How to Make the Most Bad-Ass Daft Punk Helmets EVER

By THE DJ | Published: August 30, 2011

Daft Punk Rainbow Helmet

Ok. So I’m going to state the obvious here and say that Daft Punk have the raddest helmets ever. If these things were for commercial sale, there’d be massive amounts of open rooms in hospitals because of all the avoided head injuries. Maybe Obama should forego the national healthcare plan and just make a couple hundred million of these bad-boys. It would win every thizzle-faced ravers heart over and just mayyyybe inspire them to vote…

Everybody has tried to do their “own version” of the Daft Punk shabang (Deadmau5, your mousehead is kindof cool when it lights up, but you have nothing on DP), but nobody has come close to their awesomeness. In addition, you can’t buy a Daft Punk helmet anywhere. So for all you DIYers out there, I’ve got a new and awesome project for you. Here are a couple ways to make your own Daft Punk helmets… And these aren’t cheap, look-alike replicas. They’re just as cool as the ones that Daft Punk wears.

If any of you get around to making one of these, send me a picture. Better yet, throw your own twist on it and send me the helmet itself. I’ll love you long time.

 

Yeah. That guy is hardcore. He spent 17 months to make a helmet. Well worth it in my opinion. The quality is top notch. This next video about how to make a helmet might not have an end product that is quite as cool, but it took 1 month as opposed to 17. So I think this guy deserves some props as well.

 

 

Daft Punk Helmet



 

 

                    

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Albert Einstein Quotes

By THE DJ | Published: August 28, 2011

Good ol’ Alberto. The guy is such a G….enius. But enough of me calling the sky blue. Here are some gems from one of the most amazing minds of the last hundred years.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

— Albert Einstein

                    

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California Girls at 8am [AutoTuned with Sing-Along Lyrics]

By THE DJ | Published: August 17, 2011

So I was up late browsing reddit last night (a common occurrence for me) and stumbled on this video:

The top comment at the time was “Somebody needs to AutoTune this ASAP!” At the time the video had around 8,000 views but I thought it was hilarious and decided to take it upon myself to try and make this guy sound like a bonafied pop-star. So I imported the vocals into Pro Tools, found the track without vocals, lined them up, then went to town.

I called it “AutoTuning” cause that seems to be the only thing people know of that can correct a singers pitch… I actually used Melodyne. Though it’s audio quality isn’t quite as good as AutoTune’s IMO **hint hint please work on that high-frequency distortion celemony** it’s ease of use makes up for it in the final product.

This track took lotssss of note correction, pitch drift and modulation correction, and stretching and compressing the words he sung to get them to sound more natural and in tune.

After all that was said and done, I reimported his tuned vocal into Melodyne and made him harmonize with himself to get it to sound more like the actual song (California Girls by Katy Perry) and to take some of the focus off of the way he pronounces some of the words. Next I slapped some delay on his vocal, sent the whole thing through some of my favorite mastering plugins, and voila. Here’s the end result… I think it beautifully illustrates how talent is sometimes not really needed in music nowadays–and how a video camera on a bus can capture a passable Top 40 sounding vocal. Let me know what you think!

California Girls at 8am [Autotuned With Sing-Along Lyrics!]

                    

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Salvador Dali | Quotes on Creativity

By THE DJ | Published: January 8, 2011

So I tried to find a single quote from Dali to put here… But I couldn’t. The guy is just full of gems. Before I list off some of my favorites, check this out: in order to think of the images he would paint, Dali would hold a spoon over a plate as he was falling asleep. Just as he was about to doze off, the spoon would hit the plate and wake him up. In this hypnagogic state, his mind would flash a bunch of random crazy images. Like this one:

In fact, lots of creatives (musicians, artists, inventors) come up with some of their best ideas whilst in this hypnagogic state. John Lennon claimed to have come up with the name for The Beatles in some gnarly dream. Anywho, back to the topic at hand. Here are some great quotes by Salvador Dali that I find inspiring:

To paint a picture is either very simple or impossible.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

Have no fear of perfection. You will never reach it.

I do not take drugs. I am drugs.

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

You know the worst thing is freedom. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity. You know, Dalí spent two months in jail in Spain, and these two months were the most enjoyable and happy in my life. Before my jail period, I was always nervous, anxious. I didn’t know if I should make a drawing, or perhaps make a poem, or go to the movies or the theatre, or catch a girl, or play with the boys. The people put me in jail, and my life became divine. Tremendous!

—Salvador Dali

                    

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Jazz Mutant Lemur | Amazingly Versatile Touchscreen Controller for DJs, VJs, Musicians, and More

By THE DJ | Published: January 8, 2011

Ok. So this thing sounds like Miles Davis’ love child with a rodent. But I digress… The Jazz Mutant Lemur is an Ableton controller on crack, with a twist of LSD and a side of steroids. Its like candy flipping, but crazier.

The Lemur reminds me of the SmithsonMartin Minority-Report style Traktor controller I posted about around a week ago. It might not be as flashy as the SmithsonMartin controller, but its more versatile and overall a cooler instrument.

With the Lemur you can control Ableton, Logic, Cubase, Sonar, Nuendo. You can control your DAWs, VSTs, sequencers, synthesizers, you can use it to VJ or to control lighting systems. And you do it all on a touchscreen interface, reminiscent of the iPad. In short, this thing is fucking versatile.

Unlike the iPad whose multi-touch is limited to 6 finger-presses, the Lemur has UNLIMITED touch points. In addition, users can create/design their own interfaces with the software that comes with the Lemur. This means you get to customize your instrument to your needs, your style of music creation, your style of live performance.

Beyond all this, the Lemur has built in physics modeling that you can apply to your VSTs, or, well, anything you want. You’re probably thinking, “What the hell does that mean?” In short, it means you can flick balls across the screen (they bounce around and interact with each other based on, you guessed it, real-world physics) and use each of these balls to control parameters of your DAW, VST, sequencer, lighting rig, etc. Still dont get it? Check out this video:

Pretty rad right? And you can route that shit to WHATEVER YOU WANT. Let that sink in. Again, you can route that shit to WHATEVER YOU WANT. The possibilities are endless. Have balls control your lighting. Have balls control LFOs. Have balls control ADSR filters. Have balls control video clips. Those without girlfriends can fondle their own balls on the JazzMutant Lemur. I keed. I keed.

Unfortunately, though Im writing about the Lemur now in 2011, the thing is no longer available for purchase from the JazzMutant official site. You have to find it either on eBay or at one of their resellers, and these things are going QUICK. I have hope, however, for the future of this baby… Think iPad + JazzMutant software. Maybe? Hopefully? Please? Pretty pretty please?

Im keeping my hopes up. And you should too. This thing is awesome. Combine it with the wow-factor of the SmithsonMartin controller and you have the holy grail of electronic music instruments. The future of music is electronic, its tactile but software based, it has wow-factor to match its functionality… And, though maybe not all in one piece of gear yet, the future of music is here…

                    

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Jimi Hendrix | Quotes

By THE DJ | Published: January 7, 2011

You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven.

-Jimi Hendrix

                    

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Sylenth1 | A Badass, Must-Have Synthesizer

By THE DJ | Published: January 7, 2011

Whether you make dubstep or pop, ambient or hardcore, Sylenth1 is a must-have VST made by LennarDigital. The second I loaded this baby up in Ableton and heard its sound I was blown away. Its full. Its fat. Its vast. Its expansive. Its versatile. In short, Sylenth1 is the FUCKING SHIT.

I know we all have spent countless hours trying to get that full, heavy, huge sound out of digital synthesizers. I’ve spent thousands of hours using Thor, Subtractor, and Maelstrom in Reason to try and get a huge sounding synth. And while its absolutely possible to make bad-ass sounding synths in Reason, Logic, Ableton and the like, for some reason it takes a while. It takes layering synthesizers. It takes lots of fooling around with knobs, effects, etc. What I love the most about Sylenth1 is that you get a fat, huge sound right from the get-go.

The guys at LennarDigital weren’t lying when they stated:

Until now only very few software synthesizers have been able to stand up to the sound quality standards of hardware synths. Sylenth1 is one that does.

Beyond its pristine sound, Sylenth1 is chock full of features. This synth has enough oscillators, filters, mods (LFOs and ADSR envelopes) and effects (arpeggiator, distortion, phaser, chorus/flanger, EQ, delay, reverb, compression) to keep you busy creating sounds for ages. And its wide variety of features make this synth my choice for a desert-island VST. Yeah. Thats right. If I could have one VST synthsizer on a desert island, Id take this bad-boy. And I’d make the raddest fucking electro tracks nobody would ever hear… So long as I could find an outlet.

I do have one grievance with the synthesizer. The interface is kind of shit. It really doesnt matter though… The thing is intuitive and easy to get a hang of using. It just looks kind of crappy. Maybe its because the guys at Lennar Digital know what the hell they’re doing, and they know what to focus on: the sound.

So keep your fat ass in your computer chair, make a couple mouse clicks, and check this synthesizer out. Its all over the Gaga record (RedOne likes his Sylenth1), and its gonna be all over my recordings as well.

Sylenth1 Official Website

                    

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Ratatat – 17 Years

By THE DJ | Published: January 2, 2011

I grew up playing guitar, so Ratatat have always held a special place close to my heart. We need more DJs combining live instruments into their set like they do. Here’s a rad song of theirs… Also, if you haven’t checked it out yet, take a listen to the Ratatat – The Doors Remixes album. People Are Strange is probably my favorite of the bunch.

                    

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Deadmau5′s Opinion of DJs | “They’re F**KING Cunts”

By THE DJ | Published: January 2, 2011

Joel Zimmerman, aka Deadmau5 offers his opinion on DJs. And I couldn’t agree more…

“It puts me to fucking sleep to be quite honest, I don’t really see the technical merit in playing two songs at the same speed together and it bores me to fucking tears and hopefully with all due respect to the dj type that will fucking go the way of the dinosaur id like them to dis-a-fucking-pear. Joel continued, its so middle man,they’re like fucking lawyers. You need them, but they’re fucking ****s. God bless them they’re my number one customer right so I’m not gonna go diss every fucking DJ. But to say you become this massive up on a podium performer by playing other peoples productions at the same speed as someone else’s productions and fading between the two of them, I don’t get it.”

                    

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Tobacco – The Injury | Music Review

By THE DJ | Published: January 2, 2011

I picked up La Uti by Tobacco the other day after loving some of the previews on iTunes. This shit is dirrttyyyyy! The synthesizer sounds on this EP are as nasty as GOATSE. Seriously. Unfortunately, I think it gets a little tiresome to listen to after a while. Also, I don’t like every song on the record (listen to the iTunes previews and purchase accordingly on this one). Nonetheless, these guys have a cool thing going on. I think the best way to describe it is dirty electro rock. I gotta try and find some stems for this shit so I can sample some of these synths…

                    

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