Ableton and Serato present The Bridge

When Ableton announced in October 2008 their partnership with Serato I was super excited. I’ve been producing solely in Ableton and I have also tried to DJ with Ableton, controlled by Pioneer DJM-800, but at that point it didn’t feel right, I didn’t feel comfortable with it.

Serato has been in the game of digital DJing for more than 10 years, their Serato Scratch has been a choice of several DJ’s during the years, and especially among hip hop scene, using control vinyls to control music on your laptop, has been “the” way to DJ.

While Serato has been strong name in hip hop, Native Instrument’s Traktor has quickly risen to be the equivalent to Serato in EDM.

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Top 20 Classic EDM videos – Part 1

There are lots of EDM music videos with, let’s say, a bit variety in its qualities. If you get a record company to actually put in some $$$ to create a music video for your track – it usually involves slow-motion nature scenes, a sportscar, some bikini women and the artist standing on various places with some sunglasses.

But during time, there are some gems appearing. Videos with a meaning, or some sort of creative excellence. So here goes nothing; Innotunes Top 20 selected EDM videos  that deserves to be called a “classic”

Chemical Brothers – Star Guitar

Such an mesmerizing video. Everytime I go on a train I try to sync everything outside to the music I’m listening to after this music video.

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The hidden art of sampling

Remember Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up? (Spotify link) The video of this track from 1997 was so violent it was banned from day time television and even MTV had to play it only at night time.

The times have gone by, the video itself has got a cult status, but the track keeps living a life of it’s own still being remembered in night clubs all around the world.

Prodigy’s lead man (that usually keeps everything low key) Liam Howlett is known for his sampling. Some music enthuastics have been spotting various samples from Prodigy tracks. Now in the era of YouTube the stuff gets some videos.

In the summer 2009 a very creative video of how to recreate Smack My Bitch Up was posted to YouTube. The spotting of samples was spot on and the way how the data was presented, indeed top notch.

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Are you a DJ or a controllerist?

Turntablism is mostly for hiphoppers, right? But the concept of controllerism might fit better into the electronic scene. We have moved into an era where the Mac-lit DJ is more common than the jock playing plastic plates. Since anyone can make flawless beatmixes with cheap gear now, you have to give credit to those digital artists that take more creative use of computers and its controllers.

From Wikipedia: Controllerism is the art and practice of using musical software controllers (e.g. MIDI, OSC, Joystick, etc) to build upon, mix, scratch, remix, effect, modify, or otherwise create music, usually by a Digital DJ or “Controllerist”.

The gear manufacturers are throwing out a lot of controllers for DAWs and digital DJ’ing, but real controllerists create their own equipment. Now you might argue that this extreme use of controllers is relevant only for artists performing live electronic music. But isn’t computer DJ’ing based on pretty much the same?

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December blog roundup

The month of Christmas at Innotune brought you acoustic sweets. HÃ¥kon showed us a guitar cover of Out Of The Blue, the trance classic by System F. Then seven more great acoustic covers popped up.

What has been typical 00ies when we look back at the last ten years of EDM? Our reader Anton Sonin answered: The gated clap! Do you agree? We would love your opinion on what has been most important for EDM the past decade. The mic is still open.

Thomas went back to the school bench, but with a new approach: DJ math. The numbers showed modern DJ’s are lazy. A funny view, be sure to check it out.

We’ve also featured nine electronic albums you should listen to. That is if you’re into longplayers. Anyway, have a listen to our picks and add your favourites of 2009.

Last but noe least, the December episode of our podcast was filled with Scandinavian trance and the regular blend of new music from many electronic genres. Our very own Ville Lope did the mix.

Thanks for following another month of Electronic Fjord Music! We have high hopes for 2010!

9 must hear electronic music albums of 2009

Are we even listening to albums nowadays? A lot of you guys are probably just downloading the tracks you like, who doesn’t? But I still find satisfaction in putting on a good full-lengther which is both well composed and has good individual tracks.

I asked Innotune companion HÃ¥kon Lofthus if he had any good suggestions for this album sum up. He answered:

R.I.P. albums. When buying online – why would I want to buy an whole album, when I could only grab the tracks I like? (I can listen to them first as well) So, this year has been almost an album-free year for me, and iTunes better start pushing out those iTunes LP features to get me back on buying complete albums.

You have to agree. But I’m giving this list a shot anyway. I realise I haven’t heard enough releases this year to create the complete “top edm albums of 2009 bible”, but here’s nine I would like you to check out.

Maybe you’ll start buying albums again, or at least listen to complete releases on Spotify.

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Podcast 004 – Starring Ville Lope

Finnish trance, funky house and fresh chillout. Download the fourth episode!

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The december episode of Innotune is a collection of crazy house, Norwegian funk, nasty breaks, Scandinavian trance and a tiny piece of dubstep. We’ve got new music from Deadmau5, Michael Woods and our very own Thomas Sagstad, to mention a few.

The DJ mix in the end is done by Innotune resident Ville Lope, a Finnish guarantee for quality trance. He brings you a mix consisting of Scandinavian material only!

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The evolution of the lazy dj

When I first started out with the whole dj thing back around 98-99, the prefered media for playing music was vinyl. Today my choice is more or less CD’s. In 2010 I’m pretty sure I’m gonna run around with usb sticks, thanks to Pioneer!

Now this got me thinking, has the evolution made the DJ’s lazy? Lets do the math.

Today I have a CD bag holding 320 CD’s. Every cd has roughly 8 tracks on them, meaning my cd bag at all time holds 2560 tracks.

Now when I first started, if I wanted to bring 2560 tracks to the club on vinyl, I would have to bring roughly 853 vinyls. Let’s say every vinyl has 3 tracks. The biggest UDG record bag can hold 90 records, meaning I would need something like 9,5 UDG bags. And according to Wikipedia an average vinyl weighs approx 100 grams.

853 vinyls x 100 grams = 85 300 GRAMS / 85,3 KG.

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Open mic: Electronic music decade sum up

A decade has soon passed. We’ve gone from glowsticks and the commercial breakthrough of electronic dance music, to a digital revolution with producers in every bedroom. The electronic music industry has evolved, but what has made the change?

Which releases or producers/dj’s has had the biggest impact on EDM?

What technology or gadget has had the strongest influence on the scene?

And what has been typical 00ies when we look back at the last ten years of EDM?

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Top 7 acoustic covers of electronic music

Electronic Dance Music is somewhat different than most other styles. Instead of playing the tracks live at concerts; Artists play their cd/vinyl/track and backs it up by lots of lights, lasers, dancers and so on – Also called Djs.

But there are some really talented people out there that do what most EDM producers and Djs can’t: Play it live with real instruments.

Check out these awesome acoustic covers of EDM tracks:

Daft Punk – Around The World (On violin & guitar)

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