Stitch Liveshow – Episode 12 – Real House

The Stitch Liveshow is a weekly broadcast playing different musical genres each time. It’s not live, not a show, not weekly, not broadcasted and Stitch is fictional. Follow the Stitch Liveshow on Twitter.

I pulled this one out of the archives because it has really really great tracks. This mix is great for a lazy summers day. Enjoy this real house set, this is the good stuff. Set was recorded and created with Acid Pro on October 14th 2008. Where’s the BBQ at?

Total playing time: 1:01:31

Download

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Filesize: 140.8 MB, 320 kbit.

Tracklist

  1. Mister Monday – Future (carl craig mix) (1995)
  2. Fear by Force – Danceing in outer space (????)
  3. Logic – The Final Frontier (1990)
  4. DSK – What we do (1991)
  5. Mother – All Funked up (1993)
  6. Black Science Orchestra – Philadelphia (1994)
  7. Djum Djum – Difference (1990)
  8. Fire Island ft Mark Antoni – If you should need a friend (1995)
  9. BT – Embracing the Future (1993)
  10. Frankie Knuckles – The Whistle Song (1991)
  11. Chocolate City – Love Songs (1995)
  12. Souffles H – Mondo Grosso (King Street Club Mix) (1995)

RetroTV broadcasting project part 1

I want to have my own TV station. Preferably I want software that does everything for me; but after some searches it appeared it didn’t exist. Therefore i’ve started a new open-source project codenamed RetroTV.

The aim of RetroTV is to provide a series of practices and software for running your own TV station. It’s not just software; its the whole package including documentation and guidelines/protips. Currently the software is in alpha stage: i’m developing and testing till its good enough to be picked up by the community.

Throughout this series of posts i’ll show documentation and inner workings, as well as results of the project. For todays post i’ll show the status of the project: it’s far beyond the idea stage, its nearly in beta. And we all know Beta is the way to go.

Automated stations

My goal is not at all to bring live programming or anything of decent quality. My goal is to broadcast old school television: the things we watched in our childhood. In Holland there used to be a station called “Kindernet” which broadcasted Ovide, Bassie & Adriaan, Around the Twist and a host of other series. Kindernet appeared to be a completely automated station.

Its formatting was simple: broad cast a show, have some commercials, and display what’s coming up. This project is largely the same thing, except that you can control its content, its format and will also be able to imitate clip stations such as TMF or MTV.

The Format

For automated stations use a similar way to fill up their time. To understand this format, we have to look at the difference between consumers and the station: which translates into formatting. Below tables show a difference between the consumer-level programming and station-level programming.

12:00:00 Some Show
12:30:00 Some Show
13:00:00 Some Show
14:00:00 Some Show
14:30:00 Some Show
15:00:00 Some Show
16:40:00 Some Show
17:00:00 Some Show
12:00:00 Some Show
12:24:00 Leader
12:24:30 Announcements of what is to come
12:25:30 Commercial bumper
12:25:35 Commercials, till next show
12:28:30 Leader
12:28:45 Announcements of what is to come
12:29:40 Leader
Consumer-level programming Station-level programming

So what I want for our software, is to schedule shows from a consumer perspective. The software should create the station-level programming for me. In our case we don’t have contracts with sponsors and obligations to sell expensive air-time: which is a good thing.

Example schedule

RetroTV can already translate the consumer-programming into station level programming. As a consumer we only need to tell what shows air at what time. Look at the following PHP script: this is all we need in the current version.

$showSchedule = new showSchedule();
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "0600", "Penn & Tellers Bullshit!");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0700", "Kinder Theater"); // div filmpjes van 5 mins
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0730", "Samson");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0800", "Teddy Ruxpin");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0830", "Ovide");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0900", "Bassie en Adriaan");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_CARTOON, "0930", "Around The Twist");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1000", "MythBusters");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1100", "AVGN");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1120", "Aqua Teenage Hunger Force");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1200", "Family Guy");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1230", "Drawn Together");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1300", "The A Team");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1400", "Knight Rider");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1500", "Kinder Theater");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1530", "Spongebob Squarepants");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1600", "The Legend of Prince Valiant");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "1800", "Philosophy - A guide to Happiness");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "2100", "Penn & Tellers Bullshit!");
$showSchedule->addShow(TIMESLOT_SERIE,   "2300", "Penn & Tellers Bullshit!");

Note: the current version has placeholders to support parental advisory. If this makes the Beta release, i’ll highlight it in another post.

Announcements

Behind the scenes the software is smart enough to fill up this programming with whatever it needs. As an added bonus, it will fill large gaps in the programming with pre-supplied funny movies from Youtube. What things this software can handle will be handled in a next post, describing “Content Packages”.

One important thing is to inform viewers what’s coming up next. For this, the script builds movie files displaying the program schedule. This part of the software is in a very early state, but its already pretty nice. Have a look:

The movie is generated “on the fly” using nothing more than a predefined background, some music, PHP and ffmpeg. The latter two are both powertoys: both haven’t been utilized to their full potential yet. The poor preview quality is intentional: it will only get better.

Creating movie-frames in PHP is a pain though: till now i couldn’t figure out how to do fadein-movement animations. Of course PHP wasn’t made for moviemaking: the default-Beta announcement rendering is already a challenge. I’ll make sure the Beta has enough information to get started on your own Announcement software.

Open Standards

As said before, this project will be released as open software in the upcoming weeks. For now i can already tell you the software packages it “depends”. VLC is the tool that does the streaming. Guidelines and scripts for broadcasting are included: both for unicast as multicast streaming. Just ask your local network adminstrator for Multicast support and you’re good.

Another software package is ffmpeg, a “simple” command line encoding tool. You won’t have any beef with this, as everything with this tool happens behind the scenes. Its used for inspecting movie files and creating announcements.

For storing file information and play-statistics (to make proper playlists) are stored in SQLITE. A database that is near-ideal for small projects like this. You can do SQL, so its all good.

The final package is PHP, with support for GD. The last creates frames for announcements, while PHP does the logic for creating playlists. All playlists are in an open format called Spiff, which they shorten as XSPF.

Next posts…

There is still enough to tell. About content packages, software internals, streaming and of course example rendered playlists. I’m watching a playlist right now and its freaking sweet!! More youtubes soon! 🙂

Using macIrssi with dircproxy

Installation of anything on text-based machines remains difficult. However, i hope this post will be of use to anyone out there. This short and incomplete guide helps you to to use dircproxy (a constant-online-tool for your constant-online-server) for IRC. Ingredients are macirssi, dircproxy and a linux box somewhere. Result: running macirrsi as you’ve always done, while always remaining online. Sounds good?

Although configuration options are limitless, most of the time you want to keep it simple. Here is the 4-step deal:

Installation of dircproxy

Installation of DircProxy for various common linux-platforms is a piece of cake. Just log into your machine and tell your package manager you want to use dircproxy. I can’t help you for that. But it might be something like:

apt-get install dircproxy

Telling dircproxy what servers to use

The dircproxy config file is located in your home directory: me@awesemebox:~# .dirproxyrc (where ~ is your home directory or username)

Dircproxy uses “connection classes”: little annoyances which we will get out of the way quickly. You need to know two things: the address of your server and a password. Server addresses are commonplace when connecting to an IRC server; therefore i’ll skip that subject and go straight to the password.

The password is something you create yourself. It is specified per connection: and has to be unique per connection. Just use something you’d remember, such as “OMFGQuakeNet” or something. This way you know what password belongs to what connection.

A strange thing with this password, is that it has to be stored “secure”. Therefore you have to run a script, accompanied with dircproxy that will convert your password into something unreadable. Try this:

dircproxy-crypt OMFGQuakeNet

Now specify your connection class at the bottom of the file. Like this:

connection {
   server "irc.quakenet.org"
   password "Go5XjCYTdnZOI"
}

That’s all. There is no need to specify channels, nicknames or any other thingy. You can leave your dircproxy configuration and log out of your unix machine. Or you could check out one of the gazillion options of the dircproxy configuration file and make it more secure. Whatever suits you best. I think i’m ready to connect macIrssi to the proxy. This will allow me to see what is going on in Quakenet.

Actually connecting to dircproxy

Configuring macIrssi is actually a two step process: the last remaining two steps. First you have to tell that you want to use a proxy. Second you have to add a password to your configuration file. I’m expecting you’re using macIrssi for quite a while, and connect to a lot of servers. You do not need to destroy or alter your configuration heavily.

Connecting to the proxy

While using macIrssi, type in the following commands in the console window.

/SET use_proxy ON
/SET proxy_address irc.bouncer.org
/SET proxy_port 5000
/SET proxy_string_after conn %s %d
/SET -clear proxy_string /SET -clear proxy_password

That was the first step. You’ve just set you wanted to use a proxy (or dircproxy) or whatever. Its okey now and please forget about these settings. Please Quit MacIrssi and continue.

Joining servers and channels

While MacIrssi has a great graphical userinterface, it is has no edit field for proxy-server passwords. I expect this to be resolved in some next version. Untill then, we have to look at another dull text-screen for a while.

Your macirssi configuration file is located at ~/irssi/config (where ~ is your username or home directory)

Open the macIrssi configuration file in any text editor and you’re ready to make the final adjustment. Its just adding one single line to your Quakenet server configuration and you’re done.

A strange thing, here, is that you have to enter your password non-encrypted. Just make a “password = ” section in your server config for the aprorpiate server. Then add your password. Like so:

{
address = "irc.quakenet.org";
chatnet = "ircquakenetorg";
password = "OMFGQuakeNet";
port = "6667";
use_ssl = "no";
ssl_verify = "no";
autoconnect = "yes";
},

Save the file and lets check if it works. Start macIrssi. Just wait a few seconds and… you’re connected to your favorite channels using your own nickname and settings. Enjoy!

References

  1. http://www.irssi.org/documentation/startup (chapter 10)
  2. http://code.google.com/p/dircproxy/wiki/HowtoConfigureClient
  3. http://code.google.com/p/dircproxy/wiki/DircproxyInstallation
  4. http://code.google.com/p/dircproxy/wiki/ManDircproxy (Verbose DircProxy Manual)
  5. http://www.sysctl.co.uk/

Stitch Liveshow – Episode 11 – Hardstyle

The Stitch Liveshow is a weekly broadcast playing different musical genres each time. It’s not live, not a show, not weekly, not broadcasted and Stitch is fictional. Follow the Stitch Liveshow on Twitter.

HARDSTYLE: a blend happy of melodies and beats at 150 bpm, with 56 seconds of intro, 8 bars filled with anticipation and instant party time. Every song features the same keyboard, effects but different kicks. Its a contest to squeeze as much bass and sound into a song. Selecting a variety of tracks is possible, even though the majority follows the same format and style.

Early hardstyle sucked beyond belief. Tracks tend to build up until, at the moment of climaxing, a break kicks in. And here is what happened to me: I started to prepare to dance again, shouting… but instead of the whole room going batshit insane everybody stood there watching as I went totally mad. AWKWARD! This not only happened to me, thats why the format changed probably.

Todays hardstyle is reliable. No more anti-climaxes, so you can actually dance to it and lose your mind. Because the majority of the tracks follow the same format, its actually easy to decide if you like it. Do you like one track? Then you’ll like em all. Still it was hard to select the right tunes: I don’t want my set to become boring, and I do want to have some sort of progression in my mix. That happened. Enjoy your hardstyle.

Total playing time: 2:35:23 (> two and a half hour, ^^ mixing and recording seemed like 5 minutes)

Download

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Filesize: 372,9 MB, 320 kbit.

Tracklist

  1. Alphaverb – The Otherside (Original Mix)
  2. Ivan Carsten – You Try To Play Me
  3. Razor DJ – Feeling Inside (Original)
  4. Abyss and Judge – Hardstyle Revolution (Showtek rmx)
  5. Activator – Figalicious
  6. Geck-O – Give Me Some Heat
  7. Noisecontrollers – Surge Of Power
  8. B-Front & Frontliner – Magic
  9. Max Enforcer Feat. The Rush – Fade TO Black (Official Black 2010 Anthem)
  10. Frontliner – Sunblast
  11. Showtek ft MC DV8 – Electronic Stereo-Phonic
  12. Activator – Move Your Feet
  13. Zatox – Drop The Track
  14. Bass Modulators – Nrgizer
  15. Degos & Re-Done – Salsa
  16. Max B. Grand & Djanny – Arancia Meccanica
  17. Carniflex Ft. Tim – Forever Hard
  18. Beat Providers – Abandoned
  19. The Beholder & Max Enforcer – Be Amazed (Hard Bass 2009 Anthem)
  20. B-Front & Frontliner – Become The Sky
  21. Digital Punk & MC Jeff – Keep It Bouncing
  22. Ruhann – Don’t Be Afraid
  23. Geck-O – Instant Fame
  24. Hardstyle Masterz vs Max Enforcer – Rambo Is A Pussy
  25. DJ Thera – The Test 2.0 (Crypsis Remix)
  26. Technoboy meets Ruffian – The Undersound
  27. Miss Tess-X – X-Love (Original Mix)
  28. Frontliner & B-Front – Godz Powerrr!
  29. Grandmaster Q – Dwarf
  30. Josh & Wesz – Lipservice Radio
  31. Gostosa – Sutra
  32. Noizecontrollers And Toneshifterz – Empire Of The Sun
  33. Dozer – Robin’s Revenge
  34. Vyolet – Magic
  35. Robin Clark – Wiseman
  36. Joshua Hiroshy – Endovene (Stitch Totally Fucked Up Mix)

Stitch Liveshow – Episode 10 – Minimal

The Stitch Liveshow is a weekly broadcast playing a different musical genre every time. It’s not live, not a show, not weekly, not broadcasted and Stitch is fictional. Follow the Stitch Liveshow on Twitter.

Ever drove that same car at 2 am in the morning while the radio was playing? Did it sound repetitive and generally uninspiring? Then you where listening to minimal; the worst kind of minimal. I’ve had several near-accidents due to those shows, so no wonder minimal wasn’t my best friend.

Luckily, after minimal track selection, a minimal number of tracks containing good minimal and minimal-trance like tunes was selected. Mixing was good, some epic transitions here and there.

Total playing time: 56.25

Download

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Filesize: 129,3 MB, 320 kbit.

Tracklist

  1. J-Soul – Quadbit (Original Mix)
  2. Lagora – Init
  3. Maetrik – Paradigm House (Mike Shannon Remix)
  4. Limouzina – Back to Heaven (Guy Mantzur Floating Mix)
  5. Dyno – Interferenza
  6. AD Set – Shrill Voice
  7. Daniele Petronelli – Hablando (Vandalism Remix)
  8. Edit-Select – Deposer
  9. Dersonna – Is It In (Original Mix)
  10. Jax Zero – Plink Plonk
  11. King Richard – Karma

Stitch – Neige Mix 1 (2003 Archives)

My first dance mix. Made back in 2003 with cut-and-paste audio editing software, a few Klubbheads Desire CD’s and a simple headphone. I remember creating this in one weekend, in 35 hours, with a classic version of iTunes/Amadeus Pro on my iMac DV 400mhz. Those where the days, it got the job done.

When “releasing” this track, I got massive positive response from friends to people I didn’t know. One guy used to play this every day on his way to work 😀 ha, thats’s awesome. So without further a due: clicky!

Video

Tracklist

  1. Golava – Mellow Drums
  2. Dj Tiesto – Flight 643
  3. Mauro Picotto – Verde
  4. Marco V – Indicator
  5. Profools – Upgrade 1.1
  6. JAK – Tehrap
  7. DJ Gollum & DJ Yanni – Shithead
  8. Resonance – SDM
  9. Builder – Skyscraper (DJ Luca Antolini Mix)
  10. DJ Luna – Union One
  11. Hardheadz – In Yer Phaze
  12. DJ Isaac – Nobody Listens to Techno
  13. Bass Boy – Let the bass be louder
  14. ID & T Preview Jingle “Fuck It All” from that jingle company…

Stitch Liveshow – Episode 9 – Goa

The Stitch Liveshow is a ‘weekly’ show playing a different musical genre each ‘week’. Follow the Stitch Liveshow on Twitter.

Goa… a psychedelic version of trance. Continuous beats with psychedelic blurps and tweets. This really allows for hours and hours of mixing without noticing.

Artwork is taken from my tape-digitizing project; not the ones from Rave Radio since those where well preserved. I destroyed all covers and most of the plastic casings. So well, more pictures, audio fragments and backgrounds soon.

Mixing is damn good this time. I used a more patient technique which works great. Downside is that 80 minutes now hold just 19 tracks, instead of my regular 30. Goa doesn’t allow fast mixing, that would mean destroying the atmosphere. There are still about 500 tracks unchecked, which means another Goa mix soon.

Enjoy this set, its my best one yet.

Total playing time: 1:18:44

Download

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Filesize: 180,6 MB, 320 kbit.

Tracklist

  1. M O S – Fire
  2. Alien Project – Crystal skulls
  3. Psysex – Come in Peace
  4. Lemurians – Shining With You
  5. Swaya – The Mad Maggot
  6. Psysex – Flying Saucers
  7. Infected Mushroom – None of this is real
  8. Astrix – Artcore
  9. Panick – Highway 61
  10. Electric Universe – Solylun
  11. Synchro – Magnetic
  12. Psysex – Altered States (Coco Loco Remix)
  13. Infected Mushroom – Deeply Dis….???
  14. Sol At Luna – Es Is Voller Sterne (remix)
  15. Logic Bomb – Future Uncertain
  16. Astral Projection – Cosmic Ascension
  17. Hux-Flux – Cryptic Crunch
  18. Psysex – Imprint
  19. Twisted System – Stark Raver

For Those Who Like to Reconstruct: Eugenio

My all time favorite mix was broadcasted on For Those Who Like To Groove in 1992. “For Those” was the first house show on Dutch public radio. It has always remained its notorious status due to great music and livesets. Eugenios mix hypnotized me. No matter how hard I tried to stay focussed, it took me away and I was paralyzed once again.

I’ve probably listened to this tape over a thousand times. Even then I still couldn’t remember the set in order; only track by track. (remember one track, and then you remember the next). But my tapes where degrading… I accidentally hit record on a certain part (didn’t remove the clips) and it I started searching on the Internet for “For Those”.

There are a few decent rips. Among these was a set accredited to Menno which was what I was looking for. A partial tracklist was shipped with the rip, but incomplete and incorrect. At the same time I also started collecting old school cd’s. Mostly compilations like serious beats, which where pretty hard to get in 2004. One day I found a cd called Mix the house, which contained the same tracks and same mixing style as the mix accredited to Menno. It was clear that was a mistake as Eugenio appeared to be the king of beats. He was crowned Dutch mixing champion in 1992; here is the inlay of Mix the House:

Inlay of Mix The House with pics of Eugenio and others (click to enlarge)

Reconstructing

As said, the online tapes where decent rips, but still lacked in quality. So I decided to reconstruct this one… opening pandora’s box.

All over the net I found For Those fans and started posting requests for tracklists. Slowly but steadily we identified everything; it took months. Next step was to find the actual tracks; of which Teknoises – P Kiop / Trashman – Cosmojunk where most difficult to get. I’ve spent countless hours on Soulseek, discogs and forums, gathering mail addy’s from artists and people willing to rip tracks from their cd’s. In the end it payed off: I got some tracks via mail (parsimony – the evidence by the original artist) and others where found on Soulseek (with weeks of patience).

After a few days in Acid Pro I got it exactly right. Maximizing the volume with L2 and it was done: Eugenio’s mix of 5 september 1992 was reconstructed; a near-perfect replica. The mixdown was published on dancelog accompanied with a cool story (in Dutch). Positive and constructive comments followed including someone who gave the interview with Eugenio (i lost it, sorry). Afterwards it was also placed on the list on forthosewholiketogroove.nl website. Many wanted more!!

Now that I’ve got my own blog and I’m clearing out my archive; guess what I found… but before we get to that I want to share the plans for a new reconstruction.

Plans for a new reconstruction?

Before we get to the download; there is some about For Those. First of all, in 2009 dotf.nl presented a new show with lots of great house tracks and an interview with the shows original host Robin. It was a pleasure to listen and I bet there will be more! (the download link is purposely obscured by dotf; you have to google with the hints they supply here…)

Next; over time, between 2005 and 2009, it has gotten easier to find tracks. Youtube has a lot and most tracklists are complete on the For Those Who Like To Groove forum. Hopefully this will make it easier to find tracks, the effort that went into the first reconstruction was absolutely insane.

So, what about the new reconstruction? Yes! That’s something I want to do in 2010, but i’m not sure what mix I should start with. Next four mixes mean the most to me since in those days I started with House:

  • Bart Thimbles’ set from 12 september 1992 [difficult, hard to find tracks]
  • Antoines set from 19 september 1992 [fair]
  • Rob Jansens set from 26 september 1992 [fair]
  • Robin Albers’ set from 3 oktober 1992 (last set of the show) [alright]

Other ideas are also welcome, but most of all; tracks are always welcome. When i’ll start with one of these it will be published here and on the “For Those” forum. Just spam comments to contribute 🙂

Download

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Time: 44.15 minutes in 106 MB @ 320 kbps (from various sources).

Tracklist

  1. Human Resource – Sick [sample]
  2. Gat Decor – Passion
  3. MKM – Little Stars
  4. Studio X – Los Kings Del Mambo
  5. Ramirez – Hablando
  6. Trashman – Cosmojunk
  7. Wishdokta – Banana Sausage
  8. Digital domain – Ill Be Released
  9. Dj Seduction – Hardcore Heaven (The Reincarnation)
  10. Felix – Don’t You Want My Love (Red Jerry’s Holiday Mix)
  11. Meng Syndicate – Sonar System (Aw Aw) [only handclap sample, looped]
  12. Parsimony – Evidence
  13. Total Groove – Bad Jazz
  14. Teknoises – P.Kiop
  15. J ‘n J – The Ballet
  16. Robert Armani – Watch It
  17. Tellurians – Navigator (Lightvessel remix)
  18. Crowd Control – Tranzformer(frankfurt remix)
  19. N.U.K.E. – Nana (Suicide Remix)
  20. DJ Seduction – Higher Now
  21. Edge of motion – Set up 707
  22. Interactive – The Devil (Rami’s Modi Clash)
  23. The Prodigy – Everybody Is In The Place (Dancehall Edit)
  24. E.B.Y. – Kinky Love Disco
  25. Worldparty II – Forget it
  26. DJ Hell – My Definition of House Music (Resistance D Remix)
  27. Liquid – Liquid is Liquid