All posts by Mixer Jaëxx

My Entire Personal Music Collection Is On Apple Music

I’ve had my personal music collection on Spotify, but I’ve switched to Apple Music a while ago and I couldn’t share my personal music collection playlists the same way on Apple Music. But now I can. I’m @mixerjaexx on Apple Music and @mixerjaexx on Spotify.

List of public playlists on Apple Music

Here’s the list of playlists that I have on Apple Music. They’re in genre format as that’s how I listen to my music.

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Producers Who Own Multiple Keyboards But No Mixer?

One thing I’ve never understood is the tendency for people who produce music to own all these music accessories, such as multiple MIDI keyboards, but not own a single mixer (control surface). It’s understandable if someone has limited hardware and doesn’t have a mixer, but that’s not the case for so many people.

Throwin’ money in all the wrong directions

Like take a look at this random person’s studio setup. They’ve clearly thrown money at all these music toys; they have three keyboards that appear to be very expensive. Just one of those keyboards probably costs three times as much as my one keyboard. And let’s not ignore the fact the main keyboard’s highest octave keys are inaccessible under the table.

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Reason: Custom Behringer X-Touch Remote Map Layout

[10/07/2020 Version 6.2] Hey, I’m Jaëxx. This is the 100% free MJ Enhanced Universal Control 8 channel mixer interface for Reason Studios. (The MJ Enhanced Combo Extender is the 16 channel version and the MJ X-Touch Trinity is the world’s first 24 channel version.) This is a remote map and Lua codecs that run on Mackie MCU Pro, Behringer X-Touch, iCon Qcon, PreSonus FaderPort 8 mixers (mixers that run off Mackie’s Universal Control protocol).

Using a Mackie MCU Pro, Behringer X-Touch, iCon Qcon, PreSonus FaderPort 8, the MJ Enhanced Universal Control mixer interface in Reason Studios (regular and suite) is a single native remote map with no additional man-in-the-middle software to run. Nearly all of Reason’s virtual SSL 9000k mixer is fully controllable for all 8 channels. The MJ Enhanced Universal Control controls Reason natively without messing with creating special sequencer tracks or tedious mouse clicking.

This fixes problems like buttons being mapped in the wrong areas, virtually completely eliminates clip LEDs getting triggered, functions missing entirely (like the EQ Q knobs) while adding enhancements and new features, like comp and gate LED meters, redesigned encoder LED display modes, time displayed by default, global solo and mute off functions, enhances the channel VU meters, introduces new rotary encoder LED display modes, FX return encoder LED meters, illuminated select buttons, completely new “alternative text” mode for displaying additional information and added encoder ring master VU out meters. This enables you to control the entire virtual SSL mixer and channel strip settings including channel selection. This article serves also as a guide / general commentary and I’m sharing it free…

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Am I The Only One Who Hates VST’s?

I’ve never liked VST’s. Never. There’s just something about them that I find so distracting from the whole music process. And what’s crazy is that I’m one of the only people who feel this way.

There’s a lot of different reasons why VST’s just feel wrong to me, wrong like someone walking outside in the dirt with bare socks and no shoe on. Wrong because…

Pop-up windows kill the immersion

Nearly all music software started out emulating physical music studio hardware. VST’s started out this way too. So it just seems wrong having these floating pop-up windows. The idea of virtual hardware floating on top of another and another…

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Reason: Why RE’s And VST’s Waste Your Time

Something not a lot of people realize is that most additional instruments and effects you can add to Reason via rack extensions (RE’s) and now VST’s (bleh) not only aren’t needed, nearly all of them are features found in Reason masquerading as new concepts.

Don’t be fooled by fancy audio demos

The hard, unspoken truth about music production is that there isn’t many instruments and effects devices that are doing anything new. How many effects are doing anything actually new? That’s the thing; people aren’t inventing new effect categories… after 40 years of audio design, the music community isn’t going to be coming out with new concepts anytime soon. You’ve got categories like distortion, delay, reverb, repeaters, chorus, unison, phasers, pitch shifting, gaters, amps, filters, EQs… and of which all of these are already built into Reason (with the exception of a repeating device, but that’s why combinator patches exist I guess).

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Studio Hardware Walkthrough

In this post, I detail the physical hardware I use for my desktop studio setup. Rack, mixer, music devices, audio interfaces, audio analyzers, monitors, speakers, power supplies and desktop configuration.

Rack

The rack is custom-built from two red IKEA tables. I stacked them and keep them in place with two “L” brackets. I then installed rack rails, cutting the metal rack rails with a dremel tool.

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How To Install Half Rack Studio Devices In A Full Rack

Here’s a guide on how to install half-rack (compact) studio devices the right way (so that two half-rack devices can be installed side-by-side). The bad news is that no one sells any products where you can just mount your half-rack device and install it into your full-sized (normal) rack. The good news is that I was able to modify a $20-$30 rack shelf and I’m gonna’ show you how I did it…

Foreword

What I did was do a major modification to a rack shelf with a lip on the front. This is the rack shelf I got.

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How To Copyright Music (Step-By-Step With Pictures)

[Updated: 04/29/2020] Registering copyrights for music is a very complicated process with (now) 31 steps minimum. Guides on how to register copyrights do a bad job. Here, I’m detailing a step-by-step process, including screen shots, of myself actually registering the copyrights for the album Bradenton Ambient so you can see how the real process works and not just internet article writer theory…

Why even the top guides are bad

Ask Google how to copyright music and, even at the moment of writing this article, Google lists it as a simple 7 step process (it’s over a 33 31 step process minimum) and even lists the price incorrectly as $35 when it’s really $55 $65.

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