DMb | Dance Music blog & Podcast

Arty at Vision Nightclub says the US is the top for Electronic Dance Music and reveals that he uses FL Studio to write his tracks and put down ideas when on the road.

Record your own version of AVICII – Levels (street performance, children’s choir, flash mob etc) and upload to YouTube. Winners get to be a part of the official video for Levels. Contest ends November 1, 2011 so get moving.

Check out the full Info and Rules here.

This video gave me the chills. I’m very sad to see Electric Daisy Carnival leave LA, but if it takes a move to Las Vegas to pull in 230,000 people then go for it. I’m excited to see how they plan to top 2011′s EDC.

Press Release:
Las Vegas, October 6, 2011 – After hosting more than 230,000 amazing fans during Electric Daisy Carnival, Las Vegas 2011, the world’s top musical and artistic talent will return to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway (LVMS) for the 16th Annual Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) on June 8, 9 and 10, 2012.

“When Insomniac decided to produce EDC in Las Vegas last June, we knew we were working with the ideal venue but we weren’t sure how our fans would react,” said Insomniac President and CEO Pasquale Rotella. “But after seeing more than 230,000 people show up to enjoy our show we knew we picked a City and venue that serves as the perfect home for the largest electronic music festival in North America.” (more…)

Seems everyone is rushing to get their live shows announced with some creative way of doing a video show to hide the fact that a one-man band just physically cannot be playing all of the instruments in a song live. With a few exceptions there haven’t really been many Electronic Musicians that have put on good live shows, and the word “live” is generally used to indicate that the artist may be triggering patterns or muting and unmuting tracks on the fly but generally not actually playing any instruments live. Personally I have nothing against this, what else can really be expected of one person? One man standing in front a few pieces of equipment, generally with a laptop in tow, doing a “live” show seems to generate less excitement than a DJ behind a pair of decks playing other people’s music.

The Solution
Stand in front of some mysterious piece of gear with lots of really cool looking synchronized 3D graphics and flashing lights to distract and hypnotize the crowd while bobbing your head to the music and moving your hands around like a conductor pushing buttons and occasionally pointing to the space above the crowd.

Underworld has always been one of the top Electronic Dance Music acts to put on a great live show. They always had the visuals provided by Tomato and an energetic vocalist jumping around the stage with a guitar.

Daft Punk pretty much set the stage for the current formula being used by many artists in the Electronic Music world with their Pyramid of lights and visuals. They also didn’t really play an instruments live it was more like they were tour guides through a mash-up of their entire discography. Entertaining, no doubt.

Etienne de Crecy did in next with his Visual Cube, taking the same formula as Daft Punk and the anonymous equipment in front of him. Etienne recently released a compilation available on Dim Mak Records called Beats n’ Cubes which contains some of the music from his show.

Then came Amon Tobin with Isam and the bar was raised. Incorporating perfectly synced 3D visuals projected onto a stack of boxes, Amon and his team created a show that has left people with their jaws on the floor. He’s still touring if you (more…)

Spotify, last week, finally got round to opening their services up to music lovers across America. And now we have the chance to stream full albums for free, download the songs we like and sync our spotify accounts with Facebook, Twitter and iDevices.

This recent release comes as Spotify passed the 1 million subscriber milestone across Europe and continues to grow. To celebrate Spotify’s landmark achievement the guys over at Spotify HQ have offered Point Blank a limited number invitions for users to use the service for free.

To get your hands on the streaming service, all you have to do is head over to Point Blank’s Facebook page, ‘like’ it and send your name and email address to james@pointblanklondon.com. You will then be contacted with a link to download Spotify and create and account. Remember there are only a limited number of invitations, so they will be distributed on a first come first serve basis.

Point Blank is an online college for Music Production and has lots of great classes geared towards Electronic Dance Music taught by some of the biggest names in the business. They also offer some free Tutorials on various aspects of production, check it out.

To find out more about Spotify, and it’s recent US launch, check out the video below.

Visit:
Spotify
Point Blank College

Wow these videos need to watched now! AudioGL is a new audio application for creating electronic music that is completely modular and uses a system that allows patching anything into anything else. And then the automation is all viewable in a 3D room that you can fly around in like Peter Pan being chased by a pack of flying monkeys. Watch the videos.

Get the music: Bandcamp.com

Since the Skrillex Remix is obviously 100 times better than any other version or really ANY song in 2011, the Benassi brothers decided to get a video made for this remix. It seems kinda low budget, with some mediocre After Effects filters applied.

Check it out.

This is a great video from the Create Digital Music blog showing you how to hook up several different devices to get MIDI inputs and outputs on your iPad.