Competitions, Strategy, Portability & more…

This is just a small update. As you may know I am a graphic designer / communication designer as well as (now) a music producer. While the design side of things is purely commercial I noticed the data portability group got into a little hot water with their logo being too similar to that of Red Hat’s logo (apparently). When I saw they were holding a competition for a new logo i quickly whipped up an entry and I’ve just been informed it’s in the top 15!

You can see the top 15 here: http://dataportability.techcrunch.com/ (Mine is the first logo). It appears my logo is one of the more favoured logos which is excellent. If you are in a voting mood feel free to vote for my entry

Now on the other side of the coin – Music Production – I take it very seriously but at this stage I’m yet to have any official releases. I prefer to just remix what I like and pick up new techniques along the way. I made an entry into the Foals remix competition and now my remix is live. You can listen (stream & download) here:

http://www.last.fm/music/Foals/_/Electric+Bloom+(Blaze+Tripp+Remix)

The winner is based on the number of plays (scrobbles) to the last.fm system. If you arent registered to last.fm you really should. I personally think it is one of the best social networks around as it brings you closer to the people who like the same music you do. It works better than anything else I have seen anyway.

I dont normally enter competition so I find it funny that I’m in this spot now to try and promote these community based competitions. In any case it will be interesting to see the outcomes.

If you feel like sharing the love your votes will be appreciated very much

La Chomba – Chacarron

The video of the one and only La Chomba doing the Chaccaron. It’s simply amazing to finally see people with true musical talent realising their full potential. We can only hope to see more from Da Chomba Man himself in the future.

(YouTube Video)

PS: I don’t know much about this guy but I think he also goes under the guise of andy’s val gourmet – chacarron macarron.

PSS: Does anyone have the lyrics for this? I’be been searching high and low!

What makes Vinyl so much better than CD?

The artwork.

New Mix

Just playing around with testing to record a mix with my new DJ gear. This was done into the mic input of my laptop so im not sure if the sound quality is amazing. Its quite a compressed mp3 too which I didnt realise.

Keep in mind the mixing sorta sucks too. I did the whole thing in my headphones.

Enjoy:

Blaze Mix 9th October 2006 (Right click, Save Target/Link As)

NOTE: I HAVE RECORDED MANY MORE MIXES SINCE THIS POST THAT ARE MUCH BETTER QUALITY & WITH FULL TRACKLISTS ETC. HEAD OVER TO MY LAST.FM JOURNAL FOR ALLTHE LATEST MIXES WITH MP3 LINKS

Tracks Include songs by Quesh, Les Rythmes Digitales, Chromeo, MSTRKRFT & more….

Update: I recorded this mix with my mic input on my laptop and well I have now worked out that the mic really isnt the best option for recording an audio except for… you guessed it… your voice. Honestly though, I thought laptop makers would made an easy way to get a line-in input going. Ah well you can still enjoy the mix, just next time I’ll have to drag my desktop pc into the dj room

Also posted on Last.FM

Finally trying out Last.fm Radio

Note: Disregard the following links and just try and use the links on my profile. WordPress can't seem to sort out the linking issue to last.fm.
Well I seem to have been upgraded to a last.fm subscriber (my profile) for now which is great. I get access to a few more feature which are good. Features that have always been free though are listening to radio. I fancy myself as a bit of a DJ or "good music chooser" might be the better choice for now, so why don't you sign up and then click some of the following links to fire up a 128kbits mp3 stream from last.fm of some good tracks.

• Blaze's Personal Radio plays a lot of the music I do, so check that one for some good tracks. It's quite a good match they have there of the stuff I get into, well done lastfm.
• Here's a radio station I made up combining a bunch of my favourite artists at the moment. Quite a disco house style, some french touch and a bit of electro in there too. This seems to play a lot of semi older tracks (80s and 90s style) but it's fantastic.
• I have a bunch of neighbours that like similar music to them, so why not listen to some of Blaze's Neighbours? They surely have some interesting stuff.

I normally wouldn't make a post about something like this but last.fm suprised me with the kind of tracks they were playing. Admittedly I dont listen to very much commercial music but they seem to be getting a lot of it down well.

If you're not on lastfm yet, sign up now and start saving your music history, you never know what you will find in the future. It is truly an exciting place to be.