Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas/Happy Hannukah/Merry Capitalism Season to everyone. I figured I should put out my 2022 “State of the Booth” post to give some updates outside of just the usual “Studio Setup Series” posts (which I swear are going to wrap soon).
State of the Streams
Digital Identity streams were scheduled to begin right before Christmas – I even had a Christmas Eve launch special planned…
…and then I got a call on the Friday before that the studio location became a quarantine zone. I’m going nowhere near there until that situation resolves itself. That being said, as soon as it does, I’ll finish filming and photographing all the launch bits and pieces for posts and stuff and actually update the schedule to reflect when streams will be happening.
I’m not done with the rest of the graphics package stuff quite yet but I don’t see that as a blocker to starting. I mentioned in Part 5 of the Studio Setup Series that I was working on this. I am working with a close friend that has a background in radio broadcasting on the audio side of the show imaging, and the graphics department remains myself, After Effects, and the power of Canva/Photoshop. Again, not holding back the first few episodes/streams – I can add all this in later as my backup/standby graphics are done.
House Call streams are still on hold. It’s not even in the backseat of the car, it’s more like in a trailer towed behind it, and that trailer has one flat tire and the stuff isn’t tied down as we’re going 90mph down an interstate. I will fully admit to changing gears sometimes and working on some of the graphic designs and stuff for that show as I come across ideas or materials that would fit the aesthetic I’m looking for.
But there is no scheduled start for those. I’m still firmly in the camp of a “premiere style” show, pre-recorded and broadcast at a later date.
Side note: I’ve taken the liberty of recording a few interstitial video messages with Digital Identity imaging just in case I get locked out of the studio again and have to air a re-run or a pre-recorded “Get out of Jail Free” episode. Yes, these are the things that I come up with out of thin air, go “that’s a really good idea, let me do that immediately”, only for it to turn out that I’ll probably never use them or forget where I saved them.
I’ll discuss further down what I’ve been working on during this delay/annoyance/whatever a little further below.
State of the Site/Server
I’ve been churning on the site and Discord Server pretty hard lately – working on automated social posts, special channels, that sort of thing.
Posts on the site should now post to Twitter and Mastodon automatically. Discord already picks these up.
Shameless (wait, no not shameless – it’s my site, dang it) plugs for socials below:
I’ve been working on getting solid automation around the whole “stream goes live, post to socials/Discord” thing since Mixcloud has none of this. I think I’ve got what I need but the content needs tweaking (for Mastodon specifically).
I’m also working on a neat thing that reads and verifies my followers and Subscribers on Mixcloud – more on that soon. It’s in beta, but I can tell you now that subscribers on Mixcloud will have access to a few special channels. I could extend that to a Patreon or something in the future if things go that way and I decide to open one. Don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but the functionality will be there if it gets to that point.
If you pop by Discord, you may have noticed a new #listening-room channel – I’ll be doing some prep streams (usually for live sets, not for the shows) and other music stuff in that channel. It’s listen only, but the text chat is available for everyone.
Wait – did you say prep streams?
Yes, yes I did.
State of the Second Studio?
OK, OK – let me explain. There’s no second studio. But I did find myself in a little bit of a jam given that all my equipment now resides at the studio, and with New Year’s Eve coming, I had no real way of preparing for the live set(s) I have that evening, given the aforementioned “quarantine zone”.
So, I’ve spent the last week or so cobbling together the limited ability to do set prep right from the comfort of my home office, and figured, “Might as well just rig up OBS while I’m at it”.
There would be a long story and technical explanation about Traktor, Beatport Link, Windows 11, and AMD Ryzen CPUs all not playing nice in the sandbox here but I am NOT re-living that nightmare again, thank you very much. Ask me about this some time and I’m sure I’ll bore you to death.
DJ Cryptografik, Dec 2022
Long story short, I dug my old Traktor Z1 mixer interface out of storage, picked up an old Mac Mini on eBay, hit up Guitar Center for a mic and cables, and wired it all up and built out OBS for it. Check it out – here’s what they should look like:
So here’s the deal with these:
- ONLY on Discord – that’s why I built out the #listening-room channel.
- Not really gonna be announced right now. Pretty off the cuff, I will do a lot of hemming and hawing, and arguing with myself
- Mostly limited to messing around and testing out material for the show
- Most of my live set stuff will be prepped publicly
- If that goes well, Digital Identity prep streams might become available to subscribers as an extra perk.
- Not saying I won’t occasionally do them publicly, just figured it’s a neat perk.
Those last two points are very much still a passing thought. A lot more work has to get done there and people actually need to tune in to the show to grow the server.
In Conclusion
If you read this far – thanks! I hope to get the show started here real soon. I honestly did not expect the studio to take so long for me to set up, but my weekends got surprisingly busy and it took longer than I thought. More on that in the absolute final Studio Setup Series post where I show off the entire studio from front to back.
If you haven’t already, I hope you join the Discord server. At the time of writing, it’s pretty empty in there but I think once the Mixcloud streams are back up and running we’ll get some members.
This will be the last long form blog post of 2022. I may drop a surprise in the next few days on Mixcloud though.
Looking forward to a productive 2023!
Logan aka DJ Cryptografik