Marc Reck

I finally had a meeting with leftfoot resident Sam Redmore yesterday to discuss and show how we do what we do, with the view to starting a dj partership.

It was nice to see a deeper level of geekery with the organisation of music, (and thankfully one that is imperative if you want to break barriers with it)

t was also interesting to see that although we have very different styles, and approaches, that there was a whole load of common ground, which should make this one very interesting collaboration.

Sam’s a resident at Leftfoot, and he is fast becoming known as one to watch, as he re-edits all of his tracks, so most of the stuff you hear is going to be original in some way. One of the main reasons for this is not to remix and put out a sam redmore style track, but so that he can smoothly mix music that isnt designed to be mixed, i’e live music.

The way he categorises his music utilises a well thought out system, 3 cd wallets, and a laptop with a spreadsheet on it! While this sounds strange it enables him to at a glance see what goes with what, what the bpm should be, what the key is, and where he can go with his mix.

The preedited stuff means that each mix has often been (prepared in a way) so he is free to work on the actual creative side of djing, as opposed to getting the beats to sync, or finding the perfect place to drop it. This makes a huge difference with the actual mix, and means that you can hear a wide range of music djed in the same way that you can hear dance or electronic music played.

Its similar in a lot of ways to djing withTraktor Scratch, which enables intelligent ways of storing and using your music, plus if you beatgrid all the tracks, determine the bpm (necessary if you want to beatmix live music due to its fluctuating time scales, or use the sync buttons) and the key, opens up all sorts of possibilities.

Sam it seems has built the Traktor system in a way which now seems old school?!?

Maybe its the beard though.

Its interesting…when i first moved to cdjs 8 years ago, i was moving from analogue to digital. Then when i incorporated Traktor Scratch into my setup this year, i’m now using cdjs and vinyl to control the digital music on my laptop. Sam is using a similar method but without the laptop, which seems in a lot of respects analogue now, (which it obviously isnt, but you get what i mean.)

Anyway…

The other thing we are going to be incorporating is 2 mixers. This resounds back almost 10 years ago to my first residency, (interestingly organised by 3 of our cities online gurus Stef Lewandowski, Antonio Gould, and Ed Russell!) whereby me and Yoda (not the cut n paste dj), would play a vs set on 4 decks and 3 mixers.

The technology, (and obviously my music and hairstyle!)  have changed dramatically since those days, which now means that between us, we can busy on 6 decks, 3 efx units, 2 mixers, one microphone, and our combined music collection!Endless possibilities, and with our current plan, one which should see something quite special for one of two sets at our forthcoming Project x Presents event on September 13th 2008.

We’ve also just confirmed that we will have the mighty Subsource playing!

Not to be missed!