Our five EDM bloggers.

Here’s top of the Innotune blog of January.

Get to know controllerism. Can we compare digital DJs and controllerists?  Read on and share your opinion.

You may also read about sampling and pick up a few tricks from the Prodigy classic “Smack my bitch up”.

This month we gathered 20 great EDM music videos. Check out both part 1 and part 2.

Ableton and Serato finally launched the first result of their cooperation. Ville Lope wrote about the DJ system “The Bridge” and gave you his first thoughts.

The fifth episode of the Innotune podcast featured Thomas Sagstad, BT, Sami Saari, Dj Eco, Pete Tong and Funkagenda. Plus new music from other great producers. Download, listen or subscribe to our monthly podcast.

January at Innotune also brought you mouth producing, game trance, free nu disco downloads and the true story about the A&R guy.

Stay tuned!

Picture by Chulini under a CC license.

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?

We expect more from the DJ when a laptop is in front of him or her, don’t we? Should digital DJ acts be more like a set with live remixes, or are we better off without interrupting the tracks? After all, a lot of DJ’s are already making good use of Ableton Live, Traktor, Serato etc. and their suitable USB controllers.

I’ve attached two videos by controllerist Moldover from Brooklyn that explains the deal pretty good. He has wrecked a Novation Remote 25 and use Ableton Live as software. If you would like to change your DJ act into a more live-like experience, maybe you can pick up a couple of tricks. And maybe you’ll smash your controller and rebuild it before your next DJ gig or live performance?

Lesson one:

Lesson two: