U Pluto Better Trust My Lonely Thank U. Next So Close F/ Felix Jaehn, Georgia Ku

RCA Epic Capitol Epic Interscope Grey Popsicle RCA Def Jam Reprise Island

REPORTING POOLS

n Carlos

Cabrera n Gary Canavo n Blake Eckelbarger n Chris Egner n The Dance Environment n Manny Esparza n Ilan Fong n Howard HK Kessler n Sam Labelle n Dan Mathews n Brian Stephens n Peter K. Productions n Steve Tsepelis

Nashville,TN Masspool Dj Stickyboots Victors Powered By Spectrio Nexus Radio Kahoots In The Mix With HK Soundworks Klubjumpers / RHYTHM 105.9 FM KRYC Mixxmasters Peter K Pacific Coast DJs

Saugus,MA Goshen,NJ Milwaukee,WI Chicago,IL Columbus,OH Minneapolis,MN San Francisco,CA Sacramento, CA Lithonia,GA Long Beach,CA

LOOKING FOR THESE TITLES? YOU CAN HEAR THEM AND BUY THEM AT WWW.DANCEKINGS. COM. JUST CLICK ON THE LINKS IN THE CHART. DDK HAS LIMITED MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE

Atlantic Empire Epic Capitol Atlantic Interscope Republic Republic Capitol Republic Columbia Interscope Epic Republic EOne Atlantic Atlantic Warner Brothers Capitol Interscope

Most Added Tracks 1 2 3 4 5

Nicki Minaj Travis Scott Moneybagg Yo F/ J. Cole Nicole Bus Juicy J F/ Travis Scott

Good Form Yosemite Say Na You Roc Neighbor

Republic Epic Interscope Nation Columbia

NATIONAL LATIN DANCE POOL CHART 1.

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Grupomania Pitbull feat Chombo Pabanor feat U4Ria Papo Kpuccino Alsikiatra Vaq2uero Chacal Adassa Magia Caribeña El Gran Combo Mercy Group DJ Julian, M Kings, P. Royce, B.G.Babalu Domenic Marte Nacho y Ozuna DJ Snake Marc Anthony JJ Rodriguez El Puma Jr. Charlie Cruz Luis Fonsi y Ozuna Tito Rojas

Chorro E’ Loco Dame Tu Cosita So Sexy/Tan Sexy Going To Havana Dame Un Besito Clula Eres Tu No Volvere M.B.S. Amparito Ella Lo Que Quiere...

Que Hablen HTM Todo Tiene Su Fin Casualidad Taki Taki Eata Rico Rumba Pa’ Gozar Tu Con El Imposible El Doctor

MM Juston Pegassus New Latin DA Mayimbe 360 Sky Urbano MC EGC Cafe J&N Universal Geffen Sony Cima CC Universal TR

Most Added Tracks 1.

2.

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Wisin & Yandel Reggaeton En Lo Oscuro Anuel AA feat Romeo Santos Quiero Beber Ephrm J Como Una Oracion Charlie Aponte Besos De Azucar Zion y Lennoz Tocamelo

Sony RHLM Music EJ CA Warner

REPORTING LATIN POOLS n Latinos Unidos Record Pool n Salsamania Latin Record Pool n Lobo/Bass

Record Pool n Urban Tropics Music Pool n North East Record Pool n Mixx Hitts Record Pool n Ritmo Camacho Record Pool n Ritmo Internacional Record Pool n DJ Latinos Record Pool n Mass Pool n Record Pool Latino n V.I.P. Chicago Record Pool.

NAMM 2019

1 Mark Ronson F/ Miley Cyrus 2 Zara Larsson 3 Halsey 4 AJ Mitchell 5 Robyn 6 Vali 7 Khalid 8 Alessia Cara 9 Ariana Grande 10 NOTD

Money Smile Sicko Mode Karma Ring Talk To Me Uproar Nonstop Workin Me In My Feelings Lucid Dreams Trip No Stylist Better Now DTF Wake Up In The Sky Dangerous Up Now F/ G Eazy Drip Too Hard Pretty Little Fears

DJ TIMES

Most Added Tracks

Columbia Interscope Capitol Universal Interscope Columbia Reprise Capitol Def Jam Radikal RCA RCA Epic Sybasonic Capitol Capitol RCA Warner Brothers Side FX Columbia Dauman Atlantic Interscope CayaMusic RCA Red Ribbon Republic Desert Storm Rhythm Nation Interscope Notting Hill Music Carrillo Epic RCA Atlantic Interscope Capitol Peaceman Columbia 418 Music

ATTENTION DJ TIMES READERS: DJ Times is currently looking for DJs that are interested in reporting to the DJ National Dance/Crossover chart and the DJ Times National Urban Dance chart.

Reporterships are open to Record Pools and individual DJs. For more information contact: Dan Miller, dmiller@testa.com

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Claptone: After I approached the vocalists, I supplied the Fantast theme, or more of a mood board and images of what I planned to do, how I imagined the record to be. I did not want to limit their creativity, but open up a field of connotations, in order to have them find a point of view in that field to write from. The concept would hold the album together, as would the sound. With some lyrics I received created a whole new musical composition for them – others I

just changed the layouts slightly. I did all that up to a point where I felt it was right.

DJ Times: Your event concept – The Masquerade – has really taken off. How has it grown and evolved over the past year or so?

Claptone: When I started with the first The Masquerade in Berlin in 2016, it was in the rather small Ritter Butzke club with only a papiermâché prototype on the big Claptone masks, which now grew into a whole

stage setup with 12 LED lit masks and the big chrome Claptone mask flying above the DJ. Even back then, I brought MK, Perel, Dirty Doering and Mat.Joe to set the musical perspective for the event series. And I brought performers, stilt walkers, and dancers. All that is still the same, but has grown into a worldwide touring concept. Since then, I’ve hosted a stage at Tomorrowland with The Masquerade – and for dozens of other festivals. I’ve brought the event to

Amnesia in Ibiza four times together with Elrow.

DJ Times: How do you create a connection with fans while still maintaining your air of mystery?

Claptone: It’s magic. No, but honestly, I am Claptone: People get in contact with me through social media and, at times, I get back to them and answer their questions, share their input and comments, like their posts.

I am a decent being.

– Chris Caruso

and use Ableton Live on my laptops.

DJ Times: You’ve really redefined live-show performances in the world of electronic music. For DJs who may not know, tell us the advantages and disadvantages of playing live music on a nightly basis.

Miller: A lot more can go wrong during a live show, but that's also what makes it so beautiful. Sometimes those imperfections are what make every night different and authentic. I love playing with a live band and being able to feed off each other's energy. It's an awesome experience playing night after night with the same people and dialing everything in as a group.

DJ Times: As opposed to a traditional DJ set, you're giving fans much more of an experience with these performances. Was that the goal when you first decided to incorporate in your shows the drum-pad set up?

Miller : I'm always looking for ways to add more to my sets and the drum pad was sort of the first step in transitioning to more of a live show. I use a lot of organic elements in my productions, so it made sense to add them to the performance side as well.

DJ Times: Selling out shows in San Francisco, New York City and Chicago on consecutive nights dur-

ing this tour is a pretty impressive accomplishment. What would you say is the most surreal moment of your career so far?

Miller: Selling out my first headline show at Red Rocks in Colorado was a huge accomplishment for me and totally surreal. That was the venue where I first fell in love with electronic music, and to have my family, best friends, and all my fans there was a moment I won't ever forget.

DJ Times: After such a big year, what can fans expect from Illenium in 2019?

Miller: A bunch of new music and working on a new show that I can’t n wait for everyone to see.

panies based outside of Atlanta… companies like UPS, Home Depot, Newell Rubbermaid, Mohawk, SunTrust, NCR, AFLAC and hundreds more.”

Blankowski says he’s chosen to stop pursuing high-school and middle-school dances, and club-ori-

ented parties that are usually based in the City of Atlanta. “I also focus on large events – festivals, holiday celebrations, etc. – where the Master of Ceremonies is just as important as the music, and nobody cares about your ‘mixing skills’ – they just want great music with smooth segues.”

Is it working? “Any time your skills and passion can be converted into a successful business and allow you to become an entrepreneur, it’s a major success because your destiny is in your own hands,” says Blankowski, which means, “So far so good!”

Awakened

(continued from page 17)

is a good way to keep ideas flowing.

DJ Times: In the studio, what gear and programs do you use?

Miller: In the studio, I use Ableton Live, an Akai [MPK49] 49-key keyboard, lots of guitars, and a ton of VSTs – [Xfer Records’] Serum, [Spectrasonics’] Omnisphere, and [Native Instruments’] Kontakt, among others.

DJ Times: And onstage?

Miller: Some of the gear I use onstage are the DJ TechTools Midi Fighter 3D and the DJ TechTools Midi Fighter Twister, two Roland SPD-SX drum pads – one acts as a "brain" for my Roland PD-8 V-Pads – and a Native Instruments keyboard. I then run everything through a UAD audio rack

Mobile

(continued from page 32)

“It’s a daunting challenge,” he says.

“As an entertainer, you have to find your niche and focus your marketing toward your ideal client. For me, it is weddings at upscale country clubs, local chambers of commerce, growing city parks and recreation departments, and the huge list of com-

New Digs: Ultra Music Festival ’19 But, one fact remains…

The madness ain’t going away.

DJ TIMES

Photos by aLIVE Coverage

NAMM 2019

Ultra may have a new venue…

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Ultra Music Festival, in the next DJ Times