I’ve actually never seen this video before up until today, and came across it on youtube just by chance! Pretty neat short documentary on drum and bass music during it’s fledgling years (circa ‘96) in London. It highlights a few of the big dogs’ thoughts on the music and the scene from back then, including DJ Hype, 4Hero, Kemistry, Storm, Nicky Blackmarket, and others. And here’s where I put my obligatory “boy it would’ve been SO much fun to have lived there and been part of it all back then” comment!

This was a mix I recorded a couple weeks ago that became part of the trippysoundscapes series, hosted by Boston DJ Guarav Mehta. The first half of it is primarily deep house, and at around the halfway mark it gradually builds towards more of a peak hour tech-house sound. Most of the songs at the end more aligned towards the minimal side of the scale as well. It was recorded on 2 CDJ-1000s and 1 turntable, link and tracklist below.

Effective Resolution (Nickdawg) :: Deep/Tech House Set 2.22.10

aki bergen- history of soul 
dirt crew- deep cover (roberto rodriguez remix) 
brainows- ray okpara (lahaus & boris werner remix) 
dominic martin- mistreated 
dale howard- 4 hour bang 
kasper bjorke- alcatraz (jimpster dub) 
bas amro- took you for granted 
kevin griffiths- oh yeah (julien chaptal mix) 
dave robertson & jon gurd- never do that 
tim green- lone tone 
noze- you have to dance (mathias kaden remix) 
green & falkner- satisfaction 4.25 
harry axt- bastardo 
v-sexion- oh moin (phunklarique remix) 
tube & berger- funky shit (gui boratto remix) 
alex celler- la palma 
flori & ethyl- tanqueray

If you check out cs5.org, you will start to notice that there are a pretty significant amount of short videos that are being uploading that hint at some of the new features (both significant as well as minimal) that the upcoming release of Adobe Photoshop is going to have.

The above video highlights their JDI (“just do it”) development process where they make minor tweaks to the program that specifically address the needs, concerns, and requests of Photoshop users who submit feedback to the company or user forums. Two things addressed here, based such feedback, are new ways to straighten images faster than ever before, as well as alter the opacity of multiple layers simultaneously (both VERY practical small additions!)

As many already know, the painting and brush tools are going to get a significant overhaul in CS5. For these tools, which haven’t had a huge revamp in almost a decade (since version 7 in 2002, to be precise), this will probably be a welcome feature to illustrators. This video demonstrates the new editor that controls the physical properties of bristles on your brush, which opens the floodgates for texture generation when you paint. Also highlighted is a new on-screen color picker via a simple key command, and the ability to now control brush size/hardness from simple mouse movements.

Photoshop CS3 introduced the ability to create pretty accurate on-the-fly selections with the quick selection tool, which enabled you to refine the parameters of the edge once it was made. Taking things a step further, CS5 builds on the refine edge tool by it’s ability to sense the contrast of your pixels in greater detail than ever before. Watch as the guide brushes over the edges of the cat- even though it’s whiskers are fairly dark on a dark background, it appears to do a decent job of determining one from the other. Although it probably won’t work perfect, it could save a ton of time siloing objects from the background! The extract tool has now become about as useful as Adobe Streamline (read: not at all!) 

I was reading a recent edition of Computer Arts Monthly when I came across an interesting tutorial on motion graphics written by Alex Johnson, better known by some as Vector Meldrew. After the tutorial there were several examples of some of his recent work, which I was pretty floored by. Not only does he do brand identity and design work for clients such as Adidas, Mercedes, and Levis during the day, but also spends almost all of his downtime doing video DJ performances around Europe, as well as cover art and video design for many prominent dubstep producers in the UK, including 2562, Appleblim, and many on Tectonic’s roster. A pretty well rounded batch of clients, to say the least! Check out his work below, as well as more on his website.

Headhunter LIVE AV Dubstep / Techno Performance @ Stuk, Belgium from VectorMeldrew on Vimeo.

TranceDrive is the product of a single developer (yedey.com) who entered a developer contest hosted by KVR to create a synth software package designed and programmed via their SynthMaker editor. What he ended up completing looks so polished that it’s no wonder he completely forgot to end up submitting it to the KVR site; his prize ended up becoming the kickass plug-in he built from scratch!

Without going into the technical details, TranceDrive is a soft synth geared towards trance music, so the emphasis is mostly on the piercing, nasal-like qualities of the saw wave. Taking notable cue from the Roland JP-8000, TranceDrive carries a supersaw wave, which is essentially the culmination of a room full of saw waves, as opposed to just one, for added impact. The super saw is something you don’t see in a plug-in very often. There are also 6 other waveforms you can shape your oscillators to, as well as 3 LFO’s (with 5 waveforms), modulators, and filters. 

As per your everyday subtractive synth, any of these parameters can be assigned to control one another, and there are also 9 general-use effects (reverb, delay, etc.) right out of the box. Another cool feature that makes TranceDrive unique is the fact that it also includes a limiter at the very end of the signal chain, so you can prevent clipping/overdrive before sending your signal back to the host DAW.

Check out the yeydey website to download! It’s freeware, so be sure to leave a comment to thank him for his hard work and share any presets/patches, if you decide to create any of your own from scratch.

In this edition of Coffee Table, I share with you, an object that you can actually put on your coffee table! Canon recently produced a batch of coffee mugs that were designed off the exact size and exterior of their 70-200 EF L-Series macro lens. A very limited number were promoted at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and obtained no shortage of comments from people interested on the canonrumors.com website. 

It appears as if Canon will be manufacturing more in extremely limited quantities, and you may be able to pre-order one from the Henry’s photo store.

Incidentally, the actual 70-200mm lens is very high on my want list at the moment- it’s the least expensive piece of L-series glass they produce (costing roughly $600 new and slightly less if you’re patient and like hitting the refresh button constantly on random ebay auctions). It’s a bit slower than the f/2.8 model with image stabilization, but also roughly a third of the price of that version!

The good ol’ days of hip hop! Pete Rock took the Ohio Players’ cover of Marvin Gaye’s classic “What’s Goin’ On” and flipped it flawlessly. Mecca and the Soul Brother is probably one of my top ten favorite hip hop albums of all time.