Download Adam’s Triple J Mix Up recording for free here!
Hi All,
Well, two weeks ago my third appearance on Triple J took place and I must say I have been humbled by the responses that have come in.¬† If you didn’t get a chance to tune in you can download the set here and decide for yourself if you like it or not.
All feedback is welcome as always.
Tracklisting:
01. Adam Gillett – Diablo (Original mix) [forthcoming on Subuse Records]
02. Bushwacka! – Dromederie (Original mix)
03. Justin Margovan – From the Beginning (Original mix) [forthcoming on Phobic Records]
04. Oliver Huntemann – Rikarda (Paul Ritch remix)
05. Jitzu Eff Lle – Raptus (Elia Remix) [Kaufe Musik]
06. Rekardo Rivalo – Mama Speaking (Original mix) [Styledriver Records]
07. Gummihz – Los Los (D’Julz remix) [Mobilee Records]
08. Magnus Wanscher – Trill (Original mix) [Phobic Records]
09. Jitzu Eff Lle – Raptus (Tarifbereich B Remix) [Kaufe Musik]
10. Dandi & Ugo – Zimox MST (Original mix)
11. Radio Slave – Koma Koma (Original mix) [Rekids]
12. Jakiro – Fountain Trip (Original mix)
13. Alex Piccini & Kyo – Switching (Alessio Mereu remix)
14. Tigerskin – Take the E-Train (Original mix)
15. Mark Broom – Sneak (Chris Finke’s Nolan Sisters remix) [Unreleased]
16. Binary Methods aka. Adam Gillett & Justin Margovan – Sukhavati (Original mix) [Unreleased]
17. Avus – Nonse Sence (Magnus’ Sex, Hugs & Rock n’ Roll mix 2) [Phobic Records]
Enjoy and stay tuned for the return of the Kana Show in a couple weeks! Can’t wait 
Respect
Adam
Best source of handy FREE mac applications
It is often a pain when re-installing your operating system to remember which apps you have backed up and which ones you still need to search for on the world wide web.
Here is a site which does it all for you, well sort of. All of the apps on this page are great and the best part, they are free. Gotta love OpenSource software!!
Hooray for Open Source Mac DOT ORG!!!
Kana will be back and bizzi soon…
Hi all,
Just wanted to say thanks for being so patient with the lack of content these last two weeks.¬† I will be back in London about April 16th and things will be back as normal with the Kana Show on Monday 20th April. In the meantime I will endeavor to post up some more articles next week and the recording from the Mix Up show if you miss it tonight…. but that’s no excuse not to tune in now is it 
Cheers
Adam
Triple J tonight
Check out Triple J’s Mix Up Sat 14th (SCSI-9) and 21st March (Adam Gillett)
As promised last week, here are the details of Adam’s guest appearance on Australian National radio, Saturday 21st March.
Triple J’s Mix Up dance show has long been heralded as the leader in upfront, underground, leftfield and downright wicked grooves from 10pm on a Saturday night right through to the early hours of Sunday morning.
This Sat (14th) you can hear Russian minimalists SCSI-9 (Kompakt), post Colours appearance (13th @Empire, Brisbane). Expect things to be minimal in every sense of the word from the days prior to its mainstream exposure. Tweaky, stripped back and blissful.
Following Adam’s closing set at the SCSI-9 appearance in Brisbane, Adam has been invited to appear on the Mix Up show just one week later. Sat 21st will see Adam’s third appearance on Triple J’s flagship weekend dance experience. Having been over 4 years since his last interview and guest spot in 2004, he has a lot of ground to cover so expect a showcase of eclectic techno, driving percussion and hypnotic beats.
Secret tips to improve your mix by avoiding Ear Fatigue
How come my tracks don’t sound like a commercial release?
Part 1: Ear Fatigue
News flash…Your ears fatigue Very quickly at high listening levels (yes, that means your ears do indeed get ‘tired’). When your ears are fatigued, your brains ability to register & seperate frequencies is dramstically reduced. Tha means your hearing becomes ‘muddy’!!
What is it about dance music that really drives us on? Why do we fell so empowered by it to move and shake?
Because the air being pushed by the massive (& extremely loud) speakers in your favourite club are quite literally pushing you around! The gravity effect of a kick and bass over a loud PA (public address) system is quite literally physics moving your body.
Don’t believe me? Next time you are in a club where the music is pounding your body (as well as your poor ears), try and move your self up and down (some call it dancing) in the opposite direction to the kick drum. i.e. move upwards when the kick strikes, and move downwards inbetween the kicks. I guarantee you it will feel awkward, uncomfortable and down right unnatural. Not to mention everyone around looking at you like your an alien! Get my point? Music is sound, and sound is physical.
So…. Why did I bother running you through that little episode and whats it got to do with Ear Fatigue? Well, quite simply, your ears are able to fatigue at levels much lower than that experienced in a club. And it is up to you to protect them from this fatigue to ensure you are making the most informed decisions possible about your music. If what I’ve said so far means nothing to you, perhaps skip the rest of this article and keep turning up your mixer to full. Good luck getting a decent sound, let alone being able to hear in 10 years.
Okay, thats all good and well, but what am I supposed to do about it and how do I know if my ears are ‘fatigued’?
The phenomenon known as TTS (Temporary Threshold Shift) basically means after prolonged exposure to loud listening levels, your ears’ ability to actually hear is reduced. You’re going temporarily Deaf! Don’t freak out, as the name suggests, this is temporary. But if you keep it up, can lead to permanent loss of hearing.
This handy site has provided a nice little chart with some real life decibel comparisons and even how long you can listen to certain levels before causing yourself damage. You’ll notice that increasing the volume from 90db to 95db (train whistle at 500 feet to a subway train at 200 feet) reduces the safe listening times from 8 hours to 4 hours! Don’t know what 90db is? Get yourself one of these valuable assets. A decent meter will only set you back about $100aud, and it will save you a lifetime of hearing if you use it… a wise investment if you ask me.
So, if you’re still wondering how loud you should be monitoring your productions, well that is a relative question. How long do you want to sit at the computer for? A good & safe place to start is: 8 hrs = 90db; 4 hrs = 95db; 2 hrs = 100db. Overall, if you stick to around 90db, you’ll protect your ears (you only have one pair!) and produce better music (since you won’t fatigue as quickly).
Now, if you thought I’d be finished, you’re wrong. Sound level is only one part of the ‘fatigue’ equation. Another very important area which often gets no attention, especially when you are feeling ‘in the zone’, is how long you spend listening to any one piece of audio. The longer you spend listening exclusively to one loop, one vocal part or one whole track, the quicker your ability to make objective mixing decisions fades.
Comparison is your best friend in this situation. The longer you listen to one piece of music, or one EQ setting, the quicker your ears adjust and get ‘comfortable’ with what they are hearing. This is a nasty trick your ears play on you and the only way to combat the adjustment is by making regular comparisons to other sounds.
If you are mixing your track, working on levels, panning, eq, compression etc, then by now you should have already chosen a commercial song from which to draw inspiration. Deciding which track is best suited to your needs is a personal choice but things to keep in mind are:
- Does it have the groove, energy, direction I want to achieve?
- Do I like the ’sound’ of the song?
i.e. Is the Kick/Bass prominent and punchy enough? Can I see myself going mental to this on the dance-floor (or not… if that’s your direction). Are the different elements of the song (snare, hats, melody, pads etc) clear and cohesive or are they muddy and jumbled?
Once you’ve chosen the right track from which to compare, you should do so regularly.
For simplicity and speed, load the track into your project on an empty audio track, mute it and drop the channel volume until it matches the master bus when your own song is playing. Now that its at the same level, you can easily hit the ‘Solo’ button for a quick reference to what should be considered a professionally mixed & mastered track. You can make things even faster and intuitive by assigning the reference tracks solo button to a Hot-Key on your keyboard.
Now when you are making important decisions about how much bass to have, how loud the snare should be, how far back the pads should sit etc, you have an accurate place to compare your own project to. Sure it will be very challenging if not impossible to achieve exactly the same sonic signature, but with a lot of practice and perseverance you will find your sound quality improving dramatically.
Make sure when you are working with these tools that you check sooner rather than later. Don’t leave it until you’ve been at it for an hour, or even 10 minutes. The ear will adapt within seconds to fine EQ adjustments, and within minutes to a whole song.
This same technique can be applied when making EQ adjustments. The trick here is to ‘bypass’ the EQ instead:
- You have decided a certain sound requires an EQ tweak
- Reach for the EQ and start affecting the areas you feel necessary
- Turn the EQ off (or bypass the zones you have changed) and listen to the sound as it was previously
- Turn the EQ back on and compare to what you were trying to achieve
- Repeat until you have the sound just as you need it without making it sound worse
If you leave too much time between swapping the EQ in & out, you run the risk of allowing your ears to get used to your newly EQ’d sound. This will greatly hinder your ability to make objective decisions regarding your music.
In summary, your ears are your best friend and should be treated with respect. These friends like variety, hate loud noise for long periods of time and only have one lifetime. Once they are damaged, they are gone for good.
Monitor your music at safe levels for the appropriate lengths of time and you will find your ears lasting a very long time. Make quick comparisons to music that you would consider very well made, to a professional standard, and you will find the decisions you make in regards to your own sound become much easier and yield better results.
If you have any questions about this article or want to get into further detail, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m able.
Good luck on your musical journey,
Adam
Quick & Easy CD track markers in your DJ mix
I often get asked the question: I bought Ableton, I’ve just recorded a sweet as mix and exported it to a WAV file, now how do I burn it to an Audio CD with track markers?
There are many paths you could take, considering the amount of software options available but the one I’ll share with you is FREE and Crossplatform so will work for everyone! How good is that!
Audacity is a nifty little freeware recording program that works on Mac, Windows, Linux and well pretty much anything. Its by no means the ‘best’ solution for your audio-editing needs, but its Free, its Easy, and it will work for anyone.
Once you’ve recorded and exported your mix, you will need to open the WAV file in Audacity (assuming you’ve already downloaded and installed the freeware). Once the mix has been loaded you can play or “scrub” through the mix, and, using the blue “pause” buttons, not the yellow “stop” button, you can hold the play marker at the exact place you want to set the next track at.
We are going to use “labels” to make our track markers. You can name each marker also and choose to export the tracks by label name or numbering consecutively.
First, set a label at the start of the mix by going to the menu option: “Project” > “Add Label at Selection” (Hotkey Windows: “CTRL + B” Mac: “APPLEKEY + B”)
Navigate to the next place you want a cd marker and repeat this process, all the way until you are at the last track in the mix. Once you’ve finished labelling each track, go to menu: “File” > “Export Multiple”.
Audacity will now export all your mix into the separate tracks, labels as you like, into the format and folder of your choosing. How easy was that!
The final stage requires putting the new tracks on a CD and setting it to play without little annoying gaps between each track.
To copy your music to an audio CD you are going to need software to ‘burn’ it with in the first place. iTunes will do it for you, as will Windows Media Player, both are free, but I prefer to use Toast (on Mac) and Nero (on windows). If you need to burn Red Book standard then I suggest using Toast on Mac, for Windows you can burn Red Book with Wavelab (which would negate the need for Audacity). There are other Red Book compliant burning softwares out there for PC but I’ll let you find what suits your needs.
For gapless playback, you need to import all your files into the burning software (by dragging them into the project window or importing from the menu), and change the default pause between each track from the standard 2 seconds to zero. The first track requires a mandatory 2 seconds but that will not affect the change from track 1 to 2. Each burning software does this differently so a little discovery might be inorder for you. After removing the 2 second gaps, you will want to choose the option to burn “Disc-At-Once” to prevent any subtle clicks in the playback.
That’s about it really. There is an alternative option in Audacity which requires exporting a “cue-sheet” for the lables you’ve made in the single file mix. You can read about it and the rest of this process in much finer detail on the Audacity site here.
Happy listening!
Kana Show #016 recorded 2nd March 2009
A big thanks to all who tuned in right to the end, great response in the kick106 chat room as always
That’s it from us for about 5 weeks, but stay tuned for more great sets coming up this month.
Coming soon:
- Adam will be supporting SCSI-9 (Kompakt) at Colours in Brisbane on March 13th
- Also, a special guest appearance on one of Australia’s best known FM radio stations…
Here is the show from Monday night
Tracklisting:
01. Kana Show Jingle 001
02. Kevin Griffiths – Lucifers Biscuits (Original mix)
03. Minilogue – My Teenager Gang (Original mix)
04. Loco Dice – M-train to Brooklyn (Marco Carola remix)
05. Gummihz – Los los (D’Julz remix)
06. Christian SMith & John Selway – Swingworld (Paul Ritch remix)
07. DJ T and Thomas Schumacher – Lower Instincts (Original mix)
+ Prompt – Evolve (DJ Tool mix)
08. Seth Troxler – Love Never Sleeps (Par Grindvik One Way or Another remix)
09. Rekardo Rivalo – Mama Speaking (Original mix)
10. John Aquaviva and Alex Delia – Salamandara (Da Lukas remix)
11. Tigerskin – Take the E-train (Original mix)
12. Spektre – Deal with it (Emerson Todd remix)
13. NTO – Monkeys Hug (Lutzenkirchen remix)
14. Argy & DJ Gregory – Our Drums (Album Version)
15. Adam Gillett – Diablo (Original mix)
16. Adam Gillett – Minimator (Original mix)
Last Kana Show for 5 weeks- Tonight!
The time has come for Adam to ship off back to Australia and sort a change of Visa so he can continue to represent on the Kana front in Europe.  Alas, the side affects of such a trip will mean no Kana Show on kick106 after tonight until he returns to London for the Bank Holiday show on April 13th. 
For those in Australia (or the dedicated few in London!), there is a special exclusive set coming up during Adam’s ozzie adventures to be aired on national radio… ¬†stay tuned for more details closer to the date!
No recording for Kana Show #015
 
 
Unfortunately we had some recording issues with the Kana Show last week and try as we might, could not rectify the poor recording.  For those that missed it, we were joined by special guest Justin Margovan for a back-2-back 3-deck slam showcasing some of his finer work as well as a bunch of eclectic techno goodies.
Oh well, time to move on. In preparation for tonights Kana Show, we’ve uploaded a live ableton dj set of Adam’s from the AfterHourz party in Brisbane, August 2007. ¬†Lots of layers & samples in this one, so strap in for one crazy ride.
