The Spank! Records Blog

Playing a track with an Akai MPD24

I love YouTube, I see some some of the best demos of people using gear in ways I wouldn't have thought of.

For example, here's a guy using an Akai MPD24 to trigger off all the parts to his track in real time to put together a song. Very cool.

Next Introduction To Ableton Live course starts soon

Our next course begins in 10 days time on July 24th. We still have some spots left so if you're interested contact us at training@spankrecords.com.au or drop on in to book your spot.

Link : http://www.spankrecords.com.au/misc/introToAbletonLive.asp

M-Audio Xponent now in stock

The M-Audio Xponent has just arrived in very limited supply due to worldwide demand.

The Xponent is an all-in-one digital DJ solution, incorporating a MIDI controller, USB audio interface and Torq software. It's kind of like the Vestax VCI-100 in that all of the MIDI controls are mapped to the included software (Traktor LE in the case of the Vestax), and right out of the box everything just works so you can start playing straight away. It goes beyond the VCI-100, however, by including the audio interface and thus leaves you with one less thing to worry about and carry around if you're taking it out to gigs.

Just to be clear, this is for laptop DJs who want to go completely laptop/MIDI controller equipped with no external vinyl or CD control like Traktor Scratch, Serato or indeed M-Audio's Torq. You control everything from the Xponent, including track selection, playback, effects, sampling, loops etc.

We've yet to have a play with it, I'm going to try and get it setup in the shop today so I'll have a bit more information about it for you soon. In the meantime, M-Audio have a bunch of tutorial videos for Torq on their website, and you can see the Xponent in action there.

Link : http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=university.main&prod=d173097c5491f0b5f84eb8c623da5b64

There's also an extensive review from DJ Mag here:

Drop by the store for a demo if you're interested in seeing it in action. You can also buy it online from us here:

Link : http://www.spankrecords.com.au/stock/djgear/djGearDetail.asp?id=35623

Digital Downloads :: Stage One

Yesterday marked a big milestone for us as we finally put our brand spankin' new digital download section online. Woohoo! We have been working on this for such a long time now so it's great to see it go live.

We are in the early stages of developing this, hence the title of this post. At this time we have around 1,000 tracks online. We are in a kind of probationary period with our distributor whilst they make sure all our systems run smoothly, so we are limited to this many tracks for the moment. Once they're happy with our progress then we'll get access to their entire catalogue of tracks, so there'll be a lot more to come.

To a large degree they'll also be watching to see how many sales we put through, so the more support we can get from you guys the better. We've priced our downloads competitively against the overseas sites and all of the tracks are encoded as 320kbps MP3 files.

We're carrying some pretty big labels, including tracks from Different, F Communications, Goodlife, Soma, Defected, Global Underground, Renaissance, Southern Fried, Finger Lickin', Leftroom, Strictly Rhythm and more.

We're also in the process of finalising some agreements with some big local labels and artists, and they should be online with us in the next 4-6 weeks.

So, this is stage 1. We have a LOT more planned for this exciting new addition and you'll see quite a few new features over the coming months.

In the meantime, we would LOVE to get your feedback. Opinions, ideas for improvements, dislikes - we'll take 'em all. Send them to feedback@spankrecords.com.au. We'll definately read every one and if there's enough interest in a particular feature then we'll most likely implement it if technically possible.