GODSOwn DJ's Website

So I was watching someone play Fallout 3 the other day, and at the beginning of the game, one of the character references a plaque with a Bible passage on it. I think it was from the Book of Revelations, but the gist of it was GOD blesses a person who “enjoys life”. That’s what I took from it at least. I think of some of the people I know of, and a lot of the people who are “happy” who seem to be genuinely so, are blessed in a lot of ways. They have a house, they have a job they enjoy or they get to stream for a living. GOD has made a way for them to do so. I can’t help but think negatively about a lot of the stuff that happens in life, but I realize I do need to let things go or roll off more often.

I’m hoping I can learn to enjoy life more. Instead of listening to the doom and gloomers who say “pro sports, etc are just a distraction to keep us slaves.. blah blah”, maybe I just go to a baseball game or whatever and have a good time. I was telling my mom the other day that I remember going to Summerslam in Chicago with her, where the Undertaker fought the fake Undertaker, and Razor Ramon fought Shawn Michaels I think, and what a good time I had. Or the time I went to a couple of ECW shows with my friend at the time Jason. We had a good time there and we even ended up being in the intro footage of the ECW TV show back then. I didn’t look at it as being a distraction from some grand “truth”.

I enjoy my Djing, making music, and sometimes playing games on my PS5. I am going to make the best of everything else that comes with life like work, or outside people making things more difficult for you like your landlord, etc. Perhaps if I change my outlook on things, things will get better. They have been getting better slowly but surely, but I still find myself dipping into that dark pool of negative thinking. I will make a concerted effort to work on that, and I will see how things change for me by the end of the year. With my cancer diagnosis, I was really positive and didn’t get really down in the dumps about it, and whaddya know, I ended up going into complete remission. I had a great doctor, but I’m sure my attitude helped the situation a lot.

Moving forward with life and trying to get the most out of it was what that passage I mentioned in the beginning was alluding to. If I can find the exact passage, I’ll mention it in another post. The Bible is full of info like that though. That’s why the brothers from WuTang called it B.I.B.L.E or “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth”. Here’s to heeding that instruction and trying to make the most out of this life that I can. Peace and blessings to you if you’re reading, and have a good week ahead. L8r….

I just wanted to chime in real quick before I start working today. I think our time off system in the workplace is stupid. So you’re telling me I could work some place for a few years, accrue a lot of vacation time, then if I get laid off, quit, or GOD forbid fired, and I start a new job… I have to start all over again? Not only that, but the people/management at the new job will have the mentality that if I take time off I’m taking too much time off for someone who “just started”??? First off, I didn’t “just start” working. I’ve been working steadily since I was friggin 16 years old!!!

Your PTO should be controlled by a 3rd party and carry over from job to job imho. Perhaps the government could track it or something to that effect. I think it’s ridiculous that you have to “reset” each time you start a new job. It’s stupid and illogical. Yet another way to f over the working person. It doesn’t matter that i haven’t been working for YOU for years… but I HAVE been working for years… I need time off. end rant/

So I was watching Youtube tonight, which is customary for me after I get off work, and I saw some videos regarding the state of Downtown LA, San Francisco, and New York. What I saw was very sad and I can’t believe how poorly maintained and deteriorated these areas are. I’m sure it’s the same in places like Detroit, Chicago, and probably even some parts of Atlanta. All across this country the homeless problem is bubbling and areas that were once vibrant and bustling areas of commerce, community and arts/entertainment, are now vandalized, urinated on, and home to unsightly graffiti.

When you look at old pictures or movies that show how Chicago used to be, or downtown LA, it’s incredible the difference. People on the streets are well dressed, there’s shops and diners for people to partake in. I can’t believe how far and how fast things have gone downhill in this country. What have the mayors of these cities, and the other local politicians been doing in their job roles??? There’s homeless people everywhere, which I don’t say out of disdain or disgust, but out of concern and disbelief. What did these people think was going to happen when they let rents, food, and gas (among other things) get so out of hand price wise that the average person CANNOT afford to live in this society?

You’d have to be so dense to not see it happening that I am convinced it was done on purpose! Why are they letting more migrants into the country with no job leads, some of them have no real job skills short of hard manual labor. You can’t even give the people in your country jobs to work that will keep food on their table and a roof over their head, let alone bringing in thousands of other people who are going to end up in the same boat: homeless on the streets of America. To put the cherry on top of all that, I saw a video where the Supreme court is looking to ban people from “sleeping outside”. That means not on the street or alleyway, not in your car, etc. What are people who are homeless supposed to do when law enforcement starts arresting them for being tired and needing to sleep when they don’t have a place to call home?

This stuff is so messed up on so many levels. I don’t understand why the people in America don’t revolt. It’s because most of them are hanging on by a thread and haven’t been pushed into the red zone that many of these homeless people have been. It’s time for us to start demanding answers and holding people accountable for this. I don’t care who was here first, whether black people are indigenous to the America’s, along with Latino’s or whether white people hold claim to the land, we ALL live here now.. every race…. and need to try to make this a great country to be in. We need to stop bickering over stupid things like race, when the truth is that we all have souls and can die and re-incarnate into a different race of person at any given time in history. Until we unite and revolt against how we are being led, they are going to treat us like the lemmings we’ve been behaving as and take us right off a cliff!

What’s up people.. I just wanted to put up a quick post. So Pioneer recently released a firmware update for the DDJ-REV7, which is a two channel, motorized jog DJ controller for Serato DJ Pro and now Rekordbox with the update. One of the coolest features they added in the update is called Stems EQ.
Basically what this allows you do to is use the EQ knobs on the controller to control the different parameters of their Stems functionality. So if you want to remove the drums from a song, you just turn down the low or bass EQ knob. Same for instruments and vocals with the Mid and Treble EQ knobs. It’s a very cool feature, but I’d like to see it release for the DJM-S11.

The S11 is a very expensive Serato DVS battle mixer. It costs even more than the Rane 72mk2, which is pretty comparable in terms of feature set. They both have a screen, paddle FX, etc. The S11 is their top of the line Serato battle mixer, over the S7 and now discontinued S9. With that said, I feel that any “top of the line” tech that they come out with should definitely be released for the S11. I don’t see anything that would prevent them from releasing Stems EQ for this mixer. It is essentially very similar in function to the Rev 7 mixer.

The major update in the last firmware update for the S11 was the ability to use Split Cue on your headphones from a button/toggle on the screen in the settings. That’s cool and all, but a lot of people don’t need Split Cue, hell, a lot of DJs don’t even use headphones when mixing. The ability to see the waveforms on your laptop screen, and in the case of the S11, on the mixer screen, eliminates a lot of the need to mix in your headphones. Particularly if you’re mixing a genre where you know what to expect with the music, like House or something like that.

The firmware updates for the S11 have been few and far between. The last one was pretty lackluster, but I really hope Pioneer is cooking up a banger of an update for the next drop. The S11 is an amazing mixer and deserves the best tech they have to offer. People, like myself, spent a lot of money to get a hold of that bad boy and we want it to be top tier as it was marketed as. Releasing Stems EQ, and hopefully some other killer app type features, will make us feel like our money was well spent and like we indeed made the right decision in going with the S11 as our mixer of choice for our DJ setups. Stay up, stay blessed, and keep moving forward. L8r!

So I didn’t really go into detail, but I was diagnosed with CLL, which is Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in January of 2023. I went through infusion treatments where they pump pretty powerful chemicals into your veins via IV for a few months. After that I had to take some medication every day. I did a second bone marrow biopsy last two Fridays ago and then talked to my doctor to get the results this past Friday. I am in complete remission from the illness. Praise GOD. I had a pretty bad day on Friday with my car breaking down, and life has just been tough in general. That was a bit of good news that I really needed to hear.

Even though remission doesn’t mean cured, and it could come back in the future, I feel blessed right now that I have more time on this Earth to do the things I enjoy and spend time with people I love. I pray that the Lord continues to give me more time to accomplish things I want to like being an amazing DJ, being an amazing music producer, possibly getting back into martial arts, getting in great physical shape ,and getting physically stronger. I have to work at a job or do something to earn money, so that’s a given, but when I get time away from that, I want to pursue the things I am passionate about and enjoy.

My family has been pretty supportive, and even though I suspect them a lot of undermining me, it may just be that I’m being paranoid. They have been there for me in a lot of tough times seemingly, so I don’t let my thoughts run away with me and I speak to them and show them love. I want to move forward in this life and be more positive about life. GOD brought some people into my life that have shown me that being happy and positive about life is the ticket to blessings. Thinking negatively or being worrisome about things brings bad luck and bad karma I believe.

As believers in GOD, we shouldn’t worry to much about the things that happen in life. Deal with them as they come and have faith that GOD will bring you through it. You also need to use some of the divine gifts that GOD has given to you as a human being, and I think those are things people are starting to wake up to and realize right now. Prayerfully a lot of us as human beings find out who we are and what we are capable of and move forward into a great future as the human race. With that said, I’m happy about my remission status, and I’m going to keep growing and living as long as I can. L8z!

So it’s Monday morning and I’m about to start getting ready for work. The weekend flew by, as usual, and I felt like I barely had any time to really get into what I wanted to get into. It kinda sucks that a large part of your weekend is spent preparing for the next work week. Doing laundry, buying groceries so you have food for the week etc. I wish I could find an IT job that gave me 3 days off a the end of the week. Maybe work 4 10 hour shifts or something like that. Even with that, people who work that type of shift say their weekend usually goes too fast.

The work week seems to take forever to get to the end, but your weekend goes by like a mouse fart in the wind. It’s really crazy how that works. I think the only time a person truly breaks free of that grind/rat race/hustle is when they reach the age where they can retire. Honestly though, by then, you’re at an age where you probably can’t do or enjoy the things you would have if you could have retired at a younger age. That’s why it’s important to stay in shape and take care of your body so that when you do get older, you’re not housebound or limited with what you can do.

I am still looking for a remote/work from home job as I work my current job. When I had the opportunity to work from home, I had more time to take care of the things I needed to. I could go to the grocery store on my lunch breaks, or do laundry while I worked, take my dog for 3 walks a day. It was pretty cool, but the way our society is setup, these companies are trying to get back to the “old way” of doing things. I know I’ve said this before on this blog, but with the high speed internet we ALL have in our homes, programs like Microsoft Teams and Zoom. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be largely able to work from our homes as we move into the future.

They’ve got the majority of people “coming back” into the office, but as soon as another crazy pandemic jumps off, it’s going to kick everybody in the arse again just like COVID did, and they’ll be scrambling to get everyone working from home again. Sometimes I feel like the people who makes decisions are so stupid and illogical it’s ridiculous. After what happened with COVID, why would you EVER try to go back to the old way of doing things???? Because it’s 9-5 wage slavery and you having the “freedom” to work from home is giving you too much.

Look at what happened with 9-11. After 9-11, they completely changed the way we do air travel. There’s TSA much more involved, you have to get rigorously checked before you can get on a plane. No more hanging out at the airport if you don’t have a flight, etc. How come with that we made sweeping changes in the way we do things, but after COVID, which was longer lasting and much more significant, we haven’t? Because to make changes in the way people work would be “too much like right” if you understand what I mean. They want you stressing out in traffic every day, they want you sleep deprived, they want you to have very little time for your personal enjoyment or hobbies, they want you hustling to get things done after work and all that.

Anyway, I’m getting more and more pissed off as I write this, so I’m going to end it here. Have a good work week, and push as best you can to get through it. Enjoy what time you can catch and be blessed. L8r!

Hey what’s up reader! It’s SuperBowl Sunday and I’m looking forward to the big game. Really I’m looking forward to the good food me and the wife got to eat while we watch. We’re going to be watching on Paramount+ since we don’t have cable TV or a real streaming TV service. I’m glad they are showing the game and the price for the service is super cheap per month.

Life has been the same, just working, living life and enjoying music. I’ve been working on my MPC a lot. I’m actually thinking to go sell my Roland SP 404 mk2 today. I don’t use it since I can take my MPC to work with me and its just sitting there not being used. I was all about the 404 mk2 for a while, but it is just a bastard version of what the MPC can offer. Also, Akai is going to be releasing stems for the standalone MPC pretty soon, so the 404 mk2 is left behind in the dust.

Once Akai releases stems for the standalone modern MPCs, its going to be a game changer. I’ll be able to take parts of a song I download to sample from off Tracklib and manipulate that part how I want to. I can get rid of drums I don’t want in the sample, or vocals, or isolate vocals. It’s going to be amazing. I can’t wait to try it out and even if they charged 9.99 per month for it, I would be willing to pay. I hear it’s going to be a one time charge of $10 which is a steal.

I went to the record shoppe the other day and grabbed some records out of the bargain bin to sample from. Even those records you’ll be able to stem parts out which will be really cool and open up creative possibilities. I’m looking forward to it seriously and I can’t wait until they release it!

Work has been… well… work. A lot of demands are placed on you as an IT tech and people can be very impatient. They want what they want NOW. I’ve never been that type of person to put demands on other people like that. I ask my wife to make me a cup of coffee when I come home from work, but only because when I’m at home in the AM when she is, I’ll make her coffee every time. It’s a give and take you know? But I’ve never been impatient with people or demanded a lot from people working in a “service” position.

I have my biopsy coming up in March and I’m 100% positive it will be negative. I am a strong, healthy, athletically built guy and I have been strong since this diagnosis. I am going to get in really good shape pretty soon and I’ll start playing basketball again. I was able to dunk back in like 2009 when I was working at the cable company and in really good shape. I want to be one of those older guys that people marvel at how fit they are. I’ll get there for sure. It’s hard to get up super early and go to the gym, but I have to figure something out. Maybe I can do body weight exercises in the AM at home.

I’m still working on my beat tape. Getting a job has kind of taken a lot of precedence over doing that right now. By the end of the work week I’m tired and Saturday is my day to decompress, then Sunday I have to prepare for the upcoming work week by doing laundry and going grocery shopping with my wife. It’s a grind and it feels like we barely get a lot of time to ourselves. No complaints though, just keep hustling and keep pushing forward. I have faith that one day things will get better and I’ll be able to get more enjoyment out of life, not that I don’t get some already, I just wish I could get more.

That’s it for this blog entry, have a great Superbowl Sunday and enjoy your incoming work week. Be cool, be patient, don’t let them stress you out, and find some time for you hobbies. L8r!

So I’ve had the thought that I want to start writing lyrics to my beats. I love re-listening to my songs, but something is missing from them, and I feel like it’s vocals. When I was in college, I was a very good creative writer. I’ve always been my entire life. I’m thinking to re-hone that skill and start writing lyrics every day to whatever beat I’m working on at the moment. I know writing “rap” lyrics isn’t the same as writing a term paper or essay, but I think some of the skills do convert.

I want to spend at least 45 minutes a day after work and more time on the weekends just writing lyrics. I want to see how creative I can get with rhyming, using wordplay, and things like that. I have a notebook I am going to start writing in and hopefully I can get decent at it. Maybe I can do it when I go into work on my lunch break with my MPC as well.

I’ll report back here how this little “project” is going and I’ll share any full songs I make on Distrokid or my Bandcamp page. I’m not looking to blow up as an emcee, but I would like for people to enjoy my music. I think I have a lot of interesting things to say and it will be fun trying to weave those things into the verses of a song. We’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned! Peace!

So I’ve been getting a lot of videos in my Youtube feed of people complaining about working. I never searched for it, it just started appearing and I made the mistake of watching one and now they get regularly recommended to me. Anyway, the recurring theme in this is that a lot of people feel like they are a slave to their job and that they have no free time. I agree with that. It’s very hard to get into anything before or after a normal 8 hour workday, and the weekends fly by so fast they aren’t even worth mentioning as free time. You spend most of your weekend shopping for groceries for the coming week, doing laundry, and trying to straighten up your home a bit.

I am a firm believer in the well known phrase that, “GOD loves a working man”. If GOD didn’t want us to work, I don’t think we would be doing it. Working is very good for human beings. It helps us to feel productive and it keeps our minds from being idle. A lot of the crimes that occur happen from someone having a wicked idea pop into their head when they are idle, just sitting at home doing a whole lot of nothing and they get this bright idea to go rob someone or some place. “The idle mind is the devils workshop” is the common saying and I believe that to be very true. That’s why I’m a huge proponent of having hobbies and things you do that fil your time besides the things you MUST do to keep going forward every day.

The problem in my opinion comes in the way that you can have a person that is not lazy, that is willing to work 40 hours per week, but they can’t afford their own place or have any disposable income to get any enjoyment out of life. An Amazon warehouse worker shouldn’t have to eat beans and cornbread every day when Jeff Bezos is eating steak every day. Sure, maybe that warehouse worker can’t eat good every day like Jeff, but they should be able to enjoy the occasional steak or a trip some place nice with their family from time to time.

The fact that people can’t even afford a decent apartment rental or don’t have enough money to buy “some” nice things is not fair. I would consider myself middle class and it’s a struggle to do things and get things. I buy a lot of DJ and music equipment, and thus I can’t afford to travel nor do I own a lot of nice clothes. There has to be a trade-off somewhere. I work in Information Technology and have been providing computer and tech support for different companies for a few years. There’s no reason with what I do for a living that I shouldn’t earn enough money to do all that and then some. The fact is though, in IT, companies tend to force you to join their team as a temporary employee, with low wages and bad benefits from the recruiter, like expensive health insurance and very little time off compared to what a full time employee would get. Add onto that that I live on the West Coast where the cost of living is high and you start to see the picture.

For myself and even someone working in a job that doesn’t require a particular skillset, if you are willing to get up off your butt and work every day, you should have enough money to enjoy your life to a reasonable extent. I’m not asking to own a yacht or a mansion, but can I be able to travel, buy cool stuff for my hobby, buy decent quality clothes, and eat decent food with my willingness to get up and work every day? It’s not like it’s un-doable either. American Corporations are greedy and all they care about is their profit margin for the most part. They cut costs, overwork people, among other things all in an effort to achieve the best bottom line. There used to be a time in this country where no matter where you worked, you could count on getting a bonus around Christmas time so you could buy your family nice gifts and dinner which lead to an enjoyable holiday. Those days are gone, and most companies don’t even give bonuses anymore.

It’s a sad situation, and until the people revolt against Corporate America, its only going to get worse and worse. Greed is the word of the day and you see it in all avenues of your life. Everyone wants your money and doesn’t want to give you enough to do what you want to do. It sucks and it has to change. The videos I mentioned at the start of this post are evidence that people are getting fed up and are tired of this monotonous struggle they keep enduring. It’s going to hit the fan soon and I will be alive to see it….

So I’ve upgraded from a MPC One to a MPC Live 2. The Live 2 is a lot better to use than the MPC One. It doesn’t have quite as many shortcut keys on the face of it, but the drum pads on it are the same size as the ones on the MPC X. They are the full size Akai MPC pads and I find them much better to use than the smaller pads on the MPC One.

The MPC Live also has more inputs and outputs than the MPC One. I’m able to plug both my MPK Mini PLUS and Roland GAIA 1 into the MPC Live 2 with no issues. Also, it has a RCA phono level input because it has a phono preamp inside the device. Right now I have my turntable plugged directly into the unit with the ground cable attached and it works great. Before I had to use my Tascam Model 12 and have the turntable connected to my DJ mixer, then from the mixer to the Tascam and work with it like that.

The MPC Live 2 can truly be the center of your studio and it has the inputs and outputs to do so. It has 3 stereo or 6 mono outputs onboard the unit which is pretty sick! The screen is the same size as the MPC One, but because it’s to the right of the pads and sits on an elongated device, it gives the optical illusion of being bigger. It also is closer to you than it was on the MPC One when working on the unit. I’m very happy with it and I would recommend to anyone to get this over the MPC One.

The MPC One is a cool unit, but I’m able to put my Live 2 into a carrying case and take it to work to use on my breaks. I’ve worked on songs during lunch and that’s a lot of fun and really gives me a slice of home when I’m at work. The battery inside it lasts a good long while and you’re able to get busy with it with no problem and no need for extra equipment. I have a Decksaver coming for it soon, and I’ll be able to protect it and keep dust off it better.

Lastly, the unit has a slot in the bottom internally where you can put a 2.5inch sata drive to use with the unit. I have a 512GB SSD inside it now and it works out great. I copied all my music and sound data onto the drive from my 512GB SD card and it loads the information a lot faster than it did from the SD Card on the MPC One. The sata drive is secure and has a screwed in cover over it to protect the drive. There’s no chance of it falling open, and it’s just a great way to have your music data with the device.

I got the black version, but I wish I could have gotten the MPC Live 2 Retro. Not a lot of places carry that anymore, so it’s harder to come by. I love the look of the retro unit and the gray topped pads on it. Maybe if I can find it somewhere, I can return this unit to where I bought it and get the Retro joint.

I’m hoping the fact that I love to use this unit so much will help me in creating more music on it. I’ve already made like 3 or 4 basic beats on it that sound good and I feel like I could flesh out when recording them and maybe add some lyrics to go along with them. I need to focus more if I’m going to write lyrics and not spend so much time watching people on Youtube and Twitch. It’s just a distraction and keeps me from doing my own thing and the things I love…

Hopefully, this year I’ll go live on Twitch more often and share my beatmaking process with the followers I have so far and I can start to build a community of people who are like-minded as I am. We can learn from each other and help each other get better with this music thing. A lot of us are only in it for the love of the process and the craft, and we’re not necessarily trying to get rich or famous from it. I wouldn’t want to be famous ever, because there’s a lot of nonsense that comes along with that. I could use some extra money though, so if some of my music garnered me more ends I’d be cool with that.

Have a great rest of the month and I’ll come back with some more posts soon. Peace, love, light, and blessings to you reader!