Report: Remix Hotel New York Day 2
Jun 30, 2008 12:56 PM, Lori Kennedy
The hot, sticky, sometimes wet weather didn't deter attendees from swarming into the SAE Institute for the second day of Remix Hotel NYC 2008. The day started out with everyone clamoring to get into the first panel, The New Producers, put on by our buds Don Di Napoli and J Hatch from iStandardd Producers. We sold out tickets to this panel, which was, naturally, supersweet. And if you missed this panel, as well as any other panels, stay tuned to Remixhotel.com where we'll be posting tons of video from the panels, interviews with the artists and demos from the manufacturers. Major science is being dropped here at RHNYC 2008; all you have to do is stop by the event or Remixhotel.com to pick it up. We do this because we love you.
Anyway, I was frickin' stoked to see what goodies I could play with today, and my first stop was in the Stanton room. The company was showcasing its SCS.1d Deck and SCS.1m Mix Controller (both of which are scheduled for a late-2008 release). Stanton designed these beauties to run with any MIDI-compatible software, and it can be customized to your heart's desire. The SCS.1d has a sweet 10-inch high-torque motorized platter that feels solid and is totally fun to use. It also has four velocity-sensitive pads for fast triggering, sequencing, programming and looping.
Next up was our good friends at SoundToys. I gotta admit, I was a little giddy about checking out this room because I knew the folks at SoundToys were using music from Nine Inch Nails in their kickass demo. (Yeah, so I have a little thing about Trent Reznor. Shhhh, don't tell him, okay?) You may remember that lately The Rez has been essentially giving away his music—as well as the files and stems from which to manipulate said music—and apparently, he uses SoundToys Native Effects quite a bit on his tracks, specifically EchoBoy. So the dude from SoundToys was demoing this software using NIN's "The Beginning of the End" from 2007's Year Zero (that's now, like, four albums ago), and it was amazing what you could do with it. I highly recommend checking out this software. I chatted up the SoundToys guy a bit, and he told me some funny/awesome Trent studio stories, which I can't divulge here; let's just say funky dancing was involved.
And while I LOVE hearing Trent stories, I have to admit that the highlight of the evening for me was kickin' it old school for Grand Wizard Theordore's set in the Rane/Serato room, with Grandmaster Caz (of The Cold Crush Brothers). Grand Wizard Theodore blew everyone away with his amazing scratching skills; he is a real treat to watch on the decks. He was doing all sorts of crazy mixing (blending the theme from The Greatest American Hero [remember THAT show?!] with Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force's "Planet Rock" and then transitioning into The Brady Bunch theme) and scratching (theme songs from Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Sanford & Son). He also threw in some "When the Shit Goes Down" by Cypress Hill. Sweet. Then Grandmaster Caz grabbed the mic and did some killer freestyling over the controversial "Rapper's Delight." The crowd was lovin' every minute of it.
The point I'm trying to make here is that day 2 was insanely fun. But what I'm wondering is, why aren't you here? Didn't you get my text? Because damn, son, you need to be absorbing all of this knowledge and audio goodness. We've got one more day left, so I expect to see your hot self at SAE on Sunday.
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